he state if Indiana executed convicted murderer Gregory Scott Johnson last week, continuing the state's long-standing tradition of executing men with three names, despite the condemned's requests that he be allowed to donate his liver to his ailing sister before the execution. Gov. Mitch Daniels denied Johnson's request on the grounds that it was creepy.

"Who would want a killer's liver?" asked prison warden Brad Foulke. "Yuck. The last thing we need is some horror movie bullshit where an evil liver turns this girl into an unstoppable killing machine. No thanks."

After hearing that the state of Indiana had offered to buy Johnson's sister a dinner of liver and onions as a symbolic way to apologize for wasting the one inside her brother, fans of morbid humor were disappointed to learn that Johnson was executed by lethal injection, rather than by some cooking-related method.

"It would be kind of funny if he'd been electrocuted," explained Indiana Pacers fan Brett Amrow. "Because then they could have served his liver all cooked up with onions and stuff. I'm not sure if he'd have to eat the onions first or have them surgically implanted or what, I don't know how the science of it works. I mean, yeah, I know that's gross, but you ever try eating liver without onions? Yuck."

The controversy surrounding Johnson's execution has touched off a national debate over whether or not condemned prisoners should be harvested for organs to save the law-abiding. Johnson, convicted in 1985 of stomping an old lady to death, burning down her house, and eating her cat's food, was the rare case of an inmate volunteering to offer up his lousy guts to save another human being, though skeptics have suggested it was just the beginning of Johnson's plan for a piece-by-piece escape from prison.

"The state of Indiana issued me a mandate to kill Gregory Scott Johnson for what he done, and that means every last piece of him," explained Indiana governor Mitch Daniels. "I'm not to leave no part alive, not a liver, not a little pinky finger, to survive a man who's done such things. That just wouldn't be fair to his victim or the victim's family if Gregory's liver lived on in his sister, saving her life and mocking their tragedy forever. And that's one slippery slope to go down, because where do you draw the line? What about a killer's brain? I'm sure somebody could use that somewhere. And that would be totally wrong, an evil brain turning some good person bad. Or even put in a jar, eviling up a lab somewhere until the technology came along to mount that jar on a cyborg body that couldn't be stopped even with bullets. Now I don't know many things, but what I do know is that unstoppable killer cyborgs is not what the people of Indiana were hoping for when they elected Mitch Daniels to office. Not most of 'em, anyway."

Though many doctors have suggested that Johnson's organ would have been useless to his sister anyway, since his was a 44DD size liver a her original just a petit B-cup, the larger question prison officials are asking is if it's ever right to give a condemned prisoner what they want, or if that defeats the entire purpose of punishing them. This question has grown in recent years with the rise of "reverse psychology" stays of execution for condemned prisoners who claimed they wanted to die, forcing states not to kill them out of a fear of appearing to coddle prisoners. Similar efforts by prisoners begging to never, ever be let out of prison have not yet had measurable effect.

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I don't remember anything from last night, I was comatoast. I'm not kidding, I fell in with this fast crowd of Olympic blood-dopers I met at GNC when I was there pricing one of those camelsack things you wear on your back so you can piss on the go. And everything's pretty much all a blur after that. It got a little weird at one point, I think I woke up in a closed library with torn-out book pages papier-mâchéd all over my naked body, but thankfully the next blackout warped me back home. So all's well that ends, like they say. I think I may have ran a marathon in there somewhere, because my feet are hella sore, but I'd still say partying with reckless Olympians isn't bad as far as hobbies go.

Especially when my other main hobby is throwing away paperclips, pretty boring. I'm not kidding, my trash can sounds like a sleigh bell whenever the janitors try to move that thing. Whenever I get something that's paperclipped together, that little metal doohag goes straight in the trash, because fuck you if you don't think I can keep my shit together without your help. I resent that, and if I wasn't making your memo into a naked origami chick, that shit would be filed right where it belongs, under the corner of my desk that's all lopsided from when I had my office outside last summer. I still laugh when I think of those wimpy little neighborhood kids dropping my desk while they were schlepping it back up the stairs. You don't know funny until you've seen six little third graders screaming and scurrying away from a desk that's cartwheeling down a stairwell like some kind of berserk wooden monster.

Speaking of the office, I guess the big news around here is that Red Bagel's dad died last week, some kind of buffalo-smoking accident. And I know exactly what you're thinking, but I already asked and apparently he ran a buffalo jerky shack in Wisconsin somewhere. Though if you ask me that sounds like an answer designed to avoid the question, and I'm still not convinced the man wasn't some kind of High-Plains pervert. I decided not to push the matter further out of respect for the dead, but you know I'm going to hit the 'Net hard to get to the bottom of these buffalo-smoking allegations.

Anyway, the big Sixth Sense whammo surprise of the whole deal is that it turns out Bagel's dad actually owned the commune, he won it in a poker game with a mute Indian or some shit years ago, and so now it's been passed on to Red and his half-brother Gay Bagel. No shit, a surprise brother! Makes me wonder who's gonna come out of the closet when I die. Next thing we know this Gay Bagel shows up and spontaneously craps out a kidney when he realizes the commune has accidentally qualified as a non-profit organization for three years running, due to the fact that we don't make any money and Rok Finger once had a girl scout sleepover party at his house.

While they were gurneying Gay Bagel out of here and the EMTs were looking around under the desks for that kidney so they could put it on ice, he was mumbling some shit about making a ton of profit-milking changes around here so that his inheritance wasn't pissed down a river. Something like that. I don't know if that means we're going to get some new columnists with big tits or what, but I'm all for giving that a shot. Far be it from Omar Bricks to stand the way of progress, I might even have time to download JPEGs of some ideal candidates while I'm researching this buffalo-smoking story. Shit, I may even end up breaking Red Bagel's 57-month streak of "commune Employee of the Month" awards while I'm at it, hot damn.

Bricks out.

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Since the beginning of time, the seasons have intrigued, beguiled, and frostbitten man. With summer came the Sun, and with winter came the Sun's cold and evil brother, Stan. But why? Who among the Gods would allow Stan's icy reign over the nethermonths, shining his cold rays down on a helpless populace year after year? Is this the work of Bertle the Brown? Or Oscar the Finn? Who dropped the proverbial ball and kicked it so proverbially across the street? Ye Gods, why hast thou screwed us so?

As is the case with many questions, it turns out that the answer to this one is more scientific than one might expect. Disheartening as it may be to believe, mere fairy tailery alone can not account for the vast fluctuations in temperatures between the summer and winter months. Who, then do we blame for the profanity-inducing hot steering wheels of summertime or the millions of people falling down in hilarious ways during the winter?

For years, primitive peoples believed that the flat, disc-like earth rested in a giant celestial frying pan, and that in the summer months the flame was turned on, heating the earth. The Gods were then believed to wander away to check out a noise they thought they heard on the celestial roof, leaving the earth unattended in the frying pan. By late fall, the earth would get too hot and burst into flames, sending smoke billowing up through the heavens and setting off the celestial smoke detector, which beeped weakly thanks to the Gods being too damned lazy to check the celestial batteries in the thing more often than once or twice a millennia. Eventually, the Gods would hear the beeping and dash back into the house, screaming "Holy Shit!"

The Gods would flounder around the celestial kitchen for a little while, not sure quite what they were supposed to do, then in a panic they would hose off the earth with a gigantic fire extinguisher that they kept next to the celestial stove. Thankfully the Gods knew themselves to be shitty cooks and were prepared. Hencely, a soothing blanket of snow would cover the earth until the springtime, when the Gods would start the whole rigmarole over again. It's best to remember that in primitive times, the Gods were not revered for being exceptionally bright.

Thanks to satellite photography and advanced knowledge of physics, modern man and the occasional modern woman need no longer toil under the weight of such gross misinformation. Today we know that the seasons are actually the result of a power struggle between the two sons of the one true God, Muzamtecca Brown. Muzamtecca's twin sons, named Sun and Stan, were given the earth as a present on the event of their mutual fifth birthday. At first, they were overjoyed, and the earth was a paradise with sunshine and rivers of marmalade. But before long, the two brothers grew jealous of each other, and started fighting over the earth.

Sun, the warm and cheerful brother who was nevertheless a selfish little shit, would grab the earth away from Stan, hugging it close to his chest, causing the glorious summer months. Stan, the cold-hearted and rather slow brother, would notice a few months later that he was no longer holding the earth and would snatch it back from Sun, kicking him in the knee and causing the earth's bitter cold winters.

Back and forth they have gone through the years, repeating the same routine that has resulted in the predictable pattern of the seasons here on earth. The discovery of this celestial struggle by scientists has understandably caused a rift in the religious community, as many consider it heresy to suggest that Muzamtecca's two sons are total assholes. But the reasonable man cannot argue with science. Assholes, they are.

Over the years we on earth have developed a useful calendar based around the struggles between Sun and Stan, creating our years, months and days. Except for the Mayans, who couldn't get with the program and had their own bizarre calendar with cookies and birds on it just to piss off tourists and neighboring countries. Eventually the Mayans were killed off by a mob of irate tourists who were being overcharged for not checking out of their hotel rooms by cookie-bird-moon day. The Mayans called to their neighbors the Incas for help, but the Incas answered back that they wouldn't be able to send anyone until the day after radish-spoon-donkey day, and nobody knew when that was going to be.

So the next time you awake in February to find your car encased in ice like a Jello snack, blame not the cooking-challenged Gods or the fickle freezing point of water, instead reserve your one-finger salute for that pudgy little bastard in the sky. No, not Neil Armstrong. You know who I mean.

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