indings of the 9-11 Commission distressed many in the government and law enforcement agencies this week, with media attention quickly turning to allegations more could have been done to prevent the tragedies. Some were alarmed at revelations the CIA had information about Al-Qaeda’s plan to use airplanes as weapons as early as 1995. More troubling, the twenty-first century disaster had been predicted as far back as the sixteenth century.

The question has been raised amidst the report: Could intelligence from Nostradamus have prevented 9-11?

Some, and not just stoners, are saying yes. Michel Nostradamus first released his information on the disasters in the sixteenth century, in his usual reporting style of quatrains and vague language. Still, little confusion could come from the prophetic announcement that “The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude, / Fire approaches the great new city / Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up / When they want to have verification from the Normans.� The Commission interviewed several experts on the sixteenth century seer and what exactly the government knew at the time of the prophecy.

“I’m extremely dismayed,� said some senator on the panel, “to think we had this information nearly five hundred years ago and still couldn’t respond appropriately.�

Interviewed by the Commission was Nostradamus expert Professor Paul Fischer, from New York University’s Humanities Department. In fact, Fischer is regarded by some not so much an expert on Nostradamus as one of the few people who knew anything about Nostradamus’ work and had Sunday off to testify.

“There are numerous reasons why the ‘Nostradamus intelligence’ proved insufficient to react to the Al-Qaeda problem,� said Fischer, before the Commission. “For one, the language of the prophecy is non-specific and did not really offer a date the attacks would happen. Secondly, a probable one-hundred year lapse came between the announcement of the prophecy and its translation into English, and even then there is no exact record for when it came to the attention of anyone in America. And thirdly, the United States would not come into existence as a government for another hundred years after that, and at the time did not have a bureau of intelligence. But if this Commission is determined to find someone of the era to blame, let’s just say King of England Charles II for the sake of getting this whole thing done with.�

The Commission then proposed Charles II be called upon to publicly testify to what he knew about terrorism during his administration, or reign, and faced minor embarrassment when a Senate page informed them the Merry Monarch has been deceased since 1685.

Speaking on a condition of detailed notoriety, Sen. Bill Willey expressed dismay at the Commission’s exoneration of Charles II and pre-revolutionary intelligence groups.

“Frankly, I’m not convinced all was done to prevent the horrors of September eleven,� said Sen. Willey, on Larry King Live. “The world around us changed in ways we never could have imagined on that dark day. It seems inconceivable someone could not have seen it coming and taken the Al-Qaeda threat seriously.�

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Ted Ted here, reporting from Ted Ted's world, commonly called Flatbush, N.J. Any longtime reader of the commune should know I've been on board as a reporter since day one, at least day one of my first day, and yet I feel that we don't know each other very well, you and I, the reader and reporter. Part of that is the fact you don't have a newspaper or anything; another part of that is you can only impart so much of your personality when you're objectively reporting the news, or reporting the way I do.

All that changes now.

Red Bagel requested that someone, anyone fill this increasingly dead space on the site, and when the request goes out for someone, anyone, I certainly fit the bill. It was about time I dealt a swift kick of justice to all those things that piss me off. All I can say is, cover your nuts, world—the kicking has started.

First, though, I'll give you some background. Let's call this the Ted Ted story.

For one thing, most obvious to people when I meet them, I am a small pixie. This is not a metaphor and is not a description of my personality in any way. I am a pixie, with wings, pocket-sized, judging by usual standards of pockets. There is some disagreement about this, it's fair to state. My doctors in particular say I suffer a very rare condition that allows me to grow vestigial fleshy wings and causes my diminutive size. I am small, that much is true, but do not mistake me for having a small temper or being any less threatening because of it. I could not, as you might have heard Ramon Nootles say, be beaten-up by a crack-baby. If there are any doubts, ask Ramon how I responded to that.

Since graduating from technical school in 1998 I sought a job in the growing field of handgun repair, but various psychological profiles cruelly kept me from receiving employment involving firearms. Just when I thought the business world was going to force me into the ever-growing field of serial killing, an angry letter of mine was mistakenly published in a burgeoning alternative-news website then called the commune. It's the same one that's now called the commune. Unfortunately, they published my diatribe as a news article, "Motherfuckers Still Blowing Up Shit in Beirut," and worse, they didn't even give me a byline. When I threatened to sue, then-Editor Red Bagel claimed to like my moxy and hired me as a regular staff reporter.

Despite not having a background in journalism at all, or maybe because of it, I flourished at the commune. I made good friends, though no one else could see them, and I continued to report on the things that really bugged the hell out of me. My articles have been recognized everywhere for special awards given to journalism based on opinion more than fact, though I've never bothered to go to any of these shows to see if I won because I figure they're probably scams trying to sell me time-shares.

In addition to reporting when I feel like it, I also keep my schedule busy as the commune's publicist. It's my job to get the word out to everyone about the commune, to promote the website and its staff. When I'm not doing that, I'm usually doing a lot of other things. I'm not only a reporter, but a published author of non-fiction books like Nasty Things About People Who Aren't Famous and Ted Ted's Book of Cajun Cooking.

Is there more about Ted Ted you don't know? To paraphrase the famous quote: Shitloads. But in good time you'll find out all there is to know. Keep checking back.

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T'was the night before Christmas, and all through Bricks Manor, not a creature was sleeping, because my neighbor's house was all the fuck on fire. I shit you not, communauts, this was one bizarre-smelling Christmas. I barely saved the fireworks I keep buried in my lawn, and Foghat took a big black Christmas shit after gorging himself on some kind of half-melted attic insulation. This Christmas wasn't lacking Santa, just sanity.

As the most plausible recorded version of that night's events goes, Omar Bricks had just settled down for a long winter's nap with his trusty basset hound Foghat at the foot of the bed, watching for gremlins, when from out by the lawn there arose such a clatter, I jumped up and screamed "What the fuck??" like a pissed-off ninja. Away to the window I flew like The Flash, not as fast but just as naked. Or was that The Streak? One of those guys. And anyway, yeah, the new house they'd just finished building on Dale's old lot was way the hell on fire.

For a second, brave thoughts of dashing in heroically and getting all my shit out of there whizzed through my brain, like a half-remembered action movie. Then I realized the flames were like forty feet high and that camping gear was borrowed anyway. Sure, I'd left some boxes of crackers and shit in there too, but they were probably all brown on one side due to the raging inferno that was lighting up the neighborhood like the Griswalds' Christmas decorations. And in all likelihood, eventually I would get more crackers.

So instead, Foghat and I broke out the lawn chairs and took in the show while those fire department nuts went all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the roof and shot us dirty looks for not sharing our toasted marshmallows. I think we had the entire fire department for three counties out there by the end of it, those guys get on their walkie-talkies and word gets out like it's a high school kegger. Most of them were just standing on the front lawn, trying to piss out the fire with recycled lite beer, so in all likelihood those guys actually had come from a high school kegger. But just the same, some of those guys were handy with a disposable camera, meaning Foghat and I did get some killer keepsake shots posing in front of the inferno plus some action shots of us dragging drunk-assed firemen away from the blaze like we were David Bowie-sized heroes.

So all in all, it was a good time and not a bad way to spend your Christmas Eve. That is, until the next morning, when I start getting calls from some crackpot arson inspector because the wiseass finally found my missing camping stove in the smoking wreckage. What a dickhead. Like I'm going to burn down an entire house just so I can collect the insurance settlement on a shitty Coleman propane stove. That dude must've got his arson license out of a box of Honey Smacks.

Tragic as my losses in the inferno may have been, I did have the satisfaction of being proved right in the public arena. That'll teach Martha Stewart to try and tell me you can't slow cook s'mores by setting a crock pot on fire. Once those arson vultures had dug out what was left of my crock and we cracked it open like a dinosaur egg, Foghat and I chowed down on the best s'mores this side of Valhalla. Shank that, Dragon Lady.

And truth be told, I had been a little sad after they finished building that house so fast, taking away my personal playground and cash cow, or as I came to call it, The Money Pit. No more guided tours or selling rolls of fiberglass insulation to tourists as souvenirs, no more crashing through unfinished walls like the Kool-Aid guy to the glee of neighborhood kids, and no more re-living the nail gun scene from Lethal Weapon with Foghat at two in the morning. Talk about your cold shower letdowns.

But now, by the grace of God, or at least the God of crock-pot fires anyway, I'll get to live it all again like some kind of glorious re-run. 2005 already looks like it's going to be an Omar Bricks kind of year. And regardless of what those contractors have been saying, I give them lousy odds at keeping the mysteriously destructive "neighborhood vigilante" out of the construction site this second time around. The trick is that you don't have to break into a house if you can fool the construction guys into building it around you after you're already inside.

Bricks out.

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