resident George "Foot-in-the-Mouth" Bush vowed that the U.S. would not give up the battle for Iraq until "every last American is dead and buried." Though it came out, hopefully, not as the president intended, it showed that growing discontent over the Iraq problem has not yet shaken the administration’s resolve to stay in there and really fuck things up until the Republican reign is over.

Speaking to a large group of soldiers at a U.S. military base in South Korea, also known as "the other front," the president pledged to keep a troop presence in Iraq "until the war on terror is won," demonstrating once again the president’s unfailing optimism/ignorance that a war on a concept is winnable. Look out, anger!

"The insurgents who strike at our troops… at Iraqi civilians… at the every constructive effort in the newly liberated Iraq… these cowards want the U.S. to withdraw its soldiers, so they can undo what we’ve already done there. We will not give them what they want," said Bush. Also not getting what they want are the millions of American citizen who had believed the troop presence would be withdrawn, and the thousands of American soldiers in the region who would prefer to spend their holidays with their families, alive and not being shot at.

The speech sounded almost too perfectly timed with a vote in the House of Representatives on whether or not to bring American soldiers home from Iraq, which ended in a resounding victory for the people who want them dead. The House voted down the initiative, proposed by hawkish Democrat Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania and denounced as a stunt by other Democrats, by 403-3.

Speaking for the majority, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (big-ass Republican, Illinois) said, "We will not stop supporting our troops when they need us most. We will not retreat. We will support our troops until every one of them is underground."

It echoed the promise of the president as he spoke to our boys overseas: "Even when every American soldier is killed by Iraqi insurgents, we will not surrender. We will give them more soldiers, fresh by the barrels, run too fast through the boot camps to be properly trained. And we will hold them there, like, ’Eh? Eh? Why don’t you kill these troops now? We’ll just make more.’ And we will continue with that response, until every last American is dead. This I promise you." The passionate speech was met with the most awkward applause ever heard in history.

The mixed message of the comment, mixed with the recent "Jesus was a fag" gaff by the president, has left some critics charging that the president no longer thinks himself fallible, safely in the beginning of his second term; others, on the other hand, charge that he just don’t give a shit anymore. This reporter sought the expert opinion of Newark University’s Noam Chauncey, not only to fill out column space, but also because it pisses off the bosses I despise so much.

"Public opinion has always been split largely down the middle on support for the Iraq War, and whether or not the American people believe the president is an asshole," said Chauncey, sipping a fine international coffee in his office at the not-fake university. "One issue decides the other. However, now the majority is moving toward War-no/Asshole-yes standing, which leaves the president with two options: One, to bow to increasing pressure and call the soldiers home, or two, to pretend he has a mandate to whatever the hell he wants while ignoring the world around him and the ever-present facts of reality. This president made his decision long ago. In fact, I don’t even know why you’re talking to me about it. We’ve known this for a long time and I’ve got shit to do."

The president cared so little about American response to his most recent approach, he promised us a quote for the article. Then, however, he had his press secretary pretend to search for something in his jacket only to pull out an extended middle finger.

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Contrary to popular belief and a lucrative office pool, Omar Bricks will one day again own a car. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day and for the rest of my goddamned life, even if I have to stick a wheel up Henry Ford's ass and ride him to work like a unicycle. It will come to pass.

Seeking to end the Curse of the Bricksmobile once and for all, I set out this weekend intending to play the field and test drive a few of the many suitors for the title of Next Bricks Ride.

At first I was really excited to test out one of those new electric cars, thinking that would be a blast in the pants. But of course that turned out to be a crock, turns out just because it's electric doesn't mean it can defy gravity like those slot cars we had when we were kids. You know the ones I'm talking about, they would race up the wall and back down, unless of course you took the very top piece of the track out, in which case they would race up the track and knock a picture frame off the wall, leaving a bitchin' electric burn mark on the wall like Frankenstein's undershorts. And the best part was you could do it again, after you found out where the car ricocheted behind the toilet in the bathroom. That was my favorite toy when I was a kid, and I spent countless hours figuring out the different angles you could put the track at to get the car to shoot toward a friend who was swinging a whiffle ball bat, or to see if you could smoke one by the mailman's head. Tyco missed the chance to make a freakin' mint by marketing those things as a Thelma and Louise playset back in the 90's, I'm telling you.

So anyway, after that it's the usual bullshit about "You wrecked our car into a bank," and all that "he said, she said" nonsense. I say if you're going to let people test-drive fruity electric cars next door to a bank with a giant sloped façade, well you wrote your own script for that saga. But you know how people are, always carping about some imagined offense and looking for a chance to sue.

Personally, I don't think electric cars are ever really going to take off until they make them more like bumpercars. Because that one I drove was flimsy as shit. I rammed this guy because he was wearing a 49ers hat, and when I got out to say "Don't worry dude, it's an electric car!" I realized the thing was nearly totaled. Whatever the master craftsmen who made those bumpercars knew about durability has clearly been lost to the ages. They must have opted to start from another branch of electric car evolution, the golf cart. And fun as those things are, only a jackass would ram two of those things together as a funny joke. They need to go back and start from scratch with the original bumpercar as their model, and just make them faster. That'd be badass. They can even keep that big pole that sticks out of the back, it'd be perfect for a flag or hanging wet laundry. By the time you got anywhere, your clothes would be dry and would smell like the city as a free bonus.

I thought maybe one of those hybrid gas-electric cars would be a better deal, like you could be stealthy silent but still backfire when you needed to, for effect. And I guess the one I drove would be all right, if you were playing a nerd in a movie or something. But for practical everyday use it was pretty weak. That thing was so small I'd have to buy a bike lock to keep some juiced-up ex-con from carrying the thing away while I was inside organizing my pocket protectors. I'm not kidding, I pulled off a Flintstones stop at a light once to impress the ladies and my shoes didn't even smoke.

But the real problem with the hybrid car came when it was time to refuel. Walgreens had a sale on D-cell batteries, so I figured tossing a half-dozen of those in the tank ought to do the trick, right? Well, if you're on the same page with me there don't even think about test-driving one of those hybrid cars, because it's not going to end well, trust me.

After that debacle I decided that gas was going to have to meet my car-propulsion needs for the foreseeable future. And you know what that means; I made a bee line straight for the Hummer dealership. Because if you're going to drive an car that runs on old-fashioned gas, you might as well drive the one that uses the most of it. We don't have time this week to go into how my Hummer test drive went, but tune in next issue when we'll discuss the prosecution's case and why they make those Taco Bell drive-thrus so damned small.

Bricks out.

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I guess I'm not top dog here at the commune anymore. They got a new dog. Which sucks for me 'cause those chicken livers were about the only source of protein I get in a week. Dry, chewy, but good.

That's sort of the explanation for why I haven't been writing as much lately as I used to. That and I got fired from my regular toilet brush job. That big gay Bagel Gay Bagel told everyone to cut some of the deadweight around here and everyone thought of me first. Which is nice in a way. But that way doesn't help me any, since I'm out of a job. It worked out nicely for them because Gay got a real plastic toilet brush as a gift for Christmas from people who didn't like him, so the office has one of their own. Two people doing the same job, one doesn't ask for any pay and doesn't short out the office electricity trying to build his own lightsaber, so you do the math on who gets fired. Me, I mean.

Not like it's the first job I've been fired from. That was helping my dad fix the car. I wasn't working for real pay there either, even though I tried to hold out for a hug or something, but you could never hardball dad. I would stand by him while he put the lugnuts in my hand, at least that's what he said they were. Then he heaped on more work, making me look for a 9/16th wrench out of the toolbox and then yelling at me when I told him he didn't own a toolbox. He said it was a trick question, just to see if I could think independently. And I could, and he didn't need that in his employees. Then he was attacked by a lemur and I never found out if he got that car fixed or not.

It doesn't bother me to get fired from a job if I screwed it up somehow. It doesn't even bother me to get fired from a job I was doing really good. I imagine—hard to prove that one, I guess. What really steams my beans is getting fired from a job I didn't even have. I slept in a McDonald's for three weeks one time and they finally found me when they cleaned out the grease trap, and I got yelled at real bad and they fired me and I didn't even work there. I would have told the guy so, but you know. The grease in my mouth and all.

But besides all of that, I suppose I'll still talk to you all once in a while. I got woke up one day by a call at the Long John Silver's grease trap and it was Red Bagel, asking me where my column was, it was a month overdue. I told him I didn't work for him anymore and he called me a slacker. If I knew what one was I would have argued with him, but he gets away with insulting people by thinking up big words for insults. So he said it was no excuse for not doing my column. Sampson L. Hartwig has to write one still and he's been dead for more than a year, is the story. Well, no one's going to compare me in a bad way with a dead person. So I'll get that column done and turned into Red Bagel, Mr. Smart Insult Ass, as soon as I can think of something to write. If you come up with anything, let me know here at the commune.

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