Face on the Sun?

The King Lives on - in Sunspot Form!

Natural Inspirer, April 1, 1997

In a hastily called press conference yesterday afternoon, Dr. Morris Agnosia of the Minnesota Solar Institute confirmed the rumors that have been circulating for months - he claims that there is indeed a recognizable face on the surface of the Sun, and that this face is none other than the late King of Rock n' Roll, Elvis Presley.

"Granted, it's difficult to see with the naked eye," Dr. Agnosia admitted. "But if you use a polarizing filter, tilt it to a certain degree, run the image through spectroscopic analysis, horizontally invert it, and kind of squint at it sideways with one eye, the evidence is irrefutable!"

Reactions to this announcement were mixed. Reputable solar physicist Nigel Crumpetsford of Oxford University denied that there was any value to Dr. Agnosia's research, saying that "We've seen this sort of thing before. Everyone seems to be forgetting what happened last year, when Dr. Agnosia claimed to have seen Buddy Holly on the moon, but later discovered that it was just a guacamole stain on his telescope lens."

Dr. Agnosia did not respond to this statement, or to the allegations that the Minnesota Solar Institute consists only of him and his dog, in a cabin outside Minneapolis.

On the other hand, Vixen Astra, high priestess of the Elvis in Space cult, was ecstatic. "Elvis knew all along that this would be his fate," she assured us. "When he sang 'Here Comes the Sun,' he was giving us a clue about his final destination."

When we pointed out that it was actually George Harrison who sang "Here Comes the Sun," Astra looked shifty for a moment, then rapidly exited through a window.

Frank Drone, spokesman for Burger King Corporation, was similarly enthused. "The sun is hundreds of thousands of miles in diameter," he explained. "If Elvis has grown to fit it, then his appetite must have grown correspondingly, which obviously opens a vast new market. We're working on cargo ships to transport millions of cheeseburgers to him at a time."

The government categorically denied any evidence of Elvis on the sun or any other celestial body. Their explanation: "It was a weather balloon."

It is still too early to tell what the truth of this matter is, but it is certain to spark controversy among solar physicists for years to come. There have already been reports of brawls in several observatories.

In an unrelated story, it has recently been discovered that if you play "Love Me Tender" backwards, you can hear the sentence "Kill your television."

As reported by Paul Kerschen