he United States Department of Homeland Security has been given the difficult task of dealing with the recent spate of hurricane attacks and, after weeks of standing back and assuring the public everything would be alright, settled into the more familiar job this week of arresting non-white people, taking into custody New Jersey boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. The arrest, according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, is only designed to verify Carter is in no way connected with recent Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, or any other potential natural disaster threatening the country.

With a proven record of preventing catastrophes on U.S. soil, the Department of Homeland Security seemed the natural choice for protecting the populace from acts of God as well as acts of Allah, but some are already accusing the government-sanctioned Klan of overreacting with the Carter arrest. After all, according to detractors, Carter is a 5’8" middle-weight African-American man in his late ’60s, and doesn’t even have a windspeed, compared to the 150 mph windspeed of some of the recent hurricanes that have dealt damage to the Gulf Coast area.

"No one’s accusing Mr. Carter of anything," Chertoff told the press, "at least not yet. But if the safety of the American people is in question, I have no qualms about unlawfully detaining an old black man until the danger subsides. And if it means reducing the amount of disaster-related coverage cluttering up season premiere week, I believe the American people will back me up on this."

It isn’t Carter’s first famous bout with the law. The one-time contender for the middleweight boxing crown was jailed 30 years by a racist judicial system that convicted him of murder and robbery based on false testimony and a sham trial. It is, however, the first time Carter has been mistaken for a category-2 tropical storm, but these days he isn’t surprised at all by what white lawmakers will attempt to get away with.

The Department of Homeland Security refused to give a projection for how long they will hold Carter, and exactly what they hope to find out from him in regards to other weather-related assaults on the U.S., and they reminded the media that thanks to legislation passed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, they are no longer accountable for anything they do, so shut up or they just may come after us next.

But if there’s anyone not sitting down for Carter’s legally-questionable detainment, besides Carter, it’s America’s celebrity community, always quick to champion a very public cause of injustice. While Bob Dylan was too busy writing new songs for Victoria’s Secret commercials to come to Hurricane Carter’s aid once again, his son, Jakob Dylan, did offer to fill his dad’s monstrous shoes.

"I’m organizing a benefit concert to pay for Mr. Carter’s legal bills, and we’re pushing to get him a new trial," said the forever-in-dad’s-shadow rock singer. When reminded Carter had not yet been brought to trial once on any recent charges, Dylan conceded it was true, but they had to have something to say in between songs at next week’s benefit concert.

"We’ve got everybody coming to help out," said Dylan. "Nash is going to be there—that’s right, of Crosby, Stills & Nash fame. We couldn’t get Willie Nelson for this one, but we did get Nelson, Ricky’s boys. And I’m in talks right now to get Patrick Swayze to perform a revamped version of his hit, ’She’s Like the Wind,’ but we’re in disagreement over the busfare. Keep your fingers crossed. We’ll get you out of this, hurricane!"

And if a B-grade roster of celebrities like that doesn’t keep Hurricane Carter fighting mad at the system, nothing will. Fight the power, brother—again.

Santa Claus on Trial: Week Three

Unknown American Philosopher Dead

Finely Aged Winemaker Ernest Gallo Corked

Failure of Sirius Radio Blamed on "You Can't be Sirius!" Ad Campaign

A little bird recently asked me what it felt like to do 50. I answered that question with this question: What does it feel like to eat a bacon cheeseburger through a straw, dickface? That was right before I hit the little bird in the mouth with an encyclopedia. Actually, that analogy doesn't work unless I mention that the little bird was Boner Cunningham. You probably already guessed that from the encyclopedia he's always carrying around so people will think he can read. But no matter who the little bird was, nobody suggests Omar Bricks shops for chicks at the geriatric ward. Not if he wants to keep his teeth.

Only later when Griswald Dreck asked me the same question and I almost hit him with a framed picture of Dame Edna did I realize what they were both talking about. Really? I've written 50 Polio columns? Holy shit! A quick count of the notches carved into the edge of my desk confirmed it. Damn. Damn times fifty.

It seems like just yesterday that I was scouring the net, looking for columns I could pass off as my own. Come to think of it, that was yesterday. But I tried that shit back when I started working at the commune, too, and it didn't work any better then. Turns out everybody's heard of that old bag who writes Dear Arbys.

Though the official record may show 50 Polio columns published, the actual number written is probably double that. It may seem natural as shit now, but early on it took this Omar Bricks a while to find his "voice." As a matter of fact, the first ten My Friend Polios in a row were all rejected for one reason or another. The first few were because the commune already had a movie reviewer, and they didn't like the way I compared everything to Jaws. To which I still say you can kiss my ass. I still think Working Girl is like Jaws in an office building. Whatever.

My next attempt was rejected because they said you can't just write a column about how you deserve a blowjob. Apparently Rok Finger had already milked that tit dry years ago. I tried another column using the voice of this hilarious Latino character I had created but the commune bigwigs thought our apparently huge Hispanic readership would be alienated by the antics of Frankie Hotpants. I think the real problem was I was typing in an accent, and the milkfed silver spooners around here couldn't make out a word of it, so naturally they assumed I was using the column to take potshots at them in Latinese. Which I was, but they had no way of knowing that. Pricks.

After that I tried my hand at a "reality" column, just typing up everything that was happening around me as I wrote the thing. That turned out to be easy as shit to write, but made me enemies around the office faster than an Amy Grant concert tee shirt. Like the new guy was supposed to know everybody here was so secretive about their cock fighting and underground jai-alai tournaments.

My big breakthrough finally came one day in the parking garage when I was welding a giant metal dick to the hood of Red Bagel's car. Sure, I'd known it would be a hilarious gag for weeks, as I made arrangements to get the tools and had some kid in a high school metalshop class make the dick. But in the actual moment of pulling it off, by the pale glow of that arc-welder, I realized that this was the shit My Friend Polio should be all about. And a column was born.

Of course, that actual column never ran. Bagel immediately sacked the guy who he thought dick-welded his Camry, and I figured best let sleeping dogs lie dead on that one. But it didn't matter, the seed had been sewn. Or whatever the hell you do with seeds, it was planted and shit. At that point, nobody could have predicted what would come in the next 50 My Friend Polios, unless they were following me around all the time and taking notes. Then I guess they would have had a pretty good idea.

Bricks out.

º Last Column: You Don't Know Dick About Tennis
º more columns

Well, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but another baseball season is upon us. It keeps coming back, like crabs, or that movie about the dog and cat that got lost and came back like crabs. But however it came about, we have to deal with it now, and the best way I know how is in detailing how much everyone is going to suck this year.

Let me get my first 2006 prediction out of the way early: Everybody is going to lose a lot of games this year. Take that to the bank. Even the best team in the league is going to have their pants handed to them at least sixty painful times this season. Sixty long, excruciating, face-first swan dives into mountains of Chihuahua shit, guaranteed. That's the dirty little secret about baseball that the league doesn't want you to know: Everybody stinks.

So the real debate is over who's going to be the least embarrassing team to follow this season, pretending like you've been a fan for years while your hometown nine brings new levels of meaning to the phrase "forcefully violated."

For starters, everyone's favorite dickweed, A.J. Pierzynski, hopes to lead his Chicago White Sox to a repeat of last season's improbable championship run, a feat made more difficult by the unlikelihood of the stars being lined up in asshole favor two years in a row. My prediction is the Bite Sox win six games all year. Some may find this unrealistically pessimistic, but they just don't play the Royals enough times for me to hope for better. Sorry, Sox fans, I'd fear your reaction if most of you weren't already safely behind bars.

Then of course there's the Yankees, but like I said, the assholes of the world used up all their good karma last year, which also bodes poorly for the White House in 2006. Once the Yankees' old-as-Moses rotation goes down in flames by mid-season, Yankee fans will be wishing for Small Wang, and that's never a good thing. Better to cut your losses and start rooting against the Mets now, Yankee fans.

Everybody loves the Cardinals, of course, and by that I mean everyone in St. Louis, by decree of the king. Didn't know St. Louis had a king? They're lousy with kings down there, so much so that they have to start handing out qualifiers, like "King of Beers" and "King of March-June." Slavish devotion to the Cards is required of everyone in St. Louis, as their city crumbles around them, but nobody in the rest of the country gives two shits on a bun. The rest of us settle in to watch the Cardinals stomp so much ass during the regular season that by the playoffs they're tired and roll over like Beethoven on recalled vertigo medication.

The Red Sox replaced a guy who looks like Jesus with a guy who sounds like cereal, which is only a good trade if the Jesus-looking guy is the dude from Blind Melon. Spoiler: It wasn't. While they were at it they tarred and feathered Edgar Renteria and smuggled him out of the city in a burlap sack, all for playing shortstop the whole of last season with a catcher's mitt. They brought in Josh Beckett to complete their impressive collection of "pitchers who once stomped the shit out of the Yankees but aren't that good any more." And as a final touch, they were able to trade the guy from Linkin Park to the Reds for Willy Mo Pena, all because some guy from the Twins doesn't like hitting.

As a side note, I'm sure the thought has crossed all of your minds that they should just fold the Twins and Reds together, either ending up with an unstoppable juggernaut or else a team that can't pitch or hit, depending on how the meld works out. Entertaining either way, I say: Either we get a team that will pants the Yankees big-time or somebody to fool the Marlins into thinking they have a chance, which would be funny in its own way.

So who wins this year? What's the name of that minor league team that started selling those bacon cheeseburgers on a donut? No, I'm not avoiding the question, I'm just hoping to convince my heart to put me out of my misery before I have to sit through another entire goddamned 12,078 game season. Seriously? You want a straight answer? All right: Barry Bonds wins, at least until a vain, insufferable steroid monster bursts out of his chest five years from now and starts talking about OBP and bitching about the media. Already happened? Well then, I guess we all lose.

º Last Column: Joy in Mudville (Thanks, A-Rod)
º more columns