Silver Tips Imperial...

On the 13th of June, at precisely 1 minute past midnight, until 3 AM, specially-trained women go out in the darkness, by candle-light, into the Makaibari Estates in Northern India, in Bengal, and pick two leaves and a bud.

They collect them and these become what are known as the 'Silver Tips Imperial.' Not fully-fermented when they are ready to brew, they are among the costliest and most exclusive teas in the world. Well, in the whole Universe in fact.

Kowledgeable ET Aliens come in their dark space ships and take a few cellophane bags of the stuff away to stock in their private state room galley-serveries.

It's the thing that got a certain 'Arlecchina' into trouble one time back in the Renaissance in Venice. It's one thing to silver some Venetian glass in order to make a hand-mirror for your own vanity, quite another to try and drink it!

There's nothing they like better, these weird Elvish people, than dual-meanings, dual-meaning words and sayings.

"I am drinking stars!" Exclaimed Dom Perignon.

'I am drinking my own beauty.' Said Ms Arlecchina.

And there began her long and amazing adventure.

It's all recorded partly in here, of course, which you have all read: The Witches of Demeter

Well, the original events are not, but the results of them certainly are.

...You see, my friends, the number of people on this planet right here and now, today, who would even know what made the Venetian version of 'Silver Tips Imperial' so special would be, um, not that many, perhaps seven or eight of us, hardly Eleven that's for sure. 

Do we have some 'Silver Tips Imperial' in Center Eleven? Dunno, haven't looked...

Aaaargh, you don't believe me though, do you?

But yes, the Venice version of 'Silver Tips' is really something very special indeed.

Meanwhile, the hand painted plus acrylic silk screen print of Marilyn Monroe (called the 'Shot Sage Blue' MM) just sold for a zillion bucks, of course. Warhol made plenty of MM paintings/prints but only one in which he used a specific complicated and precision 'three screen' process for the printing parts - so that all the edges and lines have crystal clear definition.

I personally think the blue background and overall coloration is pretty spectacular. I don't like Warhol because all the wrong kinds of people 'pretend' that they do 'like' him/his work.

So I'm biased.

I tend to avoid even caring about anything 'Warhol!'

Do I like this piece though? Yeah sure. I do like it.

Like Arlecchina I do not have a hundred zillion dollars though, so I cannot enter a bid for this item of art.

On the other hand, the person who bought the thing cannot have any of the Silver Tips Imperial Venice blend, either.

You could. You might be able to one day soon. But you'd have to swear an oath to the Mistress of the Lagoon, that you will never tell anyone, what you discover, upon drinking this brew.

And you can only drink it with another person, a stranger, who is wearing a mask, and whom you do not know, and if you fall for them in the enterprise, you will become like the maddened suitor, lost and hoplessly seeking his paramore through the dingy alleys of Venice at night.