However, the most celebrated result of the raid was the capture of the infamous Nail Murderer, Jason Paine, who is single-handedly responsible for the deaths of over three and a half people.

Upon capture, Mr. Paine attempted to use a nail to stab an officer’s throat. Unfortunately for him, he was then shot in the leg. While writhing in agony on the floor, he then attempted to place the nail on the ground and wait for the officer to trip over it and crack his skull open upon the hard ground, a technique mirroring his first murder of a local young woman, who had left an apartment warming party completely sober.

This time Mr. Paine received a tazing.

After they brought him to the station for processing, Mr. Paine attempted to murder another officer by dropping a nail next to his marijuana stash, hoping he would, in his impaired state, put the nail in his mouth and die, another previously successful technique. It was by sheer luck that a nearby officer discovered the nail and, to prevent any mental impairment of his fellow officers, decided to burn the entire stash, ensuring that no one would be…never mind.

After being allowed to shower, Mr. Paine then proceeded to place a nail into the shower head, so that the next person who took a shower would have a nail shoved into their eye when they turned the water on. Spotting the dangerous shower stall, an officer pulled out his sidearm and, before shooting the nail off and destroying the shower head, whipped Mr. Paine directly in his face. He was also tazed.

But finally, the hazardous night was almost over, and two officers brought the Nail Murderer to his cell. In a last, dastardly attempt to murder someone else, he pulled out a nailgun. He shoved the nailgun in one of the officers’ arms, expectantly waiting for him to start shooting off randomly and kill himself in the process.

The police, fed up with facing the same tactics he had used to murder before, kicked him in his cell with excessive force, before tazing him one last time.

The police chief of the station, John Hargrove, had this to say: “This man is the most annoying person on the face of the earth. And I want to taze him! But we still have no idea where he gets all these nails from. I mean seriously, he pulls one out in the shower? What the hell!”

Although the police may still be baffled, at least you, the reader, have the knowledge that you are safe from any one of multiple humiliating deaths involving nails and your own stupidity.

-Steven Lim

“It was a joke at first,” Terry Lenux, junior, said. “One of us had an idea – what if we could lure attractive girls across the quad? Get them into Grainger? Then, you know, maybe we could talk to them.”

As engineers are neither versed in social skills or communication, the idea of talking to girls organically seemed almost out of the question. Until Randall Varns, senior, had a brain wave.

“I’ve always seen how those girls feed the squirrels with peanuts and corn and whatever. And I was always miffed, thinking to myself, why aren’t they feeding me? I will eventually be making way more than them and will be able to feed them 100 peanuts for every peanut they could feed me now. So then I thought. Let’s make a mechanized squirrel,” Varns said.

Code named SQURYL, Varns and Lenux worked feverishly to produce a mechanized squirrel that could be remote controlled all the way from Siebel Center. But there were a few bugs to be sorted out first.

“All the real squirrels were chasing SQURYL around the trees, and it was messing everything up. And there was humping. And biting. Things got pretty kinky, from a squirrel sense. But that’s not why we designed it.”

After coating SQURYL with hawk pheromones, the engineers found success with their project. Girls that would be rated 7 or 8 on the Reddit message boards started trickling onto the engineering quad. But evidently, this did not solve Varns nor Lenxus’s problems.

“It turns out that the majority of Illinois students would rather have sex with a squirrel than me,” Varns said. “Whatever. Maybe I’ll submit SQURYL to a contest or something – or at least equip it with cameras.”

– Aaron Toch

While they do not claim to be absolutely certain of what they have found, the scientists have conducted tests and determined that the body is composed primarily of matzo, the unleavened bread typically consumed by Jewish people during the week of Passover. Since Jesus himself went on record to confirm that this bread is what his body was made of by presenting it to his disciples during a Passover Supper, he is the only person historically known to have such a body composition, making him the most likely candidate to fit these remains.

"That's him, officer, there's the body"

What is particularly interesting about the find is that it seems to dispute the widespread belief that Jesus died on a cross. What the archaeologists discovered was that it that the body had been destroyed even to the point of crumbling apart. Experts have attributed this effect to a corrosive alcohol poisoning in the blood: the concentration was at a comparable level to that of red wine.

Religious groups are understandably in an uproar. They claim that these men and women have not found the body of Christ. After all, the churches of the world know exactly where the body of Christ is: it’s in those little wafers that they pass out at their cannibalistic ritual every week.

In fact, the Church is so confident in its assertions that it has offered to allow a few wafers to be analyzed for DNA testing against the body to prove that the findings of these archaeologists is a fraud. The scientists have yet to respond to Pope Benedict’s invitation.

– Marius Berner

Photos by Wonderlane & Fleming Brishen

 “I’m surprised it took him so long, to tell you the truth,” co-founder Jeremy Lu with a hint of chagrin in his voice. “We brought change to this school, and it’s taken him this long to give us recognition?”

 Sorkin is excited to work with the material despite catcalls from the founders.

“I cannot wait to implement the memes into my movie. The way they use Philosoraptor perfectly captures the mood. ‘If UIUC has a top engineering project / why do all of its professors suck’ could not be more eloquently stated and more accurate,” Sorkin said. “And I’ll be sure to throw in another boat montage scene.”

 When it was found out that Illinois’s rowing team was near last in competition, Sorkin attempted to change his tune. “How about football? Basketball? Are you kidding me?”

 Lu is very proud of the “Walk to class / get hit by bike” meme that sprouted up on his page.

 “To think that all 8,718 members saw that stroke of brilliance and I get all the credit – I can live with that. It’s not called stealing, it’s called raising awareness about those inconsiderate bikers that use up valuable walking space.”

 Due to the popularity of Sorkin’s future film, a new class will open up, “The History of the Meme” – it is currently slated to be taught by history professor Bruce Levine.

 “I teach about the Civil War,” Levine said. “I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Can’t you get a TA to do this?”

– Aaron Toch

Photos by WEBN-TV

1. Drinks

Coke and Pepsi?

 ANSWER: One is delicious; the other is flat, sickly sweet, and Pepsi.

2. Celebrities

Joel McHale and Ryan Seacrest?

ANSWER: Joel McHale is on top.
**Easy tip to remember: McHale is in, Seacrest out.

3. Geography

Wisconsin and Minnesota?

ANSWER: Not much. They are both provinces of Canada; one happens to be more west than the other, but it still remains uncertain which one that is. Use the terms interchangeably.

4. Celebrities II

Jared Leto, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, Topher Grace, Hayden Skywalker, and Henrik Zetterberg?

ANSWER: There is none.  It’s all Pistachio Disguisey. Sure, he used to be dynamite with all his various elaborate disguises—from notable figures such as Marilyn Manson, Elton John, a mediocre George W. Bush to a remarkable Spike Lee. However, once portrayed in his promising film that bombed hard, he suffered a mental breakdown and was often found hiding in his turtle shell. Since his recovery, he only feels comfortable slightly changing his appearance for each disguise, and these “celebrities” are his inventions.

– Scott Blickensderfer

Drawn by Scott Blickensderfer

– Deadbeat Writing Staff

Drawn by Scott Blickensderfer

– Henri Kenney

“Effective on February 29, 2012, I will be resigning my position as CEO of the North Pole. My age is beginning to get the better of me, and I am no longer able to deal with the stress of the numerous responsibilities and intense media scrutiny. It has been a good long run, and I thank those of you who supported me and helped make this possible. I now am looking forward to enjoying my remaining years in quiet retirement with my wife.”

Reactions to the news of Claus’s retirement have been mixed but very passionate on both sides of the discussion. The history of the man and the famous North Pole Corporation is a long and mysterious one. His unwillingness to speak to the media has resulted in very little knowledge about the early years of his life, but experts and scholars who have studied him tend to agree that he was born in Greece almost two thousand years ago. It is commonly believed that he then traveled to Germany, which is where he learned the art of crafting toys from wood. He studied the trade there for a few centuries before traveling to the Netherlands, where he took a job building toys at a small shop to support himself.

Finally, in the late eighteenth century Claus took the money he had saved and immigrated to the United States. Upon his arrival, he used his savings as capital to establish his own toy manufacturing company. Starting with only three elves, the company rapidly grew and began to offer delivery services as well. Claus’s reputation as a jolly, good-natured man is largely due to his early years personally delivering toys in a reindeer drawn sled (although he rarely makes the deliveries himself anymore). From these modest beginnings, Claus’s corporation has expanded dramatically, and today it employs over 250,000 workers and manufactures over twenty million toys a year in more than two hundred countries.

Yet despite his impressive success, Claus is probably best known for redefining Christmas into what we know it as today. The holiday was originally intended to be a celebration of the birth of the Messiah Jesus Christ, but as time went on people began to treat the day as a serious occasion of reverence and church-going. Claus had always felt that this message was a depressing one, particularly for young children. So on the night before Christmas in 1809, he loaded up a large red sleigh and delivered free toys to the children of every house on Earth. The joy he created was so great that Christmas became a day of celebration once again. So Claus vowed to repeat this act of charity every Christmas, and has held true to his word, causing him to be beloved by children all over the world.

However, Claus’s generosity and joviality have not endeared him to everyone. Many prominent Christian groups have criticized him

Desperate Claus turns tricks for cash.

for “destroying the sanctity of Christmas” by removing Jesus from the equation. Anti-consumers have attacked him for the “commercialization of the holiday season.” Claus has also faced a stream of legal troubles over the years. In 1934 the United States Department of Labor conducted an in-depth investigation of the North Pole Corporation based on allegations that the elves were being subjected to excessively long hours and cruel and harsh working conditions (a settlement was eventually reached, although the terms remain a mystery). In 1985 PETA sued Claus, claiming that his “use of reindeer as slaves for transportation, even after the invention of modern methods such as the car, was inhumane and disgusting.” Yet somehow Claus dodged this bullet as well. The reindeer were brought up again in 1993 when the Federal Aviation Administration convicted Claus of numerous air traffic violations over the years, resulting in over $2.5 million in fines. And while there has never been any significant evidence to prove it, there has been much speculation that Claus has been using Christmas as a way to augment his wealth through involvement in immoral and illegal activities such as panhandling outside Walgreens and fraudulent online shopping websites that take advantage of the dynamic of the holiday season to fleece the general public.

Whether you love Santa Claus or hate him, it is impossible to ignore the impact that his departure will have. Will his successor continue the Christmas traditions that he has become so well known for? Claus announced that he will most likely look for an outside hire to fill his shoes, and he was quoted as saying that the most important things for any candidates to have are “a rotund belly, a jolly demeanor, and a fondness for red suits.” Rumor has it that Kevin James, Drew Carey, and Zach Galifianikis are all being considered for the job. The official announcement will be made on February 28, Claus’s final day.

– Marius Berner

Photos by Dan Cronin^