Koffee Kulture

The latest news from the people who study the effects of coffee on human beings is that drinking coffee may or may not be good for you. This is very good news for those Canadians who drink coffee – which is every Canadian not actually being breast-fed. Unlike smoking, which every medical group not actually employed by the tobacco industry has determined is bad for people, the evidence regarding the effects of coffee is that it gives consumers more energy, making them smarter, taller, thinner, younger, stronger, richer, better dressed and resistant to mold and mildew.
This explains why all the people hanging out in posh (a Latin word meaning the opposite of “instant”), coffee shops are all young, smart, thin, etc.
The bad news is that coffee may also be bad for people, making them irritable and prone to fits of impulse shopping. This would explain Toronto. In a number of studies where rats were fed a steady diet of double-latte espresso for a month, the researchers found that the rats developed a tendency to quit their jobs because they felt they were under-appreciated, and to walk off movie sets in a huff because they thought the other rats were untalented, second-rate hacks. Some of the rats were also observed punching tow-truck operators in the snout when the rats’ BMWs were towed away from no-parking zones - what the researchers are referring to a rodent-like pre-psychotic rage.
Whether or not human beings are likely to develop the same symptoms is unknown, but researchers are concerned. Some of the early warning signs of coffee-induced pre-psychotic rages include the ability to list all the specialty coffees served at Starbucks, in spite of not actually being employed there, and an unreasonable desire to be able to distinguish by smell alone a coffee bean grown in the mountains of Rwanda from a bean grown in the foothills of the Andes. Anyone spotting their friends wandering around aimlessly, mumbling the ingredients for a extra long double orange mocha-chino regular latte with cinnamon and chocolate sprinkles with foam, in a mug, should call the nearest Gen-X coffee shop where the staff have been trained to immediately dispatch a courier with an emergency bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans.
Not surprisingly, the Tea-drinker’s Council of Canada has tried to launch a campaign against the so-called Koffee Kulture which has North America in its grip. Also not surprisingly, the effort has been a dismal failure, resulting in little more than groups of aging Yuppies sitting around in their Birkenstocks, listening to scratchy Peter, Paul and Mary albums, sipping cups of tepid Earl Grey tea, trying not to notice how much like their parents they have become. A recent press release issued by the Tea Council, written in a rather fruity British accent, extolled the virtues of tea as a health-giving drink, suggested that a daily dose of four infusions of green tea would restore hair loss and lift fallen arches. Much of impact of the press release was lost, however, because a picture of Patrick Stewart was included with it. Sadly, the press release was ultimately all but ignored after a number of newspaper editors used it as a coaster, leaving coffee rings all over it and rendering it all but unreadable.
When asked how they felt about switching from coffee to tea, patrons of a local up-scale coffee emporium (from the Greek “emporium” meaning “outrageously over-priced”) responded by punching the reporter in the nose, and then impulsively purchasing croissants for everybody in the establishment before dashing outside to see if their BMWs had been towed.