Café

A true café patron, shown here on his way to his favourite café - "Café pour les connards"

Café is a French word meaning "middle class shack" and true to translation, a café is a shack where members of the inoperably middle class may be found.

Origins

Although the origins of the café are unclear, one persistent theory is that the French needed an arena in which to display their skills at consuming milky coffee, hideously shrunken biscuits (or biscotti) and various other baked things vaguely resembling food. Due to the flamboyant nature of the French, it was not long before they began waving their new found time-wasting pursuits at other countries, such as England and Italy. The English, being the gullible fools that they are, adopted the café into their culture immediately. The Italians dealt with the café phenomenon with a degree of shrewdness, making the Italian café a work of art; eliminating pretentious pastries and focusing on making palpitation-inducingly strong espresso. Unfortunately, Italy (along with a few die-hard ethnic nations such as Turkey) is one of the few places on Earth you will find cafés that are not pointless endeavours in complicating the consumption of caffeine. After the British adoption of the café, the phenomenon spread through the rest of the civilized world, appearing wherever the middle class was prevalent.

Typical Patrons

An "Obviously Not French" man, enjoying himself in a café.

Although typical café patrons would deny there is such a thing as a 'typical' café patron, probably citing some waffle about how all God's creatures are unique, they are totally wrong; the main reason is that typical café patrons most often pursue careers in which they will be paid to tell people utter lies.

Some Examples of Typical Café Patron Career Choices:

• Teacher
• Lawyer
• Politician
• Philosopher
• Journalist
• Student (not actually paid to tell lies)
• Being French
• Any career involving a briefcase (excluding assassin)
• Doctor
• Author
• Aspiring Artists

Warning

Many nefarious characters have been known to frequent cafés. These can include school teachers, businessmen, old women, the Bubonic Plague's nephew, and the Spanish Civil War. If you see any café with occupants matching this description, please do not approach, as they are to be considered armed and dangerous.

Common Items For Sale at Cafés

The Pointless and Retarded Institution of Café Crap (PRICC International) maintains a list of criteria an item must fulfil before being allowed to be sold in a café anywhere. This list is as follows:

• Must serve no purpose
• Must attain a score of 5 or above on the Wank Scale
• Must not be satisfying; cannot be filling unless sickeningly so
• Must cost at least 50 times more than production
• Must fit in café standard cup or on equivalent saucer
• Must not leave any surface free of frivolous and irritating decoration
• Must either be tasteless or so sweet, sour, spicy, salty that it barely approaches edible

Some Examples of Items Which Fit These Criteria:

• Café standard coffee: Coffee with at least three quarters too much milk, never served above 0 degrees Celsius
• Café standard tea: Water with chemicals, cafés are prohibited by law to stock anything vaguely resembling common teabag tea
• Café standard biscuit: Biscuit no larger than a two year old's thumbnail, ingredients often suspect to war crime allegations
• Croissant: Pastry resembling a French man's penis
• Danish: Croissant with jam filling
• Cake: Usually cylindrical object composed of air or cement, some variants denser than dark matter - often named accordingly
• Cool Drinks: Many kinds, all just vaguely sparkling water from the same hole in France.