My young grandson is learning to forge knives and has a lot of fun hammering on hot steel.
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What is a Hippo? A politically incorrect satire
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 other hippos, however (the real ones), turn out to be problematic, as Wally discovers they are not so open-minded about accepting a trans-hippo into their herd.
They won’t even let him use the same washroom, for heaven’s sake!
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!
Available now on Amazon for Kindle, and in print.
Coming soon for Kobo and Apple… stay tuned!
Other important questions we’ve been able to answer…
Questions? Thoughts? Concerns? Objections? A recipe for chicken noodle soup you’d like to share? You can contact me here…
Epic Honduran Roast from Oddfellow Coffee Roasters
It’s 6:30 AM, and I am just finishing a 3rd cup of coffee I brewed with a Honduran roast from Oddfellow Coffee Roasters. Oddfellow is a local roaster in Brantford Ontario that I ‘discovered’ last winter at the Brantford farmers market, and I’ve been hooked ever since. What I like about Oddfellow is not just the amazing flavour of his roasts, but that the owner, Ryan Wlodarek, buys direct from just a handful of small growers in Honduras, El Salvador and Brazil.
Today I am going to talk about his Honduran roast, because Honduras holds a special place in my heart – especially when it comes to coffee. But I’ll get to that momentarily, after I rave a bit on Oddfellow’s coffee.
Oddfellow’s Honduran Roast is semi-sweet and fruity, with a hint of toffee and citrus and easy on the stomach. He buys the beans directly from Finca La Fortuna farm in central Honduras.
Finca La Fortuna is run by Delmy Regalado, a 2nd generation farmer who inherited the land from her father. Originally it was a sugar plantation. Perched 5000 feet above sea level, this farm receives amazing tropical heat, sun and rain fortified by cool nights. Perfect conditions to produce some of the most sought after beans on planet earth. The beans must work harder at higher elevations to develop and ripen, lending to unique fruity and sharp sweet characteristics. The blend is made up of Pacas, a natural mutation in the Bourbon bean and Typica, one of the main varieties of Arabica coffee.
I love this coffee from Oddfellows, not only for its incredible flavour, but because, as mentioned, I have a soft spot for the country it comes from.
Coffee has been part of my morning ritual for my entire adult life, so it is safe to say that I’ve enjoyed thousands of cups of coffee over the years, yet there is one cup I had more than 3 decades ago that I still remember with vivid clarity.
I was in Honduras for a short visit, not as a tourist but to help an organization setup a computer system. The family I stayed with in La Ceiba knew a local farmer, and one afternoon they took me out into the countryside for a visit. The family was very hospitable, and we spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting under the shade of a palm tree. It was not long before they served coffee, with cream and sugar.
The coffee, of course, was excellent, but I soon learned that the most amazing thing about the coffee was that the family produced absolutely everything that went into it. They roasted the beans from coffee plants they grew on their own small farm. They also grew their own sugar cane and made the sugar that went into the coffee. And the cream came from their own cow.
Later, the farmer asked me if I would like a cup of water. I said yes, and he motioned to his young son and pointed to the palm tree we were sitting under. The young boy scampered up the tree, picked a coconut, and came back down with it. He gave it to his father, who used a machete to slice off the top and handed it to me. I drank from it, feeling like I was a supporting caste member in The Jungle Book movie.
That afternoon was three decades ago, a coffee experience I have never forgotten. Oddfellow’s Honduran roast transports me back to that afternoon every time a brew a fresh cup using the beans from Delmy’s farm, Finca La Fortuna.
Oddfellow Coffee Roasters has some of the best roast I’ve ever experienced. Their website is still under construction and Ryan tells me it will be ready shortly. When it is, I will add the link to my List of Best Coffee Blogs. In the meantime, you can reach him by email at oddfellowroaster@gmail.com.
Have a great day. Stay safe and stay sane.
Staying Sane in Quarantine
We just got through a period of roughly 3 months of almost complete lockdown in which we were barely able to leave the house. Recently things have gotten better. In my province, Ontario, they’ve allowed restaurants to re-open, and just last week I sat inside a restaurant for the first time in 4 months. But we still need to be careful, and medical authorities are already warning of a second wave. We might be subject to another lockdown come the fall or winter.
Knowing how to maintain your sanity has become a vital new life-skill in 2020, and not everyone is coping so well.
How do you stay sane while in quarantine during a pandemic? I’ve kept my sanity with hobbies, two of my favorites being: writing novels and making knives.
As much as I love the creative process of writing, it has one serious drawback: it involves sitting down at a laptop, which is essentially what I do for a living all day long. I’m a Project Manager at a large financial services company, in which I spend most of my day on the phone with my laptop in virtual meetings. It had always been a dream of mine to write a novel, and I’ve spent the last fourteen years getting up between 4 and 5 AM to put in a couple of hours writing before going to work. People look at me like I’m crazy, but that’s what you have to do if you’re serious about writing. It’s worth it and I feel really proud of my writing. To-date I’ve completed 7 full length novels.
And I’m glad I’m pursuing that dream, but I also needed to find something that got me on my feet, is physical and hands-on and kept me in shape (more-or-less). Gym memberships never worked for me, even before Covid-19 made them unwise. I’ve tried them several times and I’ve always found it too boring to keep up, and they are not a viable option during a pandemic.
What I needed was something physical that wouldn’t bore me to death, and keep me interested enough to stand and use my muscles for hours. So in the summer of 2016 I started another hobby – knife making.
I forge them by hand from raw hunks of high carbon steel. It seems to be working. One hot Saturday in the summer, I rolled my forge and anvil out into the backyard under a shade tree and spent the entire day forging.
I was in complete bliss, and lost almost 10 pounds. It was in that moment that I realized I’d found something that holds my interest enough to keep me physically active for hours at a time.
I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I made my own forge out of an old barbeque I found abandoned at the side of the road. For an anvil I use an old piece of railroad track that was given to me. Some good files and a couple of heavy hammers, and that’s basically all you need to get started.
The knife I made pictured below won’t win any prizes for beauty, but I had a lot of fun forging it.
It’s important to have interesting hobbies when you are stuck at home self-isolating. Forging steel may not be your thing, but you could try baking bread. Take up cooking. Learn to sow and make masks. Take up carpentry. Start blogging or write that novel you’ve always wanted to. All these things have become huge since the pandemic. In my area stores can’t keep flour in stock because of the numbers of people who’ve taken up baking. I see that as a very positive thing. Stay safe and above all, stay sane!
Blogs for Coffee Lovers & Random Fun Stuff
** This post has been updated a few times since it was originally published in July 2020 during the dark days of covid and quarantines.
As one might suspect, with novels such as “Aliens, Spaceships and the Occasional Latte”, and “Coffee to Go, With a Spaceship”, I rather like coffee. I don’t think that should come as too much of a surprise.
In today’s post I thought I’d share links to some of my favorite coffee related blogs. Sometimes it’s just really nice to ignore the news, Facebook, Twitter and anything else on the internet that can get too serious, and go to a website to relax and read about something you enjoy without having to hear anything about wars, pandemics, Donald Trump, or American election cycles that never seem to end and are always in crisis mode.
Sometimes we need a mental break. So here are some good coffee blogs and links to other interesting and fun stuff. I’ll be updating this list from time to time.
By the way, you can now find me on Bluesky.
Great Coffee Blogs
James Hoffmann, world renowned barista. He also has a YouTube channel about coffee that is extremely interesting and informative.
Roasting Coffee Beans at Home for Beginners. This article explains how to roast beans at home without special equipment, using a pan on the stove top, or in the oven, or using a popcorn machine. An excellent all-around article for the beginner who wants to try roasting without making a big investment in equipment.
The Bean Ground Coffee gear buying guide and reviews. If you’re shopping for anything related to your favorite addiction, this is a good place to start. Also, good indepth info on coffee beans.
The Coffee Channel. A great all-round website for coffee lovers, with reviews, blogs, buying guides and recipes all about coffee. They also have a list of what they consider the best coffee blogs.
Brewed Coffee. As they say in their About Us – “We are All about Coffee, including coffee news, tips, recipes, and more!”
The Coffee Hunters Journal These folks search the world for the perfect bean!
Fun Coffee Sites
Now, this is really funny… I may have to steal ideas from this to use in my own writing…
Small craft coffee roasters
Believer Coffee Company. This is a craft roaster in Ontario, who – in their own words “believe in the possibility of bigfoot & aliens, but most of all we believe in fresh roasted coffee for our consumer.” These guys get it!
Seventh Coffee Company, a small craft specialty roaster who makes amazing coffee.
Picadilly Coffee Roasters in New Brunswick. I’ve ordered coffee from them a few times, and their Ethiopian dark roast is especially smooth and fruity.
Food & cooking sites
Once Upon A Chef. You’re going to need cookies and other snacks while drinking coffee and reading great fiction. I like to cook (and eat snacks), and this site by a classically trained chef is my favorite recipe website.
Keep Food Safe. This is an excellent site about food safety. In their own words, “We support individuals who have fallen ill due to contaminated food. Recognizing that foodborne illnesses can lead to severe consequences, including hospitalization, we are committed to educating the public on current food outbreaks and promoting safe practices for both food service companies and consumers.”
Some other interesting & random stuff to pass the time
Inventing Reality: Interesting quotes on the craft of writing, and all around interesting site for writers.
Custom handmade knives for the kitchen. Good cooking goes with great coffee (see above), so if you need some new kitchen knives check out this website (and a few more below).
BookGlow. This is a fun website about books, that also appreciates a good cup of coffee.
Fadir Knives in Ukraine. A blacksmith shop in Ukraine making high quality axes and bushcraft knives.
A fun fact that coffee lovers will appreciate! Studies show that coffee drinkers live longer. See this article from CNN:
Something beautiful to look at. While you’re relaxing with a coffee, check out these amazing watercolours by Jacquie Herron. Jacquie’s paintings have a vibrant originality and freshness I find absolutely delightful.
Wordle word game answer history: for all you Wordle nerds. Check your guesses for the day’s Wordle puzzle against previous answer history. I consider this good strategy, not cheating! There’s no point in wasting guesses on words that have already been used, after all.
Featured blogs
I like to keep track of some of my favorite blogs here, so that they don’t get entirely lost in the ‘Archives’ as time goes on…
Canuckle. Have you tried this 5-letter word game yet? I’m a Canuckle nerd and have probably spent far too much time researching possible starting words – constantly going for the thrill of getting the puzzle in one guess. But it has happened a couple of times!
UFO Investigation has now gone mainstream with NASA and the Pentagon getting in on the act!
The Washington Post has finally agreed with me. A serious newspaper also thinks that UFO’s are aliens looking for coffee!
Some coffee and alien humour memes you may find amusing.
Get off your dumbphone and find a book, or in-person friends
Doom scrolling is rotting your brain. Experts weigh in on excessive time spent online. Read a book and get a hobby.
Thanks for visiting and have a great day!
~ Last updated March 18, 2025 ~
More coffee humour…
I completely missed posting anything for the month of June, so I think it’s okay to post twice today.
Alien abductions?
It’s way too hot to take anything seriously, and it is expected to reach 45c today, so here is a bit of humour I hope will give you a laugh.
This expresses in a nutshell why I am very suspicious of so-called abduction stories.
Today’s happy thought…
My post-apocalypse survival strategy is brilliantly simple:
This is all I need to get through Covid-19 or any crisis man or nature can throw at me. Need I say more?
A “nothing whatsoever to do with Covid” post
It seems there is no news except Covid news. And for the last 8 weeks or so, what other kind of news has there been? What else mattered?
But some of us still remain preoccupied with much more interesting issues, such as “Do aliens exist?”, leading up to the most pressing question on all of our hearts and minds these days: “And do they like coffee?”
I don’t actually have the answers, but I’m pretty sure that …
