urveys tell us around 5 in every 5 Americans is single, divorced, widowed, married in unhappy relationships, married and swing, or married and lie about whether they swing or not. That makes for a lot of people trying to find the right person out there, and keeping their significant other from finding out about it. In some major markets, for busy single people or adulterers on the move, “fuck and run dating� has become the hippest way to meet Mr., Ms., or Mrs. Right, and her sister.

It started in New York City as a gangbang gone weird, but “fuck and run parties� have sprung up in other major urban markets as a way for couples to get together and speed up the meeting process for people who haven’t found the person they want to be with yet. As Valentine’s Day approaches, more people than ever are signing up for fuck-and-run dating.

“People love it because you spend less time getting to know someone and what makes them compatible or incompatible,� said Mitzy Horowitz, a single art gallery owner who has been hosting fuck-and-run parties since 2002. “With fuck-and-run dating, you compress months—sometimes even years worth of a relationship into a few hours. Or as Grandma Horowitz used to tell me, ‘You never know if someone’s going to fuck you over until they fuck you over.’�

That’s precisely what fuck-and-run parties are all about. As Horowitz describes, it’s a socially acceptable environment for what is traditionally called a “one night stand,� and which I call the weekend. Copious amounts of alcohol and drugs are made available to party guests, which gives them all the excuse they need to cut loose and hit the sack with someone they just met. But fuck-and-run goes beyond the awkward sexual encounter, since after the sex, instead of going to sleep, the couple is then encouraged to hash out their relationship issues and guilt and confused intentions immediately following intercourse. Cuddling gives way to shouting, foreplay becomes guilt trips and insinuations, and sometimes, the more astute fuck-and-run dater can jump straight to “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.� Months that might have been spent turning love into emotional issues is covered in a few short hours, leaving more time to search for someone not out to just fuck you over.

Nicole Wesley, a partygoer since December 2004, praised its way of building relationship experience.

“Before I started coming to fuck-and-run parties, I spent six years dating two different guys,� said Wesley, waiting on the couch for the next party to start. “Both of them turned out to be real losers—one a jobless dopesmoker, the other a real controlling macho shit. Since I started fuck-and-run dating, I’ve met three different guys—all complete pricks. But I did it in a two-month time span, and really compressed the emotional suffering to a short time. I can’t believe how much faster the miserable experience of meeting the wrong person can be!�

Men, too, are enjoying the ease of speed-breaking-up.

“Within about twenty minutes of making out with this beautiful girl, she went totally fucking psycho on me,� says NYU college student Gopher Grass. “All I was doing was checking the messages on my cell phone and she accused me of sleeping with someone on the side. I was like, damn, that was fast! I mean, five of the girls I’ve dated have gone psycho on me, but it took weeks or even months sometimes. I knew within twenty minutes I had made a bad fucking choice for a relationship mate! That’s what a matchmaker dating experience should be.�

Rough estimates say fuck-and-run dating has a 100% success rate—no couples have continued dating since the parties began, but all have happily broken up and been glad not to have wasted more time on the futile pursuit of love with someone clearly wrong for them. And there’s more innovations on the way—party hostesses like Mitzy Horowitz are already at work on weekend getaways to simulate seven years of stifling, soul-crushing marriage.

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Some call him the 2000 spoiler. Others, the Green candidate. But to everyone else, he's simply Ralph. Ralph "Way to Ruin the World by Helping a Dickhead Cowboy Steal the White House" Nader.

But people who would use that ridiculously long nickname have Nader figured wrong. He's a man with something to say, he just uses too much detail and doesn't pump it with enough energy for anyone to really care. Nader is an anti-candidate, running with full realization he can't win the presidency, all he can do is bring attention to the issues the remaining 200 liberals in the country care about. Some say a vote for Nader is throwing away your vote; Nader says it's a statement to the established parties. That statement, of course: "I'm so fucking sick of you shits I'm throwing away my vote on Nader."

Our man Ralph is a bit of an oddity among candidates, since he says things that work against getting him elected—the very things most of us say we want in a candidate. He wants to loosen the control of special interests and corporate monopolies, raise minimum wage and get more families out of poverty. He wants to diversify wealth and put in place tax systems and social programs to increase the middle class at the expense of the richest one percent. No wonder he can't raise enough money to do anything. Someone should tell him why no one else runs against corporations and the wealthy—they tend to finance the whole shebang. As it is, the only people footing the bill for Ralph's campaign right now are Republicans who want to see Bush win in November and stoners who mistakenly think Nader intends to legalize it.

Make no mistake, the commune doesn't intend to throw it's support behind Nader. We still remain firmly anti-Bush until Kerry's elected, then we'll be anti-him. In fact, we plan on always being anti-whoever's-running-the-show, but you have to respect his commitment to his beliefs. Nader supports a pointless raging against the system so much he's willing to keep a dipshit language-mangling warmonger in the White House for another four years, pumping up private corporations and turning the rest of the world against us. There's a man who believes in giving the government the finger.

For those stubborn Democrats who say Nader's only in it for the ego-trip, think about it. Has capturing 3% of the vote ever been an ego-boost for anyone? Ask Mondale about the ego-boosting he received in 1984, and he even won a state.

To Ralph himself, who claims he might steal some Republican votes this time out and even the playing field for the other candidates, a reality check is also in order. Republicans disagree with you on every single thing you believe in, and would probably take the seatbelts out of their car during a high-speed wreck just to get your goat.

Most of you may be wondering, what will happen in November then? The two most likely scenarios are, 1) Nader backs out of the race at the last minute and throws his support behind Kerry; or 2) he don't. In which case, four more years of winter. But it's not my job to tell the future, at least not as long as I'm not wearing my swami hat. I'm watching this race close, however, because I believe if Kerry's elected, the world will keep a close eye on us for the next four years; if Bush is elected, they'll just scrap the "watch close" plan and rise up like a pissed-off Fletcher Christianson. I don't know if Nader will be among the first wave of dead in that scenario, or accept a cabinet position or what.

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I woke up the other day, took a look around and was hit with one shocking ass-wiper of a realization, people: We live in one giant fat-assed country. I turn around for five seconds and all of a sudden everybody looks like they just stepped straight out of a family reunion in Wisconsin. I don't know what the hell happened while I was used-car shopping, but it looks like the inmates have taken over the fat farm.

I met a guy down at the DMV the other day who told me he's suing KFC and Burger King for making him fat. I shit you not! Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't think he's got a good case. Because believe me when I tell you that this motherfucker is fat. Some people gradually get fat when they're not looking, others pack on the pounds while they're testing how little physical activity they can get away with in life. Not this guy, though, he's go-for-broke, may-the-biggest-ass-win fat. I mean like "Sizzler takes down the All You Can Eat Shrimp sign when you see him coming" fat. All he needs to do is waddle his big ass into the courtroom and there's going to be no further witnesses on that subject. They may even just settle right then and give him the cash so he doesn't take his jacket off. The whole "proving you're fat" issue that has tied up other lawsuits of this kind is a total non-issue for this guy.

So, he's halfway there. But the problem is, I don't think his case is ever going to make it to trial. Because those fast food titans are some wily folk, smarter than you'd think from the people they hire to work in their restaurants. And they learned an important lesson when Big Tobacco was dragged into the courtroom and had their pants pulled down. See, whenever somebody tries to sue one of those places for selling them the quadruple bacon cheeseburger that broke the camel's back and triggered their thirteenth heart attack, the fast food guys don't panic. They just bide their time, and file a motion here or there, inconspicuously delaying the trial month after month. Eventually they drag out the lawsuit long enough that the plaintiff invariably dies one of those spectacular heart-exploding deaths before the case can go to court.

And you know that Big Tobacco is jealous as all get-out, but unfortunately for them, it doesn't take some poor bastard forty years to die from a Whopper. The fast food companies can play the waiting game and just plain outlast the tubby malcontents, while they sip on their bottles of spring water and ride their elliptical trainers on into the new millennium.

But don't think for a second that I'm one of those smug bastards with the metabolism of a greyhound that's just looking to cash in on America's miserable obesity. Because believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, Omar Bricks was once a fatass himself. At the age of nine I discovered the joys of whipped cream straight out of the can and before you could say "saturated fat," I was one bulbous, sticky-faced little porkpie. I was teased mercilessly at school, at home and at the beach, and I almost didn't finish grade school since I was so busy pulling retaliatory pranks on all of the skinny little assholes that made my life a rotund living hell.

But this is where the inspiring message comes in, fat Americans. By the age of twelve I had hit rock bottom and I would eat anything, including White Castle burgers. They called the burgers "sliders" back then, and I'll leave it up to your imagination to figure out what that meant, since this is a family website and all. But my point is that when I hit the bottom of my last can of Spray-Whip and there was nothing but cold gasses left, I made a promise to myself that Omar Bricks would never be fat again.

And you know what? It wasn't easy, but I kept good on that promise. It probably helped that I picked up a tapeworm off a White Castle burger around that time and lost about fifty pounds in two weeks, and I haven't been able to eat anything containing meat or grain since, but the point is that I did it. And there's nothing to say that the rest of America can't do the same, assuming that the world's supply of tapeworms isn't dangerously low at the moment or anything freakish like that. I'm not sure where you'd go to find figures on that kind of thing, but I bet the odds are pretty high that somebody out there's some kind of expert on the subject.

So get on it, boys and girls. Omar Bricks knows full well that no diet plan works for everybody, but with a little trial and error I'd bet hard cash money that there's some combination of enemas, tapeworms and bulemia that will turn the trick and punch your ticket back from fatasshood.

Best of luck! Bricks out.

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