Soosed News Patrol

Villagers from Illinois are seeing their late mayor's face in the bark of tree. The striking resemblance can be seen in the picture at left.

"Donald Stephens spent more than half a century at the helm of this Chicago suburb.

Now, less than two months after his death, some say an eerie likeness of the late mayor's face has appeared in the peeling bark of a 50-foot sycamore."

Eerie. Even though it seems impossible to argue with, people don't think it looks like him.

"I see Jesus," said Cathy Sansone, the membership director at the health club.

You know what? I'm throwing my hat into this. It's not the mayor, it looks nothing like him. It's not Jesus because Jesus is currently in a grilled cheese sandwich somewhere (or was that Mary?)

Anyway, the tree is clearly displaying the face of Frank Zappa:

Yeah, that's him alright. Just like him to haunt a tree, too.

A man. His wheelchair. An 18-wheeler truck. Become one.

"A man was taken on a wild ride when his wheelchair became lodged in the grille of a semitrailer and was accidentally pushed down a highway for four miles at about 50 mph, authorities said."

The man lodged his chair really well, apparently.

"An investigation revealed the man in the wheelchair had pulled in front of the truck at a gas station, and it somehow became lodged by its handles to the front grille."

It takes a very special person to accidentally attach yourself to a huge truck, but accidentally do it so well that when that truck drives for four miles down the highway, it doesn't kill you. Way to go, wheelchair man.

NASA is saying it's 80% that the Atlantis shuttle will launch on time tomorrow. That means we have an 80% chance of being completely uninterested in whatever happens tomorrow.

What exciting mission is the shuttle going to embark on?

"The crew's 11-day mission to the ISS includes three spacewalks to deliver and install the new Starboard 3/Starboard 4 (S3/S4) truss segment and deploy its wing-like solar arrays."

Dramatic.

In the event the shuttle doesn't launch, I have compiled a list of similarly entertaining things to do:

• Sitting upright
• Talking to paintings
• Making sure the thread count on your bedsheets is 100% accurate
• Passing in to a coma
• Watching reruns of "Daily Planet"

Pictured above is what I'll be doing during the launch tomorrow. I have a bit more muscle but you get the idea.

Students in Holland have invented alcohol in a powdered form.

"The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets... top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content"

Of course, this is completely different from the last time this was invented.

"In Germany, alcopops -- sweet drinks containing alcohol and in powder form -- caused quite a stir when launched on to the market."

Or the time before that.

"Alcohol powder, classified as a flavoring, was sold in the United States three years ago."

If you'll excuse me, I have to go invent computers. I think it's only been done once, so I'm set.

I'M GOING TO BE RICH.

It seems some fans of the cancelled CBS show 'Jericho' are a bit crazy. Or hilarious. They have protested the cancellation with calls and peanuts. That's right.

"CBS, deluged with calls, messages and shipments of nuts signifying viewer displeasure, is reconsidering its decision, a source close to the production said Tuesday."

A lot of nuts.

"The network apparently has been impressed by the display of viewer passion, which included the delivery of 50,000 pounds of peanuts to its New York offices."

I can only imagine that phone call.

"Hello, national peanut concern, how may I help you?"
"Yeah I'd like to place an order for delivery"
"Sure, we ship peanuts in 5lb and 10lb containers."
"I'm looking for something in the 50,000lb range"
"MR. DAVIS... IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!"

"There's already been one positive outcome: CBS is donating the protest peanuts to charities, including one that sends care packages to troops overseas."

"Hello Care4Troops? ... yeah it's CBS... we're sending a truck over... careful when you open it"

Lincoln Middle School in Pontiac, Michigan is teaching middle schoolers how to make sure babies don't die. FINALLY!

"Crib Notes, which was created and taught by public health nurses, was designed to reduce infant mortality in Pontiac, Michigan, which has the highest rate in the county."

This has proved very useful for some students, most notably Victor Reyes.

"I was nervous at first, very nervous," said Victor, an eighth-grader. "I thought it was going to be a little bit complicated until they showed us a video and brought a demonstration baby in. ... Now that I'm good at it, it's not even a problem."

Victor is now well prepared by the program when he has kids of his own. Except:

"Victor, 15, is using his newfound knowledge to help raise his 3-month-old son, Giovonni."

Oh. That's nice.

Said Lois Winer, a nursing supervisor for the county who oversees the program. "We thought this was a perfect population to begin to educate on prevention."

I think they should educate on a different kind of prevention. They seem to have a completely different problem in Pontiac... I can't seem to figure out what it is...

"The program, taught to sixth- and eighth-graders in three schools, is not a sex-education class or one that teaches about reproductive health or pregnancy."

Damn right. By the time they are in 6th grade, most of these students are already having children of their own. Sex education would just be a waste. Who needs condoms, anyway!

We must teach these young parents the subtle tricks to raising children:

"We learned not to sleep on the couch," Shantaya said. "That's what my mom did. She's still doing that. I had to tell her, 'No, that's not good."'

I wish someone had told me that. Now where did I put my notepad...

In what sounds like something Ireland would do, school officials in Illinois are refusing to hand over diplomas to five students. The reasoning is pretty solid.

"Five students denied diplomas after cheers erupted when their names were called at a high school graduation emerged empty-handed Tuesday"

Their crime: Other people cheered for five students during the ceremony.
Their punishment: The five students don't get ceremonial diplomas.
The solution:

"Officials told the five female students and their parents Friday that they would hand over diplomas if they received apologies -- even anonymously."

Seriously? Seriously. They want an apology from people or else they will punish students for something they didn't do.

This is like in grade 3 when Jimmy stole Dave's hat. But when Jimmy was caught with the hat Mrs. O'Ryan made Sammy apologize to Jimmy. Well, it's not entirely like that, but sort of like that. Jimmy was a jackass back then.

Caisha Gayles, one of the students being denied her diploma summarizes the situation pretty well.

"It's just dumb. It's petty," Gayles said.

UPDATE

They have reversed the decision.

"The Illinois State Board of Education, [has] said it cannot support the district's decorum policy because it makes students responsible for behavior they cannot control, in explaining the decision."

Illinois, slow-moving logic capital of the world.

God dammit, Japan:

"Japan's latest robot, called Kansei and created by a university research team, can pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords."

Oh god:

What an accurate response to love. They probably call that one the "creepy fucking smirk".

NIGHTMARES FOR WEEKS.

Apple is set to release the iPhone to public markets in late June, commercials revealed Sunday night. The hype is building, but the potential customers fueling the hype don't seem to be of high calibre intelligence.

"During an onscreen demonstration of the iPhone in Apple’s sprawling retail store here recently, an employee, clad in a black T-shirt, of course, surprised a potential customer.

Nonplused, the customer stammered, “You mean it’s a cellphone, too?”

Good. Lord. It's called the iPhone. People like this probably bought the iPod because they thought it was full of seeds. Very expensive seeds that play music.

India is using technology from 1997 to catch snow leopards:

"Forest guards in western India are using cell phones with ringtones of cows mooing, goats bleating and roosters crowing to attract leopards that have wandered into human settlements"

This is far better than their "leopard fall in pit" trick:

"methods such as live bait like goats tied to trees to lure the leopards, which then fall into large pits dug by guards"

Animals in India aren't too smart. They hear a ringtone and walk in to a cage, expecting food, or they see food and fall in to a pit.

Maybe some animals were designed to die?