Ellen DeGeneres Helps Us Through The Starbucks Christmas Cup Crisis Of 2015

Ellen DeGeneres helps guide us through the Great Starbucks
Christmas Cup Crisis of 2015.  

I was going to weigh in on the "controversy" about the Starbucks holiday season cups, which are just red.

Some evangelical Christians are upset because the cups don't mention Christmas, or anything like that.

However, I saw a clip of Ellen DeGeneres explaining the situation and possible solutions much better than I could, so I'll just let her do it.

Wacko "Pastor" Says Starbucks Puts Semen From Gay Men In Their Lattes

"Pastor" James David Manning of the Atlah Worldwide
 Missionary Church in Harlem has some unique theories. 

Yeah, the headline of this post is a strange one. But there is actually someone making that claim.

Pastor James David Manning of the Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church wins this year's award for the most creative and out there conspiracy theory of the year. And the decade. And the century.

Manning runs  Atlah in Harlem, It's a virulently anti-gay mess of an organization that ranks right up there with the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.

OK, he hates gays.  But give Manning points for doing this, um, creatively.

Let's just quote a snippet from Manning's  radio show, as provided to us by Raw Story:

"My suspicion is that they're getting this semen from sodomites.......My suspicion is that semen, like cord blood, has millions and millions of little zygotes in it, and it flavors up the coffee. And it makes you think you're having a good time drinking that cup of latte with semen in it."

Manning says he knows this story is true because he read about it in the Inquisitr. 

And he did! I looked it up. Of course, the Inquisitr article informs readers the semen in the Starbucks lattes are fake, as the story originated at the satirical web site Huzlers.com

Inquisitr in turn got the news the story was fake from the well respected rumor-debunking site Snopes.com. 

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.  

The lovely sign Manning put up in front of
his Harlem church earlier this year.  

But hey, the semen in the latte story is too fun to pass up, so Manning decided to run with it.

Hey, it'll get his few extremely gullible followers to give him more money, and he'll get richer and richer.

And he'll continue to enjoy his bigotry.

He does that a lot. Manning has previous told us that President Obama is a homosexual crack smoking demon from Kenya or somewhere who is unleashing these homosexual demons on the nation's black males.

Or something.

The latest development is that Starbucks has apparently sent Manning a cease and desist letter, telling him to shut up about the semen in Starbucks latte, already, since the story isn't true and it puts Starbucks in a false light.

My first thought was Starbucks' cease and desist letter is a little excessive, since who would believe the semen story anyway? But then I've often grossly underestimated the intelligence of some Americans, so the letter from the lawyer was about right.

Upon receiving the letter, Manning has doubled down, as the delightful video below of him indicates. Skip ahead to a little past the five minute mark. The first part of the video is just Manning reading the letter from Starbucks' attorney.

It's hard to follow Mannings' thinking but it appears he thinks Starbucks sent him the letter to scare him into shutting up about the "truth." He says it will backfire, because now he's going to proclaim this news about Starbucks far and wide.

I can't wait! This will be so much fun!

He also warns women against going to Starbucks for a latte, because drinking it will get them pregnant.  I don't know where to go with that remark, other than to be stunned by Manning's complete incompetence in the field of basic biology.

But oh well.

Here's that video I promised:

Apparently, Retrieving A Stolen Sandwich From A Trash Can Is Stealing At Starbucks

From The Slog blog in The Stranger in Seattle, we have news of a guy who was fired from a Starbucks for stealing.

This guy says he retrieved a discarded sandwich from
the trash at Starbucks. A firing offense?  

Nope, he wasn't sampling all the coffees or anything like that. Store employees had thrown out some wrapped sandwiches which had passed their sell-by date.

The employee, Coulson Loptmann, said he was starving, so he retrieved the sandwich since nobody else wanted it.

But that was stealing, according to The Slog, and Loptmann was fired. 

Yes, yes, I suppose Starbucks was looking for an excuse to Loptmann and just picked the stupidest one. But he says he wasn't on the boss's shit list until this happened.

Loptmann said he's on food stamps since he couldn't get enough hours to work full time at Starbucks, and the constantly shifting schedule made it hard to obtain a second job to make ends meet.

Unless they hated this guy, don't you think firing a guy for stealing a stale sandwich from the garbage can is a bit harsh?

I can only think of a few reasons why they did this:

1. The aforementioned theory the boss just hates this guy.
2. The boss is a jerk, and wanted to demonstrate who is in charge, so he put the hammer down on Loptmann just for sport and an example.
3. Starbucks didn't want the negative publicity about low wages and low hours, so they fired this guy to shut all the employees up who were tempted to do something like this because they have no money. If this is the case, the plan backfired.
4. Starbucks doesn't want employees getting sick on discarded food, as a spokesman for the company said. But Loptmann said nobody mentioned his health. They just yelled at him for stealing.
5. Outfits like Starbucks are hoarders, and they don't want anybody taking anything, including their garbage.
6. Whoever is in charge of the rules wants to demonstrate that even if you're poor or broke, you have no business taking something for free. Even if nobody wants that item.
7.. Somebody hid a valuable gold coin in the discarded sandwich, Loptmann knew it and wanted to make a killing.

Vote for your favorite theory!