View from the North 40: It's the news you most likely can't use

In April, the Belgian coastal town of De Panne crowned the top seagull screecher in the closing ceremony of its European seagull immitation championship.

Reuters reported in an April 23 article that the contest attracted to the stage 50 participants, many dressed in seagull costumes. They were each judged by a professional jury which awarded up to 15 points for the contestant’s ability to mimic a seagull call and up to five points for mimicking their behavior.

The contest, won this year by a 21-year-old architecture student from the Netherlands, is meant to foster sympathy for the seagulls which, one attendee said, “open litter bins and steal ice cream and sandwiches.” But, organizers say, the pestiferous birds are “part of the coast — there is no coast without seagulls.”

If I were in the contest, I would exit the stage shrieking and run around stealing food from people’s hands and out of the garbage. Just to be authentic.

But a Kentucky man might not recommend my tactics.

When you read the headline “Man shot roommate after accusing him of eating the last Hot Pocket” you think, yeah, those guys are in college — or they’re rooming together after finding each other in a support group for dudes in their 30s who just got kicked out of their parents’ basement — and one of them brought the Hot Pockets home from their job at the 7-11.

This is a stereotyped misconception.

It’s ageist too because, in fact, the Louisville, Kentucky shooter, Clifton Williams, was 64.

Williams, the May 24 Associated Press article says, was arrested on assault charges May 21 after accusing his roommate of eating their last Hot Pocket, then attacking and “shooting him in the buttocks.”

So rude.

Louisville Metro police told local news media that when Williams saw the last microwavable Hot Pocket was gone, he started throwing tiles at the roommate, then shot the roommate in the buttocks as he tried to escape.

The victim was subsequently admitted to the hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Should the situation go south, though, and the roommate perish from Williams’ punitive action, a Dutch inventor may have a solution for his final resting conditions.

Bob Hendrix, an entrepreneur from The Netherlands, is now “growing” coffins composed of mushrooms and hemp, a May 24 article from the Associated Press said.

In the process, mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, is combined with hemp fiber in a special mold. One week later, a coffin, shaped a lot like an Egyptian sarcophagus, can be removed from the mold and used as a highly biodegradable natural resting place.

The article said that Hendrix, the 29-year-old founder, discovered that mushrooms “are the biggest recyclers on the planet.”

“So I thought, ‘hey, why can we not be part of the cycle of life?’ And then decided to grow a mushroom-based coffin,” Hendrix added.

This is no second rate, bargain basement coffin — a bed of moss can be added inside the coffin. His company also makes mushroom and hemp urns that are designed to be buried with a sapling sticking out, so as the urn breaks down, “the ashes help give life to the tree,” the article says.

I gotta say, a couple minor alterations to his recipe and people would be getting buried with ’shrooms and weed, giving a whole new meaning to the funereal lyrics “Go rest high on that mountain.”

Now there’s a slogan for his coffin business.

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