n the wake of the catastrophic flooding that hit New Atlantis/New Orleans this week following Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of refugees have been evacuated from their submerged homes and treated to an exciting whirlwind tour of America’s domed sporting facilities.

“Don’t worry, the government will take care of you all,� explained President Bush, who drastically cut funding for levee upgrades in order to pay for a war in Iraq, so terrorists wouldn’t be able to destroy a major American city like New Orleans. “We’re sending water wings and crossword puzzle books on the double.�

Upon being plucked from their rooftops and attics after breeched levees on Lake Pontchartrain submerged the city in up to twenty feet of water, thousands of New Orleans residents were transported to the Superdome, home of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, for emergency lodging, beer, and giant cheese-filled pretzels.

“I really appreciated that they opened the Superdome to us,� expressed flooding victim LaTrevor Wynn. “But I gotta say they gouged the fuck out of us for boat parking at the stadium. I was saying we should park a few blocks away and swim to the stadium, but there was some guy in a wheel chair who wanted us to just pony up the money. I guess he was rich or something.�

Good spirits quickly turned foul, however, when the stadium’s power and sewage systems both failed, and they ran out of souvenir air horns. Before long, deteriorating conditions and asshole Saints fans forced the evacuation of the Superdome, which by then smelled strongly of poor people.

Refugees from the Superdome, which is now almost completely under water, were moved by bus to the Astrodome in Houston, formerly home to over 30 years of bad baseball courtesy of the National League’s Houson Astros, as well as the catastrophic 1992 Republican National Convention that offered America one last chance to listen to Ronald Reagan flapping his cheek meat.

Relief efforts at the Astrodome were short-lived however, as over 100 refugees suffered knee injuries from the stadium’s unforgiving Astroturf playing surface. Several reported serious cases of rugburn as well.

Re-refugees from the Astrodome were then bussed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where a disappointing summer performance by the local Twins has left plenty of empty seats in the Metrodome.

“This place blows,� complained disaster victim and dome expert Marvin Milk. “It has all the ambiance of a bus station and the hot dogs are gross.�

Fellow refugees agreed about the hot dogs, but gave high marks to the stadium’s nacho hats, a popular refugee staple. Problems arose at the Metrodome, however, after some disenfranchised dickcheese left the stadium’s back door open, allowing all the air to escape and collapsing the dome’s pressurized roof. Some blame the mishap on the Metrodome’s short-sighted no-smoking policy.

The remaining refugees who didn’t take to wading through Minneapolis’ many metropolitan lakes out of sheer habit were shipped to either the Skydome in Toronto, Canada, or the Tacomadome in Tacoma, Washington.

“Man, this sucks. I knew we were going to get the Tacomadome,� bitched flooding victim Marcy Flobere of New Orleans.

A few lucky victims were bussed instead to Tropicana Field in St. Petersberg, Florida, which has a part time gig as the home of baseball’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays in-between housing refugees from the region’s monthly hurricane disasters.

Tropicana Field has not been without its share of problems, however, ranging from occasional hurricane damage to the roof and overcrowded bathrooms to the stinky, lousy baseball taking place on-field.

“This has been a disaster. I’ve had to watch four Devil Rays’ games this week,� groused Tropicana Field refugee Homer Angus. “This is worse than the hurricane.�

Government officials have assured the tired, huddled masses that they will be allowed to return to their homes in New Orleans as soon as disaster-relief workers can find the city.

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Truth be told, nobody ever thought Omar Bricks would get a cell phone, least of all Omar Bricks. That's strictly Captain Kirk bullshit for sci-fi geeks and mama's boys in my book. But to be honest I never thought somebody would leave one unguarded on the counter at Emergency Room Pizza, either. So let this be a lesson, we should always write our books in pencil or dry erase marker whenever possible or else look like an asshole later.

For those of you not native to the area, ERP is a local legend, a hospital-themed pizza joint that burns the fuck out of some tasty pepperonis. It's not really legendary for the food, but more for the number of people who have passed out or lost their shit while eating there, which are many. Apparently all the bloody tourniquets and bone saw decorations on the walls are too much for some local pizza lovers, and all the tables in there are pretty banged up from people falling down all over the place or scrambling out the windows in a panic.

Personally I think it's awesome. Yeah, what you've heard about the pizza is true; it does pretty much blow ass. It basically tastes like somebody smeared glue on a cardboard box, then set it on fire. Not that I've ever done that. But the place is never crowded, and you know Omar Bricks digs that part. I hate having to wait in line for shitty pizza. Plus ERP never fails to lift my spirits when I'm in a carless funk. They do this thing where every new customer gets a steaming cow heart right in the middle of their pizza as a surprise the first time they eat there, and let me assure you that shit is some serious dinner theater.

Now, the classy move when you're new to ERP and you get a heart on, to the Bricks school of thinking, is to palm the bloody thing in one hand, then stagger up to the counter and start coughing like you just took a hit off a Pinto muffler. When the dude in the paper hat asks you what's the score, that's when you squirt the heart out of your hand like you just coughed the fucker up. What happens after that is a matter of chance and wind direction, but in my case the nasty thing smacked off the guy's face like a wet frog and the entire restaurant threw up all at once. That's how I got my picture on the wall.

Not everyone handles it so well. One time I was there gnawing on a slice when this rookie got her pizza, and she actually thought the cow heart was a big bell pepper or some shit, and I guess she was some kind of bell pepper freak because she stabbed the fucker with her fork like it was going to get away. By chance, at that exact moment somebody flushed a toilet in the john, which sets off that fountain that squirts all the fake blood up by the counter, an ERP landmark. As you might guess, the lady dropped two gonads trying to get out of there before her stomach caught up with her brain, and that's why the front door is missing the glass on the bottom.

Something similar must have happened last week, because some poor soul got the rock out of there at the speed of fear, too fast to be worried about cell phones or their left sneaker. I left the shoe there, since they have a wall they nail those to as trophies, but I was pretty sure that nails and cell phones mix about as well as nails and Jesus, so I liberated that bastard like an Iraqi oil well.

Of course, the real trouble with cell phones is trying to figure out what your phone number is, not enough people write it on the back of the phone with a grease pencil like you're supposed to. I had a plan to have commune speed bump Bludney Pludd dial every number in the phone book until my phone rang, which was brilliant enough, but some little shithead kept calling the thing to ask if his mommy was coming home and that cocked up the whole deal. I had to send Pludd out to take him for ice cream so he wouldn't eat up all my battery time calling like that, since I don't have a charger or anything.

At least I can call out well enough, which is handy when I'm at a fast-food drive thru and I don't want to roll down my window and let the cold in. But people still find a way to piss on my pageant, saying they're not allowed to drop food through a sunroof or there's certain places where it's not polite to use a cell phone. Hey, if I want to talk on my phone while I'm pissing in a movie theater urinal, that's my own business. As for whoever's on the other end of the line, well, that's why I didn't find a camera phone. I just say I'm at the ocean or in a rainforest or some shit and they have to take my word on that if they want hear the rest of the story.

And don't get me started about people bitching that it's dangerous to talk on a phone and flip through the yellow pages while you're driving. Christ on a bike, I'm starting to understand why this thing got left behind. It's like a nag magnet.

Bricks out.

º Last Column: Long Live Omar Bricks!
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As of this writing it's been about one week since our building burned down. You may have seen it on your local evening news, or read about it in Fire! magazine, if such a thing exists. I can't say I have many regrets about it, although I would have preferred to have been given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a female firefighter. So I do have regrets, I suppose.

The whole "everything I own completely destroyed" comes at a pretty pivotal time in the commune history, as I was quite on the fence about whether or not to continue my fruitless Don Quixote-like pursuit of informing the public of the conspiracies around them, or to just retire and dedicate my life to hot-tubbin'. I've long begun to suspect that the Internet is nothing more than a passing fad, and short of creating a MySpace site for the commune, there is no way to distinguish one's self on the worldwide web. So to summarize, I've decided to take the commune to a quarterly pamphlet publishing routine.

As the commune started as a pamphlet, some might say we've taken a step back. I prefer to think of it as walking all the way around the earth until you wind up back in the exact same spot where you once stood. It's nothing personal against our readers or our staff, although there are a few of you who will one day get what's coming to you, nothing personal, it's just that I've poured way too much of my time and money into this anonymous enterprise and I don't believe we've affected nearly enough readers. If only the truth were more contagious, or I could infect everyone in the world with some kind of computer-born virus. This would not cause death or pain, this theoretical virus, but spread the love and joy that humanity can overcome the darkest things about itself; and possibly cause some rectal itching, who can say with theoretical computer-born viruses? This has been my dream. But as with all dreams, it must come to an end when we wake.

This is not the end of the commune—not by far. I mean, it is for you, sure, but not the end for the commune staff, myself chiefly among them. We've all become close friends, and I'm sure they will have little problem doing the exact same work we do now with no office, an unprofessional outlet for their work, and absolutely no paychecks, not even coupons or Bagelbucks. They're dedicated like that, and it's not because they're stupid, no matter what you might have overhead me saying loudly while drinking it up. If anything, our low-budget guerrilla-style reporting will bring this family closer together. Particularly Raoul Dunkin, who most definitely needs to be brought closer together with force. I've already bought the perfect van to act as our new office, and as soon as I find out for sure who survived the fire we will all make our way south to Mexico, where publishing costs for pamphlets are simply insane.

It's been rough for them all, this news I have yet to tell them, but we'll take it in stride. I'm not saying we will never publish on the Internet again, and if Emile Zender, lifelong subscriber to all things commune, deems it worth his time, he's welcome to transfer our smaller publications to the website version, which he is inheriting. And basically, as our last note, I think covering Paris Hilton going to prison pretty much finalizes all the news we could ever hope to report. What's more important than wealthy people being jailed for driving felonies? The world has turned upside-down and on its ear. Which reminds me, I promised the gang we could Van Twister a few minutes ago. It's like Twister, but in a van. So enjoy this, what may be our final commune. And if Ivana Folger-Balzac asks you where everyone disappears to when she gets back from her vacation, tell her we all died in the fire. I would wink at you, but this is text. Thanks for all the fond memories and however many years of loyal readership.

º Last Column: Return to the Bermuda Shorts Triangle
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