Okay, my ‘thing’ here is coffee, aliens and light-hearted sci-fi escapism. So when I came across this story from the Ukraine, I just had to share it.
Windows in this coffee shop have been shattered by Russian attacks 4 times already,each time the shop continued to work.Now,the windows have been broken for the fifth time.Barista came to work after the Russian attack last night,started making people drinks with cats on the foam to cheer them up.
Do aliens like coffee? Of course they do. It’s the most awesome hot beverage in the galaxy, after all. And we believe extra-terrestrials are visiting Earth to trade for it, and we can prove it. We even have pictures! All those UFO sightings are really aliens coming here to shop for coffee.
Galactic Smugglers series, Book 1
As I’ve written previously, UFO’s are just aliens looking for coffee. Consider the following syllogism based on known facts:
Premise one: Coffee is the most awesome beverage in the galaxy.
Premise two: All intelligent beings love coffee.
Inescapable conclusion: Therefore aliens love coffee.
Premise one and two are simple facts that all rational people will freely admit. Considering these facts together, the chain of logic is irrefutable and therefore the conclusion we arrive at is unavoidable. UFOs must be aliens looking for coffee. It’s only logical!
Fact!! Aliens like coffee!
I challenge anyone to refute the soundness of this logic. We all know coffee is the most popular drink in the world, for good reason. It’s awesome. All smart people know this, and any alien capable of traversing inter-stellar space to get here must also be highly intelligent. They know how to build spaceships, after all. Therefore, they must be here for the coffee.
Here’s more photographic evidence:
When aliens come for coffee, they bring the entire family
They come in peace
The good news is we can be pretty confident that their intentions are peaceful. How can we be so sure? Well, it’s simple. To put it in a nutshell, buying a cup of coffee is going to be much cheaper than an inter-stellar war.
Think about it: An inter-planetary war is going to be pretty expensive. It cost the western alliance 4 trillion dollars just to invade Iraq, a small country on our own planet just a few thousand miles away. If it costs that much just to invade a country a short distance away, think how much an inter-planetary war would cost!
Buying coffee is cheaper than inter-planetary invasions
It would be much cheaper to just buy the coffee from us. If I can do the math, I’m pretty sure an intelligent visitor from space can also do the math. They’re not stupid. Also, they wouldn’t want to risk ruining the Earth’s climate, which is perfect for growing coffee. Inter-planetary war is sure to wreak havoc on the environment, to say the least, which would put the world’s coffee harvest at risk. No intelligent being would take that chance.
So we can all relax, order another latte and get back to solving our Wordle puzzle for the day. The aliens aren’t here to start a war. They will be down at the local shopping centre disguised as humans buying coffee.
The days are short and the nights long and dark this time of year up here in the Great Canadian North. And to compound the dreariness, the news has turned into a daily horror show that just keeps getting worse and worse.
There are times when I feel a knot in my stomach after spending a few minutes perusing the news, and it’s very hard not to fall into depression. It can be a real struggle to keep one’s mood upbeat, and I know I’m not alone in this. Millions of thoughtful people are deeply worried with the insanity being unleashed on the world by the Orange Fascist in America, and his oligarch buddies.
So to help lift our moods, in today’s blog I thought I’d share some fun facts and happy thoughts related to the world’s most awesome beverage.
I’m talking about coffee, of course!
Today’s Happy Thought
We’ve always known that coffee drinkers are generally much more interesting and intelligent people, especially when compared to tea drinkers. I think we can all agree that’s just a simple fact.
Today’s good mood brought to you by coffee
But there’s more! The really great news is that coffee drinkers also live longer!
It’s true. There is now scientific evidence that drinking coffee improves your chances for a longer life than the non-coffee drinking crowd. According to researchers at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death.
According to Peter Kistler, head researcher at the Institute, “moderate intake of ground, instant and caffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle…”
The third in my Galactic Smuggler’s series, “A Spaceship for Hire” is now published and available in Ebook on all major Ebook sellers.
Book 3 in my Galactic Smuggler’s series
Book #3 picks up where “Coffee to Go, With a Spaceship” leaves off, continuing the story of Jack and Donna and their nice alien friends.
Exiled from Earth and unable to return home, Jack makes a living running a small cafe on a distant planet at the edge of the galaxy. But when marauding space pirates start raiding galactic trade routes, Jack and his alien friends find themselves cut-off from the rest of the galaxy.
It looks like Jack is soon to be out of business and out of money, and with war spreading he’s unable to go for help.
Help eventually comes from a very unlikely person: Donna, his ex-girlfriend. She’s learned how to fly an old alien spaceship that’s been abandoned in the woods behind her farm, and agrees to help Jack and his friends out.
Jack really, really, doesn’t want to go back into space, but he’s got no choice. Jack, Donna and a band of alien friends leave in Donna’s spaceship to go for help.
Along the way, the unlikely couple discover that they still have feelings for each other. But before they can start living their happily-ever-after, they first have to fight off space pirates, stop an inter-galactic war from spreading, and try to find their way back to Earth for another load of coffee.
This is a ride you don’t want to miss!
I think you’ll really enjoy “A Spaceship for Hire”. I’m really excited about it, and I think you’ll find that it’s a fun read.
I had a strange experience with life imitating art while writing Octavia Seven.
Octavia Seven is my time-travel romance about Octavia, an anthropologist from the 23rd century who travels back to our time. Her mission was to study life in our day before a killer virus wipes out humanity, leaving very few survivors. She was supposed to just conduct a few studies then return to her own time before the pandemic starts. But of course in fiction it can never be that simple, and she meets Jake, falls in love, and that’s when things start to get complicated for her. Jake can’t return with her, and she can’t stay with a killer virus on the way…
The real thing is never as much fun as fiction
I finished the first draft well before Covid-19, long before there was any hint of the real pandemic that was about to hit us in 2020.
I set the manuscript aside for a bit, fully intending on going through it a couple more times before sending it off to my proof-reader.
However, before I could finish the manuscript and get it to my proof-reader, Covid arrived and a real pandemic started sweeping the world. In those early days of covid, we had no idea how bad it may get, but as the bodies started piling up I lost all interest in my story, and I stopped working on it.
A bit too close to home
In my fictional story, I even had the virus starting in China. It was a bit too close to home, and I dropped the project, not knowing if I would ever finish it.
During those first few months of covid it felt like we were living in some kind of sci-fi plot, and I lost all interest in apocalyptic movies and fiction, because, well, it felt like we were really in one.
This is what it felt like in 2020
We got through it, and thankfully it didn’t turn out to be an apocalypse. Last year things started to get back to something more akin to normalcy, and over time I was able to gain some perspective on Octavia Seven.
I dusted off the story and got back to work on the manuscript. I really loved the characters and the story and felt like it was worth publishing, so I finished my re-writes and sent it off to my editor for proof-reading.
But I made some edits to the ending.
Who needs an apocalypse? They’re really not all that much fun…
I’m really not a fan of apocalyptic fiction any more. We have grandkids – I won’t tell you how many because the overall number is a bit ridiculous, but let’s just say we have several adorable grandkids who are still pretty little. Four of them are five and under. The thought of them picking through the ruins of a devastated Earth, scavenging to survive and hunting rats for their next meal, absolutely horrifies me. Only people who don’t have kids could possibly enjoy writing that kind of garbage.
So after living through Covid, I re-wrote the ending of Octavia Seven. It’s now a time-travel story about how love can change history for the better.
I’m a huge fan of happy endings. Who needs bad endings that leave you depressed? If I wanted to be depressed, I can read CNN for that.
You’ll likely need some cookies while reading your favorite fan-fiction. My favorite chef, Jenn Segal, has some fantastic cookie recipes. Check out her website here. Go and bake some before sitting down to read.
It’s official, I’m a Canuckle nerd (nerdle?/Cannerdle?). In today’s blog I’m finally coming to terms with that and admitting it to myself and the world. My wife is already planning to have friends and family over later tonight for an intervention.
Canada’s favourite word puzzle game
I love Wordle, the 5-letter daily word puzzle game that’s taken the world by storm. And the Canadian version of it, Canuckle, is just as much fun for Hosers like me. For those of you who may not know, Canuckle is a Wordle spinoff with a Canadian theme – 5-letter words like BACON, CANOE, MOOSE, KAYAK, MAPLE, BACON, SYRUP, BACON, … etc, etc. You get the idea. (Oh, did I mention bacon?)
Wordle in 1!
It’s true. A couple of weeks ago I finally got the coveted Wordle in 1!
On May 4, the Wordle answer for the day was TRAIN. Fun fact, it was also the word of the day for a Wordle spin-off, Canuckle. I did Canuckle first, and got it in 3. Then I turned to Wordle, and thought, what the heck, I may as well use TRAIN as my starting word. And BAM! My first and only time getting Wordle in 1.
You have to be a Wordle addict to appreciate the excitement, but I rode that high for a week!
Wordle in 1 on May 4, 2022
The Best List of Canuckle Word Puzzle Starting Words
Since I got hooked on Canuckle a couple of months ago, I started keeping a private list of words which I think are very good candidates for future Canuckle answers. In today’s blog, I’m sharing my list with other Canuckle addicts. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Maybe we could start having meetings in church basements…
I claim no insider knowledge. This list is simply what I believe to be likely candidates for future Canuckle answers. I’ve made a note next to some of the words explaining why I think they make good puzzle answers.
Just in case you’ve been missing out on the fun, I’m also maintaining a complete archive of past Canuckle puzzle answers, starting with the very first puzzle back in February 10, 2022.
If you are a fellow Canuckle nerd, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.
This is how I feel if I get up in the morning and there’s no coffee…
In today’s blog I thought I’d share a humour meme I created this morning. The idea came to me when I found this retro photo of a screaming woman on the internet and thought – that’s how I’d feel if I got up in the morning and there was no coffee. Any true coffee lover will easily relate to the humour in this image.
The first thing I do when I get out of bed is head downstairs into the kitchen and start the coffee. And then I stand there and wait for enough coffee to appear in the carafe to pour a cup. Fortunately my coffee maker has a ‘pause ‘n pour’ feature, otherwise it would get rather messy.
In nice weather I’ll take my coffee and laptop outside to the back deck and listen to the birds while writing or reading the news. Unfortunately in Canada the weather is crap 9 months of the year, in which case I go into the living room, turn on the gas fireplace, and sit next to the fire.
I can’t imagine starting the day without coffee. I’m not sure how non-coffee drinkers do it, but I think the government should fund a research program to study them. We need to find the answer to how they function, if not to confirm they’re human.
I find it very relaxing to make humorous memes, especially if they are coffee related. Kind of goes with the territory when your ‘thing’ is escapist adventures featuring coffee loving alien smugglers.
