The Coffeespy

Oh, that Chicago Tribune.  Usually journalists will thinly veil their manipulation of facts in pursiut of getting their message across.  Not so with Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva.  Here's a man with the guts to stand up and say, "I'm a journalist, and I'm not afraid to just make stuff up."  We admire your stand against impartiality and objective reporting, Mr. Silva.  Though only a bold few are courageous enough to dress up their political views in the guise of unbiased newsmaking, even fewer forego the guise altogether.  Most impressive.

From the Chicago Tribune:

President Bush, insisting that "the fight in Iraq can be won,'' said today that the withdrawal of U.S. forces which everyone wants will come when "conditions on the ground are right.''

Ethics, standards, and grammar be damned.  That's some powerful stuff right there.  So powerful, in fact, that our resident iceman, Mr. Popsicle, says you deserve a big thumbs up!

Amidst the criticism the Catholic church recently received for proclaiming their own doctrine, which didn't include extremism or usurpation of secular governments, there were two responses from unlikely sources.  The first comes from Canada and the Edmonton Sun which lamented the miserable condition of Western Liberals:

Unless we start a nice little revolution I suppose it's pretty much inevitable that the Western world will crash down in flames and failure, splashing around in its own decadence and materialism as it does so. Our opponents have absolute faith and are willing to die. We have the Spice Girls, global warming documentaries and socialized medicine.

And while the fundamentalist foot crunches down on our fleshy necks, we will scream in polished and rehearsed tones, "We're offended, we're offended." The rallying cry of the liberal, modernist world. "I'm offended. Please feel my pain. I'm offended."

CLARIFIED

Which is precisely what various critics, some of them conservative evangelical Christians, said this week when Pope Benedict XVI merely clarified and emphasized Roman Catholic teaching concerning the truth of Catholicism and the place of non-Catholics.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church had the audacity to say that, wait for it, Roman Catholicism was right.

He did?!  How dare he!  Religion is silly (except Islam which is culture)!

Also, from the very non-Catholic Baptist Press:

I will let Bishop Hanson explain his pain. I do not see this new Vatican statement as an innovation or an insult. I see it as a clarification and a helpful demarcation of the issues at stake.

I appreciate the Roman Catholic Church's candor on this issue, and I believe that Evangelical Christians, with equal respect and clarity, should respond in kind. This is a time to be respectfully candid — not a time to be offended.

Imagine that, we were able to have a religious dispute in the West without beheading someone.  Lucky for you, Coffeespy HQ is here to remind you it could ALWAYS be worse:

I don't mean to play favorites, but whoever brought that cake made out of diamonds in the lower right hand corner is the winner in my book.

Coffeespy HQ actually has no pictures that can possibly do this story justice.  From the BBC:

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

As much as I love a good militant gorilla, a warbadger might give them a run for their money.

Another rumor circulating amongst the cultured Iraqis we're attempting to help is the ability of the Americans to see through burkas.  Sometimes I wonder how they keep from falling to their knees and worshipping the rising sun some days.  From CNN:

As an American soldier peered out of a passing tank, a young engineering student and a retired accountant contemplated one of the more common questions on the streets of Baghdad: Did the soldier's wraparound sunglasses give him X-ray vision?

"With those glasses, he can definitely see through women's clothes," said the engineering student, Samer Hamid. "It makes me angry. We are afraid to take our families out on the street."

For once, I'm left speechless.

IraqSlogger works some magic with its headline:

Well, that's interesting.  I suppose you could chalk it up to a bad source and pretend that fact checking is a mythical standard, but when you actually read the story at IraqSlogger you find no mention of failures on all benchmarks.  What you'll read is how they haven't been met, but as "Project Management for Dummies" will tell you, benchmarks are marks of progress, not pass/fail barriers.

I declare this a Joker level boner.  And the Jooker doesn't like it when others horn in on his boner territory…

I'm sure IraqSlogger is already looking into outdoing it's own boner.  I can't wait to see their "new adventure in crime!"

Update: LA Times calls measuring performance a "costly blunder."  The unspoken suggestion is to follow the Democratic congress' policy of not measuring anything and simply speaking out of one's ass on any given subject.  Don't worry, if we just leave Iraq and forget about this whole terrorism thing, it'll go away.  Lord knows we shouldn't be checking our work.

Stan "the Man" Lee responds to the LA Times:

Thank you, Stan, for that sparkling commentary.

First, try not to let the following blow your mind: 

You may be asking yourself, what does Cindy Sheehan have to do with vampires and werewolves on the moon.  Well, that just means you're not in the Coffeespy hive-mind and need to get yourselves there post-haste!

A werewolf on the moon means you always have to deal with the werewolf!  It's always a full moon.  The vampires are just a bonus of the werewolves being there, honestly.  And Cindy Sheehan?  If she's voted into the legislature, we'll have her in front of the cameras full-time.  Being a monster fed by the spotlight…

Ah, now you're getting the picture.

Coffeespy's younger brother, Cappy Chino, has repaired the damage done by professional programmers.  Indeed.

In honor of this most historical event, here is a robot riding a gorilla wielding four, count them, four machine guns!  Even better, he brought extra ammo and uses a prime number as his battle cry!

Remember those crazy women who used to cross-check each other to get a shot at grabbing a Beanie Baby? They’ve evolved.

Coffeespy HQ has undergone an intensive study of religious figures, cultural trends, and historical events developing the most scientific and irrefutable assessment you will ever read - bar none.

The left has hit upon the cause behind America’s difficulty with radical Islam - the religious right. Yes, it’s true. The underlying reasons, however, are very different than what you may be thinking. In fact, I would go so far as to say you are about to have the pillars of your faith rocked by four-color awesome.

Background

First, a little history. Way back in biblical times, there were a lot of lepers. Apparently, the population of lepers grew through a lack of culling by the angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament. Indeed, it was this very demographic, diseased misanthropes, that God decided would be his new primary voting bloc. And so, he crafted up Jesus - a peace-loving, miracle-bestowing dude of massive healing and food-creation abilities. He traveled all around the biblescape healing lepers, curing blindness and such. He was the right man for the times.

Or so we are led to believe. You see, we’re only seeing the story as written by those he healed and helped. We’re not seeing the story written by those he vanquished in the cleansing, vengeful fires of God’s wrath. Now THIS is the kind of diety we need to get behind. Coffeespy HQ has uncovered verified simulated information that Christ was vastly different in real life. Rather than traipsing around healing people willy-nilly and preaching about turning the other cheek, Jesus could switch, much like Christopher Walken, from good guy to all-out Old Testament-style nuke thrower quicker than it takes to blurt a psalm.

Current Situation

Islam has Allah, a god that calls upon his people to not only conquer all others, but gives them the latitude to literally explode themselves all over the rest of the population. I mean, that’s a harsh, hard-core kind of divinity. And he’s crafty, too, allowing his disciples to interpret his book as either a slash and burn doctrine for world domination or an apologist public affairs effort to protect the masses until such time as they can be used as living grenades. This is one bad-ass lord of all we’re dealing with here.

Stacking up against Allah we have Jesus. Let’s take a look at the Son of God, shall we?

Note the powers and titles of our hero. The “Prince of Peace.” He uses “love” and “forgiveness.” Also, he’s wearing almost no protective armor. What chance does this kind of holy warrior have against bin Laden and company? None!

Now let’s take a look at the big man himself, the gee-oh-dee: GOD.

Aw yeah, busting through shattered glass, deflecting bullets with his arm, and hair blowing all wild like he’s got his own personal hurricane just for his head! Unfortunately, there’s Jesus pinned up by mere mortals with just about the woosiest look he can have on his face. “Oh yay, Dad’s here to save my bacon one more time.” Come on, how many times did the Spawn of the Almighty have to get help from Dad? Way too many!

In fact, so many times that Coffeespy HQ analysts have scientifically proven, with number so brain-shattering that we cannot show you, that it must not be true. Also, Coffeespy HQ researchers have pieced together an alternate and completely true version of events that prove beyond argumentation that Jesus was neither a pacifict nor a “man of peace.”

Popular history says that Jesus died for the sins of many. This is not so, Jesus actually crucified himself in order to make himself harder for his many cage matches with other pantheons. We know this because nobody worships Zeus anymore, at least not seriously. So where did Zeus and his minions go? Jesus ended them.

Remember that scientific explanation we can’t reveal to you lest your mind explode? It says, basically, that Jesus was on the cross during one of his hard-core training sessions when Zeus and his cronies showed up mistakenly thinking the Romans had gotten to him. They began teasing Jesus. Below is the completely true and authentic artists representation of what followed. Jesus flew off the cross and godsmacked the Greek Pantheon straight out of existence:

KRAKA-BOOM, indeed. With this absolutely accurate version of Jesus restored to history, our analysts believe we can concentrate on increasing the SMITE America doles out by at least 75%. No longer will Christian pundits be content to allow progressives debating the separation of church and state to go un-punched. No longer will military Chaplains be pushed to the sidelines of conflict and can finally act as they should have all along - Weapons of Mass Divinity!

Stay tuned, dear reader. Coffeespy HQ will be releasing the new and, finally, true stories of Jesus of Nazareth in a monumental tome entitled: Ultimate Jesus, Son of Smite. Hopefully, this will give Christians the boost they need to rise up and cleanse the globe of all non-believers.

Coffeespy HQ hopes you and yours have a suitably explosive July 4th. Be safe, but not too safe. And a very special hello from the most patriotic supergroup ever in the history of supergroups: The Rushmore Four!

Ah, the greatest presidents of all time… making national heritage necessary for survival one punk at a time.

As promised, Coffeespy HQ is covering the guerra de gamma sweeping the nation.

Here is this week’s, err… last week’s casualty list.

Confirmed smashed:

1. Several people in boats
2. Several people standing on docks
3. Hercules
4. Every Iron Man Armor except the Stealth Armor
5. …then the Stealth Armor
6. Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters’ front gate
7. Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters’ front door
8. Rockslide of the X-Men
9. The arms of Rockslide
10. The legs of Rockslide
11. Mercury of the X-Men
12. Surge of the X-Men
13. Hellion of the X-Men
14. An X-Man I don’t know and they don’t name
15. That teenage girl Wolverine wanna-be X-Man
16. A red sports car

Suspected smashed:

1. A lot of Sentinels

When I say Hercules got smashed… I mean he really got smashed.

The KAPOW Count:

1. Click x2
2. WHHAKOOOM!
3. Tappety
4. Tap x4
5. Crrreeeaak!
6. WHAKOOOM! x2
7. SMASH
8. WHAKOOM! x2
9. Crash
10. KABOOM!
11. BRAKKKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM (Yes, I counted the Os)
12. VOOOSH
13. KRAKOOM
14. KRAAAK!
15. SSHHHRRAKKK
16. CH-CHOOM
17. VVVMMM
18. FASSHH
19. KA-WHOOOOOM
20. SHNK
21. SHTHUNK
22. THOOOM
23. SHREEEE x2
24. BRROOOOMMM
25. KRAKKABA-THROOM!
26. THOOOOOM
27. THOOM x3
28. KRASSHH
29. KA-WHAMMM
30. BOOOM
31. KRRRK
32. SHRAMMM
33. BTOOM
34. KRNCH
35. FSSHHH
36. KRAK
37. THRAMM
38. RRUNCH x2
39. RRRIPP x2
40. SHLUKT
41. SHHZZZZZZ
42. WHRAM
43. THWAMMM
44. SKRAMMMM
45. SHHHTHUNK
46. SHRRIIPP
47. WHABOOM
48. KOOOM
49. KTANG
50. BADAKOOM

KRAKKABA-THROOM! makes a strong reappearance as the sound of the Hulk colliding with Iron Man. I said it before, I’ll say it again: Three syllables in the first word, hyphenated, all caps, and ending in an exclamation point — that pretty much hits all the evaluation categories for world class sound effects.

Also, RRUNCH and RRRIPP are each used twice because each arm being ripped from Rockslide’s body (and then thrown to Connecticut) deserved their own sound.

Factoids:

1. For some reason a gang of adolescent mutants have a better chance of taking out the Hulk than Iron Man.
2. The Hulk has the ability to be at the X-Mansion and kicking Hercules’ butt at the same time.
3. Angel is a tactical idiot.

Analysis
None… there’s not much to analyze this week. But I’ll say this, at least:

Best preposterous violence of the series so far… watching Rockslides arms disappear in the distance like a Barry Bonds out-of-the-parker while the Hulk delivers his one-liner is absolute, whole-grain geek-fuel.

Irresponsible Speculation
Charles Xavier will answer the Hulk in a manner not to his liking resulting in more smash.

Tony Stark isn’t as smashed as we would like to believe.

Doc Samson is still about to pee himself, knowing that he cannot go through any story involving the Hulk and remain un-smashed.