Since Matt Walsh has so thoughtfully answered the question What is a Woman?, the question now on every thinking persons mind is, quite naturally, What is a hippo?
I know you must have been struggling with this question as much as I have. Fortunately I’ve got all the answers right here in my recent humour satire The Hippo.
It follows the story of Wally, who has courageously rejected the species identity arbitrarily assigned to him at birth by his bigoted, narrow-minded, reactionary parents. Despite what his birth certificate says, he now knows he’s really a hippo, and he wants his parents to cough up the cash so he can get the species affirmation surgery he desperately needs.
The good news is that Wally doesn’t have to undertake his journey alone. He has a whole group of transspecies friends at his side: there’s Kitty the tabby-cat, Rover the rottweiler, and Erica the transsexual kangaroo who aren’t about to let any biological facts stand in the way as they shake off the shackles of oppressive species bigotry to forge their own identity.
What happens next is enough to make even the LGBTQ+ look transphobic…
To find out more, you can go to the book page here on my website, or check out the Amazon book page, or better yet buy your own copy today!
If there are aliens, they’d come for the coffee. Today’s humour brought to you by www.mjwahl.com
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It’s Friday, and I’m sitting outside on my deck enjoying an unseasonably beautiful and hot November afternoon. Now, I think that has to be the first time I’ve ever used those words together in the same sentence – beautiful, hot, November. We’ve never had such a gorgeous streak of weather in November. It’s been warm and sunny for over a week now. But I digress. The real point of this blog is that it’s Friday, and time for another fun Friday post featuring alien and coffee humor.
I found this image of the coffee cup abducting a coffee bean on iStock this morning, and loved it so much I just had to have it and made up this humour meme.
Finally, UFO investigating is no longer the domain of fringe crazies and the tin foil hat brigade. It’s gone legit! Last year the Pentagon released its long anticipated UFO Report, and experts have been weighing in on it ever since.
Even NASA is getting in on the game. Last week NASA announced that they are kicking off their own study of UFOs, although they are now calling them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs. NASA can call them UAPs if they want to, but they aren’t fooling anyone. We still know what they are.
NASA’s Help Isn’t Needed
While I appreciate NASA’s intention to help us out, it really won’t be necessary. Since I’ve been writing on the subject for years, long before NASA came to the party, I’ve come to consider myself an expert in the field. And I’ve already figured out what these UFOs or UAPs or whatever you want to call them are. As I’ve blogged previously, it’s a proven fact that UFOs are aliens looking for coffee.
Thanks NASA, but we won’t be needing your help after all. It’s already sorted.
However, not all experts in the field of UFO investigation are agreed, and this is where you, dear reader, can help. My colleague and follow UFO expert, Gluplock, is also a regular blogger on this website. Gluplock argues that UFOs are not actually visitors from space, but some type of advanced technology from Earth. Likely Chinese drones or advanced top-secret American aircraft, according to Gluplock.
Has NASA joined the tin foil hat brigade?
As my fans know, (and all rational people will admit), UFO skeptics like Gluplock can’t be right. The UFOs must be alien in origin.
Chinese drones? I doubt it!
Gluplock disagrees. He doesn’t believe in aliens (or so he claims) and is convinced the UFOs are just Chinese drones or advanced US tech the Pentagon doesn’t want us to know about.
You can take the Russians out of the equation. They can’t launch an invasion of Ukraine without their equipment breaking down on the highway to Kiev, so I doubt they’re capable of any advanced tech. So it’s down to either the Chinese, Americans or aliens.
I money’s on aliens. Gluplock argues it’s the Chinese.
As you may well imagine, this has stirred up quite the debate among the bloggers, staff writers and owners at my publishing house, Franklin Street Press. And this is where readers of this blog can help. We’d like you to weigh in on this important debate and send us your thoughts. Are UFOs alien visitors, or advanced technology from Earth? Let us know what you think!
Are my colleagues secretly suppling aliens with coffee?
Personally, I think Gluplock is just trying to throw us off. I’ve long suspected that he has ulterior motives. Maybe it’s his name – I seem to recall it from somewhere but can’t quite place where. Interestingly, he owns a farm out in the country with several large barns. Jut this past summer Gluplock invited a bunch of us from Franklin Street Press over for a barbeque one Sunday afternoon. While Gluplock was occupied with flipping burgers on the grill, I took a beer in hand and went exploring. I wandered into one of the barns and found it stacked, floor to roof, wall to wall, with skids of coffee.
That’s a lot of coffee. You could keep an entire Caribbean island caffeinated for the tourist season with that much coffee.
Alien Shoppers
Aliens have been spotted at the local market looking for coffee.
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Naturally, I confronted Gluplock with my discovery back at the patio, while everyone stood around us next to the grill. He feigned innocence, and claimed that he just really likes coffee and wanted to hedge against future price increases. But I have my suspicions. Curiously, I also noticed that no one else looked surprised. Several even quickly looked away, pretending to be suddenly interested in something else, or muttered under their breath that they needed another beer and went over to the cooler.
I’m going to be keeping a closer eye on all of them from now on.
The truth really is out there, and it’s time the public knew!
But now that UFO investigating has gone legit, maybe people will start paying more attention to what experts in the field such as myself have been saying for years. Aliens really are visiting us from space, and they’re here for the coffee.
Aliens like coffee. If there are aliens, they would definitely be here for the coffee.
However, despite the wealth of solid research and information I’ve provided in my blogs, the US government still claims they don’t know what these aerial phenomena are. But readers of my blog and popular novels won’t be fooled. We all know exactly who and what they are, despite what Gluplock and other skeptics say.
Thanks NASA, but this is one party you’re a dollar short and a day late for. Please turn your attention back to getting people to Mars. You’re a bit overdue for that.
Stay tuned for future contributions to this blog from both Gluplock and I as the debate over the true origins of UFOs continue.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time, an old sage once said. And you can’t be all things to all people. Books are like that too. No book, no matter how brilliant or witty or marvelously written it may be, can appeal to everyone.
That’s because we are often looking for different things at different times. Sometimes we want serious fiction, sometimes humour. Or you may be in the mood for something light and fluffy. Mindless escapism. Crime drama. Or a spy drama. Or a steamy romance. Fun-filled adventure. To help the reader find the sort of book they are looking for, books are classified into different genres, and within each genre are categories and subcategories.
‘Hard’ sci-fi or ‘soft’?
Take, for example, my own specialty: sci-fi. Within that broad genre there’s serious “hard” sci-fi. One of the key promises within that category is that it will stay within the boundaries of real science. The Martian is an excellent example of this. All the science and technology portrayed in that novel is real and current. Then there is space opera. In space opera you get to make up your own science, and use fantastical made-up things like worm holes, time travel, warp drives, alien civilizations, and so on. Star Wars and Star Trek are very obvious examples of this genre.
A good book, regardless of its genre and category, will deliver on the promise that’s inherit within its category. And publishers put a lot of time and effort into coming up with titles and covers for books that will give customers a good feel for what can be expected between the covers.
Judging a books’ intention by its cover
I think my publisher, Franklin Street Press, did a great job coming up with the covers and titles for the two books (to date) in my Jack Winters Detective Series, which is about Jack’s friendship with alien coffee smugglers who have come to Earth looking for coffee.
I think the covers and titles of my books make it pretty obvious – there’s nothing series here folks. This is not ‘hard’ sci-fi. I’m all about mindless escapism, frankly. I get enough “serious” drama from my day job and reading the news.
Looking for ‘hard’ sci-fi in all the wrong places
But there’s just no pleasing some people. No matter how brilliantly witty the title and cover of a book may be in accurately portraying what a reader might expect between the front and back cover, some people still manage to get it wrong.
Recently a reviewer on Amazon criticized “Aliens, Spaceships and the Occasional Latte” for not being very plausible. I kid you not. This reviewer also said that as sci-fi, it was a bit too “soft”. Now, that’s funny. Was this reviewer seriously expecting “hard” sci-fi with a plausible, realistic story line when they picked a book with a title like this, featuring an alien holding a steaming cup of coffee?
Hmmm…
Space Opera
Relaxing, humorous, and definitely not ‘hard’ sci-fi.
I wonder what his first hint was that this wasn’t hard science? Perhaps it was the cover with the picture of an alien holding a cup of coffee? Or was it the title, “Aliens, Spaceships and the Occasional Latte”? Or maybe it dawned on him in chapter 21, when Aunt Beatrice complains about alien visitors landing their spaceship in her cabbage patch. I don’t know, but it’s hard to grasp how anyone could pick up a novel with such a title and cover and expect anything other than fun-filled escapism.
A good book delivers on its promise
I don’t mind being judged on the basis of what my books are intended to be. But being criticized for something the book was never intended for is just plain silly. He may as well criticize my book for not having any good recipes for baked lasagna.
I think my novels deliver exactly what you might expect from the kind of covers and titles I’m using. There’s no subterfuge here. It’s beach reading escapism at its best. I like to think of my novels as modern day dime novels. Fun filled adventures in space.
We all need to take a break to recharge and relax
We often turn to forms of entertainment to relax, recharge, and take a break from the seriousness of work and daily life. Dime novels came into vogue during the American Civil War, arguably some of the darkest years of the country. People needed a break from the horrible news, and TV hadn’t been invented yet. Dime novels provided an affordable form of escapism. During the depression people snapped up cheap “pulp” fiction and went to the movies. They needed the break.
That’s what myself and other authors writing similar books are trying to do. Provide light-hearted escapism. We need it these days. I can’t remember a time when the news was so consistently depressing and awful on so many different fronts.
If you are looking for light-hearted escapism, you’ve come to the right place. If you want serious, hard sci-fi with “plausible” story lines, that’s not what I do. You won’t find it here.
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.
