Scientists Say No, Really, Universe Shaped Like Soccer Ball

ccording to U.S. and French researchers reporting in the science journal Nature last Thursday, the universe is shaped like a giant soccer ball, patched together out of a dozen spherical pentagons. No, really.

Data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a device the researchers insist is made entirely of tapioca, has indicated that the universe is finite and symmetrical. The probe maps background radiation left over from the Big Bang, the interstellar genesis event that occurred over 20 years ago, according to researchers.

The same researchers also indicated that regularly ingesting expensive sugar pills will cause your cock to grow big and hard like a redwood. Other revelations discovered by the researchers last week: grizzly bears are terrified of clowns, nobody can see you if you have your eyes closed, and if you stick your tongue against the railroad tracks in February, no way will it get stuck there.

The argument for a dodecahedral universe, made up of twelve pentagons forming a sphere, is a radical departure from earlier theories. It would also seem to end the fierce debate in the scientific community over whether or not God likes soccer. Previous suggestions about the universe's shape, from Boellinger's Taco Theory to Neumann's assertion that the cosmos is shaped kind of like an abstract pelican, have been proved absurd by this latest data.

"We were just shitting you when we said last year the universe is shaped like Lon Chaney's dong," admitted researcher George Ellis. "It's actually shaped like a soccer ball. Scout's honor!"

Fellow researchers Jeffrey Weeks and Domar Segui, still high from the rush of their groundbreaking discovery, greeted Ellis' announcement with a sustained jag of scientific giggling.

"Totally!" agreed Segui. "A big-ass soccer ball, filled up inside with galaxies shaped like blueberry muffins."

"Oh yeah!" remembered Ellis. "I almost forgot about the muffin galaxies! Most of them are shaped like that, except the one that's shaped like a high-heeled shoe and is made of braunschweiger."

"And candy!" nodded Segui, choking on a licorice whip. "The stars are made of candy and Mars is made of chocolate and nougat!"

"And the Milky Way was douched out of the vagina of the giant space-goddess in 1942!" shouted Weeks above the cacophony, which quickly died down. "Okay, that was going too far," admitted an embarrassed Weeks.

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The original television probably wouldn't impress your average 21st-century American, who is used to all manner of razzle-dazz and flippety-flupp in the delivery of passive, couch-slumping entertainment. No, the first TV was a humble device, nothing more than a telephone attached to a small easel that held a pad of paper. The caller would call to tell an acquaintance about something that had happened, and while he verbally described the scene the answering party drew it up on the pad of paper. It was a rather stupid invention, but it was all they had back then and was wildly popular because it was new. Everyone marveled at the "Fourteenth Wonder of the World" (everything was a "Wonder of the World" back then, even Tommy Smothers) but social critics warned that the television would be the end of us all, with youths aimlessly doodling away the days and sending dirty pictures back and forth by way of description.

But after a few years, America's love affair with television began to wane, and by the mid-1930's Americans began to feel the seven-year itch for new technology. Many thought it would come in the form of a talking train, and a series of popular books were written on the subject. But the powers-that-be knew they had to get the ball rolling on a new, improved television, unless they wanted to continue running all over to hell and back every election year, shaking hands with every sweaty yokel that crawled out from under a rock somewhere. No chance! The talking train would have to wait. The time had come for television.

No one knew this better than President Roosevelt, and he wasted no time shining the big, lightbulb-shaped searchlight into the sky, signaling for all of the inventors to come out of their basements and backyard sheds and insane asylums and come to their country's aid.

Roosevelt gathered all of the nation's inventors together in a large hall that smelled strongly of cabbage, which everyone blamed on the room but all knew was the stink of the inventors themselves. They were given their mission, to re-invent television, and the inventors took to it with relish in their hair. Right off the bat they formed inventing teams, which they gave tough-sounding names like "The Genius Gang" and "The Eureka Dukes" and they invented chants that they used to taunt the other inventing teams. Before long there was a tug-of-war and a sack race to determine exactly which inventing team was the best, and within a week the President had to send in the National Guard to break it up because the inventors weren't getting any inventing done. But by that time the inventors were entrenched in a bitter clan war, and operatives from the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency had to be sent in to infiltrate the gangs and break them up by starting rumors about who exactly was stinking the place up like cabbage.

The government then wisely sent the inventors on their separate ways, and hunkered in to hope for the best.

The early returns were not promising, as most of the inventions that were submitted revolved around grafting telephones to sundry household devices, such as a hat rack and an ironing board, with the notable exception of one inventor who somehow managed to build a working telephone inside of a live pig.

Several other inventions of lasting importance were created during this quest for television, however, by inventors who either didn't understand the assignment or who thought the easel-pad television worked fine. And though the patent office was at first disappointed to receive them, inventions such as the burp-counting clock and disease flypaper would eventually have profound effects on American life.

The first invention that the office received which came anywhere close to improving on the original television was Monasto Farbie's Dream Beam Television. Farbie was an RCA employee of sub-normal IQ, who nonetheless did quite well in life by smiling constantly and only opening his mouth to agree with what more important people were saying. Farbie's invention involved a complex series of mirrors and magnifying glasses designed to shoot images over a distance of up to nine feet. It didn't even do that well, but being that it was the only new patent submitted with the word "Television" actually in the name, it was seen as a step in the right direction.

Out of this mess appeared Solace Mertz, an inventor from Idaho who hadn't been present at the President's meeting because he'd spent that weekend trapped in a box. Mertz arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, with a fully functioning television camera and screen in tow. When asked where he came up with the idea, Mertz told a long, detailed story about a dream he'd had one night where hyper-intelligent panda bears had come down out of a flying cocoanut and taught him how to make a television.

No one present knew what to say after he finished his story, except the CIA, who acted quickly by kicking Mertz in the teeth and telling him that if he didn't go along they'd tell everyone that he had married his cousin. Which was true, though Mertz had cleverly avoided detection for years by marrying all three of his cousins, so that nobody could say for certain which one he was married to and curious parties eventually got confused and gave up.

Roosevelt then quickly announced that Farbie had invented the television, and the nation was spared the embarrassment of awarding medals and honorary degrees to some Moonie who talked to panda bears. Everyone was happy: Farbie was famous, the nation had a new reason not to clean out their rain gutters, and politicians never had to go to West Virginia again. Mertz returned to his humble Idahoan life and lived quietly for years, until the night the panda bears returned to his dream and told him how build a ray gun that could remotely induce a cerebral hemorrhage in a head of state, which is a story for another column.

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Dear commune:

Aren’t you just tired of all this bullshit?

Reggie Shaw
Dove Plains, GA


Dear Reggie:

We know exactly what you’re talking about. Those fussy pricks downstairs at Crochet! magazine need to be put in their goddamned place. First they have the gall to involve the police in our staff’s hallowed Annual Pogo Stick Race semifinals. We here at the commune may be a passionate bunch, given to boisterous arguments and cataclysmic displays of machismo, but we’ve never been unable to resolve our own pogo race photo finish disputes among ourselves. Sure, small-arms fire is sometimes involved, but cooler heads and Russian Roulette always prevail.

And speaking of meddling, who are they to say who can and who can’t keep livestock in the building’s common areas? They automatically assume it’s the commune’s goats that have been shitting in the elevator. As if their staff is above suspicion. The pricks.

Anyway, thanks for understanding. Sometimes the commune just needs to vent.

the commune

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Editor’s Note: the commune is not responsible for those embarrassing Capri pants all the girls are wearing these days. We’re guessing a sauna mishap was responsible for those ridiculous things. But we do look forward to making snide remarks when we’re looking at photo albums ten years from now, just for the record.

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