n a move that surprised the slow and feeble-minded alike, President Bush appointed diplomat John Negroponte as America’s first Director of National Intelligence this week, in an attempt to shore up the nation’s failing mental defenses.

“Now this may be a case of the pig callin’ the posy pink,� folkified Bush, our national leader and self-described folk hero. “But y’all is dumb as shit.�

Surprised and appalled by his own re-election, sources report Bush quickly decided something needed to be done about national intelligence, and the lucid and well-coordinated Negroponte was the obvious answer. Speaking in complete sentences and rarely attending to bodily itches with his house keys are said to be the strong suits that brought Negroponte to the president’s attention.

Negroponte, dressed in matching colors and with all button-holes and buttons lined up correctly on his vest, accepted the new position of Intelligence Czar graciously.

“It’s about time you dumbasses got your shit together,� announced the charitable-yet-firm Negroponte. “Though the fact that you all did something this smart frankly worries me. Is there a bucket of crap dangling over my head or something?�

According to the strangely-named Negroponte, whose last name does not mean “Black Dude� in Spanish or Italian, national intelligence has been going downhill for almost fifty years, pretty much ever since The Andy Griffith Show debuted in 1960. As a corrective measure, the new Intelligence Czar has called for the immediate canceling of all reality TV, switching all broadcasts of the Spice Channel to PBS, and outlawing country music. Whether these early remedies will be successful, however, remains to be seen since slack-jawed apathy remains so firmly rooted in the national character. Word on the street indicates that Negroponte may have his work cut out for him.

“What Russian royalty have to say about intelligence is a mystery to me,� sniped freelance quote-whore Dennis Murphy. “He should put on his big fuzzy hat and go back to Eskimoland.�

A surprising number of men on the street (and two dumb-looking women) seemed to confuse the concept of an Intelligence Czar and the famous Russian leaders of antiquity. Several half-educated men were convinced all the Czars had been murdered by the Bullshitiks in the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the commune has decided to refrain from using colorful or figurative language in the future, to avoid further misunderstanding and possible bloodshed.

Oppressed Bullshitiks, however, can find Negroponte at the White House during his office hours.

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Piss on the shitdick who says Omar Bricks doesn't have any culture; I went to the opera last weekend. I picked up a ticket from some guy in a pillow-quilted jacket down by the bus station on the way home on Friday, and Saturday night I was there at the opera house, dressed to the nines in the flashiest translucent shirt any of those crusty old shits had ever seen.

I told whoever's grandpa it was taking the tickets that I wanted to be seated in the Cesarean Section, because I hadn't had time to stop by the sporting goods store to pick up any binoculars on the way over and Omar Bricks doesn't pay good money not to enjoy an opera with all four senses. I'd wanted to swing by Kleggman's to get a pair of those gigantic 'nocs you see the cops use in the movies, the ones that are so damn big you can see what the dude ate for lunch when he hits those high notes, you know what I'm talking about? Now that's fuckin' opera. But my bus doesn't swing over that way and I'm not about to hoof it ten blocks just so I can count the fat rolls on some chick in a Viking helmet. And there's no point in wasting a night sitting up in the nosebleeds where you'll never see the beer guy again after the first act anyway.

Turns out the crusty old bastard thought I was kidding, as if Omar Bricks looks like he couldn't afford the good seats. Which is totally true, but where the hell does he get off? Lucky for him he reminded me of the dad from Diff'rent Strokes or else I might have had to egg his mansion. We discussed the matter for a while and conferred with some security personnel before we all decided to settle it with a footrace. I got to the good seats first, fair and square, with only a minimum of old-lady-pushing involved, but they turned out to be sore losers and I spent the rest of the night in a bar down the street.

Some guy I was talking to at the bar was telling me that a Cesarean Section is actually an operation where they surgically remove the baby from a pregnant chick's stomach. That was about the nastiest thing I'd ever heard in my life and I was sure the guy was making it up, but turns out he was right. I hope he knew I was kidding about his sister's porn career. But seriously, what in the hell is the world coming to these days? Are people now even too lazy to shit out the baby when it's ripe?

Next thing you know we'll all have colostomy bags so we don't miss any of the funny commercials on TV. Then everybody will be happy as sperm whales until they're in the middle of a Seinfeld when they realize their shit bag's topped off. We'll have to invent some kind of reverse pizza delivery guys to come around and pick up the bags on demand. "We'll be there in 30 minutes or less, or your dialysis is free!" What a life. Sure, it'll make for some funny soccer bloopers, but talk about your messy Armageddon-style bicycle accidents. Or skydiving mishaps, yeeich.

I don't know, it may sound like a utopia to you, but I think it'll end up being more trouble than it's worth. All of a sudden they'll be kicking you out of the opera because your shit bag doesn't match your tux. Sound hard to believe? They're already closer than you think, and I should know. If Prince can show up at the MTV Video Awards with his ass all hanging out, who are these guys to say shower sandals are inappropriate attire for their lousy little opera? It's not like I was performing or anything.

But that's the future for you. A couple of fatasses up on a stage, screaming in Italian while an army of old farts sit in the audience, benignly crapping away in their color-coordinated shit bags. Jesus. I'd move to Canada if it didn't mean going metric.

You can go on ahead and go softly into that goodnight if it suits you, but the bastards can have Omar Bricks' voluntary bowel movements when they pry them from his cold, dead fingers.

Bricks out.

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Omar Bricks has never been afraid to get his hands dirty. On the contrary, more often than not it looks like I've been playing patty-cake with a tar baby. I consider it a badge of honor that I've always been willing to roll up my sleeves and get into shit others considered best left untouched, and have always walked on my hands where others feared to tread. But this gyro sauce is a different matter altogether. This shit makes Lava soap seem about as useless as an eight-year-old wet nap. I need some napalm, and I need it with aloe.

You truly can't understand the horrors of discrimination until you've gone through a day with your hands smelling like a Greek man's testicle cheese. People won't look you in the eye, the glove store locks their doors when they see you coming, and dogs faint when you enter the room. This is also the first time I've understood the meaning of that "People are Strange" song by the Doors, I'd always thought that guy was singing about visiting Oklahoma. Turns out his hands just smelled like the inside of a bulimic Yeti's yak bowl. No wonder that dude did enough drugs to kill a roadie.

This whole misadventure started out innocently enough, last week when I was throwing water balloons full of piss at some Mormon missionaries who made the mistake of trying to infiltrate the commune offices. Don't get me wrong, it's not the usual Omar Bricks style to be so free with the bodily fluids, but we were all out of water. The city shut our building off following Red Bagel's TV appearance when he told everyone the government was adding tooth whitener to the city's water supply. So it was either going to be piss-balloons or blood-balloons, and unfortunately for the Mormons, my bladder wasn't bursting with blood at the time.

It turned out the missionaries had been working at the commune for weeks, hatching a terrorist plan to lead us all to Heavenly Father's love. In retrospect, it should have been obvious, since they were the only two guys in the office dressed like they worked in an office, and they were the only people who didn't refer to Bagel as "Sir Fucks-It-Up."

But all in all, everybody here was too busy avoiding all awareness of work reality to pay much attention to the missionaries, that is until the tall one made the mistake of trying to convert Ivana Folger-Balzac and she hit him with the fire axe we keep in the kitchen for opening cans of food foraged from Crochet!'s food drive bin downstairs. This started some kind of unholy Mormon-on-commune rumble, which ended well for the missionary who fell out the window at first sign of trouble but poorly for the one who was left to try and Jackie Chan his way out of the office. Luckily for him, Ramrod Hurley took the brunt of the violence, and most of the piss balloons, because he made the mistake of wearing a tie into the office that day and no one likes him. At some point the missionary got away, or else was stomped into a copy machine or some dark corner of the office from where he has yet to emerge.

Either way, all the rumbling worked up a powerful appetite within yours truly, and I decided to celebrate by trying out lunch at the new Greek place down the street. I figured gyros sounded good, since I like food that spins, but unfortunately the one I got was broken. What it did do, however, was stink up my hands like goat shit in a cucumber patch. I tried washing my hands with soap, lye and banana custard, but none of it did a damn bit of good. And when I got back to the commune offices, everyone kept calling me Boris. I couldn't tell if they were being sarcastic, or were just blinded by the Boris Utzov-like frunk emanating from my own raunchy-ass hands and thought Boris had returned from wherever the hell he's been since our bus trip.

After a few days of this indignity, however, this morning I happened upon a solution that killed two birds with one stone, solving both my stank-hands problem and my I've-never-run-through-an-office-building-with-my-hands-on-fire problem in one beautiful blur of lost time. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what happened myself, but do an internet video search for "Flaming Office Mime" and you can judge for yourself.

Bricks out.

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