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People are always trying to set me up. And I'm not just talking about all the backstabbers planting evidence or hiding their plastic baggies in my pockets when the cops show up. I speak of the dating life.

It's like I literally have some huge sign around my neck that says, "I want you to fix me up with a numbnuts!" Figuratively speaking. Everyone and their sister knows someone and their brother that I would "just love." But this past week was the worst. It seemed like everyone I knew all conspired at once to send me out through a gauntlet of bad dates. I don't need to tell you it was a lot of fun, if your idea of fun is having Captain Hook as your gynecologist.

First was my sister, proving once again she's the dull blade in the family toolbox. The guy was some lawyer from her law firm, and *yawn* what a bore he was. All he could talk about was money. He told me he made a lot as a lawyer, like I even asked, but he really didn't need any of it since his family invented the cases they use for CDs and made like a trillion dollars in the 80s. I tried to make conversation, and asked if he owned any CDs. He said he owned three music studios and two music review magazines and people were always sending him free CDs. Like I needed to know all that. I just was wondering if he could make me a copy of that "Safety Dance" song. So I ditched him when he went to the bathroom, and thankfully haven't seen him since.

If it's even possible, mom always does even worse. The guy she set me up with didn't even really show up to dinner, but in fairness, he is in maximum security. The letter he sent was real nice, a bit awkward, since he didn't know my name and just called me "that chick on the outside." From what I gathered, mom wrote to him after seeing him on CNN and she thought we'd hit it off. At least I didn't have to sneak out of the restaurant. I wish somebody had shown up to the place, though, besides that courier. That dildo wouldn't even stay for a drink.

If you thought I was tired of this already, you're more than right. But still everybody's persisting. Ramon Nootles here at the commune set me up on a date and when I show up, it's him again. I told him I've had it up to here with him, and gestured to a body part. That only seemed to make him more excited. So you can guess I didn't even get to sit down on that date.

Toot, my little brother, he's got a good heart, but his friends are all screwed up. He must have scheduled the date over a bad cell phone connection or something since the restaurant turned out to be some motel room and three bald guys showed up at the same time. Talk about miscommunication. Even with 3-1 odds they were real downers. They only wanted to talk about religion and surrendering my soul to the Leader of Glorious Light. They had some interesting pamphlets, though, and of course the Leader is both divine and righteous and will lead us to the cherished afterlife in the path of heaven. But none of this gets me out of being set up with spazzes, obviously.

Leave it to dad to put a big fat sore point on the end of the week. He talks up his candidate for blind date all week and I actually look forward to meeting this guy. He's fun, he watches TV all the time just like me, he despises books, he's a crack sniper, he's a crack addict, recovering, and thinks women should be called girls. Sounds like a dreamboat, huh? Well, dad also forgot to mention he's my Uncle Luke. Dad gets confused a lot. Everyone else remembers you can't date blood relatives, at least not north of the Mason-Dixon line, so we just had a quick dinner and parted on good terms, until the next bail-out.

Advice to anyone who wants to set me up on blind date: Don't. Or if you absolutely have to, just remember I'm really busy and have been working a lot lately. I'm a hot property again, so really put some backbone into it. Now that I'm having a comeback dating uncles and Ramon Nootles is out. Period.

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New Year's: the holiday, the spectacle, and the brand of adult diapers, can all kiss Omar Bricks' cherry red ass. That's not a threat—it's a promise. Actually, come to think of it, it's an invitation, but that doesn't sound nearly as menacing. But call it whatever you will, the word is out that Omar Bricks wants all things New Year's to choke hard on a turd, now and forever.

Before you start assuming that Omar Bricks is just jumping on the recently fashionable "New Year's Eats Old Pussy" bandwagon, check the record. I've never been a fan of the holiday, and I stand behind my record dating back to the third grade, when thanks to poor legal advice I stayed up all night on New Year's Eve in a confused attempt to see if Santa Claus was real, and instead got the drop on so many drunks in bulge-ridden leisure suits that to this day I still involuntarily beat children whenever I smell polyester. I've only had one good New Year's ever, and that was the year I forgot it was New Year's and spent the night locked in a canning plant, getting sick on mangoes.

This year had its own flavor of suck since I was under the mistaken legal impression that the statute of limitations for all 2005 crimes runs out at midnight on December 31st, so I'd spent the whole night running around and settling scores, dealing out hasty justice like my immune ass was about to turn into a pumpkin. I also set free all the dogs in the neighborhood, mainly because I've always wanted to see a shitload of dogs running together like in the old Chuck Wagon commercials. I had to rush and do a half-ass job of setting a parade float on fire just to get home in time to watch the Times Square countdown, a yearly tradition for lazy, television-watching sons of bitches everywhere.

Now, no one needs a call from CNN to catch the breaking news that New Year's television sucks big wet titty. Any time they schedule over two hours of air time for a ten-second event, you know there's going to be more crappy filler than a case of Winky's, those off-brand Twinkie knock-offs Foghat always wants every year for Christmas. About four seconds after the ball drops, they unleash an endless cavalcade of morons strategically positioned around Times Square, standing around saying shit like "There sure are a lot of people here… yep…" I haven't seen that many uncomfortable silences on TV since they gave that narcoleptic Chevy Chase his own late-night show.

After the depressing spectacle of listening to Dick Clark drunk his way through the ball-dropping countdown, I was in heavy need to distraction, so I went quick to the pantry for the case of Safeway beer I'd been saving all year for the occasion. Two minutes after the drop was over, Dick was still on stuck on twenty-seven, and I was really glad I'd saved the beer. It was a sad, sad state of affairs, ladies and gentlemen, and I spilled an entire case of beer on the couch. Some would say that's what I get for opening all the cans at once, but you save time your way, I'll save it mine. I just wish I'd noticed that the beer was spilling sooner, since the couch swelled up so much it pitched me onto Foghat's loveseat, and I accidentally touched way more dog underbelly than I care to admit. Now Foghat won't even look me in the eye, which makes going to his room to use the Super Nintendo especially uncomfortable.

That's right about when the neighborhood mob showed up to get their mailboxes back, which I'd been driving around collecting all night so I could open up my own Mailboxes ETC and hook up some sweet business tax breaks for 2006. I had to take a break from juicing my couch to talk the mob out of setting my neighbor Hamms on fire, because he had about 400 mailboxes lined up in his front yard like some kind of surreal drive-in theater (I didn't want to fuck up my grass). It all ended okay though, since I was able to convince the mob that the mailbox caper was exactly the kind of thing my other neighbor Mitch would do, and he wasn't home, so I had everybody over to my place to help suck the beer out of my couch.

Which may sound like a great time, yeah, but actually it was kind of weird. So screw New Year's. Bricks out.

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