Monday, December 23, 2002
I have to admit, after my high-voltage high colonic, I almost gave up on the idea of building my own car. Actually, “almost” is too strong a word: I shitcanned the whole plan at a high rate of speed. It takes a wise man to realize his limitations, and almost being offed by a power plug gave Omar Bricks a wake-up call to his own. Sure, I still had sweet-assed visions of rolling up the block in a car shaped like a gigantic ding-dong dancing in my head like sugarplums , but more than likely there would be bigger and badder tools than a floodlight involved in making that happen. And I knew that I was looking at an unintentional bolt through the cock, minimum, before I got some kind of half-assed car together that would probably belch flame and get me arrested at the emissions testing station.

For a while I was toying with the idea of becoming a shut-in. Just piss on the whole idea of transportation all together, since that’s all clearly more trouble than it’s worth. In the modern world, there are only two good reasons to leave your house: if it’s on fire or if you’re moving into a swankier house. But the main problem with this plan, which I think is the main reason more people aren’t shut-ins, is that it’s damned hard to make a living without going outside. Even computer geeks have to go outside sometimes to keep their skin from going translucent and causing some kind of occupational freak-out hazard.

The world is full of mugs trying to cook up scams to allow them to work from home, because lazy sides are like opinionated assholes: everybody’s got one. Or knows one, something like that. It’s an old saying. Most of the work-from-home deals involve stuffing envelopes, and they’re all a crock. They pay you to stuff envelopes with money and send it back to them; only you have to provide the money. So you end up going into the red on the deal, but it’s a pretty sweet gig for them. I thought of starting one of those myself, but it’s a pretty competitive racket and I don’t have a P.O. box.

Even though I knew the odds were against me, I figured that since I was a columnist and not a bricklayer or anything getting-off-your-ass-intensive like that I might still be able to pull off the work-from-home thing. I mean, how cool would it be to wake up in the morning and already be at work? It’d be like being Rok Finger, except you wouldn’t have to sleep in his office or smell like Ben Gay all the time. All I had to do was find a way to get the columns from my brain to Red Bagel’s desk without using my body as the middleman.

Inspiration came quick on that one and I bought a trained carrier pigeon from a guy at the park, to handle the legwork for me. He was a little on the small side (the bird), so I had to write small and keep my columns pretty short, but he learned the route to the commune offices faster than I expected. And it’s not like an ostrich would have been able to fly there, even if I could strap a whole Tolkien novel to its ass. It’d probably just walk there slow and check out all kinds of shit on the way over, and I can do that myself without paying out for birdseed every couple days.

Well, I thought I had the problem licked for a while until Red Bagel called me at home the other day and told me my bird had been eaten by an owl. I don’t know how he knew all the details, and come to think of it the fucker did have some white feathers stuck in his beard when I saw him the next day, but whatever happened it was back to square one for the Homefree Bricks Project.

Some smartass at the commune offices suggested that I could just email my columns from home, which quickly earned him my coldest “shithead” look. Like I’m going to lay out my precious green for a computer and internet connection and all that at home when they’re giving the shit away for free here at work? Who do I look like, Bill Gates? I don’t even have a microwave, I make popcorn with a spare key I found to my neighbor’s back door.

So anyway, the shut-in plan isn’t exactly flying along like a greased dream. I think I’m going to have to shitcan this one, too, and look for another way to get to work. I’m hoping Santa’s going to pony up for some skiis this year, we’ve got a decent base of snow out there right now and I think I might be able to find a route to work that’s all downhill. The tough part will be finding a way home that’s all downhill, too, like some kind of crazy M.C. Escher drawing or something. I’m not ruling that out, though, I think it’s high time that gravity started pulling its own weight around here.

Bricks Out.

Pulling a Franklin in the Garage
I went home, dug up the adapter and with a little elbow grease I managed to get it to plug into the floodlight. Turned the whole shebang on and no light, but a weird humming noise and the place started to smell like a hair salon.

Let There Be Light
With money a little tight in the Bricks household since the out-of-court settlement, why flush away more precious green paying some overpriced beerbellies up in Detroit to build a car for me, when I could build it myself? I’ve seen some of those guys. Believe me, it can’t be that hard.

Silly Attorneys, Tricks is for Bricks
Things have been downright rancid lately, like I need remind you. No car, no bus or cab rides since they banned me for having a sense of humor, and if another punk kid makes fun of the basket on my bike I’m not even going to explain how it’s screwed in and the screw’s stripped, I’m just going to jump to the ass-beating.

Deep Omar is the Chess Messiah
Omar Bricks knows a thing or two about chess. For one, there’s a dude that looks like a horse, but he’s not called a horse. Don’t ask me why. I think it’s stupid too, but I didn’t make up the game. Also, don’t try to mix and match checkers pieces while you’re playing, because nothing pisses off chess geeks more than bringing up the subject of checkers.

A Prank Call From the Fates
Everybody knows about my well-publicized car troubles and my citywide taxi ban. For most people, the parade of tears would end there, but for Omar Bricks they’re just getting the marching band and sweater-wearing elephants out of cold storage.