United States Acquires Mexico at Swap Meet

merica added a new addition this Fourth of July when it officially signed the papers declaring Mexico part of the United States.

"This is a glorious day for all Americans," said President Bush, for possibly the billionth time. "We have added a beautiful section of land to America's backyard, as well as taking out the 36^th 'surprise Axis of Evil' country. As soon as we finished with Nepal, we were going to fix things up there. That will certainly save us some time."

The purchase of Mexico happened quickly last week when it suddenly became available. Mexico, believed once owned by Spain until it won its independence on Sept. 16, 1821, was actually owned by an American named Merle Switzer. Switzer (1763-1817) was a traveling spice salesman who operated the route between Spain and Mexico. On one of his excursions, he apparently took the papers from Mexico from King Ferdinand VII to settle an outstanding debt; it was believed Ferdinand loved his oregano to excess.

According to Switzer descendent Orville A. Switzer, after Merle retired, "He meant to get down and check the place out thoroughly, as well as inform them he was the new landlord, but just never got around to it. He did have bad knees."

The elder Switzer passed away, he left his property including the Mexico ownership papers to his heir, who then passed it on to his heir. All were oblivious as to the nature of the documents, which were in Spanish, and were only kept because of the clever "Bless This Mess" hand-stenciled message Merle Switzer had written on the back. The frame family heirloom eventually came to Orville A. Switzer, who thought it was time to upgrade to a professional wooden plaque declaring the mess blessed. But when he extracted the document from the frame, Orville, who learned partial Spanish from his daughter's boyfriend, Miguel, deciphered the importance of the document. He then took it to a swap meet.

"I figured, 'Hey, this is Mexico. Everybody knows where it is and it's already pretty much self-maintaining. I ought to be able to get a couple bucks out of it. But I knew they'd screw me over if I took it to a pawn shop, so I asked my friend Arnold to sell it for me at his belt buckle table at Florida's Biggest Swap Meet."

Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and a regular attendee of his state's Biggest Swap Meet, spotted the documents while browsing the belt buckles, asked Arnold Plegg about them, and immediately called his brother on the cell phone. Within a few short hours, with a plea to hold the documents rather than sell them before the president could arrive, George Bush had showed up at the swap meet and paid the $78 out of his emergency presidential expense account.

Once the papers were signed over on July 4, 2002, the president quickly told the American people of their new acquisition in a televised speech that interrupted Court-TV's "Red, White and NYPD Blue" Marathon.

Details were sketchy at the time of press, but emergency sessions of Congress had been called to speculate on the value of Mexico, whether it was possible to re-sell the documents for a higher price, or use the land for some other purpose. When reminded Mexico already had a large population, the president insisted that they'd be taken care of, though he didn't specify if he meant that in the motherly or mafia fashion.

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Ever since the beginning of time, man has wondered at a way to know exactly what time it is. "Is it even really the beginning of time?" he wondered. What if it was the end of time, or the middle? No point in plowing the field today if it's going to be the end of time. But you probably shouldn't party too hard if it's just the beginning, since that's a long time to spend hung over. And, come to think of it, what time of the day is it? I could be late for the orgy.

In medieval times, it was believed that one could tell time by throwing rocks at a calf. If the calf was unaffected by being hit with the rocks, it was nighttime. If the calf became agitated, it was noted that the time was daytime. If the calf was hit in the head and died instantly, it was exactly noon, and time for sandwiches.

The ancient Sumerians are thought by many to be the first culture on the planet to take timekeeping seriously, but this is doubted by many who knew them. The Sumerians were famous bullshitters, and they also claimed to have invented the elevator, the toaster oven and rock 'n roll. Conversations with ancient Sumerians are said to have been infuriating affairs, since they constantly interrupted with comments like "Yep, invented that" and "No way, we had that a long time ago. Seriously, like a million years ago. You guys are just getting that now?" The Sumerians were eventually killed off by the Egyptians, who didn't know what time it was but knew how to kick a lot of ass.

When they ran out of ass to kick, the Egyptians grew bored and became obsessed with making sure their breakfast wasn't late. This was no simple task since nobody ever had any idea what time it was, so when they wanted to know they had to ask the king, who made up a number in a confident-sounding voice. Eventually the king got tired of people asking all the time and he ordered the Egyptian scientists to build some kind of magic device to tell the time while he was taking his naps.

As was their solution to everything, the Egyptian scientists built a pyramid. This didn't do them any good at all. But when the pyramid collapsed due to faulty rock stacking, they noticed that the pile of rubble cast a different shadow depending on the time of day. The scientists quickly put this discovery to use, hiding in the shadow and popping out to scare the holy shit out of any villagers who happened to wander by.

After several years of this routine, a scientist named Obel-Ra noticed that every time they scared a certain villager on his way to get water from the river, the scientists always found themselves crouching in the shadow next to the same urine stain in the sand left over from the Great Supa-Scare of 3551 B.C. While pondering the relevance of this information, Obel-Ra missed his cue and the villager went unscared for the first time in several years. Obel-Ra was promptly kicked off the scaring team and ostracized from the Egyptian scientific community.

Ostracism, while bad for your social life and your skin, does tend to afford one plenty of time to ponder scientific insights. And if it weren't for Obel-Ra's banishment, we might still be wondering today when to take our two o'clock break. Luckily for us, Obel-Ra used his time alone to ponder his discovery and develop a timekeeping device he called the Obelisk. Egyptian for "Obel's Man-Handle," the Obelisk was a tall, four-sided tapered monument that Obel-Ra advertised as "actual size, ladies." During the daytime, the Obelisk would cast a shadow over a set of lines on the ground, which would indicate the hour of the day. And at night, what do you care what time it is? You're drunk. Go home and go to bed.

Though the Obelisk made Obel-Ra famous and revolutionized Egyptian life, it was not without its flaws. For example, during the winter, when the sun's arc through the sky kept closer to the horizon, it was always four o'clock. Rather than doubt the almighty Obelisk, most Egyptians just changed their working hours to 7am-3:30pm during the winter, which meant they were always just getting off work and never had to do anything they didn't want to do.

Obel-Ra, however, was keenly aware of the problem, and he spent the next years slaving away in an attempt to develop a better timekeeper. After 20 years he finally perfected the sundial: a small, portable device that used a style pointed at the north celestial pole to cast a shadow which accurately told the time year-round. However, when Obel-Ra was on his way to show his new invention to the King, a scientist hopped out from behind a pile of rubble and startled Obel-Ra so badly that he dropped the sundial, which was destroyed. Obel-Ra was again ostracized after beating the man to death with his own leg, and he kept his inventions to himself after that.

Eventually somebody else figured out how to make a sundial, and people pretended like it worked for hundreds of years until the first wristwatch was fished out of a Chinaman's ass in 1841, changing timekeeping history forever.

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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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