The Coffee House

Coffee and Fireworks

2008-07-17T09:49:00.002-05:00

I decided that we would celebrate the 4th (or sleazy traitors war of insolence against the King day as I prefer to call it). So we invited a few of our favorite customers (all two of them) to Chateau Caffeine for a spot of barbecue and some fireworks. Both the barbie and the fireworks necessitated a trip to Bigtown and just for a change we spent a glorious Sunday morning at Sam's Club. The very next day the Kissbotty Gazette had a front page article from the Fire Marshall reminding all of us Kissbotians that fireworks were illegal in Kissbotty County. WTF! I have been screwed again by Sam's who are conveniently situated in another county, what a rip!

I can't help thinking that fireworks should be legal everywhere on the 4th. After all you people did rebel against your King so what if a few homes get burnt down, it's a small price to pay.

PS My guests (who were clearly not impressed with the selection from Sam's) decided that next year we should all pop across the state line, into North Carolina where apparently they really know how to make fireworks.

Coffee and Jack Lalanne

2008-07-03T09:37:00.002-05:00

Fruit of the loins I and II both came home for Father's Day which was a rare treat indeed. FOTLI recently bought a juicer and has been boring me to sobs about it for weeks. Well she took it upon herself to bring it down in order to demonstrate how great it was. I have to say that I kind of enjoyed messing with it and we made some cool drinks; carrot and orange, kiwi and grape, melon and celery and my favorite, bloody marys. Being the curious person that I am I had to try the pulp to see what that was like. The carrot was dreadfully dry, the orange was nice as was the kiwi, the melon was not up to much at all. All in all I probably ate more roughage that I had ever had and of course there had to be consequences. Yes indeed, I spent all of Father's Day on the crapper courtesy of that smug git Jack Lalanne and three weeks later I still don't dare fart. Worst Father's Day ever

Coffee and Porn

2008-05-19T10:12:00.003-05:00

Once again , my favorite theme. Now remember folks you heard it first here, Smalltown is about to get its first porno store, I am so excited I can hardly wait. No doubt you are amazed that I have scooped the Smalltown Gazette and even the Bigtown News but there it is and this is how it went down.

Hugh Jazz (the town manager) and (Simple) Simon Hemmer (Hemmer, Royds, and Piles LLP) the town's attorney were having a meeting and so secret was it that they decided to have it in the Coffee House (I know, what were they thinking)? It turns out that some porn empire has decided that the good citizens of Kissbotty county need to have their love lives jazzed up with a touch of erotica and as Smalltown is the county seat where better to open shop but here. Much to their chagrin the town's elders have been informed by Simple Simon that it is unconstitutional to ban porn from the town. The best that they can do is make life difficult by enacting all sorts of vindictive legislation. For example, they cannot situate outside a school (mind you they probably would not want the pro bono competition, see here) and so on. Still I know how these things work, there will be much huffing and puffing and eventually the porn boys will bung a few Franklins to the council and we will be away.

The last time the Boss and I accidentally stumbled into a porn store we found ourselves in the artificial wiener department. After much deliberation the Boss selected a rather ambition model in black with a white top. She got to the checkout and the clerk said "Madam, that is my vacuum flask".

Happy days

Coffee and Sufferage

2008-05-15T09:51:00.004-05:00

As I have mentioned from time to time, Kissbotty county is a pretty rural agrarian environment with classic southern values. It is not unusual to see the dog in the front seat of the pickup with the woman riding the bed and many folk adhere to the old Shakespearean quote of "A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, The more you beat 'em, the better they be." Not of course that I subscribe to such nonsense you understand but when in Rome.......

Anyway I was on my travels this morning when I spotted one of those magnetic ribbon thingies stuck to the side of a minivan. Instead of saying "Support our troops" it said "End domestic violence now". This is what happens when you allow Yankees to move into our country. I tell you people this is just going to upset the equilibrium and before you know where you are women will be expecting to vote. Worse still if Kissbotty women realize that the female orgasm is not an urban legend I am going to be screwed (or not screwed more likely).

For now I am going to get my own ribbons made and every time I see a domestic violence ribbon I shall replace it with a "Iron my shirt" ribbon.

Recently these Yankee "women" held some sort of protest meeting, can you spot me?

The Health Inspector

2008-05-15T09:33:00.001-05:00

Well we got through another snap health inspection this morning. I guess that after 4 straight all clears the inspector felt the need to flex his regulatory muscles. The best that he could do was to point out that the tomatoes were a bit on the warm side. The boss pointed out that they had only just been purchased and he would be better employed checking the temperature of the chiller at the Walmarts but he was having none of it.

After he was safely out of earshot (I am not that stupid) I mentioned that if he wanted to mess with the fruit he could always check out the temperature of my plums. The boss looked at me and without the slightest hint of shame mentioned that the only reason that we ever passed a health inspection was that she allowed him to check the temperature of her melons.

What a trollop!

Coffee and Drugs

2008-05-01T09:01:00.002-05:00

Fruit of the Loin II is coming home for the summer next week. When we lived in North Virginia there were so many restaurants and stores that they pretty much dragged kids of the streets and offered them jobs. Here in Kissbotty jobs are few and far between and I suspect they are saved for the local kids. Last year FOTLII had no luck in finding summer employment and ended up being used as slave labor here in the Coffee House. Determined that this was not going to happen ever again she made a list of every potential employer in Kissbotty (excluding me and the Boss). I noticed that on her list was the local Homo Depot and she had been told that they were a pretty good employer. As it happens the manager is a fairly regular customer so I offered to put in a word, which I did. Unbelievably FOTLII made an unexpected visit yesterday and whilst she was here the Homo Depot manager turned up. I introduced them and he offered to interview her straight away, mentioning with a wink that next week might be too late.

So she trots off, gets interviewed and passes a urine test. You have no idea how disappointed I am. How can a child of mine possibly pass a snap drug test without a week to flush out? This is clearly a complete waste of a college education.

Coffee and Fruit of the Loin II

2008-04-18T10:09:00.000-05:00

Coffee and the Hill Folk

2008-04-18T10:00:00.002-05:00

So a couple of hill folk wander in yesterday afternoon. They were fairly smartly dressed and I was bored so I thought I would entertain them with my stories and general wit. After a while we got to a show and tell of our tattoos and I have to say that I am in awe of these ladies who unashamedly display their little nooks and crannies. Well the afternoon drew to a close and she told me that she had often passed by the Coffee House but never before come in. She said that she thought it was an uppity place for lawyers and the like but now she had met me she realized that wasn't the case.

Color me speechless.

Coffee and the brown trout

2008-04-15T20:46:00.003-05:00

Today we have a sad anniversary here in Southern Virginia. Of course it has brought out all the nutcases and one even had the temerity to leave their pamphlet in my slice of coffee heaven. Inside this glossy toilet roll I am told that school shooting are caused by people who believe in evolution as they have no regard for life. Well so far so good but then we get serious and it seems that anyone who looks at a pretty woman is a fornicator and anyone who has had sex outside of marriage is going straight to hell. Well Kissbotty it looks like we are all doomed. I tell you I am so tempted to start the Coffee Bitches Church of Satanology. I could leave leaflets telling people that they will not go to hell if they don't fornicate (preferably with me). Now I think about it, every single church is about send me your money and every single cult is about having sex with your leader. I could be onto something here.

On a different tack, the Dean of Students at Collegetown has closed every single student kitchen. There has been a spate of students urinating in the ovens and then turning them on to high. Then they started to load them up with text books and turning them on, oblivious to what happens to paper at 475 degrees. The latest prank (and what has caused the Dean to close the kitchens) is that someone has developed a penchant for cooking faeces, isn't that nice? So Fruit of the Loins Two who is a grown up grad student cannot cook her dinner because someone has been crimping off a length and microwaving brown trouts.

I mention this only because in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre some "experts" believe that students should be armed on campus. Would you really want a Glock 27 in the hands of someone who gets their goodies from roasting dumps?

Coffee and the Drag Queens

2008-04-15T09:47:00.003-05:00

Lawdy, lawdy, lawdy I am back from therapy after having judged the "womanless" beauty pageant. What a nightmare! My fellow judges were some local businesswoman and a weather forecaster whose main claim to fame was being fired for posting pictures of his wiener on Myspace. Actually on reflection I think that a "friend" did it for him and in consequence I was not sure which side of the street he was driving on. Fortunately I had the woman as a bufferzone but I can tell you I was pretty clenched all night.

I can also tell you that Kissbotty's finest transvestites are a pretty ugly bunch and during the course of the evening one of them had the audacity to kiss me. That sort of nonsense hasn't happened to me since the 7th grade at St Edwards Church of England School when I foolishly followed a trail of M&Ms into the boiler room and was ravished by Mr. Toerag the janitor. On a slightly happier note, unlike Mr Toerag, Miss Mona Lott didn't use her tongue and for that small mercy I shall be forever grateful.

Now if you will excuse me I am off to Kissbotty High School to score me some naughty schoolgirl porn and try to restore some heterosexuality here.

TCB.

Coffee and the Bog

2008-04-11T14:02:00.003-05:00

As I have mused in the past, there seems to be a certain genre of woman who really should not be allowed to breed. Heavens knows why they do because clearly they are not enjoying the experience (although perhaps they overly enjoy the conception part). Anyway it strikes me that they spend the next 18 years pretty much ignoring their little snot gobblers which causes the nasty little sprog to clamor for attention and become even more obnoxious which causes Mommy to ignore it even more and the circle is complete.

Today such a Mother graced me with her presence. She looked like a smartly dressed businesswoman who had unexpectedly and unwillingly had to pick up the brat. She ordered a sandwich for herself and a high sugar content dessert for the fruit of her loins. The kid ran its grubby little paws across my windows (which had only just been cleaned last year) and constantly pestered the Mom who was studiously ignoring it. Eventually I heard her say that she would be right back and the kid whine on about not wanting to be alone. After a short interchange where she folded faster than Superman on laundry day she dragged the kid off to our luxury restroom facilities. A few minutes later they both emerge and walk up to the register to pay. Before I could ring them up the kid announced in a loud voice. “My Mommy did a smelly poo in there”. Well I know that the kid finally got her attention because she actually groaned in embarrassment. There were of course a thousand things that I could have said to ease her pain but you know I just made eye contact and reveled in the moment.

Sometimes I actually do like children, I really do.

TCB.

Coffee and Court

2008-04-08T09:27:00.004-05:00

Once again from the "you could not make this stuff up" department we have another true tale from the Coffee House.

Judge Mental was in yesterday for his lunch which was unusual as he doesn't normally do a Friday. I suspected that he had read the blog and was angling for his free lunch. Well I can tell you that he angled in vane because as we say in the corporate world, he has missed his window of opportunity for a blue horizon gratis gastronome experience (Damn, I wish I knew what that meant). Still I was nevertheless bowing and scraping and treating him with the reverence that his omnipotent powers demand.

After he left the lady at the next table (who had clearly been eavesdropping on my ingratiation) asked if the was Judge Mental. She then went on to explain that she was supposed to be in front of him that morning but had sat in the wrong court. Now the Circuit Court was not sitting on Friday so she clearly spent all morning in the Juvenile Court. She missed the fact that Judge Mental is a man, Judge Jenny Taylia (Juvenile Court) is clearly a woman (and what a woman) and she saw a parade of children being sentenced to deportation to Smallscrote County, or whatever they do.

She had traveled from South Carolina and the other party had flown in from Seattle and she had blown it. Now she is asking me if I think that Judge Mental will reschedule. Well I discovered many years ago that unhappy customers seldom tip very well so I told her that he certainly would and not to worry as this happens all the time. The truth, of course, is somewhat different and I still recall with schadenfreude the day that (Simple) Simon Hemmer (Hemmer, Royd and Piles LLP) spent a morning in my arms and tears when Judge Mental found for the defendant because he was 5 minutes late for court.

I hope that she learnt a lesson here as she decided not to have her attorney in court because he had already ripped her for a grand for some trivial paperwork. Of course had she used the legal beagle then she might have ended up in the right court and perhaps even won her case.

I tell you, bloody lawyers, You can't live with them and you can't live without them. The bastards.

Coffee and Porn

2008-04-08T09:22:00.001-05:00

You will recall from an earlier blog that Kissbotty County has but one High School, excitingly it is in the news again and every word of this is true, as you really could not make this stuff up.
It transpires that there is a young lady student at the high school who is somewhat proud of her marital skills. So proud is she, that she decided to record herself performing what is euphemistically known as a sex act on a fellow student. Then for reasons apparent only to herself she sent a few copies to friends and as you can imagine this viral video spread like wildfire. (Aren’t cell phones wonderful? I tell you when I was a lad all we had were crudely drawn cartoons and I am sure that most of them were drawn by the Gym coach in order to make us feel inadequate in the genitalia department).

Of course it was not long before a copy fell into the hands of someone in authority and then all hell broke loose. The police were called in and they confiscated every single cell in the school. Not that I am any sort of child psychologist but if I were, I might take the young lady aside and explain that when you make a home made sex tape you set yourself up with a legacy that will absolutely come back to bite you when you try to enter Congress or take up some position of authority in later life. (Actually that is a lie, if I ever did find this young lady I would marry her, still I digress). The boys in blue took a different approach and arrested everyone who had a copy of the video on child pornography charges. It seems to me to be a little over the top to place half of Kissbotty’s High School students on the sex offenders register and ruin their little lives even before they become adults. There is plenty of time to grind their hopes and aspirations into the doormat of the welfare line after they have grown up.

So Bertie Grabbitt (Sue, Grabbitt and Runne LLP) and I were discussing this when I happened to mention that if he (the great defender that he is) were to take on Miss Teen BJ 2008 as a client he could get hold of the evidence and pass me a copy. Puffing himself up to his full judicial majesty he told me that if he did that then we would both be hauled up on child porn charges. No Bertie, I replied you misunderstand for you would just be calling on the services of an expert witness for I assure you when it comes to porn I am a Viking.

The Coffee Bitch

P.S. Dear Miss Teen BJ 2008 if you would like a free coffee you know who to call.

Coffee and the traffic stop

2008-04-03T08:44:00.002-05:00

Well it looks like the local boys read this blog as they took me up on the offer I made in Coffee and Speed (part I). The Boss is hugely pissed about this. It was not so much the road side cavity search that upset her (frankly I think that she was up for it).

No what set her off was when one of the cops radioed back to base to say that they would need a bigger flashlight.

I tell you people sometimes I laugh so much I think that my pants will never dry.

Coffee and the Radio

2008-04-03T08:14:00.003-05:00

This is a post that should have gone up two days ago, my bad.

As you know I am not a great fan of Kissbotty Radio (home to all the hits). Amongst their crimes are the love affair that they seemingly have with Kelly Clarkson and Cassie Underpants as well as being Virginia's official Christmas station. Apparently this means that you have a mandate to play only Christmas songs starting at Memorial Day and quite frankly by the time Christmas rolls around I want to put a bullet in my head.

Well two days ago they announce that their market research had discovered that their rating would go through the roof if they played Christmas every day! For two hours they gave us Bing and Carpenters and brought back so many unhappy memories. Eventually they 'fessed up to this all being and April 1 jolly wheeze. (Not that I didn't see that coming in the first 20 seconds).

The tragedy of all of this was that hundreds of Kissbotians called in to say what a great idea 24/7/365 Christmas music was.

Kissbotty I weep for you.

Coffee and the Judge

2008-04-03T08:05:00.002-05:00

Judge Mental was in for lunch today. When he came up to pay I related the tale in Coffee and Speed (part I) and concluded by saying "So some nice kind Judge dismissed the charges". He looked at me, smiled, winked and said " Well it could not have been me, I am not a nice kind Judge".

So I didn't comp his lunch and that I think is a win win situation.

Coffee and Speed (partII)

2008-04-03T07:31:00.003-05:00

Some very strange people came into the Coffee House yesterday. They dressed like they were twenty but looked like they were fifty. The ordered coffee and breakfast sandwiches but one asked if he could have the bacon soft as he had no teeth. There was something strangely fascinating about these people and I assumed that perhaps they were hill folk who had come into town for some annual pilgrimage to stock up on grits and welfare checks. I have to confess that I was kind of please to see them wander off but less that pleased to discover that not only had they purloined all the sugar from the table but also the sugar from the surrounding tables. I mentioned this to the Boss and the first thing she said was "damned meth heads". According to the Boss an addiction to sugar and no teeth are the classic signs.

All of this leaves me doubly confused. First off, if this is the result of taking meth why would you even take it let alone pay for it. Secondly how does the Boss know so much about this stuff? Tonight, after she falls asleep, I will take a pair of pliers and wiggle a few of her little pegs to see what happens.

Coffee and Speed (part1)

2008-04-03T06:58:00.004-05:00

So FOTL1, FOTL2 and Slugger all come home for the weekend, and what a weekend of barbecue, beer, shooting and general mayhem it was.

On Friday Slugger decides to visit his Alma Mater and leaves FOTL1 to her own devices (which is never a good idea). About 11:00 FOTL1 is bored so she calls me to ask where the spare truck keys are (notice that she doesn't ask if she can borrow the truck). About an hour later I am pacing the floor asking where my truck could be when FOTL1 arrives looking shaky and carrying a big yellow sheet of paper. It turns out that she was pulled by a State trooper for doing 80 in a 55. The cop informs her that she has transcended mere speeding and is now comfortably in the reckless zone. FOTL1 asks if being engaged to one of Maryland's finest might help her out. Astonishingly the cop acquiesces and agrees to write her up at 74 and thus bring her back to the realm of speeding. Then he asks to see the registration which I keep in the center console that FOTL1 does not know exists. Now, and this is where the story gets really strange, the cop decides to write her up for failure to produce registration, but not speeding! Well the FOTL1 takes the penalty notice and the registration to the Kissbotty court which as you know is next door to the Coffee House and offers to plead guilty now as she will be back in Maryland next week and can't make the court date. The clerk takes the papers before Judge Mental who dismisses the charges.
From reckless driving to nothing in less than 60 minutes, only FOTL1 could pull that off.

However there are some points that still concern me. The first is, what did that little Jezebel think she was doing driving my beloved truck at 80 miles and hour? Secondly, I don't think that she actually learned anything from this. So if you are a cop and you see the most manly truck in Kissbotty, feel free to pull it over and give the driver a full roadside cavity search. This offer does not apply if you find a hairy arsed Englishman driving.

TCB

PS Slugger tells me that he will always reduce a reckless to speeding unless the driver gives him earache. The lesson here, kiddies, is to always respect your cop.

Coffee, Power and Plays

2008-03-21T09:08:00.009-05:00

There is but one High School in the whole of Kissbotty County. I am sure that like me you will find this surprising as, after all, how much educashun does one need to grow tobacco and brew white lightening? I suppose the fact that we have even one school must be largely due to some interfering federal mandate that only serves to raise these poor little mite's hopes of a career just to later dash them against the grill of a McDonald's fryer.

Anyhoo, the boss and I decided to support these future burdens on the welfare state and see one of their school plays. Astoundingly it was all rather jolly and despite my misgivings I had a good time. It was, however a sad mark of the times that not only did the play have to be censored but in addition one of the mothers had to read a speech beforehand explaining that these kids were just acting and didn't really mean what they were saying. Heads up here folks, that is why it is called acting.

Afterwards we decided to grab a little Mexican (food that is) and managed to sneak in about 2 minutes before closing. As a general rule I don't normally do this as I know that when you piss off the kitchen staff they invariably snot up in your enchilada, but I was hungry enough to ingest a little mucus. As soon as our appetisers arrived, cheese dip for the boss and 4 Coronas for me, all the lights went out. Assuming that this was a hint to leave I started to hurl abuse at the staff only to discover that the east side of Smalltown was in darkness. Eventually Pepe asked if we would like our food to go. Sensing an opportunity to turn a drama into a crisis I told the boss to leave this to me and proffered a credit card. Of course with no power, the terminal didn't work. Looking as sad as I possibly could and under the cover of darkness I palmed my twenties and apologetically offered a five which they gratefully accepted. I later discovered that the fajita when served on a hot skillet is infinitely more attractive than cold and congealed in a poly box. Still whilst the lights were off I did manage to swipe all the flatware, two bottles of hot sauce and a very nice cheese dip dish.

TCB.

PS. The following day the town's tow truck driver came in and told me a story of how a drunken teenager had made an appointment with death by trying to ram a power pole. God clearly smiles of drunks in Smalltown as she rode up the support cable until the car was resting on its rear bumper. In order to get the car down Redneck Power had to turn the town off so he could pull her out, hence the power outage.

Coffee and the Porker

2008-03-11T07:10:00.003-05:00

So Fruit of the Loin 1 and Slugger are settling down into domestic bliss and they decide that their happiness will be complete if they get a dog. Being the ~~socially responsible adults~~ , do-gooders that they are, they decide to adopt and they find this bloater. The story is that he has been rescued from a puppy mill

Now let make this point. If I am ever kidnapped by white slavers and set to stud impregnating women who want possible Ph.D. foetuses and I am being overfed and you "rescue" me, I will kill you, do you understand?

Coffee and Onions

2008-03-05T14:16:00.002-05:00

There are a few days when I really don’t care anymore. It’s not that I don’t care about the business per se, but when I feel that I have done enough then I have done enough. At this point my usually desultory service becomes surly and I just don’t have the patience to twat about with your ridiculous requests and questions. I am sorry but there it is, sometimes a man can only do so much.

Today was a fine example. The morning coffee crowd was in and we did a cracking session of lattes, cappos, muffins and bagels. Then just before lunch Postman Pat turned up with a bumper check from Kissbotty County in settlement of a catering order. At this point I realized that we had already reached an acceptable daily taking so I voted to take the rest of the day off. Sadly the boss used her casting vote (aka a knee in the nadgers) to dash even my smallest of dreams. So, steeling myself for the lunchtime rush and jamming an icepack down the front of my shreddies the following took place. An elderly patron asked for soup and the cheese and onion muffin. After I had gone to all the trouble of writing her ticket and taking it all the way to the kitchen she then flags me down to let me know that she has just realized that the cheese and onion muffin has onion in it and she doesn’t like onion, so could she please have it without onion.

Not really being in the mood for jollity I was forced to point out that the freaking muffins are not actually baked to order and perhaps she should take the hint from the menu that the cheese and onion muffins might contain onion.

Honestly a cheese and onion without the onion, my life has turned into a Monty Python sketch.

Coffee and Smoke

2008-03-03T10:19:00.006-05:00

Before you start this little tale of country folk you should probably nip over to my other blog and have a squint at this http://kimscar.blogspot.com/2008/03/smoker.html I promise that we will wait for you.

OK welcome back, now as I was saying. I was pottering around in Homo Depot collecting bits and pieces to finish the project when I bumped into one of my customers. Spying the armfuls of dexion and angle iron he mentioned that it looked like I was into a project. Ever one to regale my fellow man with a story or two I explained the design behind the smoker. He then shared his design for a Kissbotty smoker (and I swear that this is verbatim). You find an abandoned refrigerator and strip out all the plastic. You then put back the racks and use an Hibachi grill full of wood to smoke you meat. Of course you need to vent the smoke from the top for which purpose the correct tool of choice is a 12 gauge! Isn't that great?

He also gave me a recipe for beans. You place a bucket of beans on the base of the refrigerator next to the Hibachi but under the meat. This was so that the fat from the meat would fall into the bucket and make the best beans ever. He looked at me wistfully and said "That was before we discovered cholesterol now food tastes like crap"

People like these are why I am never leaving Kissbotty County

Coffee and reviews

2008-02-28T14:42:00.003-05:00

So I was lounging around, avoiding work, when my eyes fell on the restaurant review section of the Bigtown News. Quite recently a new upscale restaurant has opened just up the road from us and the filthy hack from Bigtown had written a report. As you know my opinion of journalists is that they are the second oldest profession and the oldest is more honorable. True to form the hack gloatingly admitted that he took his wife out for her birthday and then wrote the review. In other words her birthday treat was on the company dime, the tight bastard. I tell you if I was Mrs Hack I know what Mr. Hack would not be getting for his pudding for pulling a cheap stunt like that, still I digress.

Well the review was pretty sad. Indifferent food, indifferent service (..... the server only stopped at our table on her way to somewhere else....) and a high price. Hardly what one might expect from our only fine dining eatery. Not that I have an ounce of schadenfreude in me but I confess I laughed until I cried. Oh to be an undercover food critic.

Then it suddenly dawned on me, perhaps they have done the same to our bistro deli coffee house. I can see the review now.

"The food was quite nice but the server kept looking at my wife's jubblies, winking and lifting the corner of his apron".

Damn if this gets out I am dead meat.

TCB

Good news, good news, bad news

2008-02-28T09:10:00.004-05:00

Good News.
Mr Fixit called in yesterday and although the Espresso machine was working I wanted him to check it out anyway. Well the verdict was that the machine was in fine fettle (despite the bastards at the Quality Coffee Co., Bigtown telling me that it was beyond repair). He gave me great maintenance tips and I was so impressed that I actually broke the habits of a lifetime and tipped him out.

Good News II

The second piece of good news is that I have been invited to judge a beauty pageant! How sweet is that? The organisers obviously realise that I have a fine and discriminating eye for the ladies. I am also anticipating that a little bribery won't go amiss here. I am certainly not above allowing a potential beauty queen from developing her full potential in a sans frock situation. If you think that I am being gauche then let me float this past you. Next time you watch Wheel of Fortune, make a mental note of the best looking babe on the show, watch her win and then ask yourself if she didn't ride Pat's shaft of fortune during rehearsals. Point taken?

Bad News.
Having far too hastily accepted the judging deal I have just been told that this a drag queen beauty competition. Dear God how on earth did I suckered into this homofest? Well I can tell you for a start there certainly will be no shenanigans going on with the judging. It's not that I am opposed to a spot of shirt tail lifting, as far as I am concerned the batty boys do me a favor by leaving more totty for us red blooded sausage bandits. Still there is something buttock clenching about deciding which amateur transvestite is the best looking.

Talking of the Wheel of Fortune have you noticed Vanna's hands? Clearly 25 years of pointless clapping have raised callouses 2 inches thick on her palms. No wonder her engagement was called off. It must be like being fondled by a Navy dockyard welder who forgot to take his gloves off.

Now I am off to stick pencils in my eyes before this line up of deviants sends me blind.

TCB

Coffee Service

2008-02-27T08:30:00.003-05:00

At one time, when I was in the big bad corporate world, I ran a technical support team. I say with no sense of false modesty (natch) that I ran a great team. You see I had a philosophy that all products were the same no matter who you bought from, trucks, televisions, guns, whatever. All that separates companies is the quality of after sales care. Salesmen are lazy incompetent order takers that apparently avoid closing in order to focus on the big picture, usually from the confines of the golf course. Fortunately I had a boss who realized the importance of what I did and rewarded me handsomely for my efforts. I was given more money than I could spend and was allowed first dibs on the office women. All in all it was a sweet life. Now I only mention this as now I am a customer I am constantly appalled at the worthless imitation of service that most companies pretend to offer.

Case in point, last week my espresso machine gurgled, farted and then died. As you can imagine a Coffee House with no espresso is like a car with no starter, it looks the part but it ain’t gonna take you anywhere fast. So I call around the coffee companies in Bigtown. The first one I called told me “I don’t think we service espresso machines”. Well numbnuts, you either do or you don’t, thinking, in your case, doesn’t enter the equation. This went one all morning until I found someone that could speak in more than monosyllables. They agreed to take in the machine and repair it. Two days later I call then and they tell me that they don’t repair my particular model. However to make up for the inconvenience they will discount a new one from $6400 to $5000. Bastards. Needless to say I told them where they could stick their coffee machine and drove once more to Bigtown to collect mine.

During the weekend the Boss had the brilliant idea (and I wish that I could take credit for this) of calling in at another Coffee House and asking how they got their espresso machine serviced, they were happy to give her the number of a sole trader who makes his living from fixing these things. I called him up and he knew the model, the probable fault and said that he could fix it. Sadly for me he is so busy that he can’t get to us for three days, merde!

Of course the concept of poor or non-existent service trickles down through the industry. The Digital Queen of Smallville came in for her usual large skinny caramel and I was forced to turn her away empty handed. I think that the look of sadness on her face will haunt me forever. I hate to leave a good woman unsatisfied.

The Coffee Bitch

PS Just for fun, or probably out of desperation I reconnected the espresso machine and she fired up! If the DQ shows today she will be leaving with a big one in her hand, on me. Ahh Double entendres where would my life be without you.

Bertie's Revenge

2008-02-25T11:54:00.002-05:00

Damn just as I was nodding off an outraged Bertie bludgeoned his way into the shop. He stripped off his pants and his jacket and started to hit me around the head.

"Bertie" I cried "What the hell do you think you are doing"

"I am slapping you with a suit" said Bertie

Will this day ever end?

Bertie rides again

2008-02-25T08:29:00.003-05:00

Bertie Grabbit (Sue, Grabbit and Runne LLP) has been looking more and more morose these days. I am guessing that he is slowly coming to the realisation that the next President of the US will be either a white woman or a black man. Even Bertie, whose politics are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, must realise that that crusty old fossil McCain isn't going anywhere especially in light of his alleged dalliances with a not unattractive lobbyist. I tell you people when they say that politics is a dirty game, they really mean politicians are dirty.

All of this has made Bertie more curmudgeonly than usual and he has taken to warning fellow customers that I will short change them. Now most of my regulars look at Bertie with a "so what's new" look on their faces. We have all come to realise that a little financial shenanigans is all part of the rich tapestry of being part of my world. Bertie also likes to ask loudly how I passed the health inspection, to which I reply, "the same way as you passed the bar exam, by writing the answers on the back of a $100 bill".

Anyway it is time to put Bertie in his place so this morning I posted the following advertisement in the Bigtown News

Coffee and Language

2008-02-19T15:16:00.002-05:00

Winston Churchill once said that we are two nations divided by a common language and how right he was. Case in point. When we first moved to Kissbotty County I would ask refined ladies if they would like any more tea/coffee/ whatever, to which they would sometimes reply “I don’t care for any more”. Now in English “I don’t care” has a certain connotation that the original offering was not particularly acceptable. I have to confess that I spent a few weeks in a melancholia of self doubt until I realized that this was just a southern way of saying, no thank you. In similar vein, whenever I hear someone say, “Please may I have” it is like a breath of fresh air. An example of which now follows.
The Boss’s sandwiches are overfilled and generally people will request a fork. The most common form of this request is “Can I get a fork”? To which I quite often reply, “Not from me pet, I don’t do ugly chicks”.

Coffee, God and Crack Hoes

2008-02-19T10:46:00.004-05:00

Bear with me people this is a convoluted tale but as usual I promise that every word is true.

As a prelude to this sorry tale might I respectfully ask that, if you have not already done so, you first read this tale.

In addition here is another story. Some time ago we met a nice preacher man who runs a Mission in Honduras. He sends out medical aid and imports their coffee, which he sells for them. I may have actually blogged this in the past but to be frank I cannot remember what I was doing yesterday, let alone last year. The faithful reader will recall that the big guy upstairs and I do not converse much these days. I can’t remember what the spat was about but in the finest traditions of grudge bearing nothing gets forgiven until I get an apology. (Is it sacrilegious to expect God to apologize). Anyway, just to show what a great guy I am, we bought 30 pounds of coffee and that was my olive branch, so don’t keep me hanging for my apology.

And now for today’s story

We have, over the ages, developed a fine and wholly justified reputation for our coffees. There is no great secret one just has to buy good quality beans, store them sympathetically and grind them fresh. Water at 195 degrees and toss whatever you haven’t sold in 2 hours, my coffee has a short but happy life.

Last week two of the nastiest, skankiest crack hoes that you have even seen slithered into the shop. This in itself is unusual as despite the fact that we are situated next to the Court House and, ergo, the jail all of our customers are jolly decent sorts. Even the trustee is the sort of guy that you would want to work on your house and trust to wander around when you weren’t there. So the skanks (and using the term skanks is very, very generous) order two coffees and to make a not too subtle point I serve them in to go cups. They search through assorted bags and sacks in order to come up with the necessary $2.74 and pay me in torn bills and pennies. One of the trollops sucks on her coffee and declares that this is dishwater and says hello, where is the caffeine. As you can imagine I was outraged and looked skank 2 in the eye and say “That is the house blend, if you are not happy I will gladly refund your money”. The skanks keep the coffee and I follow them out with a mop as I Clorox a trail of bodily fluids from the counter to the door.

Well after a few minutes of muttering and stomping about I tried the coffee and it was garbage. Nasty, thin, watery dishwater unfit for human consumption or come to it, skank consumption.

Talk about no good deed going unpunished, bloody Hondurans and their crap coffee. I tell you people, you try to do the third world a favor and all the thanks you get is to be scorned by skanks.

Thank you God, thank you so bloody much.

Coffee and Tea

2008-02-14T14:55:00.001-05:00

We have started to develop a well earned reputation for our afternoon cream teas and I am good with that as I see it as part of my mission to wean the ladies of Smalltown off the shine and onto more esoteric pastimes.

So yesterday we had the ladies of the Smalltown book club in, and before you say anything nasty, yes they were real books not coloring books. I normally give a little spiel on how cream teas work and why the term high tea is incorrect. I then end be telling them that it is their tea and they can do whatever they please. Well as you might imagine I don’t mean it, I mean you will do what I say as when it comes to tea I am omnipotent. Still someone had the audacity to ruin the ambiance by telling me that she didn’t like tea and wanted de-caffeinated coffee. For a moment I thought about asking them all to leave but to be frank I needed to money (and I have discovered that cream tea participants tip generously).

So the greedy old luddite had two refills and then redeemed herself when she announced to the crowd that this was the best coffee that she had ever had in her life. I was just about to forgive her gaucheness when she said, yes much better than Starbucks. Starbucks!

Well excuse me but isn’t this rather like telling the Dean of Harvard that his school is much better than the Smalltown Community College and Tire Service?

Talk about the good Lord giving and taking away.

Coffee and Monks

2008-02-14T14:29:00.002-05:00

As I have mentioned in the past, Smalltown is the buckle on the Bible belt. Today I saw something that I had never seen before and to be honest did not realize even existed in this part of the world. Two Franciscan monks came in for coffee. I was naturally curious as to their lifestyle so I set up a conversation. After they left I could not but help to reflect on the fact that if they really did want a life of celibacy and emotional isolation they should probably move to Chateau Coffee. At least it would be more comfortable and they could use the internet to download copious amounts of Japanese scat porn.

Coffee and Ribons

2008-02-14T11:08:00.003-05:00

Ah Valentine's Day. Can there be a more romantic time of the year? You would think that tying a big red ribbon around the old johnston and hanging around with a unwrap me look would never get old but it seems like the magic may be fading a touch. The Boss didn't look to impressed this year, well I suppose it was a very cold morning.

I tell you, I will never understand women.

Coffee and the Tree Rat

2008-02-08T08:36:00.000-05:00

This blog comes under the realms of the "you couldn't make this stuff up" category, but I swear it is all true.

I was arranging with a friend to organize a squirrel hunt. The deal is that we will hopefully bag a mess of squirrel and the womenfolk (as we call them in Ol' Virginny) will cook up a stew or something. (Those of you who read my blogs on my turkey hunting experiences will understand the hopefully in the previous sentence). Now I was under the impression that squirrel is vermin and as such there is no season, which caused some dissent amongst the group. A quick peruse around the internet proved me wrong and established that for reasons that I cannot comprehend you cannot shoot a squirrel (aka tree rat) outside September 1 to January 31, so we missed it by days.

I was wondering if I was going to be sufficiently gastronomic to eat the little critter (I know the Boss won't) when the following ensued.

A stranger joined in the conversation and although agreeing that the season started on September 1st, mentioned that folk in this area regard the best eating to be had in August and that no one would care too much if one was to start huntin' a little early. Well he seemed to know what the score was so I asked him what the eating was like. He told me that it was like a delicate chicken or perhaps frogs legs. This kind of blew me away, who would have thought that Smalltownians would be connoisseurs of frog’s legs. Then he let us know that his Grandma had eaten squirrel all her life and that she regarded the best part as the brain!

To think that I was feeling squeamish about eating the thigh.

Well it’s Friday and tonight I shall be slipping into the arms of Bacchus on a river of Grolsch courtesy of,

a) Hemmer, Rhoyd and Piles LLP who tipped me out an astonishing $100 on a catering order
b) The scumbags of Kissbotty County (we got the jury lunch order)
c) The Smalltown Development Authority who asked us to cater their meeting today.

God Bless you one and all.

Coffee and Floods

2008-02-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

I don’t actually need reminding but nevertheless I am regularly reminded that here in Smalltown we are indeed the buckle on the Bible belt.

I was having a slow morning so I thought that I would engage a passing customer in conversation. We chatted amiably about politics, sport and world economics and he had some fair and balanced points. Then we got onto glabal warming and he told me that as a Christian he didn’t believe in it. Apparently God has made a promise never to flood land again so if global warming is going to cause the water to rise, it must be just a myth.
Wow am I glad we cleared that up.

As a postscript another customer was wondering why people bothered to ask God to relieve their suffering. After all he cocked a deaf ear to 6 million Jews. Now I really don’t know what to believe.

Coffee and Hugs

2008-02-04T08:43:00.001-05:00

A lawyer from Bigtown, who I shall call Ron, is a fairly frequent visitor. Now as happens it seems like everyone arrives together and then decides to leave together. So Ron is at the end of a line of people who not only want to pay but entertain me with stories about their lives. Ron, clearly late for court, is hopping from foot to foot and eventually jumps the queue, slaps a $10 on the counter and says “Gotta run, this should cover it”. Well as soon as the words were out of his mouth he spots the Boss coming out of the kitchen and decides that his lunch merited a hug.

There is a fine dividing line between a hug and foreplay and to be honest I think that Ron crossed it in the first 60 seconds. I don’t know what to be more pissed about.

a) Ron copped a free feel
b) The Boss was clearly up for it.
c) When I finally cashed him out he had left me a 49-cent tip.

I wouldn’t mind him tweaking the old funbags but honestly 49 cents. Talk about it never rains.

Coffee and the Texas Ranger

2008-01-31T10:45:00.000-05:00

We have a customer, Albert, who I appreciate above all others. The reason for my undying devotion is that for some bizarre reason Albert always tips me a twenty. Cup of tea and a scone; a twenty. Lunch for Albert and Missus; a twenty. Now what’s not to love about that?

So purely by coincidence Albert is in line to pay and right behind him is Bertie Grabbit (Sue, Grabbit and Runne LLP). Well before I had even rung up Albert’s tab he drops a twenty in the old pickle jar. Bertie spots the tip and naturally (being an attorney) assumes that a mistake has been made. His jaw drops and I see him draw breath as if to speak. Nimbly vaulting the counter I casually fell Bertie with a roundhouse karate kick to the throat before hopping back over the counter and thanking Albert for his largesse.

I have learned so much from watching Chuck Norris as Walker, Texas Ranger.

Swipe here -> Chuck Norris is always there even when you can't see him. <-

TCB

Coffee and the filthy hacks

2008-01-31T09:39:00.000-05:00

What the intercourse is it about journalists? I presume that when they are out on assignment (and for that matter when they are in the bar) they are on expenses so why are they cheap skating me, the bastards? Here are two absolute gospel true stories to prove my point.

For quite a while the journo who covers this area for the Bigtown Gazzette used to sneak into the Coffee House to use the wifi in order to email her ~~story~~ tissue of lies back to base. When my back was turned she would then sneak out without ordering anything. Well I got wise to this little ruse and as soon as she came in I would give her a menu and as what she wanted. Her tactic would be to start with a glass of water, file her story and then when my back was turned, well you can guess the rest. Not only do I expect to be paid I also expect to be lavishly tipped out as well. I certainly don’t expect the royal shaft.

Yesterday (and this is still making my blood boil) some girly hack from the Smalltown News and Post came in with some other silly bint that she was clearly interviewing for a story. I asked them what they needed and she replied, “Nothing thanks”. The audacity of using my Coffee House as a free meeting place was so astounding that despite every fiber of my being urging me to drag her out of the door by her pubes I simply walked away.

After conferring with the Boss, if she tries that shit again I will ask her not to disturb me at work; after all I don’t go to the bus depot and interrupt you blowing vagrants.I don’t know what they teach these people at Journo School but by the Christ they have balls of steel.

Coffee and Guns (again)

2008-01-31T08:55:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite customers who should remain anonymous (screw that, it was DQ) came in for a bowl of soup. Her bill rang up at $3.57 and as she looked at the display on the register she muttered "That's what I need". Well ever one to pry into someone else's business I asked if she meant a Magnum 357. Cutting a long story short we then had a philosophical discussion on the relative merits of the 38P+ and the Magnum 357 rounds, and the bad day she was having.

As she left I could not help but to reflect on the fact that if you piss of a Yankee woman she will whine and bitch and have a hissy fit and generally make your life hell. Piss off a Kissbotty County woman and she just picks up her 357.

I tell you people I am never leaving Kissbotty.

Coffee and Hiatus

2008-01-31T08:37:00.000-05:00

Good Lord, I'm back. Did you miss me? I missed you (natch, otherwise why would I be blogging)?

I would love to be able to tell you some fantastic stories that explain my absence. You know, an inoperable brain tumor that was miraculously fixed by a blind neurosurgeon from Chicago that operates (pun intended) pro bono because he loves the blog. Or perhaps a deep undercover mission to stop the Moooslim hoards jacking our precious right to rape the world of its natural resources. Sadly none of that would be true and as you know my stories are all kosher. The simple truth is that I just got bored and now I am not bored, just boring.

Despite the lack of a blog, all my chums kept turning up, Bertie, Judge Mental, the DQ and every day they do something to amuse me.

So here we go, pen akimbo and wating for today's hilarity

The End

2007-08-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

That's it, I'm done. It seemed like a good idea at the time but the novelty of writing a blog about a Coffee House has worn thin and to be quite frank it goes against my mantra. Many years ago a wise man once told me that everything had to be just for fun and I guess I ran out of fun. It is not that I ran out of stories (thanks to Bertie and Co. the stories will never end), but it all seemed such a nause writing them down.

So that is it, don't come back here there is nothing for you, just move on, I feel your loss. Still if you really want to continue to dip into my life (and if you do might I respectfully suggest that you get one of your own). Click here.

Goodbye forever.

TCB

Coffee and Salad

2007-07-19T07:48:00.000-05:00

As our regular patrons will know the Boss puts on a special lunch every day. I don’t know how she does it as it is my avowed intent to stay out of the kitchen forever, but she does, and who am I to ask questions?

Today’s piece de resistance (as the Germans say) is a Caesar Salad with anchovies so I thought that I would share with you the reason a Caesar Salad is called a Caesar Salad

In 31 AD Julius Caesar was having his birthday in Londinium, which as you are well aware eventually became London. The local tribes known as the Angles (from which we derive the term Anglo-Saxons) hated the Romans whom they correctly thought of as foreign invaders. The maurauding tribes were, however, very much smitten with a Roman import know as lettuce which previously had not been seen in England. So the bandits invade Julius Caesar's birthday party seeking the said lettuce. Caesar shows them a truly beautiful salad to which the bandit chief replies, "We come to seize the salad, not to praise it!"

And you thought that today was going to be wasted. Now get back to work.

TCB

Coffee and more Internet

2007-07-17T13:40:00.001-05:00

Do you remember all the nausea I experienced trying to set up an Internet connection? Well you can remind yourself here and here and here and here and here. Finally we ended up with two different service providers and as one was free I was cool with having one for me and one for the hoi polloi. The salespeople from the free service promised me an upgrade to 5Mbits, a portfolio of promotional stuff and a $75 commission for every sucker I converted to them. Sadly none of this materialized but what the hell I still had free DSL. Then without warning the modem started flashing all of its lights like a disco on acid and making strange noises which must have translated as “Argghh I am about to die”, which is indeed what it did. Then I discovered that the Smalltown Telephone Company had pulled the plug on the DSL line. What a bunch of cheapskates. These Scrooge like antics, coupled with the stories that I hear concerning the reliability of the 2 wire router lead me to recommend the Smalltown Alternative IP Provider, however………….

This month my bill was up from its normal $42 to a staggering $153 (an I assure you that I did indeed stagger when I opened the envelope). Closer examination showed that the difference was due to 4.4 Gbytes of overages. Now FOTL2 is home for the summer and up until now things have been just sweet. She of course denies everything and I hate to put 2 and 2 together but I know the little hellion is guilty as sin. They say that if you love someone set them free, if they don’t come back they were never yours. If on the other hand you set them free and they come back, eat your food, mess up your home, watch your television and rack up your Internet bill then they are probably your student child.

As a postscript I spoke to the wonderful people in the billing department and they agreed that I had suffered enough (I expect that they know FOTL1 and FOTL2) and agreed to drop the overages. In view of this supreme piece of customer relations I shall do the unusual and out them. The Coffee Bitch recommends the great guys at B2X Online.

Now if you will excuse me I need to download some vast amounts of smut while the Boss still thinks it is FOTL2.

Striking whilst the iron is hot.
TCB

Coffee and the brown stuff

2007-07-17T08:43:00.000-05:00

One of the benefits of working in a place where I meet lots of people is that if I whine on long enough, eventually I will find someone with a solution to whatever the vexation special of the day is. Recently my customers have found me an honest roofer (I will let you know how that works out), an automotive paint sprayer and 320 square feet of scrap corrugated tin (don’t ask).

Last week I was bleating on to all and sundry about how horrid the Kissboty County dirt is and how badly my lawn is faring seeing how it hasn’t rained for about 100 years. I was explaining how I hate to use chemicals and what I really wanted was to add some body to the nasty soil. Well right on cue a nice lady mentioned that she had a donkey (or an ass or a mule, I really don’t know the difference) and a pile of donkey poo. All I had to do was drive over and collect it. Well, as you know, as a result of my shenanigans at the Coffee House I am usually up to my neck in doo doo anyway, so a spot of shoveling wasn’t going to make a difference to my life and we made an appointment. The nice lady offered me directions but I declined as I have a GPS in the truck so I just needed the address.

On the appointed day we set off for what started as a pleasant jaunt through the leafy byways of old Virginny (as no one calls Virginia in these parts). Things were going well until we flashed past a strange looking sign. It was yellow with black dots and just as I said, “I wonder what that means” we rounded a corner and discovered that it meant the pavement was about to end, and we were on gravel. In truth the sign actually meant that the road would turn to gravel, then dirt, then mud and then water. It is not possible to exaggerate the crappiness of this “road”. We drove for miles and miles in four-wheel drive, axle deep in slime and slithering sideways at every turn. Throughout this drama the GPS helpfully reminded me to “turn right in 2 miles, approaching in 30 minutes”, 4 mph top speed.

Now the Virginia legislature (may Allah shrivel their private parts) has decided that Virginia drivers who fail to use a turn signal or other serious offense are going to be fined $2000 and this fine will be used to improve the roads. (As an aside this law does not apply to out of state drivers, so come on in chaps, it’s a free ride). I therefore respectfully suggest that the boys in Richmond start with SR715, or at least put up a sign that says the road will become almost impassable in 5 miles so turn around now while you have room to turn.

Eventually we arrived some 45 minutes late and I confess in a foul mood. I chased the donkey around with the pooper scooper and finally collected a truck load of donkey dump. Needless to say I decided to ditch the GPS and get direction back that did not involve a washed out logging trail.

On the off chance that you may think I have exaggerated this tale I challenge you to drive SR715. To make it really exciting go to your video store first and rent the movie Wrong Turn.

Coffee and Food

2007-07-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum.

My life is over, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead.

Scribbling in the sky the message, fun is dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

It was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest.

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought we would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.

Hide all the food, I cannot buy it;

For the Boss has put me on a diet.

With apologies to;

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Coffee and (de) Construction

2007-07-11T18:29:00.000-05:00

Directly opposite our little slice of caffeine heaven is a funny looking building that has been empty for the longest time. It was rumored that it was to be demolished but nothing ever seemed to happen. Then this morning a monstrous machine and its baby brother were parked on the sidewalk so it looked like we were set to go. As this looked like it was to be my only intellectual stimulation for the morning (what with Bertie failing to appear) I thought I might sit in the window taking a few snaps. The backhoe wriggled itself into position and extended its bucket. As it reached out a small amount of debris fell out of the bucket and showered a lady who was walking out of the front door.

Now I am the first to admit that what I know about building demolition can be written on a postage stamp and still leave room for the US Constitution but in my opinion, and I could be wrong here, the first thing that you want to do before sending a shanty off to building Valhalla is to make sure that it is unoccupied.

Still as we say here in Kissbotty County all’s well that ends. The building came down and there was no loss of life. All in all rather a disappointing day really.

Coffee and Genealogy

2007-07-11T13:10:00.001-05:00

As the regular reader (all two of you) will know, Bertie Grabbitt (Sue, Grabbitt and Runne LLP) generally picks up his morning coffee and lingers whilst we put the world to rights. This morning Bertie recalled a tale involving his genealogy. Grandfather, Father and himself. Of course I knew that he was making it all up. After all, show me an attorney who actually knows who his father is.

Coffee and Guns (part , oh whatever)

2007-07-11T10:20:00.000-05:00

Finally we got some shootin’ in. One of our faithful customers who has a spot of land in the depths of Kissbotty county invited us to his place in order to mix and match guns and have a little fun. You will recall from earlier blogs that the hunting experience in the UK involves considerable volumes of food and it looks like the same applies in rural Kissbotty although I believe it is called victuals or something. Anyway the preshooting experience included gallons of coffee, OJ and mountains of food and after that, well the shootin’ was the cherry on the cake.

They gave the Boss a 38 Walther PPK to try out. (In case that rings a bell, it is James Bond’s sidearm of choice). Well after she finished everyone’s mouth just dropped open. It may have been the fact that she killed three coke cans out of four (and let me tell you people, at 14 yards that is no mean feat). Or it may have been that as she did it she screamed “Take that you motherless little sons of a ^%$#@!. Whatever, it was all round a damned impressive performance, which may be repeated in the Coffee House one day so just watch out all you complainers.

After we ran the gamut of 44’s and 45’s I pulled out my 50 caliber Desert Eagle, which really is a dichotomy of a firearm. The DE is about the size of a cinder block and weighs about the same. When you pull it out at the range, mere mortals quiver at your overt manliness and nubile virgins (who are few and far between here in Kissbotty) instantly throw themselves at your feet and offer their virtue. However the DE has a major design flaw and that is that the spent round is ejected not from the side where it should be, but vertically. This ensures that a red-hot casing is almost guaranteed to hit you in the face. If you are really unlucky it will also jam across the bridge of your safety glasses causing you to scream like a girl and ruin the illusion of your manliness. It is in short a piece of Israeli crap. I actually asked Magnum Research what the deal was and they replied that this can happen if the shooter is firing “limp wristed”. In England being limp wristed is an anachronism for batting on the other team, so not only is the DE a piece of crap but the manufacturers think that I am a gay boy. On a more hetero note I also use a Smith and Wesson Magnum 500 which has the twin virtues of being the most powerful handgun bar none and also American made.

Now I am off to buy a Walther PPK. I know that 38 caliber is a tad girly but if the Boss can use it to blow the testes off the flies in the kitchen then at least I will have some distraction during the quiet times. By the way before you start to whine about buying American, the PPK is made under license in the US by the finest gun maker in the world, Smith and Wesson.

Ka-Boom
TCB

Coffee and the 4th

2007-07-05T10:58:00.000-05:00

Listen up people, you are going to have to stop asking if I enjoyed the 4th. Of course I didn’t. I am English, we lost you insensitive clods. Asking me if I enjoyed the 4th is akin to asking Mrs. Lincoln if she enjoyed the play so knock if off.

Actually one of my customers (and you know who you are) had the audacity to ask if the English celebrate Independence Day. Natch I replied, “We sure do, we call it thanksgiving”.

As it happens I had a very nice day as the Sci Fi channel had a marathon of the Twilight Zone and those were the days when you colonials could make television programs. It was also better than last year, check it out. Is it really over a year since I started this nonsense?

Coffee and Tea

2007-06-29T09:07:00.000-05:00

OK, when I am explaining the subtle differences between Irish Breakfast and English Afternoon it is not smart for you to ask if I keep English Midday. I know that you are just trying to impress your friends but it is hardly impressive when I roll around the floor laughing and wetting my pants. Best leave the choice of tea to me, agreed?
By the way the next person who asks for cream with their tea will be banned for life. If you want to ruin your tea I believe that there is a Starbucks in Bigtown somewhere. From now on you decide if you want black, brown, green, red or white tea and I will prepare it with the correct accoutrements. On second thoughts that is way to complicated, you say hot tea and I will bring you a perfectly brewed pot based on my assessment of your personality.

Coffee and Church

2007-06-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I broke the habit of a lifetime and went to church. Well it wasn’t really church but rather a church supper type thingy, still it was a close call. I thought that Kissbotty County was the buckle on the bible belt but as we headed south into Flatus County I realized that I was wrong, for here are churches every 100 yards or so. I didn’t know that there were so many flavors of religion, Presbyterian, Apostolic, Lutheran, Baptist, Gospel, the list is seemingly endless and it is all very confusing. As far as I am concerned there are two religions, the Christians and the Muslims. The Christians comprise of two tribes, the Protestants and the Catholics. The tribes hate each other and from time immemorial they have tried to kill each other. The Muslims comprise of two tribes, the Sunnis and the Shiites. The two tribes hate each other and from time immemorial they have tried to kill each other. In addition the Christians hate the Muslims and try to kill them. In a complete lack of contrast the Muslims hate the Christians and try to kill them. There is probably a lesson here but I just can’t see it.

So I met a nice crowd of people including one old lady who had just had a cedar demolish her home in the recent storm. She was of the opinion that the good Lord would provide and I guess I spoiled her evening by speculating that this may be the same good Lord who had just destroyed her home. As you can imagine the evening went downhill after that, mainly because the Boss kept glaring daggers at me and drawing her finger across her throat. Honestly some people just can’t take a joke. On the brighter side, these Baptists know how to eat, did I ever chow down. I suppose that it would be uncharitable and curmudgeonly of me to criticize the band, so I will. Every song had lyrics along the lines of “every day brings me closer to you dear Lord” and at the end of every song people would shout out “Praise Jesus”. It was like these people actually want to die. It is no wonder that people say the Devil has all the best music. For the record I want to live forever. Well perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. I want to die at 97 having just introduced a Dallas cheerleader to her first multiple orgasm and the last words I hear on earth will be “Oh CB you have ruined me for all other men”.

Much later that evening back at Chateau Coffee I had this uneasy feeling that something was wrong, I just couldn’t put my finger on it until I realized with shock that it was Friday night and I was sober, what a nightmare. Saturday mornings aren’t the same without the usual conversation.

CB ; “Oh my head, Jesus what happened”?
Boss; “ Why do you do it”?
CB; (very much under breath) “Just trying to drink you pretty my love”
Boss; Well I have no sympathy, you really are a pig”
CB; “Please stop talking, where are the aspirins”?

The great thing is that when I wake up I know that I am going to feel better and that is more than the Baptists can say, haha.

Praise Jesus

TCB

Coffee and Pies (Part II)

2007-06-20T10:12:00.000-05:00

Good grief, is this pie thing ever going to stop. OK this is positively the last post (well until at least next year). Some of the ladies of the town have now come into the Coffee House to berate me and put me right. Apparently the ladies don’t have time to be makin’ no damned pies, as they are too busy pleasurin’ their menfolks in bizarrely exotic ways.
And that is all the correspondence fit to be bloged.

Coffee and Pies (part III)

2007-06-20T08:37:00.000-05:00

After posting Coffee and Pies I have been informed that I dodged a bullet with this judging business. It transpires that the ladies of Kissbotty County who do bother to enter their pies take this thing way too seriously and apparently hell hath no fury like a woman whose pies have been scorned.

After last year’s fair the pie judge was found dead under strange circumstances with a plastic bag over his head and a third place rosette inserted into his rectum. Apropos nothing at all, all of the Kissbotty deputies are women, I don’t know what this says about the Sheriff’s proclivities but I can tell you they were pretty damn quick to close the case and according to the crime report it was an autoerotic misadventure. Now the plastic bag I can understand, after all who amongst us hasn’t felt the urge to slip a Ziplock over our head and pick up a copy of Cheeks Apart Plus (volume 27), I know that I have. Still I can’t help feeling that the ladies in brown were overly keen to hush things up and perhaps that rosette was a bit of a clue.

Anyhow as a result of last year’ spot of unpleasantness it seems like the ladies are keeping a low profile this year and this is the reason why I only had one pie to judge. So I did not get to scorn anyone’s pies and for this small mercy my colon and I will be eternally grateful.

From now on I shall restrict myself to judging the Boss’s cottage pie, which incidentally has nothing at all to do with this fine old British Tradition.

Yours in mastication,

TCB

Coffee and Pies

2007-06-19T14:40:00.000-05:00

I don’t know why but we don’t have a county fair here in Kissbotty, it’s a shame but there you go. We do, however, have a fair and what a jolly good one it is too. In fact I have been to County Fairs that aren’t a patch on whatever we have instead of a County Fair. I spoke to Kissbotty’s tourism officers and they have promised me that next year we will have a County Fair, their excuse is that this year they were concentrating on the fishing thingy instead. I suppose from a revenue point of view the fishing thing makes more sense but you know my views on fishing. (Unless you are dressed in waders and casting flies, which does require a modicum of skill).

A few weeks ago the Boss and I were invited to be judges, I got pies and the Boss got cakes. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was, as to be honest, eating pies is where I am a Viking. Almost everywhere else in the world the word pie is prefixed with a silent but understood meat. Steak and Ale, home made Pork Pie and thrill of thrills a Steak and Kidney Pudding is like a thousand angels copulating in your mouth. So last Saturday the boss and I arrived, clipboards and silver sampling forks in hand and discovered that here in Kissbotty the word pie does not involve the meat word. To heap disappointment upon disappointment there was only one entry. Imagine that in the whole of Kissbotty County there is only one woman who can make a pie. In a fit of pique I awarded her a desultory blue ribbon and stomped off to have a look at the barbeque smokers. I really don’t know what is up with Kissbotty but there were only two barbeque entries (and between you and me, one of them was using propane, how inappropriate is that)? My next project is to build a smoker so I figure with a field of three entrants I should be in with a good chance, especially if someone were to accidentally tip a bucket of urine down the smoke stacks of the competition.

So if you want to unmask the Coffee Bitch (aka the Smalltown phantom flasher) I will be at the 2008 Kissbotty County Fair in the barbeque section standing next to an empty bucket.

Coffee and the squirts

2007-06-18T10:39:00.000-05:00

In Walmart the other day I saw some packets of Immodium in the last minute impulse-buy rack by the cash register. Now candy I can understand, but you've either got chronic diarrohea or you haven't.

Coffee, sparks and colons

2007-06-18T10:29:00.000-05:00

Generally we have a pleasant little relationship here in the Coffee House. The Boss makes the muffins, preps up the salad, stirs the soup and generally flits around the kitchen doing magical things that are a mystery to me. Whilst listening to the happy sounds of a woman working in the background, I scan the Internet looking for world situations that may be in need of my advice. Currently I am trying to resolve the issue of the former British colony of Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe. Inflation in Zimbabwe is now running at 3000% and unemployment is 80%. It really is quite a vexing situation and alas it is not the only former British colony that gives me cause for concern.

So you can imagine how annoyed I was to have my concentration broken by the Boss telling me that most of the sockets in the kitchen were dead. Breaking away from Robert Mugabe and his crooked henchmen I set off to reset the breaker (which by the way is situated in the restroom, how dumb is that?). Now when it comes to this electrical stuff I can recognize a tripped breaker and I can also recognize an untripped breaker and we had the latter type so it was a call to our landlord, Kissbotty County. To their credit they sent a man out within minutes although after he had retrod my footsteps he spent an inordinately long time scratching his gonads and muttering softly. After and hour or so he called for reinforcements and we soon had two sparkies scratching and mumbling. I watched with mild disinterest as we approached closing time, hit closing, got well past closing and then something that I had not taken into account happened.

I have the most well trained colon that you can imagine; in fact it is no exaggeration to say that you can set your clock by my colon. However I don’t use public toilets. Call me a weirdo if you will but I never have and I never will. So remember that;

a) we are well past closing time
b) the contact breaker panel is in the restroom
c) the restroom is overflowing with sparkies

Out of the blue I get a colon message “OK CB ready when you are”. Ooops thinks I. Ten minutes later “Hey CB, lets go here”. Another 10 minutes “CB YOU BASTARD GIVE IT UP”. Finally the sparkies call it a day and promise to return in the morning. 5 milliseconds later I am in the company van driving home at 90 miles per hour using my left foot on the accelerator and my right on the brake with my colon now screaming “ready or not, here we go”. Of course I made it home safely and I consoled myself by filling in an overtime form. Needless to say it was rejected, as I hadn’t obtained prior management approval. I tell you sometimes this Coffee House is like working for the Third Reich. In fact if there is anything to this Buddhist nonsense I bet Mr A Hilter has been reincarnated as the Boss. I might just sneak up behind her and shout Zieg Heil and see if her right arm twitches.

TCB
PS In fairness to the boys, they returned really early and found a deeply hidden (by me, my bad) ground fault trip. Hats off to the Kissbotty electricians.

The Bitch rambles

2007-06-12T14:04:00.000-05:00

Summer is here at last and school’s out. What with the hot weather we are currently being inundated with under aged and under dressed young ladies. I suppose it is not unique to Kissbotty County but here skimpy seems to be the style and daily I am confronted with little girls wearing pretty much nothing at all. It looks like most of them got out of school and spent the weekend sunbathing as the are all pink except where the straps of their bikini tops were. (Not a sophisticated look girls). Sadly the ones that have not already given themselves a melanoma will end up with skin like John Wayne’s arse by the time they are 35. Still why should I care, I am sure that there will be a fresh batch of nubile young ladies in 20 years. High School kids, you gotta love them. Actually you probably shouldn’t love them but you get my point. I was reading the New York Times last weekend when I spotted an article about how old folk are acting younger these days, it was titled “50 it’s the new 40”. It got me thinking “16 it’s the new 21”; well at least that is what I will be telling the judge next week.

We have just had some big fishing competition here in Kissbotty. Apparently it was sponsored by ESPN or something similar, not that I would know, as I have no interest in that sort of nonsense. What caught my eye however was the prize money. The winner picked up a cool $100,000 and even the eighth place (a local lad apparently) grabbed a $50,000 boat. Jesus what a soft touch, I mean how hard can it be to catch fish? (This is coming from someone who spent 6 consecutive weekends not catching a turkey). As far as I am concerned a fishing rod is a stick with a worm at each end. Still at least they were using catch and release rules, which is lucky for the fish. Shame we can’t use the same rules for genital herpes.

Coffee and Cake

2007-06-08T09:42:00.001-05:00

Yesterday the Boss cooked a strawberry cheesecake. Actually I am not sure that cooked is the correct term, in fact I have no idea how one makes cheesecake. My theory is that it is far safer for me to keep as large a distance between me and the kitchen as possible. Anyhow she really surpassed herself and this thing was a piece de resistance. I would like to report on how it tasted but apparently I have put on a couple of ounces since we opened the shop and as a result I am now banned from all the pastries, isn’t life cruel, temptation beyond endurance.
So in the afternoon one of the court officials spots the cake and after a few moments of indecision gives in and purchases a slice for her and her daughter to share. When her daughter saw it she apparently said “To hell with sharing” and rushed over to get her own slice, which she took back to the sheriff’s office. A few moments later our trusty trustee turned up and as you know I am morbidly fascinated by his “career”. Well he said “You got cheesecake; man I haven’t had cheesecake since 2005”. From this I deduce that he has been a guest of Virginia for 2 years so his crime must have been somewhat serious. Yet he walks the streets of Smalltown and has enough money to buy cheesecake. My curiosity is burning me up and before long I am going to have to just ask him what he did to get such a sweet job and how do I apply.

Coffee and the General

2007-06-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

As the faithful reader will recall our little coffee house is situated right next to the Smalltown courthouse. Of course you won’t know, and why should you, that there is a very fine statue in the courthouse garden of General Jubal Early who fought bravely for the Confederacy and I quote.

"Virginia holds the dust of many a faithful son, but not of one whom loved her more, who fought for her better, or would have died for her more willingly."
Senator John Warwick Daniel – 1894

During the war of northern aggression,as it should be correctly described, the Yankee hoard could not defeat the General and General Lee (God rest his soul) referred to him as “my bad boy”. Even Lincoln begrudgingly admitted that the heroic actions of Jubal extended the war (of northern aggression) by at least 9 months.

Sadly the brave General, who was a son of Smalltown, was no match for a drunken redneck in a pickup truck. The General is now a pile of smashed granite and as a final indignity he was decapitated by a F150 and his head rolled down the hill, ironically in the direction of the hospital.

This morning (and I swear this is all true) I caught Bertie Grabbitt (Sue Grabbitt and Runne LLP) inspecting the scene. I naturally assumed that he was now plumbing the depths of ambulance chasing, that is to say statue chasing. However, it turns out that I was wrong as the razor sharp mind of Bertie is working on a defense. How can you defend a drunken redneck in a pickup who decapitates a General I hear you cry, well from the mind of Bertie comes the defense.

Apparently you cannot build a brick postbox on a highway. This is because if a motorist hits a solid postbox then the Post Office is liable. So if the General was standing too close to the road then the drunken redneck may have a claim. Only in America. Of course the faithful reader will remember that Bertie is from New York and I think that says it all. Watch this space I shall faithfully report the legal proceedings.

TCB

PS To be pathetically serious for the briefest of moments I am pissed. We live in a throwaway society. Spouse bothering you? Throw them away. Architecturally atheistic building needs maintenance? Tear it down and build another out of pre-formed concrete. General Jubal Early has stood outside the courthouse for well over a hundred years and now he has gone, murdered by one of his own. I hope that he will be replaced in bronze and granite but I expect doing nothing or, even worse, concrete will prove to be cheaper. Thank God it is Friday, in 12 hours I shall be in the hot tub sleeping in the arms of my favorite Greek God, Bacchus, and General Jubal A Early will be a distant memory of when life was just a little better.

The Coffee Bitch heads north

2007-06-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

Not only has FOTL1 flown the nest, she has also flown the state. She has left God’s own country and now resides in Maryland. Back in the jolly old UK a person of somewhat effete mannerisms is known as a Mary so it is a constant source of amusement to me that the limp wristed have a whole state named after them. Of course the state could have been named by suck up colonists after some old queen but I think that you will agree my hypothesis is vastly more amusing.

The only thing that FOTL1 could not get up to the land of French poodles was her car (she was driving the U Haul) so it fell to me to chauffer her ancient but much revered Tonka toy 4 wheel drive the bone shaking 276 miles north. Thus it came to pass that at 6:00 on a Saturday we headed north with the boss following in the truck. I really am the worst morning person in the world so it is a mystery to me as to why I am always out of bed before 6:00. The highlight of the trip (and brilliantly planned by me) was a stop at exit 243, specifically for the purposes of breakfasting at the Waffle House. I tell you, if I am on the road and in need of a breakfast the only food that will hit the spot is the Waffle House All Star breakfast and a gallon of coffee. Just typing this sets me off like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I still have not worked out why I am so addicted as they really are fly blown health hazards (hence the family name Waffle Fly) but I love the places. I have this theory that they are all delivered on trailers and even brand new they are delivered with cracked tiles, fingerprints on the glassware and restrooms 2 inches deep in urine. Next time that you are in a Waffle Fly check it out and you will see what I mean. Talking of the restrooms I have a theory on why they are always flooded. You see the first guy misses the pan and leaves a small dribble on the floor. The next guy decided that he doesn’t want his shoelaces dragging through the yellow river so he hangs back a foot or so and misses even more. This goes on through the day until by about late afternoon the Waffle Fly clients are standing by the main door and urinating into the restaurant in the general direction of the bogs. FOTL1’s fiancé, Slugger, says that this is why he will only use a Waffle Fly late at night after many pints of beer. In this way he can’t focus on the dirt and squalor but can still taste the food. Everyone to his or her own but I say a little e coli is a small price to pay for a slap up breakfast.

As you can imagine the rest of the journey was a bit of an anticlimax until we hit the Capitol beltway, where there really should be a sign saying “Please check your brain before entering”. I had already told the Boss that under no circumstances was she to leave more than a one-inch space between the Tonka toy and the truck, and for most of the way all I could see in my mirror was that huge Ram emblem. Then she temporarily lost concentration and let the gap grow to two inches, which of course was the cue for some Maryland moron to switch lanes. All I could see was 4 tons of Dodge standing on its front wheels to avoid bringing certain death and destruction to manicured cretin in a Honda Civic. As a slight aside, here in God’s own country, you don’t actually need insurance, all you have to do is give a $500 bond to the DMV and you are legal. It is my intention therefore to buy a real old clonker SUV and weld Armco to all four sides. I shall them cruise the beltway and give no quarter. As soon as some vegetable rips the side off his BMW I shall stop on the shoulder and explain why I have no insurance and wish him the most pleasant of days. I reckon that within 6 months I will have creamed about 1000 cars. I wonder if a local body shop might like to sponsor me and make this project pay.
Cutting a long story short we eventually arrived and several beers later the beltway was just a vague memory. The astute reader will doubtless recall that I used to live in northern Virginia but in just a year I had forgotten what a lunatic asylum the DC Metro area is. Thousands of people all wanting to share my space, parking spaces that are the exact width of a small car (let alone a man’s truck) and no, and I mean no, green spaces. Still the hospitality of FOTL1 and Slugger was top notch and they even gave up their bed, kindly ignoring the inevitable beer/bladder related incident.

The next morning we headed south again, hitting the beltway at 10:00 on a Sunday morning and yes it was once again like race day at Daytona. It rained all the way home but it was sunny in my heart for I was heading back to the mountains where a man can breathe without choking on the fumes of a thousand Mary’s cologne.

Now to get this mattress to the land fill before the Boss notices.

Coffee and Prizes

2007-06-06T08:43:00.000-05:00

Well that was a strange week. I actually got sued by a customer, thus proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished. The Boss decided that we should run a little competition thingy to increase sales of the espresso drinks. We bought a whole load of those stickers that you peel apart to see what you won and slapped them on the cups. Now I specifically ordered a ratio of 99.9% “Sorry please try again” to winners so I was amazed when the very first customer leapt in the air screaming, “I’ve won a motor home”. Clearly there was some awful mistake here but she wasn’t having any of it and when the Motor home didn’t materialize she had me up in front of Judge Mental in the District court. It took all of Bertie Grabbitt’s (Sue, Grabbitt and Runne LLP) oratory skills to explain that the label actually read “Win a Bagel”

I tell you as soon as my 401(k) plan kicks in (aka the Virginia lottery) I am long gone.

The Bitch bitches (again)

2007-05-21T14:40:00.000-05:00

Ignoring wiser council I decided to get a fifth opinion on this turkey hunting business. As an experiment I also decided to see what getting out of bed at 5:00 would be like after guzzling a bottle of Chianti the night before. As experiments go it was probably not my finest hour but, as I am sure you will agree, unless you try these things you will never know. So once again I climbed the north face of the Eiger but this time with a pounding head and little black dots floating in my eyes (where do those dots come from)? Yet again the wily bird evaded us and this time even Tonto gave up so I was back at Chateau Coffee (sans le meat) by 11:00. The good news is that turkey season is now over and the next item on the agenda is Dove. The even better news is that one cannot hunt Dove before 12:00, finally I shall be both hunting and lying in my pit; bonus! Because it was such a nice afternoon (and not as the Boss pointlessly suggested because I was hung-over) we spent the afternoon hanging out on the deck. Of course ever silver lining has a cloud and my Saturday afternoon sloth meant that we had to do the Sam’s Club run on Sunday. Don’t ever be tempted to do this folks; the Sunday crowd is even scummier than the Saturday crowd, I expect the regular dross are in Church leaving the dregs of the dross to bother me.

Note to Sam Walton. If you place a row of cobblestones between the doors and the parking lot this will ensure that flatbed carts get a good shaking as your customers leave. This will result in at least two items falling off much to the amusement of your minimum wage retardees. Oh wait a minute you already did this. Well you could also make your parking lot with a 5% slope. This will make it impossible to let go of a cart that weighs 400lbs for fear it will run down the hill and smash into some poor bastards truck at about 35mph. What’s that? You already covered that? Of course you have. Back in the UK they have the Monopolies Commission (ironic note here, why is there only one)? They stop stores like Sam’s stitching up a neighborhood. Sadly Virginia has the finest politicians that money can buy which is presumably why the nearest Costco is 95 miles away in North Carolina.

So after Sam’s we are back at the Coffee House, unloading the truck, loading the shop, cleaning, restocking and prepping for Monday. Finally we are done and we set off for home, cutting through the court complex as a short cut. There we spot a freshly detailed Sheriff’s car with our local trustee sitting on a stool admiring his handiwork. I stopped to exchange pleasantries with the Bro’s and as I drove off I reflected, not for the first time, what a far more relaxed life he has than I. It is only a matter of days before I expose myself (so to speak) as the Smalltown flasher and end up in the town pokey for a 6 stretch. Three hots and a cot, a little spot of fetching and carrying and what is more washing the Sheriff’s car is infinitely easier than washing the brute of a Ram that I have to clean.

Easy street here I come, Zzzzip.

TCB

Coffee and Marketing

2007-05-16T10:38:00.000-05:00

I might have to reassess my marketing skills with regard to the Coffee House. Yesterday a young lady came into the shop and asked how the wifi worked. I told her that once she became a customer I would give her the password and she was in business. An hour later she settled her account and gave me a $2 tip (nice). She then told me that she wished that she had known that we were here the previous day as she had driven the 30 miles to Bigtown looking for wireless. She eventually found herself in a well-known coffee chain store that charged an exorbitant amount for a coffee plus, and get this, $10 for the use of the Internet. After she left I considered her $1.25 for the coffee (cogs $0.50) and $2 tip (of which the IRS will get 40%, natch) and wondered if I really did have my finger on the pulse. Still it doesn’t pay to be too greedy, as those painted Jezebels at Smalltown’s library have already undercut us all by offering free Internet.

Speaking of marketing I think that I may have stumbled upon a new business model for the Coffee House. You see when it rains here in Smalltown people don’t fancy walking the hill for lunch, but they will telephone in a to go order. Most of the government employees seem to use our trusty trustee to fetch their lunches so they don’t even have to get wet. Actually this trustee business puzzles me, you see he has been in business just as long as I have. This means that his crime must have been relatively severe to warrant such a long sentence and yet minor enough that he can walk the streets of Smalltown with pockets full of other people’s money. I would guess hog humping or wife beating but I don’t think that either of these are actually illegal in Kissbotty County. Now with telephone orders I can pace them according to how busy the boss is. So if she is lounging around then the lunch will be ready in 5. Conversely if she is busy then “your lunch will be ready for collection in 30”. This means that we get a nice low stress throughput of clientele. It also means that if the Boss has bothered me I can wait until she is really snowed under and then tell the Circuit Court that 12 jury lunches will be ready in 5 and to send the trustee down now.
Anyhow the point is that I am seriously thinking of telephone orders only, so you come into the shop decide what you want and then use your cell phone to call it in. I will see how fast the Boss’s arms are flapping and give you an eta on your eats. The only disadvantages that I can see are that a) we will get through a lot of to go boxes and b) no-one seems to tip on carryouts. However I think that we can overcome this with what I call a non-discretionary gratuity donation (my man at the IRS says that, unlike tips, donations are tax exempt). So bring your cell phones and dig deep people, we need to make this work, I have a wireless network to support.

Coffee and Glasses

2007-05-14T10:17:00.000-05:00

Saturday night and FOTL1 and FOTL2 are home. We all decide that with Mother’s day around the corner we should eat out and by a remarkable and fortuitous stroke of luck there is no argument as we all fancy a spot of Mexican. One of the advantages of being “in the trade” is that I know where to find the Health Department reports for restaurant inspections and this is what I use these days as my dining guide. So it came to pass that we found ourselves in Santa Anna’s Revenge, Smalltown. It is not the most salubrious establishment but at least (according to Smalltown’s inspectors) the guacamole is at the correct holding temperature.

I expect it is due to my English accent but I always seem to have a problem ordering at a Mexican restaurant even though I try to speak s-l-o-w-l-y and c-o-n-c-i-s-e-l-y. So I ordered a Corona “and may I have a glass to drink it from please”. Of course I got a bottle of beer, a wedge of lime and a glass of water. It must be the English in me but drinking from the bottle is so passé, if my mother could see me she would be spinning in her quicklime. Of course I planned to ignore the water but something caught my eye and looking down I saw that my old mate Bertie Grabbitt (Sue, Grabbitt and Runne LLP) had an advert printed on the glass. Apparently he specializes in accident and personal injury although bearing in mind the class of Santa Anna’s Revenge customers I would of thought he could have used a better copy. Perhaps “When your home is mobile but your vehicle ain’t come and see Bertie”. Actually I note that he is no longer Bertie, presumably in order to assist his more cerebrally challenged clients he is now Bert, which is two less letters to spell. I can’t imagine why the old Judas didn’t come to me first but he didn’t and as he has targeted the trailer market I shall have to set my sights a little higher.

I shall be forced to offer my glasses to Percy Piles (Hemmer, Rhoyd and Piles LLP) and I have even got the copy prepared

“Lots of smiles with Percy Piles
So let’s make a date to litigate”

Watch out Bert, I have my stencil and magic marker ready to go.

Coffee and Hunting (part IV)

2007-05-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

Well it’s official; there are no turkeys in Kissbotty County. Once again I was up at 5:00 am and ready to do battle with the wily bird. We went back to the original happy hunting ground, the one that involves climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro. We climbed and climbed and climbed and heard and saw nothing. By this time I suspect that Tonto my faithful tracker and guide is getting a touch embarrassed at our abject failure to even hear a bird so he decides to move us on. We climbed down the other side of the mountain and back up the next mountain. After an hour he moves us on and hence another mountain, and so the morning dragged on. We are hunting on 500 acres and I swear to God we walked 499 of them. 5 hours later we gave up and emerged from the woods onto the dirt track road but about 2 miles from the truck. What a morning. I got back, kicked my boots off and decided to have 5 minutes on the sofa. After a few seconds I realized how much more comfortable I would be if I put my feet up. Then how much more comfortable, if I put my head down and before I knew what was happening, well you can guess can’t you. Of I course I might be feeling a little more manly had I brought the meat home but alas and alack it was not to be.

In an earlier blog I may have rashly said how great it was to be at one with nature. Let me tell you that from now on I am going to be at one with my mattress until at least 11.00 am on a Saturday morning and all the turkeys in Virginia can kiss my hairy old English bottom all over.

Coffee and Names

2007-05-08T17:55:00.000-05:00

When I was a lad, which admittedly was a few decades ago, people had what I can only describe as real names. You know James, Harry, Mary and that sort of thing but these days it seems to be the case that anything goes. The so-called Posh Spice (and let me tell you people, anyone born in Essex, England is far from posh) named her kid Brooklyn as that is where it was conceived. People seem to name their snots after their favorite car or even shampoo and it all seems such an abdication of parental responsibility. These kids are going to grow up and be tortured by their little playmates for having names like Apple or Honeybunch Snowflake. Anyone naming their child should spend a few minutes checking out rhyming slang and stupid sounding names. A case in point is that Brad and Angelina should have listened to this advice before naming their kid Shiloh Pitt. At some point, someone at school is going to spoonerise her name and it will all end in tears. Kissbotty County educated folks may click here.

Talking of names, my old sparring partner, Rita Whiplash has pulled off an amazing coup and I am green with jealousy. She has started to advertise herself at every Outback Steakhouse in the land. I don’t know how she did it but every coaster features Rita. Now I don’t expect you t believe me and I could hardly believe it myself but here is a picture of the obverse and reverse of an Outback coaster.

Unfortunately the Valtrex challenged and Shine addled old slapper forgot to put her contact details on the coaster and this is where I need your help. I have promised Rita that wherever I go I will ink in her number and I also told her that I would get my vast army of readers to help out as well. So please visit an Outback tonight and write on the coaster 1-900-SPA-NKME.

Rita has promised me a small commission and I have just had to buy a new coffee engine so to be quite frank I need the money.

Living off the fruits of love.
TCB

Coffee and College

2007-05-07T10:13:00.000-05:00

Lawdy, lawdy, what a weekend, I am wrecked. As you will doubtless recall (like you care) last weekend was graduation weekend at Collegetown. As it all started at 8:00 I was out of my love chamber at 5:00 so as to make it on time. The hooding ceremony went real well and as a bonus they didn’t waste any of my time with speeches, they just got on with it. For the benefit of the hard of hearing they had one of those sign people working nineteen to the dozen. Halfway through I realized that this would be a perfect job for me to add a little fun for the deaf people, and heaven knows they need some extra fun.

Welcome to the 2007 hooding ceremony (and please fondle my buttocks). Today we celebrate the achievements of our graduate students (I am wearing women’s underwear). Before we start I would just like to say (I am soooo gay).Well you get the picture and this does not even include the obscene gestures (did he just flip me off?). Yes indeed that is a job that I could do with relish.

In contrast to the hooding ceremony the awarding of the undergraduate degrees was three hours of drawn out misery. Why on earth these people would think that I would be interested in their anecdotal stories of childhood is beyond me. To rub salt into the wounds FOTL1 told me that the college actually pays these professional bores to speak. So there is another job I could do.

Due to a bit of a cock up on the booking front I booked a birthday party for the same day as graduation. This is why I generally let the Boss do all of the work in the Coffee House whilst I put the world to rights in conversation with our customers. Well the outcome was that we had to thrash back to Smalltown and set up 20 cream teas. The only high spot of the afternoon was when one of my customers told me that she wasn’t wearing any panties. Well as I am sure you can imagine this certainly captured my attention, however as I span round I discovered to my chagrin that the confessor was about 3 years old. Her mother rushed over in a fluster of embarrassment and explained that they had just had a slight bathroom incident and no spare underwear. Apparently the little girl thought that this was so neat she was going to find “the man” and tell him. Well little girl I salute you for being so young and already realizing that the Coffee Bitch is “the man”. If your dress sense does not improve in the next 15 years come back and see me.

We were supposed to move FOTL2 out of college after graduation but due to my double booking our Saturday afternoon I, once again, found myself zipping down the interstate for the second time in two days. Has anyone else noticed what a luxurious life style college kids have these days? I only came to realize this as I loaded computers, TVs, fridges, futons and a ton of other assorted girly crap onto the truck. By the time we were finished we looked like the Clampetts going to Beverly Hills. I did try to get the Boss to sit on the futon on the way back but as usual even my smallest of dreams were dashed. I think that FOTL2 was so embarrassed by my impression of the Joad family that she just got in her car and headed north, leaving me and the Boss to haul her crap. I am tempted to make her offload the truck herself but I know that if I try that on then all her stuff will sit in the truck until August when I have to haul it back to Collegetown, and there’s a thought, in just a few short weeks I will be doing it all again.

What a life.

Coffee and the Truth

2007-05-03T08:41:00.000-05:00

Well it is official, Cheryl has gone and she actually came in to see us for a farewell tea, which under the circumstances was jolly sweet of her. It made me feel rather sad actually. Not just because she was going as to be honest, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, a replacement is just around the corner. No it is more to do with envying her youth. Many years ago I was doing the same thing, Bombay, Calcutta, Chittagong, Dubai, the world was my oyster and what fun I had. These days just waking up in the morning is all the adventure I can handle.

After much searching I thought that I had found a replacement for Cheryl but as usual the Gods conspired to thwart my best endeavors. I have, for quite some time, been on rather good terms with a very pretty little high school senior but unfortunately here in Kissbotty County the kids don’t know how to spell discretion let alone act with it. So it came to pass that with one hand firmly grasping my boys, the boss asked why I had told little Angela that I was taking her to Florida after graduation. Instantly realizing that a misunderstanding had occurred I replied “ No, my dewy cheeked English rose. I said that as soon as she was 18 I was going to tamper with her”. This was quickly followed by the old twist and pull maneuver that I have come to know and fear so well.

I’ll tell you what, who ever wrote “The truth shall set you free” needs to have his head examined

The Cofee Bitch vs. Mother Nature

2007-05-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

I really should have learned, after all these years I should have know better. Every time I berate the Gods or Mother Nature they come back to bite my weary old ass. And so it came to pass that I found a dead deer in the front yard. It hadn’t been shot and it didn’t look like a car had hit it. It looked like Mother Nature had just made it wander into my garden and then made it drop dead. Normally VDOT will take care of this sort of problem but only on state maintained roads. Here in Kissbotty County I don’t think that we have state roads so when it comes to garbage removal, snow ploughing (to use the correct spelling) and indeed deer removal, one is pretty much on one’s own. So I had a word with my gentlemen hunters and the consensus of opinion was that I should tie a rope around it and drag it out of smell range into the woods. Well I have recently discovered two new facts. The first is that a dead deer is the biggest fly magnet in the world. The second is that when it comes to smell range, you can never haul a rotting deer too far from your house. With a nice southerly breeze (which blows about 100% of the time) it is now impossible to sit on the deck without retching. I would pull the damned thing further into the trees but as you can imagine I can’t get within 500 feet of it. My only hope is that the neighborhood dogs eat it and then go home to yak up a huge portion of rotten deer bowel onto the marital bed. Now you are probably thinking that this is a tad mean so let me explain. My neighbors (and this is probably a southern thing) seem to think that it is acceptable to let their hounds out in the morning to wander the ‘hood and let me assure you that it is not acceptable. I do not want Blossom wandering into my house like she owns the place. I do not want Spot drinking my solar powered water feature dry and I certainly don’t want Butch ripping open my garbage bags in search of a tasty morsel. Fortunately salvation may be at hand as Virginia has declared a bounty on coyote. So if I stalk out the carcass, give these interlopers both barrels of the trusty BSA 12 gauge and then spray paint them grey, Blossom and her little mates could earn me $25 a pop.

Actually I don’t know why I should be in such a curmudgeonly mood as my predictions in a previous blog turned out to be correct and our takings for last month exceeded my wettest of dreams. I decided to celebrate this wonderful news with a spot of copulation but unfortunately so did the Boss. Fortunately I was able to resolve this dichotomy with a couple of Mogadons and when she was safely tucked up in the arms of Morpheus, sneak out and meet Miss Rita Whiplash behind the potting shed. Even Rita, the shine addled old trollop that she is, complained about the God awful smell but at least I was able honestly reply, for the first time in our “relationship”, “Well it isn’t me my little dominatrix”.

Mercy Mistress Mercy.

Coffee and the Bobcat

2007-04-29T14:19:00.000-05:00

Once again the elusive gobbler beat me, still at least I had some fun, Coffee Bitch and nature at one. There is definitely something to be said for sitting out in the woods first thing in the morning. I am camouflaged from head to toe, with camo gloves and a face veil. Comfortably ensconced under a tree I fancy that as long as I don’t move I am invisible and certainly a small herd of deer agreed as they ambled by with 10 feet of me. Then, just I was starting to relax and feeling one of those exotic eyelid movies coming on I spotted a Bobcat. It was huge, spitting and snarling and all teeth and claws. On reflection it might have been someone’s pet ginger tomcat but it was quite a size I can tell you. He was cautiously prowling through the woods, oblivious to my presence and getting closer all the time. When he got to within 2 feet I threw my hands up and made a dreadful hissing noise. The cat hardly expected the tree to come to life and leapt about 10 feet in the air. It spun around and started windmilling its legs so when it hit the ground it took off like, well a scolded cat I suppose. For my part I hardly expected it to vent its bladder in fear. Oh yes, as it span around in mid air it did a ghastly impression of a Catherine wheel of urea and lavishly soaked me. From bitter, bitter experience I can tell you that the one thing worse than the smell of tomcat urine is the smell of tomcat urine drying in the morning sun. When we all hooked up at the end of another turkey free day the very first thing my hunting chums said was “What is that awful smell?” When I told the story they laughed until they were sick, the heartless bastards. I would like to be able to tell you that I got my revenge as they had to hold their heads out of the window on the drive home. Sadly we were using my truck so now the new car smell has been replaced with the used public bathroom smell.

I don’t mind Mother Nature taking the piss I just wish that she wouldn’t keep the catheter in the icebox.

Fortunately for tomcats everywhere I won’t be hunting next week, as I am off to see FOTL1 and FOTL2 graduate college. FOTL1 has completed her Master’s Degree with a 4.0 GPA and has been accepted into the premiere college for her discipline to study for her doctorate. She has also been given a teaching position so I suppose I will have to start calling her Professor FOTL1. FOTL2 has completed her Batchelors Degree with honors and has been accepted into her chosen college as a graduate student working towards her Masters Degree. As a result of some very astute planning by myself, they both graduate from the same college at the same time so I will not have to waste two weekends pretending to be proud of the little helions.

Now to let you into a little secret. I left school at 16. I only mention this in the hope that you will join me in shoving Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (to give it, its full title) up our collective bottys.

All together now, one, two, three, PUSH

Coffee and the Party

2007-04-27T09:46:00.000-05:00

As I have mentioned before Smalltown is the buckle on the Bible belt. Churches outnumber topless bars by 1000 to 1 and ladies of virtue outnumber ladies of the night by the same ratio. I had no idea how serious things were until I went to the post office to buy some stamps.
"What denomination?" asked the clerk."Oh, good heavens! Have we come to this?" I replied.
"Well, give me 30 Catholic ones, 10 Baptist ones, 20 Lutheran, and 40 Presbyterian."

As you can imagine being a Coffee House we get through a tremendous amount of milk every week. Lately I have noticed the boss staring wistfully at the milk refrigerator and eventually she confessed that she had a secret fantasy to bathe in milk. Ever one to help out I told her that I could do that and would she like it pasteurized. She replied that she would be happy if it came up to her chest.

Well it is Friday and that has to be the best. My gentleman hunters have been in to make the arrangements for tomorrow and once again we shall be pitting our wits against the turkey. Fortunately my main man has twisted his knee. I say fortunately as this means that he doesn’t feel up to climbing the north face of Everest tomorrow, instead we will be hunting on level ground. I tell you, these good ol boys climb like freakin mountain goats and I can also tell you that a shotgun that weighs 10lbs at ground level feels like 200lbs after you have climbed what feels like 2000 feet. So if on Monday you see a blog that starts “Mortals, behold the mighty hunter” you will know that I beat the gobbler. Watch this space.

One more working day until the end of the month and we have not only beaten our previous best but we have shattered the record. Normally I would celebrate with a case of Grolsch and a big ol’ pull of white lightening but I have to be up at 5:00 again tomorrow morning, so we decided to have a party behind the Coffee House for our regulars. Most Smalltownians are pretty reticent when it comes to putting out and we were concerned that the party might not even get off the ground. Fortunately my little nursey girlfriends from the Smalltown hospital came up with a perfect solution. I am sure that you will have heard of Long Island Iced Tea, well with the aid of my little Florence Nightingales we made a big batch of Smalltown Iced Tea. I provided the ice and the tea and they provided the lysergic acid diethylamide and the Psilocybin mushrooms. I tell you this was the party of the year, I am so glad we got a video as I am sure you will agree that some of these Smalltown ladies are pretty damned hot. Of course you have to remember that almost all of them carry a pocket bible and that kinda takes the edge off. I say almost all as DQ was in this week relating a tale of unbounded altruism and at the end I said “Jeez woman you really are a saint” to which she recoiled in horror and said “I ain’t no saint CB”. One sinner out of hundreds, not a great percentage, still hope springs eternal.

OK enjoy the party and I will see you next week when hopefully I will be covering the keyboard with turkey parts

Coffee and the Accident

2007-04-23T11:22:00.000-05:00

My Jim Beam induced moment of introspection was rudely curtailed by someone barging into the Coffee House and frantically asking me to call 911 as his wife had fallen over and maybe broken her leg. Suspecting, as one does, the old slip and fall scam I shuffled off to the office to have a leisurely read of our insurance policy after all one cannot be too careful in these matters. As a slight aside I once had a car radio stolen and when I made the insurance claim the premium taker asked me what model the radio was. Of course I replied that I didn’t have a clue. The insurance tosser then informed me that the make of radio would determine what size the check would be. Ah right replied I, I do believe it was a Rolex. Insurance boy replies "Well CB I don’t think that Rolex make radios". Sure they do I retort, It was a clock radio.

So I wandered outside to find the poor lady lying on the sidewalk with a clearly staved in patella (knee cap to you) and a husband flapping around like a headless chicken. As usual there wasn’t much of interest going on in the shop so I thought I might hang around for a while and see what happens. After a while the adrenaline starts to wear off (hers, not mine) and the pain kicks in. I decide to do the decent thing and get her some iced water and an ice pack. She accepts my gifts but studiously ignores the tip jar that I left clearly in sight. After some 15 minutes her moaning and wailing starts to get on my nerves so I offer to walk across the road to the Smalltown hospital. Back in the jolly old UK if you wandered into the ER and told them that someone had fallen over outside, Matron would dispatch a couple of skimpily dressed nursey types and a gurney and everything would be taken care of. Sadly it would appear that in Smalltown (and probably everywhere else in the US) there is no room for initiative in medical care and in consequence much of the ER just stared blankly at me, as if I had wandered in and asked for a Tabasco enema. Of course we know that we can lay the blame firmly at the doorstep of our litigious society and it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to picture Messers Hemmer, Rhoyd, Piles, Sue, Grabbitt and Runne all following the gurney handing out business cards and waiting for a wheel to fall off. The outcome was that the best that the ER could do was to let me use the phone to call emergency services again. The charming dispatcher told me that they had got my call and the ambulance was currently on its way from Brokeback Mountain and would be there within 10 minutes. And here is the point of this blog. Did you notice the definite article? THE ambulance? In the whole of Kissbotty County there is one ambulance? Yet I have seen lots of different ambulances running around but I guess they are reserved for special customers who perhaps have a secret number to call. I might just try dialing 912 to see what happens.

Now one might like to suggest that the Kissbotty Emergency people should save their money and buy another ambulance so that anyone who falls over and breaks a leg doesn’t have to wait 20 minutes for a 100 foot ride to the Smalltown ER. However the Public Safety people are addicted to the Boss’s chicken sandwiches and every month they have a big meeting for which they order 22 Chicken on whole wheat. So if the choice is between spending money on our sandwiches or buying a new ambulance might I respectfully suggest that you tread carefully?

Note to the legal profession in Smalltown. The broken leg woman obviously didn’t make it, so there might be a juicy negligence claim in the making. I know she died because she never came back into the shop to pay for the ice water, ice pack and the jolly Coffee Bitch conversation.

People can be so selfish at times.

Coffee and Hunting

2007-04-22T05:52:00.000-05:00

Yes indeedy I actually went huntin’ with my buddies and here is how it went down

CB’s diary

Got up at 5:15, it is dark and cold
Drove miles to the middle of nowhere
Climbed the tallest mountain in Virginia
Nearing the top, heard turkey gobble
Answered with turkey caller using last remaining joule of energy
Hear faint gobble
Hang around for 5 hours
Go home, no breakfast

Turkey’s diary

Wake up at sunrise
Flutter out of tree
Have sex with my hens
Make weird gobble noise to let the ladies know who’s their Daddy
Hear “hunters” dicking around with Walmart turkey call
Move ladies to next county, gobbling as we leave
Breakfast on bugs, berries and nuts.
Plans for tomorrow? Probably more sex and food, what a life.

Actually it turned out to be somewhat addictive and although I can’t believe it myself I am booked to do it all again next Saturday. We pitted our wits against a turkey and the turkey won. I blame it all on television myself.

The Bitch doesn't go hunting

2007-04-16T13:04:00.000-05:00

In order to tell this little tale I need to set a scene and explain some cultural differences so bear with me here.

In England we have very few open spaces and no guns so hunting is pretty much a non-existent sport. In addition the champagne socialists have banned fox hunting on the basis that the fox did not get a vote as to whether or not he should be torn apart alive by a pack of dogs. England has neither moose, nor elk nor bears, so all in all hunting is restricted to small birds. If you are fortunate enough to be the friend of a multimillionaire (or indeed a multimillionaire yourself) you might get the opportunity to walk a 1000-acre grouse moor, and here is how your weekend might go.

Friday night, arrive at stately home for a nice leisurely dinner and cocktails. Saturday morning, arise at 9:00 for a spot of breakfast. Actually the full English is a rare treat. Eggs, sausage, bacon, kidneys, black pudding, kedgeree, kippers and so on and on and on. Incidentally for you culture vultures, breakfast is the only meal where the English gentleman serves himself, the butler just stands there, strange but true. Then at around 11.00 everyone piles off to the moor to bag a few grouse, scared up by the beaters. Then a spot of luncheon and we are done.

So back to the Smalltown Coffee House. It turns out that this is the start of Spring gobbler season (turkey to you) and my gentlemen hunters have invited me join them. We are making the arrangements over a coffee and things start to head south faster than Britney’s career. It seems that I have to be sitting under a tree before the sun comes up. Who would have guessed that turkeys spend the night in trees and you have to blow their heads off just as they are getting out of bed. There was to be no cocktails, no black pudding and worst of all no lying in bed until 9:00, in fact the final knife to my heart was that they arranged to collect me at 5:30 Saturday morning. I did, however, have one tiny out. Apparently the boys (who let me tell you are no spring chickens) do not go out in the rain so my instructions were to look out of the window at 5.15 and if it was raining, assume that they would not show. So it came to pass that with trembling fingers I pulled back the drapes to discover that God had answered my prayers and it was indeed hammering down. With a scream of joy I leapt back into the pit, crossed no man’s land and entered enemy territory. Of course I was rebuffed with the usual “Get away from me” but hey, at least I wasn’t hunting.

On reflection perhaps I could have removed my camo and boots before trying it on with the boss but when in Kissbotty……..

Coffee and Sickness

2007-04-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

Bonjour, ma petit choux. I am back. I haven’t blogged forever as we got incredibly busy for the longest time and to be quite frank after a hard day of overcharging and shortchanging I never quite fancied writing about it. Then something happened that has not happened for 10 years, I got sick. I got so sick we actually had to shut down. Now I wasn’t exactly at death’s door, but I was sick enough to watch daytime television so it was almost like dying. In a coma like trance I watched a program where obese women with pendulous breasts and no bras, rush to the front of the audience, guess the price of a piece of trailer trash furniture and win a car. It was a triumph of mindless nonsense and is possibly the only program so simple that all the rules are contained in the title. It is called the “Price is Right” and America, I weep for you.

I was also bemused by the advertising, which let me tell you, outnumbered the programming by two to one. Here is a thought, if you are advertising payday loans or title loans or any of those other legal loan shark deals, should you not advertise to working people? You see advertising loans to people who are watching daytime television seems to me to be a recipe for not getting a loan repaid, unless the master plan is not to get repaid but to get your hands on the title to the family car. Still worse than this are the adverts that scream at me. “PAY ATTENTION MORON, PUT KAABOOM DOWN YOUR TOILET AND NEVER CLEAN IT AGAIN, DO IT NOW MORON”. Jesus if I had the strength to get my Magnum 500 I would have shown that bearded twat Billy Mays a thing or two.
Well if daytime TV is a plot to get the malingerers back to work, it worked on my sick ass. I tell you people I would rather be circumcised by a meth addict coming down from a five day high, whilst suffering from a grand mal seizure and wielding a rusty grapefruit knife than watch anymore daytime TV.

Coffee and Angels

2007-04-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

We have a customer who is something to do with Bigtown’s Symphony Orchestra. Last year she gave us tickets to the Christmas Pops thingy and recently she gave us tickets to see the Orchestra and Aaron Spelling. I know it sounds a strange combination and indeed it turned out to be a night of disappointments, which seems to be a theme in my life lately.

The festivities started off quite well with the Liberty Bell March by Souza. Sadly for Souza (like he gives a rat’s) no one can listen to this without thinking of Monty Python, which incidentally is pronounced Pie-thun. I only mention this as inevitably when people discover I am English they tell me how much they like Monty Python. Dude, that was 40 years ago, move on, try watching a Bottom DVD at least that is only 20 years old. So at the end of the march the conductor says “And now for something completely different”. How the Boss and I howled. (If two people laugh in the Bigtown auditorium, does it make any sound?). Then he spoiled it all by talking about Tin Pan Alley music, which was apparently a flash in the pan at the outbreak of World War I in 1917. WTF! What are you teaching your kids out here? Where were you in 1914? This is just as bad as that nonsense you people spout about saving my ass in 1943. (BTW you are wrong on that as well, I wasn’t even an ovum in 1943). WWII started in 1939 and we broke the Germans backs in time for you to saunter over and steal all the glory. Oh well let’s not dwell on old history.

So the second half arrived and I eagerly awaited Aaron. I was particularly keen to meet Bosely and Charlie’s Angels as I needed to thank Farrah Fawcett for a very happy experience that involved the 14-year-old Coffee Bitch and that poster. You have no idea how crushed I was to discover that this was not a night to be spent with my lovely angels but instead some huge black guy warbling on about how “I don’t know much, but I know I love yoooooooouuu, and that may be all I need to know”. What a rip.

I tell you people, it is a sad Friday night when the only bulge in the Bitch’s pants is a S&W Air Lite PD351

Coffee and Divorce

2007-03-29T10:02:00.000-05:00

So Bertie Grabbit (Sue, Grabbit and Runne LLP) and Percy Piles (Hemmer, Rhoyd and Piles LLP) were in the shop yesterday, discussing a case in which they represent, respectively, the plaintiff and the defendant. It didn’t sound too interesting so whilst they were both distracted I used the opportunity to short change them both. Then Bertie started talking about another case in which he represents Mrs Darleen Scumbag who wants a divorce from Donnie Scumbag. Darleen has a huge scar on her left cheek where Donnie shot her in the face. Apparently the round went into her cheek and exited the back of her neck miraculously missing the carotid artery, jugular vein, vagus nerve and all of that stuff inside the spinal column that allow Darleen to walk and talk and yes indeed breathe. Now Bertie (and I swear to God this is the absolute truth) says that he thinks this will be suitable grounds for divorce, to which Darleen demurs on the basis that after the shooting she went back to Donnie.

I have no interest at all in the marital status of Donnie and Darleen but this does raise the question, what did Donnie do to Darleen that is worse than shooting her in the face, to prompt the divorce?

Note to self, never marry a Kissbotty County woman. Apparently they are harder to get rid of than a dose of Iranian crabs.

Coffee and the Bard

2007-03-23T13:49:00.000-05:00

OK so Shakespeare may not have actually said “What a tangled web…” after all.

See here

Well he should have said it. Still being at the top of the list of non-Shakespeare quotes is almost like he said it don’t you think?

In spiteful retaliation at Shakespeare geeks of the world here is a joke that only the Brits should get..

WS walks into a pub and the landlord looks up and says “Get out, you’re Bard”

Now I am off to clean the crapper, which just goes to prove that one day you are the windshield and the next you're the bug, as WS never said.

TCB

Coffee and Pain

2007-03-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

So I was whining on to one of my customers about the appalling state of my front garden. It’s not exactly my fault as the previous owner had done pretty much squat in the grass department. In reply, and possibly to stop me becoming seriously boring, my man gave me a whole load of advice on lawn maintenance and then told me that I needed a four wheel drive tractor with a grader attachment and a heavyweight lawn rake. I stated the obvious that I didn’t exactly have all of this industrial equipment and without a pause he said, “Well I do and you can borrow it”. So this weekend I shall be King of the Hill as I trundle around on a big ol’ tractor. Today I told this story to two of my neighbors who are also customers and they both said that they also had the same equipment and if only I had said they would have willingly let me borrow it. That, my friends, is what life in the south is all about.

Kissbotty Radio (home to all the hits) is once again plumbing the depths of professionalism. Due to someone forgetting to put a quarter in the electric meter they went of the air for about an hour or so. When Dick ‘n’ Ed (the impossibly perky little gay bar loiterers that they are) realized what was happening, or not happening in this case, they put a Police single on, hit the repeat button and went off for a spot of mutual appreciation. For many months these two walking perfume shops have been crowing about the fact that they also broadcast on the web (for those fortunate enough not to be able to receive a radio signal). Of course it goes without saying that they forgot that the web listener would be hearing Rox-aaaaaaane, you don’t have to put on the red light, 237 times in a row. Now the listener was so concerned that Dick and/or Ed had died at the wheel that the emergency services were called. That, my friends, is what life in the south is all about.

Actually I shouldn’t rag on at Kissbotty Radio, they do their best and at least it isn’t 24 hours of hard-core country. The problem is that I have had some bad news and to be quite frank I am feeling more that a touch testy. My little friend Cheryl has announced that she is to pack her bag, leave Smalltown and head for L.A. in search of a new life. She has no job, no place to live and is just going to wing it. This paragraph is not going to make any sense unless you read about Cheryl first, so if you have not already done so, please click here and the rest of us will wait until you catch up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Great welcome back, now you know why I am so grumpy. I suppose it was good of her to give me some notice so that I can gradually wean her off the gamma hydroxybutyric acid, God knows I don’t need her getting any repressed memory flashbacks as I think in all fairness only one of us had a good time. Anyway it looks like I am going to have to find a replacement for Cheryl and my first thoughts were perhaps one of my PHAT mothers might do. Fortunately I discovered in the nick of time that one of them is the sister in law of the police chief. Jesus, talk about a narrow escape. Perhaps I will just have to stop putting the sensual in non-consensual. As William Shakespeare once said “What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive” or did he say “Incey Wincey spider”. I just don’t know any more.

Cheryl’s impending departure has made me realize that I too should make so life style changes. I have therefore decided to stop pretending to be a masochist. You see it’s true I do get no kick from sham pain.

Coffee and Hells Bankers (cont)

2007-03-19T07:27:00.000-05:00

As a preface to this story and if you have not already read Coffee and Hells Bankers, might I respectfully suggest that you click here first.

Well isn’t this interesting? I have a little tracker installed on the blog. It tells me the number of visitors (a constant source of disappointment), where they are from and what they looked at. So this morning I checked it out and was delighted to see a new reader from Wilson, North Carolina. At this stage I should explain that a visitor is not necessarily a visitor, bear with me here. If one is really bored you can find a blog and then click on the “next blog” tab and effectively blog surf. With this in mind, if I see the referring URL as another blog I normally assume that the “visitor” clicked and moved on. Conversely if there is no referring URL then the visitor either used a search engine to find me or typed in my address. So I drilled down into the Wilson NC tab and mined the following information.

Domain Name (Unknown)
IP Address 208.11.8.# (Branch Banking and Trust)
ISP Sprint
Location

Continent North America
Country United States (Facts)
State North Carolina
City Wilson
Lat/Long 35.7325, -77.9259 (Map)
Language English (United States)en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution 1024 x 768
Color Depth 24 bits
Time of Visit Mar 19 2007 7:42:25 am
Last Page View Mar 19 2007 7:43:25 am
Visit Length 60 seconds
Page Views 2
Referring URL
Visit Entry Page http://rockycoffee.b...gspot.com/index.html
Visit Exit Page http://rockycoffee.b...d-hells-bankers.html

The IP address is Branch Banking and Trust! How cool is that? The boys at BB&T are onto me. As you see, there is no referring URL and the entry page is the index page to the blog. More interesting than that is the exit page, Coffee and Hells Bankers. I have this vision of someone in Wilson NC reading the blog and then rushing around the building screaming “Oh woe is me the Coffee Bitch hates us”. OK that was just a tad fanciful but you get the point.

As it happens one of my Smalltown readers has a similar problem with BB&T. He is an attorney and suddenly $3 charges were appearing on his client account statement. In Virginia an attorney is not allowed to receive interest on a client account so BB&T do quite nicely out of this one. My man called them and was told that the $3 charge was to have the cancelled checks returned. So he tells them that he doesn’t want the checks returned, to which he is told that if that were the case then the $3 charge would become a handling charge.

Could it be that BB&T are in so much trouble that they need to snatch a few dollars from everyone’s account? Anyhoo here is a little tip. It is entirely possible that when all the wonderful people from First Virginia Bank left, post the takeover, they moved to Suntrust Bank. Here are all the nice, polite, courteous, intelligent people who do not stiff you with random fees on a whim. Just a thought.

TCB

Coffee and more temptation

2007-03-16T14:00:00.000-05:00

Ah Friday again, if ever there was a day that set my loins on fire it is Friday and it looks like a fine end to a fine week. We started off with quite a few visits from Smalltown’s young mothers; apparently the kindergartens close during spring break so the ladies are stuck with their sprogs and, in need of respite, they take them out for coffee. Now some of these ladies are PHAT so I definitely gave them more attention than is strictly necessary. In any other business this would be called stalking, but here in coffeeworld I can get away with unrestricted letching. I happened to notice that one of them had a nice little rose tattooed on her stomach and as you know I am a sucker for that stuff. She seemed pretty cool about showing me even though I accidentally pulled a button or two off in my haste to unbutton her blouse. The snot gobblers are a bit of a nuisance but I find that a couple of loops of duct tape works wonders, and to be frank the look of pathetic gratitude on these mother’s faces is the only reward I need. If the visits continue into next week I shall know that it is not just the coffee that they are after. Watch this space.

We also salute the legal system this week. My favorite telephone call involves the words “jury lunches” and we got the call twice this week. Of course it is not just the jury lunches but also all the visiting attorneys who have not yet discovered my penchant for providing truly indifferent service. I tell you people, some days the streets of Smalltown are paved with gold.

Talking of attorneys, as we were, here is a completely true story. Freddy Sue ( Sue Grabbit and Runne LLP) was too busy to walk down the hill for a lunch, so he sent one of his women. (As a slight aside this must be a southern thing, as Yankee women and for that matter English women don’t fetch lunch or collect dry cleaning for the boss, now back to the story). Bertie Grabbit and Ronnie Runne were already in and were chowing down. So our lady of the lunch orders the usual for Freddy and then says, “Freddy told me to give you a $2 tip”. Under normal circumstances I don’t like to accept tips on carryouts, oh who am I kidding I grabbed the two bucks and jammed them in the pickle jar before she changed her mind. After she had gone I related the tale to Bertie and Ronnie and mentioned how nice it was and that perhaps they could consider doing the same so that I got tipped out but didn’t have to suffer their presence (I know, I really am a great host aren’t I?). Well the odd thing was that Bertie didn’t really fight back much and our conversation was like pulling the wings off flies so I gave up. It turns out that Bertie has a little pile of morning medications and a pile of evening medications. The evening meds include a sleeping pill and can you guess what Bertie did? Of course you can. I noticed right away but I wonder if his clients did.
The next day Bertie came in with his wife and daughter. He asked for his usual so I proffered two lines of coke and a spliff, how we all laughed, happy days.

Do you remember our old friend the mountain man from previous blogs? He has become quite a regular and I still get a kick out of watching this huge hillbilly drinking white tea out of bone china. He is a great guy and also somewhat of a ballroom dancer. Apparently he has been taking lessons for years and now he is the redneck Fred Astaire. Actually the humor of this is all visual so I guess this paragraph is fairly pointless. Still look on the bright side, I had to type this nonsense whereas you, dear reader, merely have to flit your eyes to the next paragraph.

It turns out that I may have been a little too hasty in dismissing the avaricious advances of BB&T. Having received a statement which shows a zero dollar balance I have now received notification from some debt collectors in West Virginia. Clearly the moronic moneygrubbers at BB&T don’t realize that western Virginia and West Virginia are not the same place. Still bring it on boys I can’t wait to see you collect on a debt of $0.

And that was the week. Thanks to Bertie’s mix up on the meds I was able to seriously shortchange him and as a result, tonight I shall slip into the arms of Bacchus on a river of Grolsch instead of that poison from Milwaukee.

Watch out liver here comes Friday night.
TCB

The Bitch Shows and Tells

2007-03-13T10:11:00.000-05:00

Another day of laughter and lattes draws to a happy conclusion. We actually had a blinding day as the register showed we took $575,121, comfortably a Coffee House record. Sadly closer inspection revealed that the total might have been due to my ineptitude when playing the Boss’s piano (aka the register). So not only was the register light by some $574,534 but we now owe Virginia $28,756.05 in sales tax and Smalltown $23,004.84 in meals tax. Now I don’t know how staff appraisals are done at GE and Hewlett Packard but here in the Coffee House they are done with a swift knee to the groin, which is why, once again, I am typing whilst sitting in a bucket of iced water.

A little earlier we played a game of show and tell. As you will recall I decided to get myself inked up again and put a portrait of FOTL2 on my shoulder. You will also recall that DQ showed more than a passing interest. Well DQ and DQ’sF were in and DQ decided that she wanted a sneak peek. So I showed my artwork, DQ’sF showed her belly button stud (and damned exotic it was too) and DQ showed ….. errr…. emmm oh that’s right, nothing, zip, nada. What a rip. I tell you people I am so getting that woman inked up. I figure a small coffee bean under the bikini line maybe. Try explaining that one away to Mr. DQ

Finally do you remember Coffee and the age of innocence? If not click the link. I was thrilled to see that even the Bard is in on the act. Hundreds of years ago he said it far more eloquently than I ever could.

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Day?

Better to that than to the Summer's Eve,

A popular feminine deodorant spray

That hardly puts me in the mood for love.

-William Shakespeare

TCB

The Coffee Bitch Wins

2007-03-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

I am delighted to report that once again Bertie Grabbit has worked his magic and the feltch babies at BB&T folded faster than Superman on laundry day. Yes indeed, yesterday the USPS delivered yet another missive from North Carolina but this time far from threatening me with financial ruin and hemorrhoids they credited the account with $99 (all the fees and penalties that they levied) which brought the account balance to zero and then they closed the account. I find it somewhat ironic that this is the result I wanted some months ago. I wonder how much this nonsense cost BB&T, or to be more acurate you, the poor saps that actually pay their outrageous charges. Still it’s always the way, when you are steeled for a good punch up you are faced with capitulation. I was sort of looking forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with Bertie in Federal Court whilst he does his renowned impersonation of Winston Churchill “This Sir, simply will not stand”. Oh well perhaps if Bertie can work some more magic in my Anna Nicole Smith paternity suit I will have my day in court.

Coffee Bitch 1; Lily livered bean counters 0

Coffee and Body Art

2007-03-07T11:39:00.000-05:00

It’s been a funny start to the week. Mondays are usually our graveyard days. I have zip to do (apart from looking busy so that the Boss doesn’t find work for idle hands). I have set up a few mirrors so that I can sit at my coffee station and look into the kitchen. I tell you, I can watch women work all day. The mirrors also have the advantage of alerting me to the approach of the Boss so that I can a) look busy and b) wipe the pastry crumbs off my apron. It’s a life I tell you. For some bizarre reason Monday was huge, we never stopped working and that is what I need to talk to you about. You see when we are busy and you arrive, you can be assured that the service is going to be crappier than normal. So it seems to me that you have a few options. The best plan (A) would be to come in, leave a nice big tip, apologize for bothering me when I am busy and leave. Failing this you could walk around the block a couple of times and see how we are on your return. If we are still busy revert to plan A and we will all be happy. Anyway give it some thought and we can see how it goes.

In contrast Tuesday was so quiet even the roaches came out for a picnic. I was so bored I decided that I would go get myself inked up again. This body art business is hugely addictive which is odd as it is not exactly pleasant. It is not that it hurts or anything, it is just a long, long time to be sitting still. Well I was discussing this with DQ and she was looking at me with that mixture of interest and apprehension. We chatted a bit more and I think that she might be a candidate for a spot of body art. Of course it might be more fun not to involve her in the decision loop. I think perhaps a roofie latte, bundled into the back of the company minivan and a trip to Magic Dan’s needle emporium. Now what would DQ like to wake up to tomorrow morning? Perhaps a horny little devil?

I really do have too much time on my hands don’t I?
TCB

The Bitch walks through the woods.

2007-03-07T11:11:00.000-05:00

We have, here in Smalltown, a religious sect (although I am sure that they would hardly thank me for calling them a sect). Now the ladies are quite a pleasant bunch but in contrast the men are a dour bunch of mono-syllabatical (yes I know, he just made that word up) miseries. It is almost like they have an eleventh commandment, “Thou shall not enjoy thy life”. It is all very strange but stranger than this is the fact that the ladies scare me. Yes I actually feel my pulse rate and BP start to surge and I have just realized why.

As I may have already mentioned I was pretty much self raised and for want of better company, used to immerse myself in as many books as I could. I cannot recall where my parents were but as the faithful reader will already know Mummy was not in the kitchen. In order to explain where the old man was I need to tell you a little tale. Decades ago English pubs would have two bars with separate entrances. One would be the public bar, which was pretty much sawdust and spittoons, whilst the other would be the lounge bar (or select or snug or similar), which would be nicely decorated with a carpet and comfortable seats. In order to pay for the near utopian conditions of the lounge bar the landlord would charge an extra few pence for the drinks and this also had the bonus effect of keeping nearly all the cheap bastards out of the “posh” end. I say nearly as it was common practice for my old man to order in the public and when the landlord's back was turned, sneak out of the door, across the parking lot and into the lounge (yes, all to save 2p a pint). The real bonus for the old boy was that in those days the landlord would always place trays of snacks and tasty nibbles on the bar and this was where the old man would obtain his nutritious and free evening meal. You will be the better enabled to judge his meanness when you discover that he had rubber lined pockets so that he could take the contents of the drip tray home with him at night. Well that was a strange tale, wasn’t it? Now back to the point.

I read and I read and I read. As soon as I could I read. Then I found the Brothers Grimm. Was there ever a more appropriate name for an author? Dear God what is all that about? These are nasty, nasty stories, full of child murder, abandonment, incest and necrophilia (Sleeping Princess my ass, the bitch is dead you pervert). The worst of these “children’s tales” has to be Hansel and Gretel. I was about four years old when I read this and I tell you people I didn’t close my eyes for a week afterwards. If you do not know this charmless little tale have a look here, but most of all look at the picture. There it is, the witch’s bonnet, that is what scares the living crap out of me. Every time I see one of these people I imagine being shoved into an oven, albeit a damned huge oven these days, and cooked alive.

Sleeping with my eyes wide open.
TCB

Coffee and Dirt

2007-03-02T09:59:00.000-05:00

Well it has been yet another day of crushing disappointments. All I wanted was a little excitement or possibly nudity or failing that, some juicy gossip, but no, the fickle finger of fate once again failed to point at the Coffee Bitch. I thought the day was going to start with some excitement when a guy came in real early, told me that he would order in a second, sat down and starting getting out his fixings. Well as I have repeatedly said I am the most tolerant Bitch in the world but even my world has limits (honestly, it does, no really it does). So pausing only to collect my buddy Mr Glock from under the counter I prepare to escort him gracefully off the premises. Seeing me approach he held up his hand and said “It’s OK I am a diabetic”. Well he sorted himself out and then apologized for shooting up in public but apparently it was an emergency fix. By now he is either hypo or hyper glycemic and he needs his carbs for which purpose he orders three monster BLTs and a gallon of soda so all is forgiven. However I still watched him eat with my finger hovering over the 1 having already dialed 9-1.

Years ago back in the UK I had a buddy whose pancreas died at the age of 30 and sadly he went straight onto the needle. Whilst he was getting used to insulin he carried a card that read something along the lines of; I am a diabetic if I appear to be intoxicated I maybe in insulin shock. Please call Emergency Services”. I thought this was such a neat idea I carried a card that said, “I am a drunk. If I appear to be intoxicated I probably am, do not inject me with anything”.

Later DQ’s friend came in with a colleague for lunch so I thought I might just pump her for some dirt on DQ. Of all the people in Smalltown I was sure that DQ would be a rich and hitherto untapped source of indiscretions. DQ’sF (for want of a better nom de plume) started off with “We went on a conference together once”. Oh yeah baby this is what I want to hear, “but nothing bad happened”. Putting my tape recorder away I turned to her colleague who told me that she graduated High School with the girly lawyer next door and what is more the girly lawyer was a cheerleader. Now one hesitates to make sweeping generalizations but I think that we can agree here that all cheerleaders are noisy, promiscuous little trollops whose only ambition is to gratify the needs of the quarterback under the bleachers. So pen akimbo I waited only to be told that she was a really nice person. God if things get anymore refined here I will have to start inventing stories.

Next time these two are going to get one of my famous Ketamine Hydrochloride lattes and then we will see who is the pillar of discretion.

Watch this space
TCB

Coffee and more bad news

2007-02-28T08:36:00.000-05:00

It really is a funny old world. Just this morning I received some very bad news from Bertie. According to the so-called DNA expert, the unfortunate incident that occurred whilst I was watching the Anna Nicole Show some two years ago, could not possibly have resulted in the impregnation of said Ms. Smith. What a blow. I cannot but help notice that they were not so quick to reject the claim of that crusty old fossil once married to ZaZa Gabor. Once again we see one rule for the rich and another for the poor.

Still by way of consolation I see that my favorite squeeze, Britney is back on the market. I know that she is a bit wacko but I think her new look makes her real hot. At least the drapes now match the carpet and I am here to tell you that you can’t say that about too many Kissbotty County women.

Talking of Kissbotty folk, quite a few have asked me what the deal was with Coffee and Kangaroos. I presume that they ask because they don’t know the answer. In similar vein no one in Kissbotty asked about Ms. Whiplash’s trombone. I presume that is because they DO know the answer. You've got to love living here.

As I said it’s a funny old world.

TCB

Coffee and Hell's Bankers

2007-02-26T10:45:00.000-05:00

Today’s rant concerns the antics of Branch, Banking and Trust (BB&T). When we first arrived in the land of opportunity one of the first things that we had to do was open a bank account. Purely by an act of good fortune we stumbled across First Virginia Bank. These were wonderful people. Apart from offering first class service with a smile we got to know them all by their first names and they treated the Boss and I like old friends. Well they say that all good things come to an end and thus it came to pass that First Virginia was bought out by BB&T. Within months the Manager left, followed by the assistant Manager and then most of the staff. Now as an immigrant myself I don’t have a racist chromosome in my body but if you are employing people to deal with the public then it is my guess that they should have a reasonable command of the language. BB&T didn’t get the point and it soon became impossible to speak to anyone on the telephone. (Yes I accept it may have been my fault for having an English accent). Then strange charges started to appear. My favorite was a $10 deduction every month. This apparently was our fault, as we had not given First Virginia our social security numbers when we opened the account. Now BB&T were being fined by some regulatory authority and rather than tell us, they just tacked the charges onto our account. It goes without saying that, despite giving BB&T everything that they asked for, this charge came and went over the next year. By the way if you have ever tried to open a bank account without a social security number you will know what a cartload of BS this was. About this time we were making up our own words for the initials BB&T, my favorite being Ball Busters and Thieves.

When we moved to Kissbotty County we decided that we should change banks and say goodbye to BB&T forever. I wrote out a check on the old BB&T account that left just $3 in the account so that if they gave me a hard time about closing it I could just walk away. Well I did not count on the avarice of the scumbags from Charlotte. Before I could close the account they hit me with a $10 handling fee (they had never pulled this stunt before). Now the account is $7 overdrawn so the hit me with an unauthorized overdraft fee of $35. They then write to me to let me know and charge $35 for the letter. Then some other BS and before I can blink I am being threatened over a “debt” of $99. Apparently if I do not submit to their extortion I will be reported to some credit agency and my life will be over. Well I say bring it on BB&T. I shall be instructing Bertie Grabbit (Sue, Grabbit and Runne LLP) to issue writ (or whatever you colonials do) for mental anguish, tortuous interference with business, habeas corpus, Flagrante delicto and whatever Bertie can pull out of his hat. Of course this suit will be on the back burner until Bertie has successfully brought to fruition my paternity claim in the case of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

In the meantime might I suggest that any of you unfortunate to “bank” with BB&T that you seek alternative bankers? I heartily endorse the great folks at Coffee House Banking in Smallville in fact I left a small deposit there just last night.

TCB
PS FOTL1 tells me that she had a similar experience. She had a redundant BB&T account with $11.29. BB&T decided to clean her out and call it a closing fee. Scumbags!

Coffee and the Sprog

2007-02-26T08:08:00.000-05:00

The Boss has asked me to point out that on February 23rd 1985 she was delivered of a gift from heaven aka Fruit of the Loin 2. She did NOT “drop a sprog”. Oh well at least we are talking, sort of, again.

Coffee and (no) love

2007-02-23T21:15:00.000-05:00

So it’s Friday night and I thought that I might be able to get my sentence reduced. Well as I am sure you know we have no parole in Virginia and as we say here if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Sadly it looks like there is no parole in the Boss’s heart either so it is another 7 nights in the small house (tool shed) for me. Actually things have gone from bad to worse. Today I was presented with a salmon pink envelope inscribed with the initials CB. “What is this, my dewy cheeked English rose” I ask. With steel in her voice and ice in her heart she replies “Happy anniversary CB”. There then followed a rip in the time space continuum. A few seconds that saw my life flash before me. A time when my normally clenched and rigid colon turned to water and all I could say was “aye aye err aye”. To make matters worse 22 years ago the Boss managed to drop a sprog. Yes indeed it is also FOTL2’s birthday as well. Normally the Boss takes care of this but this year the card read “Happy Birthday from Mummy and no one else”. Not only did I not get parole, my love life is now officially on death row.

As if my life could not get any worse my little Canadian friend GenBen is still firmly north of the border (is that a double entendre? I do hope so) and DQ has disappeared into the Carolinas ostensibly on some sort of education thingy. Fortunately Ms. Rita Whiplash has a number that I cannot forget. 1-900 SPA-KNME. It looks like tonight I shall have to let my fingers do the walking or as we say in Quebec “Je suis dans merde creek sans le paddle”.

TCB

Coffee and the Cold

2007-02-21T13:45:00.000-05:00

I tell you people I work for a slave driver. I told her this morning that I couldn’t go to work today as I was suffering from anal glaucoma. “Anal Glaucoma” she said “what’s that?” “Well” I replied, “it’s when I just can’t see myself hauling my ass to work”. Today I am cleaning U bends with my toothbrush.

Actually the real reason for not wanting to get out of bed is that it is too damn cold. You always know when it is really cold here as the Smalltown lawyers have their hands in their own pockets.

Oh I slay me, I really do.
TCB

Coffee and Kangaroos*

2007-02-21T13:25:00.000-05:00

One of our regular couples, who are both in their mid eighties, came in for breakfast today. They are immigrants from New York and he used to be in the scrap metal business. If you have ever seen the Sopranos you will know where I am going with this. When we are quiet we will sit with “Don” and his lady and chat as they have their coffee. Today Don left us for a short while in order to renew his CCP. For those of you unfortunate enough to live in a State that spits on the second amendment allow me to explain. Here in God’s own State we can openly carry a gun, with a few exceptions, pretty much anywhere. Now if you want to, you can also take a short training course and then apply for a concealed carry permit (CCP). Virginia is a “shall issue” state, which means that unless there is a reason not to do so you will be issued with a CCP. It goes without saying that the Bitch and FOTL1 are both CCP carriers.

Whilst we are sipping on our Kopi Luwak Don returns in high dudgeon. His renewal has been rejected as he had forgotten to mention a minor conviction on his record. It transpires that 20 years ago a couple of scumbags tried to break into his yard and he beat the living snot out of them. As he is telling the tale I started to do the math. 85 years old now, 20 years ago equals 65. Damn he was 65 and he kicked the crap out of two burglars, sweet. Well the father of one of them decided to take Don to court as the kid had lost a couple of teeth. On the steps of the courthouse the father who had a gold front tooth made the mistake of taunting Don. Don replied taking a pop at the old man in order to collect some gold for later. From then on the story went down hill rapidly. As he is telling this story you could see his eyes turning that flint grey color and I thought that even at 85 this was one old man that you would not want to cross.

Here are a couple of epilogs to this tale. The first is that a week after the court deal (after which Don had to pay $290 restitution) the little thug turned up again and from the safety of the other side of the fence told Don that he was going to wait until Don got old so he come back and whip his ass, can you imagine waiting for a 65 year-old to get old? As it happened he never did whip Don’s ass and 20 years later the two are good friends. The second is that Don, who is well retired, misses the old business and wants to start a scrap yard. He has asked me to consider going into business with him. It occurs to me that the Boss and Mrs Don could run the Coffee House which would free me up to take up a new career busting heads. Of course no one is going to respect someone called Coffee Bitch but “Il Patroni” has a nice ring about it, don’t you agree?

Onwards and Upwards
TCB

* OK so a free Latte to the first person to understand the title of this blog. DQ, you are way too smart so don’t even think about trying.

Coffee and Home (alone)

2007-02-18T10:05:00.000-05:00

Home at last, home at last. Thank God almighty I’m home at last. Yes indeedy I am safely ensconced back in Chateau Coffee.

Well that was a horrid touchy feely weekend of getting to grips with our inner beings. I am not sure if it achieved anything but there were one or two amusing moments. Brad or Brett or whatever his name was (and I never really took part in any of this, courtesy of my travel bong) apparently suggested that we should all look deep within ourselves. Well some silly bint from up north, probably a lawyer from Fairfax County if I’m any judge, took him way too literally. The daft slapper tied a mirror to a stick, looked deep within herself and found two rings and a Rolex. I haven’t laughed so much since my mother (may she rest in her quicklime) caught her left breast in the mangle.
Still as a bonus to you dear reader I am going to share the wealth and the only thing that I picked up this weekend.

Apparently in order for me to get in touch with the Boss’s inner woman I have to;
Wine her,
dine her,
call her,
hug her,
hold her,
surprise her,
compliment her,
smile at her,
laugh with her,
cry with her,
cuddle with her,
shop with her,
give her jewelry,
buy her flowers,
hold her hand,
write love letters to her,
and go the end of the earth and back again for her.

Just for the record for any woman to get in touch with my inner man she has to;
Show up naked.
Bring beer.

Well I shall not be working or blogging tomorrow so you are on your own. President’s Day has me moving my beer fridge and bong into the tool shed. I think that if I move the lawn tractor out and an airbed, duvet, personal DVD thingy and my vast collection of smut in, I shall be in good order. What is more, oh joy of joys, it turns out that Ms Whiplash makes house calls. I wonder if the sound of music can be heard from the “guest cottage” out by the road. If not I shall invite Ms Whiplash to bring her trombone. Apparently it is a bit rusty but I don’t see why that should bother me any. As long as the POA Nazis do not discover that I have turned my “illegal” tool shed into an “illegal” guest cottage I shall be in fine fettle for the rest of the winter.

Testosterone rules baby
TCB

Coffee and Feelings

2007-02-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

Since I blogged Coffee and Hearts the Boss has been more than a touch testy. In an attempt to restore the old joie de vie she suggested, nay demanded, that we attend one of those relationship weekend seminars. If you have ever had the misfortune to do one of these things you will already know what a miserable orgy of humiliation and self-deprecation it all is. Anticipating the worst I had the good sense to pack an ounce of Morocco black for the trip and just before we started, spliffed up. As expected Brad or Bruce or Bryan or whatever his name was droned on and on and on about being in touch with our partners feelings and blah blah blah. After what seemed like a lifetime of soul searching I finally returned to planet misery as he started a little exercise to prove one of his many points. “ OK CB what is the Boss’s favorite flower?” he asked. Oh thank you Jesus I know the answer to this one. “I do believe that it is self raising” I replied with a happy smile.

Apparently I am spending the next 14 nights in the tool shed.

Coffee and Health

2007-02-15T10:29:00.000-05:00

When I was running my little medical outfit up north one of our greatest expenses was health insurance. Admittedly we had a great plan but it soon got out of hand and we were paying $1500 per employee per month. I managed to find a more reasonable plan but over the last few years that too crept up in price until we were once again paying over $1000 per employee. Now you can surely imagine that these sorts of prices are way beyond the means of the Smalltown Coffee House so we have recently joined the millions of Americans with fake medical cards and ID. I know that I mustn’t rag on at my adopted country but really people you have seriously screwed up this healthcare business. There are some very simple solutions to this mess but none will work until you make it illegal to bribe politicians. (Yes I know that it is called lobbying but it is illegal in pretty much every civilized nation). As I am seriously at risk of becoming tiresome here I will stop now and simply proffer this paragraph as a prelude to the following true story.

Here in Smalltown we have quite a decent sized hospital, which is part of a large chain (if that is the correct term) spread across southern Virginia. Recently they appointed a new administrator and he is now a regular customer of ours. He is actually quite a decent chap and is slowly crossing the shell hole filled no-mans land between customer and friend. Jim came in for lunch yesterday, looking like the world had just fallen out of his bottom. Instead of the usual hi test coffee and chili he ordered the veggy surprise and water. Ever one to cheer my fellow man I enquired as to what was happening. It turns out that his cholesterol is through the roof, he has some other issues and basically life now revolves around no alcohol or any food that involves taste, aka not worth living. In an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons I mentioned that at least he was assured of the finest medical attention for free. Looking sadder than a one legged man at an ass kicking contest he replied,”Not really, most of my meds are not covered and I am $450 a month out of pocket”. Isn’t that crazy? The Chief Executive of Smalltown’s Hospital has a crappy health plan, I am outraged. Why are you people not self-insured? Actually I should explain the true cause of my outrage. You see my secret health plan was to offer Jim a free cup of coffee and then ask if he could get my bum grapes done on the DL. Clearly if these people don’t look after their own I am going to have to stick with my rubber ring cushion.

As I said at the beginning you have seriously screwed up this healthcare business.

TCB

Coffee and Sponsorship

2007-02-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

Samlltown’s Scout Leader, Lawson D Woods called in this week. Half way through his Café Noir and petite fours he casually mentioned that $250 would sponsor a boy scout. On reflection my response of “WTF you must be different planet buster” was hardly appropriate. I therefore went on to explain that if “sponsoring” is a synonym for paying money to keep little mouths shut then I am currently “sponsoring” two girl guides and let me tell you that those painted jezebels are bleeding me white. Lawson quickly left with a disgusted look and a failure to tip. I am guessing that he is losing his mind as once again he has forgotten my name although why he would call me Mr. P D O’File is a mystery.

Still this talk of sponsorship has given me an idea. I wonder if I could sponsor an attorney or two in the District Court. Nothing too crass, perhaps a button that flashed up a subliminal message “Call a recess, send the jury to the Coffee House”. The more I think about this the more it sounds like it could work. My first thought was to offer the job to Bertie Grabbit but I think that he is too honest for my shenanigans. Yes I know, “honest attorney”, that must be the biggest oxymoron ever (just ahead of American Healthcare and British Cuisine). Still (Simple) Simon Hemmer (Hemmer Rhoyd and Piles LLP) is up for anything as long as it involves an Alexander or two so he is my man. I shall let you know how it goes down.

Habeas Corpus baby.
TCB

Coffee and Hearts

2007-02-15T08:32:00.000-05:00

Contrary to the ugly rumor that is being spread (by guess who) I did not actually forget Valentine’s Day. For years I have heard the expression “It’s the thought that counts” and I thought, “Oh sod it, I just can’t be bothered”. Subsequently I came to realize that this was not the best tactic in my attempts to get the Boss to lift her moratorium on the horizontal rumba.

I tell you if it wasn’t for Smalltown’s Mistress of the Night, Ms. Rita Whiplash, I would be stuck in front of American Idol with the rest of you party animals.

Mercy mistress. mercy
TCB

Coffee and (un)Happiness

2007-02-14T08:57:00.000-05:00

Things that make me unhappy.

Kissbotty County weather. Last week we were promised a big old snow storm, we got a few flakes. This week we had an ice storm warning, it got a touch chilly. I am so disappointed. What is going on? As I write this, the mutual scrote scratchers, Dick ‘n’ Ed at Kissbotty Radio (home to all the hits) are once again announcing “Kissbotty County Schools code red five”. This means I am off to Applebees to spout some Faust and see if I can get the English teacher to bend over. Whatever, bring on the weather I have a four-wheel drive to check out. Damn this global warming.

Dish Satellite Network. The list of Dish’s crimes defies belief so forgive me if I miss a few salient points. For a start that advert that hooked me clearly stated $29.99 per month. It did not say that $29.99 is a teaser, which lasts for 10 months, but you have to sign an 18-month contract. They also fail to mention that $29.99 does not include the decoders that you need to rent at $5 per month each. Free professional installation only includes connection to an existing cable socket. If you want a television in your kitchen and the kitchen is not wired then it ain’t gonna happen baby. I wonder what amateur installation would be. I have a vision of the dish man throwing the decoder through a window and driving off. Of course the irrevocable 18-month contract does not prevent Dish from upping the rates, and this they have done. I am expected to be placated by the fact that I now subscribe to America’s Top 250 (as opposed to America’s Top 180). This does not mean I get another 70 channels, I guess Dish just pulled another number out of the air. If what I get is America’s Top anything, you people are in serious trouble here. By the way, removing Court TV from the line up and then turning it back on does not constitute another channel. I just wish I were smart enough to know if the knock-off decoders on ebay actually work.

Things that make me happy

Heated leather seats. For someone who never successfully navigated the anal stage of psychosexual development, that lovely warm feeling down below is so reminiscent of a potty training failure. I think I am going to drive all day.

Beep beep
TCB

Coffee and Drugs

2007-02-13T09:56:00.000-05:00

I love pharmaceutical reps, they have a rotten job and I don’t think that anyone could argue that they are not on the bottom rung of the sales ladder. Much of their sales technique revolves around bribing doctors and this is where I come in. Quite often a booted and suited rep (and in these cases rep is short for reptile) will come in and order 18 bagels and gallons of coffee and so on. They also like to leave me little tokens of their appreciation of my overt manliness and that is why I have a collection of a gross or two of ballpoints and other trinkets. So it came to pass that I found myself using a pen advertising Lovenox. Yes indeed Lovenox. Now is it just me or does Lovenox sound like an STD. “Sorry Pet I don’t think that I can tonight, my Lovenox has flared up again”.
Intrigued I hooked up to their website and apparently Lovenox is nothing to do with the galloping knob rot but rather a deep vein thrombosis medication, who would have guessed.

On the website there is a quiz to assess your risk of a DVT so I thought that I would give it a go. Of course I lied about my physical condition (just like I do when filling in those dating site questionnaires). So having told Lovenox that I have a body mass index of 2.0 (whatever that means), I run 2 marathons a week, have a pulse rate of 40 bpm and unfeasibly large genitalia, Lovenox determines that I AM at risk of a DVT, the lying scumbags.

Actually I could never trust a drug company whose website shows such a lack of quality control. Apparently there is a medical condition called a hearth attack. I suppose this happens when you are all fired up and feeling grate.

Now I think I can spot a rep on the horizon so I need to water down the coffee and rub some Nivea Intensive Care Lotion onto my Lovenox.
TCB

Coffee and Tuna

2007-02-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

So it’s Monday lunchtime and some complete knuckle shuffler has the audacity to ask me if the tuna salad was fresh. I instantly replied that indeed it was not, in fact it was made last week and we left it hanging around all weekend. He looked at me waiting for the rebuttal and when it didn’t come, asked if I was messing with him. No I reply these Virginia winters are great as we can just leave this stuff outside the backdoor and it keeps pretty fresh for weeks. I guess that he didn’t believe me as he ordered the tuna and left quite a decent tip.

Now I have to nip out back and rescue the tuna from the jaws of a marauding possum.

Toodle Pip.

TCB
PS I later realized that he wasn’t being a jerk, he probably had an inoperable brain tuna.

Coffee and Snow

2007-02-08T08:26:00.000-05:00

Well that was another hideously dull day. For a while I thought that I wasn’t going to have any customers and this I blame on the weather. There is not too much to recommend Fairfax County but at least they can manage to conduct business when it snows. Here in Kissbotty the merest hint of a snowflake closes the schools for a week and we all grind to a halt. I am guessing that when the snots are off school parents have to baby-sit and therefore don’t go to work. This means that they don’t buy coffee and they don’t go out for lunch. One of the school administrators came in (at about 11:30, in jeans and looking very smug) and told me that the closures are due to the fact that Kissbotty County does not want kids hanging around bus stops in the cold. Well people let me tell you when I was a boy we didn’t have school busses, I walked three miles every day and what is more it was uphill in both directions. We were so poor that my parents bought my clothes from the local Army surplus store. Can you imagine the shame of walking to school dressed as a Japanese Admiral? By the way these closures are announced by the impossibly perky Dick and Ed on Kissbotty radio (home of all the hits) and they are punctuated by strange statements such as “Kissbotty County code green four”. These statements are actually the secret code for which bar the teachers will meet up at for a lunchtime alcohol and weed fuelled orgy of lust and depravity.

Anyway it really is too much to expect me to sit here and twiddle my thumbs. I swear to God if it wasn’t for the DQ and the fishing waders (I never tire of that) and my old mate the mountain man I would have gone gaga today. Yes indeed the mountain man returned today with his dear old Mother (or Mama as we say in the south). The poor old girl isn’t too good these days and has had quite a few falls, probably shine induced if I am any judge. To prove the point she shuffled off to give the Boss a hug (which let me off the hook), tripped over her own feet and launched herself across the shop. Fortunately the Boss was there to catch her, and it was fortunate as if I had been there I would have deftly side stepped and granny would have been toast. Ladies if you want to throw yourself into this Bitch’s arms you need to be wearing a school uniform. Sadly Granny is looking a little frail these days and I rather fear for her marbles. She and the man mountain were the only ones in the shop when she asked if I knew the person in the corner. After a few moments of MM and I shrugging shoulders and rolling our eyes MM pointed out that she was actually looking at my reflection in the mirror. Without missing a beat she said that we looked so alike he could be my brother. And so the world turns.

Ever one to utilize my copious quantities of spare time I checked out the BBC news to find out how the Champagne Socialists are ruining England. I spotted that back in the UK 160,000 turkeys have been slaughtered due to an outbreak of bird flu. It seems to me that the World Health Organization have seriously dropped the ball on this important issue. If we all put some non-drowsy formula Day Quil in our birdbaths I am sure that the problem will be solved. Of course it goes without saying that we will also need to use some Night Quil for the owls.

Also back in the UK I see that Sir Paul McCartney is having troubles with his divorce. Perhaps he should try to put his current predicament into perspective. In olden days, if you were unfortunate enough to be robbed by an omniped, it would almost certainly be a pirate. At least he's going to come out of this alive.

Talking of pirates I see that video piracy is now so prevalent in the UK that they now have their own rating; it is of course, AAARRRRRR

From the local news pages I see that a nasty tornado passed through Florida last week. Now a Florida tornado and a Smalltown divorce have something in common. In both cases someone is about to lose a trailer.

Finally here is some driving advice for the elderly in Smalltown. Pressing the pedal on your right will make your car go a little faster. Forget all that rubbish about suffocating at speeds above 15mph, it was all a myth.

VAROOOM
TCB