SILICON VALLEY, CA — In a press conference last Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced several new updates to the timeline template, the most noteworthy being a new feature which indicates whether or not the user is an organ donor. “Eighteen people around the world die each day waiting for a heart, liver, or kidney transplant,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference, “and by adding this new feature, I hope to change that. Kind of like Bono and…AIDS, right? Bono does that whole anti-AIDS thing?”

Since no one ever lies on Facebook, Zuckerberg predicts that user profiles will be a 100% universal and reliable tool for surgeons to make organ donor matches as early as next year. Some hospitals, however, have begun to use the feature already, and almost-doctor Mark Thompson of the completely legitimate St. Bernie’s Hospital in Beulah, Mississippi says he made his first patient-donor match earlier this week.

“This drunk fella came in earlier complainin’ a’ stomach-cramps, and I was pretty sure he needed a new liver. All I had to do was a little searchin’ in the Beulah High School network, and I saw that right under ‘Religious Views: Pastafarian’ on Jimmy Creevey’s profile, it said ‘Type A, Organ Donor.’ I asked him if he’d be willin’ to give up some liver on Facebook chat and it was a done deal.”

Almost-Dr. Thompson went on to explain that his patient was relieved to know that not only did the donor have the right blood type, but that he was also “fun guy,” having seen pictures of Creevey doing a beer-bong from the second story of a barn at Timmy Hatfield’s party last Friday.

Some users, though, have had a less pleasant experience with the donor-request process. Tammy Marquette, a high school student from Columbus, Ohio, was initially a fan of the feature after getting “like omg, over fifty likes!” on her organ donor status update. However, she says she became a little unsettled after receiving friend requests from several older men hoping to evaluate her as a possible kidney-donating candidate for a young relative.

“Normally I would have thought they were creepers, but omg the grandchild thing was so sad! One guy messaged me to say that he really needed me to make my ‘Sweet 16 Pool Party!’ album public so he could complete his evaluation though, which my friends agree is totally sketch.”

Many investors viewed the “organ donor” app as an attempt by Zuckerberg to add value to the Facebook stock before its upcoming IPO. Proponents, meanwhile, applauded Zuckerberg’s efforts to legitimize a website whose current most popular use is the sharing of cat videos.

Critics, however, pointed out that the feature may be “really weird,” and “totally unnecessary,” and many raised concerns about the fact that after 30 days, users who don’t select an organ donor status are automatically made “brain donors.” Hearing this feedback, Zuckerberg became twitchy and blurted out, “no, I’m definitely not trying to make a zombie army to take over the world. That’s definitely not what I’m doing!” before running out of the room.

EVANSTON – While job fairs at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have been well attended by many prestigious firms, such as Boeing, Schneider Electric, and Microsoft, the School of Communication is excited to report a massive influx of recruiting pressure from Starbucks for this year’s graduating class.

“This might come as kind of a surprise, given the rigor of the Comm curriculum,” theater major Kirk Hammill told The Flipside, “but I was actually kind of worried about finding a job after graduation.”

For Hammill, who will start in July as a barista at Starbucks’ Grand Central location in New York, his new job is a “dream come true.” “I’ll practically be on Broadway!” he exclaimed over his no-whip, non-fat, extra-hot double hazelnut mocha.

Department Chair Matthew Schlue says he couldn’t be happier that his students are finally receiving recognition for all the hard work they’ve invested in their education here at NU. “Now when they overhear Business Majors talk about their Wall Street interviews while toiling away on their one weekly homework assignment at Norbucks, they can know that they’re special too,” he told The Flipside to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

According to Hammill, the application process was no “chorus-line harmony.” In a strenuous first-round group interview process, applicants were asked difficult milk-based questions, like, “How does the froth to espresso ratio compare in a cappuccino versus a latte?”

Hammill says that some of the philosophy majors present made real fools of themselves during the interview. “Ugh, such amateurs. I think one even said a Café Americano is coffee based. He probably wouldn’t have known Barbara Streisand from Patti Lupone.” (Upon hearing the latter statement, Rachelle Terry, a close friend of Hamill’s who has received a Music Theater Certificate , screamed and ran out of the coffee shop where this interview was conducted).

After breezing through round one, Hammill says that he knew he sealed the deal at a dinner a few weeks ago. While Google recruits have reported being taken out to dinner at such culinary hot spots as Charlie Trotter’s and Alinea in downtown Chicago, Starbucks executives treated to high-profile candidates like Hammill to an evening at the Applebee’s location just a little farther down Michigan Ave. “I knew I had the New York position in a lock when the regional manager asked me, ‘If you could draw any picture or write any message in latté foam, what would it be and why?’ I said the opening verse of ‘Memory’ from ‘Cats.’ The Head of Human Relations was so moved that she cried.”

ABC STUDIOS, MANHATTAN—The entertainment community was completely unsurprised to learn this past week that broadcasting icon Dick Clark had passed away as a result of a heart attack at age 82 in his Santa Monica home. Though official records report Mr. Clark’s time of death as sometime during the morning of Wednesday April 18th, 2012, medical examiners say he actually could have died as early as January 4^th, 2005, the date his last facial twitch was observed.

The entertainer’s death leaves ABC executives with a foreboding and unfamiliar task in finding a replacement for Mr. Clark in his iconic role as the host of Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve, since the notes from the last audition process are recorded in hieroglyphics on a cavern wall somewhere beneath their Manhattan headquarters.

Describing the most important attributes of a prospective host, ABC Executive Producer Chip Bauerman told The Flipside, “the main thing is that they can count down from ten, but that actually eliminated all of the aspiring actors and actresses we auditioned.”

When looking for a new face for the annual TV special proved fruitless, Bauerman said executives went back to the drawing board. “We scratched our heads and thought, ‘Geez, what was it that made ole’ Dick so special?’ and then I think we got it. When I think New Year’s, I think good will to all men and that whole spiel but I also think youth, joy, revelry, and mainly hope for the future—basically everything Dick Clark wasn’t.”

According to Bauerman, Barbara Bush, Ozzy Osbourne, and former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich were among the names tossed around in the “people who represent exactly what New Year’s doesn’t” category, but executives were eventually forced to abandon the process following a disastrous meeting with Kanye West. When asked to give a sampling of what he might tell audiences on the big night, West told producers he’d likely start off, “now I’mma let you start up here 2013,but I just wanna say 2012 was definitely one of the best years OF ALL TIME.” The rapper reportedly stormed out of the meeting, though, after being told that hosting the New Year’s Eve special would not, in fact, allow him to freeze time on years he won Grammys and didn’t do anything too horrendously offensive.

An epiphany of sorts hit the ABC team when Vice President Tommy Studemaker suggested they just continue to use Dick Clark’s body as the host each year. “After a while,” Bauerman explained, “we realized—you know what? Dick’s mouth really hasn’t moved in a broadcast since the mid-nineties, so if we just play an old audio tape with the right year dubbed in and prop him up pretty well, odds are no one will know the difference!” Their predictions are supported by a 2010 survey in People Magazine which asked readers to choose “Real or Wax?” for a picture of a live celebrity and their figure at Madame Tussaud’s Museum, where a staggering 11 out of 10 readers guessed wrong for Clark.

In order to preserve Clark’s famously lifeless appearance between broadcasts, his body will be frozen and stored in the same underground vault as Walt Disney’s brain and Mel Gibson’s soul.

ASG Candidate Campaigning on “More Recess, Less Homework” Platform

EVANSTON, IL – The Office of Undergraduate Admissions was excited to report Tuesday that the Class of 2016, whose newest members were notified of their admission the preceding weekend, will be the university’s most diverse in over 25 years. When asked to elaborate on the precise nature of this notably vague “diversity” which characterizes the incoming freshmen, Vice-President of University Relations Alan K. Cubbage explained that this year the Admissions Committee opted for a new approach in the application evaluation process in an effort to promote what he calls “academic biodiversity.”

“You know,” Cubbage told Flipside, “every year we accept all these a nerdy straight-A types and then they come and complain about how hard it is to do well with the curve. So this year, we thought, hey, after that whole Supreme Court affirmative action thing we should probably steer clear of too much ethnic diversity or whatever, so why don’t we try to get more kids that are average or slightly below to even out the nerd-distribution.”

Following the brutal mauling of three Pre-Meds by 4.0-seeking classmates during the Fall Quarter Chem 101 final, Cubbage says that the Administration realized that Northwestern currently suffers from an overpopulation of predators. A more desirable ecosystem, he suggests, would bring an entire spectrum of trophic levels to the Evanston tundra and establish a biologically diverse academic food chain. The new curve-breaking predators of the Class of 2016 will feast on lower-level autotrophs such as such as “try-hards,” diligent workers who lack the intelligence of dominant species, similar in nature to the North American Carpenter Ant.

Lower-level heterotrophs will include “moochers,” who likely have reasonable academic abilities but are too lazy to do work on their own, and instead scavenge on the efforts of “try-hards,” or in the case of more attractive moochers, curve-breakers who are single and/or desperate. To identify future moochers in the applicant pool, the admissions committee looked for key words in recommendation letters like, “fails to live up to full potential,” and “lack of motivation.” Further down the hypothetical chain are “snoozers,” sloth-like creatures who struggle to remain awake through introductory economic lectures, and the ever-elusive “gamers,” rarely spotted at classes during the day due to the absurd amount of time they spend playing StarCraft.

Cubbage revealed, though, that the issue of establishing decomposers in the new NU ecosystem still remains. To fill this role while maintaining admissions standards, the University is considering requiring Comm students to take several actual classes before graduation, though conservationists argue that the placement of such a vulnerable species in a predatory environment would likely result in extinction.

LOS ANGELES — Jean Dujardin, the star of the Oscar-winning silent film The Artist, committed a career-crippling faux pas on Sunday night when he spoke while accepting his Academy Award.

The audience at the ceremony watched in shock as the supposed Frenchman bellowed his acceptance speech and proclaimed his JOIE DE VIVRE! to the very rafters of the Kodak Theater in what can only be described as a Brooklyn accent. A mortified Natalie Portman shrunk behind the back of the 8ft tall Oscar statuette on stage left—viewers were disappointed when she did not later re-emerge as the black swan to frighten her Best Actress successor—and outside, Ryan Seacrest screamed girlishly. (Seacrest later argued that he thought the offensive sound had come from the ghost of the dead dictator whose ashes Sasha Baron Cohen had dumped on him earlier in the evening, Seacrest was still in the process of removing the ashes particle-by-particle from his Henry Ford tuxedo when the spectacle transpired.)

It seems that actually speaking may prove a career-ending mistake for the formerly promising and questionably French actor. “I was just expecting his voice to be a little more like a Parisian James Earl Jones and a little less like Fran Drescher,” said Melissa McCarthy, who’d been stiffed earlier in the evening for her drastically underappreciated performance in Bridesmaids.

Other audience members found the actor’s voice too caustic to even continue listening and left the theater. “Now someone else will know how this feels,” yelled Tree of Life director Terrence Malick as he flung-wide the theater doors and burst on to Hollywood Boulevard.

Given the widespread disapproval of the entertainment community, the Academy made the decision to retract Mr. Dujardin’s award early Monday morning and instead present it to George Clooney. “Our first thought was to just give it to Meryl Streep,” a spokesperson told Flipside, “but we figured two in one year might be pushing it.”

Most upset about the event was former Oscar winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, 2010), who was so shocked by Dujardin’s decision to talk that he st-st-stuttered through his presenter’s monologue.

EVANSTON – Northwestern University seniors were surprised to learn that the 2012 Commencement Address would be delivered by a farmer named Paul from central Illinois.

“I mean, I guess I understand how farming might be important in light of the food crisis in, like, Africa and whatever,” Weinberg senior Jonah Goldblum told Flipside, “but I was expecting someone a little more… academic.”

Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro reacted to the lukewarm response to the farmer, saying, “This Spring, thousands of graduates will listen to speakers who tell them that they can do anything now that they have a college degree, but here at Northwestern, we decided to take a more realistic approach. We thought, hey, a lot of these kids are going to be unemployed and living in their moms’ basements until they take a job that will have nothing to do with their Philosophy major, so why don’t we just bring in a real average guy and knock down their expectations a few notches.”

Possible speech topics Farmer Paul has discussed with NU administrators include “More Corn, Less Calculus: The Backbone of America,” “At Least I’m Employed,” and “Really, the Midwest Isn’t That Bad.”

As many schools began to release convocation information online this past week, students at other institutions were quick to take a few jabs at Farmer Paul’s unglamorous vocation. “Ugh, how plebeian,” Harvard student Liam VanBuerman III wrote in his blog Musings in Cambridge: the Quandaries of the Intellectually and Socially Superior, “though I suppose students at a Big Ten school couldn’t be expected to appreciate the same kind of entertainment as students at such an elite institution as this.”

Harvard recently announced its commencement day speaker will be author and social pundit Fareed Zakaria, who will deliver a speech entitled, “Your Life After Harvard: Complaining about Society and Being Better than Other People.”

After hearing President Schapiro’s explanation, Goldblum sighed and consented, “I mean, I guess it might be nice to hear something more realistic than your standard ‘go forth and change the world’ commencement address. I’ve been struggling to find real world applications for my Existentialism degree, and who knows, maybe the dairy industry is the place for me.”

Mr. VanBuerman could not be reached when contacted for further comment. His girlfriend Mimi Birnbauch informed Flipside reporters earlier this morning that he had collapsed under the weight of his own ego.