June 21, 2010 | ISSUE 46•25

ALBUQUERQUE, NM—The process of evolution, through which single-celled organisms slowly developed over billions of years into exponentially more sophisticated forms of life, has inexplicably culminated in local Albuquerque resident Mitch Szabo, leading evolutionary biologists reported Monday.

According to baffled sources within the scientific community, the exact same mechanisms responsible for some of nature's most spectacularly ingenious adaptations have apparently also produced a 35-year-old office assistant who has only worn pants that actually fit him a total of five times in his adult life.

"The identical processes that have given us the remarkable camouflage of the stick insect and the magnificent plumage of the bird-of-paradise have, it would seem, also given us a man who cannot scramble an egg," University of Pennsylvania biologist Ann Goldwyn-Ross said. "Despite evolution's emphasis on the inheritance and replication of advantageous traits, a man walks among us today who sweats profusely in any temperature and went to see Anger Management in theaters twice."

"Mitch poses a real challenge to the whole notion of survival of the fittest," Goldwyn-Ross added in reference to the biological triumph who has never held a full-time job for longer than seven months. "He's turning evolutionary theory on its head."

Enlarge ImageCosmic dust spent eons coalescing into galaxies in a complex process that had the unlikely outcome of Mitch.

Indeed, scientists said Mitch is perplexing on multiple fronts. For instance, in studying his weird, asymmetrical gait, researchers have been unable to discern any particular locomotive advantage he has over the more effective and less stigmatizing forms of self-propulsion exhibited by other bipeds. Researchers have also failed to determine how the development of the nuanced communication system of language, itself a product of humanity's unique capacity for abstract thought, ultimately led to Mitch's strong preference for the term "exsqueeze me" over "excuse me."

Some have reportedly even begun to wonder if the phenomenon of Mitch necessitates a modification of accepted evolutionary theory.

"It's a given that natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift have interacted in some elegnant way to create this man who smacks his lips pretty much constantly and still listens to Papa Roach," Professor Dan Robbins of Yale University said. "And yet, paradoxically, that seems impossible considering all the undesirable qualities evolution is supposed to filter out."

Added Robbins: "I mean, did you guys see his new haircut?"

Despite initial efforts to understand how the Albuquerque native came into being, one researcher told reporters that even a modification of Darwinian theory might be insufficient to account for Mitch.

"I know this is controversial, but we have to consider the possibility that Darwin was wrong, " said Victor Siles, a geneticist at the University of California–Berkeley. "Nothing we currently know about DNA, no fully mapped genome, can account for the presence of someone whose apartment smells that much like Chef Boyardee."

Creationists, meanwhile, have been surprisingly muted in their celebration of a man whose existence would seem to disprove so much of evolutionary theory.

"It's great that Mitch has been so disruptive to the evolutionist camp," Jim Moore of the Colorado Springs–based Genesis Ministries said. "But quite honestly, there's no way we can explain him in terms of a perfect or loving God, either."

"We're just going to sit this one out," Moore added.

When approached for comment, Mitch himself shrugged and asked if he'd be getting any money for this interview.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/eons-of-darwinian-evolution-somehow-produce-mitch,17635/