Coffee-Soaked Awards - Week of February 5, 2007

The first full week of February has slipped past us, and while good portion of the country is still locked in winter's icy grip, there's been enough news to keep us bubbling, and feeling warm and cozy on the inside. Of course, the CSM being what it is, we're not going to focus on any of that, instead choosing to take our slanted aim at some of the other stories that crossed our line of sight these past few days. So let's get this started, and yes, we're going to be like the rest of the media and start with (seemingly) the biggest story of the week.

Live Fast, Die Young Award

Anyone who picked Anna Nicole Smith in their Celebrity Dead Pool was at least a little psychic. Moving on...

The Breast Intentions Award

The Breast Cancer Society of Canada has recently turned down a few thousand dollars in charitable donations. Why? Because the money was raised by exotic dancers. Although it seems like the perfect way to get men, who generally don't think much about breast cancer unless it affects them personally, to give money to help find a cure. It'd be like male strippers donating some of their tips to an organization researching prostate problems. In related news, the exotic dancers are now considering sending their donation straight to Fredericks of Hollywood, in exchange for new clothes. Others call this "shopping".

Turning the Tables Award
A restaurant in West Belfast was recently awarded £25,000 after a jury found that the Irish News had given them a defamatory review. The paper's review was fairly critical of the restaurant, which the owner claimed as a "hatchet job" that hurt business. The suit was filed because the Irish News had failed to print a retraction or an apology. We here at the CSM haven't seen the review, but we can only imagine that the complaint stemmed from the paper having compared the Belfast restaurant with McDonalds, which is an obviously Scottish name.

What's in A Name Award
How could last Sunday possibly go wrong for Chicago native Scott Wiese? After all, the Chicago Bears fan was so confident in his team that, if the Bears somehow lost, he would change his name to Peyton Manning. Well, lo and behold, Mr. Wiese woke up Monday morning with the knowledge that his days as Scott Wiese were numbered. He has already filed the paperwork to request the name change. On the plus side, there wasn't a similar bet made using the name Englebert Humperdinck.

That's Not Nougat Award
We give this to an unnamed Italian chocolatier, for providing a man in Germany with a surprise in his candy. The man located a finger when he bit into a chocolate, instead of the expected nuts and other potential fillings. The fingertip went unnoticed largely due to the other ingredients in the delicacies. Luckily, or unluckily, the candy wasn't found in America, where the finger would have been mostly ingested prior to discovery. Nevermind the immediate lawsuit, with the defendant pointing with a Snickers bar.

Caffeinated Commentary
Monday, we here at the CSM detailed "sexpresso" shops. Well, as respected (we hope) members of the caffeinated community, we felt that something more really needed to be said about all of this.
Sex and coffee is a combination of two of our favorite things. In fact, both outrank sleeping by a wide margin. Just think of how more readily and freely you would give away your $7.50/day for a latte, if only you could have it served by a fine specimen of your chosen gender. With the amount of money that would be poured into the economy through a larger proliferation of these types of coffee shops, we could filter some of those profits into charitable donations, such as cancer research, or a way to improve the coffee bean itself to produce a higher caffeine content.
So this is a call out to the President. No, not President Bush. I'm speaking of the President of coffee, Howard Schultz. The man who positioned Starbucks into the global machine that it currently is.
We here at the CSM ask this of you, Mr. Schultz. You are the one who can take the torch lit by these scantily clad ladies of the latte, and take it running to new heights, and new levels of impact. Picture, if you will, the Nordic ideals serving coffee in Minnesota, while sultry Southerners deliver the goods in Atlanta. This could rapidly spread across the country, providing a new meaning to the morning pick-me-up.
But that's not all. This could go multinational. There could be Celtic gods and goddesses across the British Isles delivering coffee to the masses, people under revealing furs throughout Siberia, and a carry-over of the geisha tradition in Japan. Not to mention the potential for bringing sexpresso to the Middle East, possibly ending, or at least easing, some of the strife throughout that region.
So Mr. Schultz, we ask this of you. We beg this of you. Don't think just about the bottom line. Think about the potential to make this a big and beautiful caffeinated world. And think about how coffee can bring us all together.
Help us, Howard Schultz. You're our only hope.


Stay safe out there.