On the evening of Friday, November 13 at approximately 8:00 PM, multiple Northwestern students reported seeing a polar bear climb out of a mysterious and previously unnoticed hatch on the Lakefill. The students, who were leaving a “Lost” fan club meeting in Norris, reported seeing the subject leave the hatch and run north along the lake. There have been no further sightings of the subject,  described as being a 500 lb. white male about six feet in length.

Further investigation of this report uncovered a gas leak in the Wildcat Room of Norris, where the “Lost” fan club meets. Gas inhalation is known to cause both auditory and visual hallucinations, especially in those addicted to convoluted television shows with improbable plots.

The University Police reminds all members of the Northwestern community that there are no polar bears in the Evanston area and that they should think twice before reporting such phenomena.

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This message was sent using the NU Bulkmail service to Evanston Faculty, Evanston Staff, and Evanston Students with urgent priority.

CHICAGO—This week, Sesame Street, which brought America wonderful things like “The Letter W” and “The Number 9,” is over the hill. The beloved television program planned to celebrate its 40th birthday with cake and parties until Sharon Kim began to questions its involvement with children.

“It’s just not right, a 40-year-old playing with children in dark alleyways,” stated the mother of three. Kim’s comments have drawn interest from parent organizations all over the country, and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has called for a federal investigation.

The middle-aged program has been linked to disturbing involvement with millions of unsuspecting children. Some of the allegations against the show have been pretty alarming. It is purported that children were asked to “tickle Elmo,” a phrase that has repeatedly come up during debriefings. Authorities can only guess at its meaning.

Ernie, who stars in a segment of the show along with his life-partner Bert, was quoted as saying “[these children] make bath-time so much fun.” Said Kim: “It’s ridiculous: children have been inside [Sesame Street’s] bedroom, with two men no less.”

In related news, Sesame Street’s treatment of its workers is being thrown under scrutiny as well after it became public that one of the show’s characters is living in a garbage can.

EVANSTON—A riot broke out on Wednesday the 11th as a typo in a local paper mistakenly misspelled the name of the Northwestern mathematics building, Lunt Hall. By accidentally substituting a single poorly-placed consonant for the “L”, writer Edward McGlonin inadvertently plunged himself into a tumultuous hell of incensed women’s rights groups, gleefully inebriated fraternity patrons, and everyone in between. When asked about the incident, McGlonin stated that “the low lighting [conditions] made the two letters look exactly the same” although this interview was conducted via telephone and there were sounds akin to snickering on the other end. His editor was similarly displeased and confused about how the error had escaped his notice, but declined to comment when accosted by this Flipside reporter.

These flimsy apologies aren’t enough for certain organizations, though. Melina Hibasteus, co-chair of Women Against Offensive Labels, commented on the controversy: “It’s ridiculous. Those two letters aren’t even close to each other on the keyboard; it can’t possibly have been a mistake. We have faced years of vulgar name-calling attached to our gender and anatomy, and we’ve had enough.” However, some members of the Northwestern University community found the unintentional misspelling quite funny. Shilo DeBaunt, of the fraternity Kappa Zeta Kappa, was quoted as calling the mistake “hilarious” and “that [he] loves anything to do with [the typo]” before promptly high-fiving fellow fraternity brother Tommy Morraghin.

The reported backlash from feminist groups was tremendous. “Who knows?” said Hibasteus. “The next time I’m referring to the Block Museum of Art, my vocal cords might just… slip. They’re quite similar sounds.”

WASHINGTON—The EPA recently released a shocking comprehensive report in which they revealed the true cause of global warming: the end of the Cold War. Although the Cold War neared its end twenty years ago with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, its effects on global temperatures are just now being discovered. According to lead scientist Bill Nye, “the frigid diplomatic relations between the United States and the former USSR were the chief source of global cooling and an effective combatant to the forces that present themselves today as global warming.” He goes further to say that, “all of those stories about the rise of pollution in cities contributing to global warming are just urban legends.”

The groundbreaking report has angered environmentalists everywhere. Former Vice President Al Gore, crusader against global warming, is having trouble coming to terms with this new, even more inconvenient truth. “All this time, I thought I was helping the world by carpooling, conserving energy, and ‘going green’,” said Gore. “In reality, what I should have been doing all along was using my political connections to build up China into a superpower, thus facilitating the creation of a Colder War.”

In accordance with the report’s findings, the EPA has issued a list of recommendations to combat global warming. The organization suggests that people act with a detached demeanor towards anyone they meet while making sure not to allow any situation to escalate into open confrontation. Other advisable steps to take include attempting to see a lunar eclipse before your neighbor, and accumulating a larger collection of tools than any neighbor possesses. Frequent awkward contact with ex-lovers is also encouraged. Smith is confident that with this new information, society will be more capable of fighting the global problem. “If we all do our part to make our personal diplomatic climates a little bit colder, we can solve the problem of global warming once and for all.”

BOSTON—Thomas Fine, a linguistics professor at Harvard University, reported that he was “stumped for the first time in his life” after trying to analyze the words in Soulja Boy’s new single, “Trix be smackin my 24s, nah?” After a full perusal of the song’s lyrics, Fine concluded that the rapper’s lyrics “do not match up with any sort of language ever observed in the vast canon of human speech.”

Fine began his press release by speaking on Soulja Boy’s rhyme schemes. “In the second verse, Mr. Boy attempts to rhyme the words ‘hoes and bitches’ with ‘I throw them some fifties’. I have searched the Harvard database and there is no dialect known to man in which these words have even slightly similar phonetic construction.” The linguist also noted that approximately 75% of the rhymes consist of words ending in ‘ah’, such as ‘nah, ‘yah!’, and ‘cuzz ah’. “There are simply not enough words that end with this particular phoneme,” Fine noted, “that would make it possible for about half of these rhymes to be remotely original.”

In addition to nonsensical rhymes, Fine explained that Soulja Boy also displayed a perplexing lack of sentence construction abilities. “He constantly interrupts his sentences to interject with seemingly random shouts and hollers. For instance, he starts a line with ‘I say to the hunnies every day,’ which seems normal enough, but then continues “YUZ SAYS WHAT CHYA YAHIN IN MY GRILL,” which makes absolutely zero lexical sense.”

Fine’s final analysis reported 90% sentence fragments, 4 words per sentence, and a second grade reading level. “The most bizarre line in the song,” he said, “is the 3rd to last one. Mr. Boy raps, ‘I wanna chill around.’ Doesn’t he know that prepositions aren’t something you can end a sentence with?”