ovember's presidential election officially became a four-man race when Sen. John Edwards, of North Carolina, announced Wednesday he had picked Sen. John Kerry to be his presidential running mate, throwing in his own hat for the vice-presidency. Edwards, the dynamic Kennedyesque Congressman who gave Kerry a real challenge in the race for the Democratic nomination, could provide enough boost to take the party into the White House this fall.

"No longer will America be divided under the current administration," Edwards declared, towering over a small podium as his bellows carried across a crowd of supporters. "We will stand united, and the people will have their way when we win back the White House!"

Edwards, the ten-foot tall former trial lawyer, had Kerry announce his decision in an email Tuesday, followed by a longer press conference on Wednesday. Rumors the two had disagreed on many key issues were dispelled when the behemoth senator hoisted Kerry up in his palm and carried him through the crowd on his shoulders.

"Edwards-Kerry in 2004!" they both shouted to the crowd.

Party insiders have speculated Kerry might decline Edwards ticket invitation, opting for a less stunning candidate, like Florida Sen. Bob Graham, Missouri Sen. What's-His-Name, or Joe Piscopo. Rumors had put Kerry at seeking Republican senator John McCain of Arizona for bipartisan ticket, but insiders say Kerry feared an assassination at the hands of Fox News and Clear Channel radio executives.

In the end, the Massachusetts senator accepted the offer to join the Edwards vice presidential ticket, putting to rest fears the junior North Carolina political superstar would overshadow… uhm… oh, shit, I just said it… you know, rhymes with Larry. Kerry! In his acceptance speech Wednesday, Edwards defied Kerry critics who accused the senator of leading an uninspired race and being an undead zombie.

"I've known this man for at least a few weeks. I think we've met before that, but I'm not that sure," said Edwards, gesturing to a man sitting two seats down from Kerry, before being corrected by an assistant. "This one, this one's John Kerry, and he's going to be our next president. He's got years of experience in Congress, and an outstanding record of service for our country. And I'm sure he's done other stuff. And I'll be happy to make him my partner as I pursue the vice-presidency!"

Concluded the Herculean young senator: "Change is coming, Washington, and that change will be called… aw, shit. I just said it! I just said it…"

The Bush campaign shook off any worries about the threat of an Edwards-Kerry ticket.

"People respond to the vice-president," said campaign spokesperson Wanda Waywitten. "Some people say he's a mean son of a bitch, a cruel, cruel little man, but I don't believe it. People only call him Dick because it's his name, despite what all those rumors suggest. He's not scared of death, his tiny heart has stopped so many times, so he's certainly not scared of a ten-foot Democrat. Is it really true he carved Mount Rushmore?"

Edwards has inspired many hopes Democrats in search of fiery, presidential leaders. Though his political career has lasted only a short duration, Edwards previously spent years as a trial lawyer, and his life inspired the John Grisham novel The Rainmaker. Before passing the bar, some say Edwards stomped through North America and created the Great Lakes, once brewed the world's best beer, and invented the first radio. Legend also has it he designed all the album covers for Yes and lassoed the moon, all before his 25th birthday.

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"Four score, and seven years ago these fuckers couldn't even get a date."

There's a famous quote by Mark Twain that I've never heard before. It goes, "When I die, I want it to be in Kentucky. Because everything happens ten years later there." So my first idea was I wanted to go there and see if I could catch that last episode of Murphy Brown I never saw.

Don't bother going, that's all I'm saying. It's all some sort of joke because Kentucky is in the same time zone, as far as I could tell, and the newspaper there has the same date. And the grass isn't blue there, either. It's mostly brown, at least in that cow field I checked out. "State of Big Fat Liars," that's what the licensed plate should say.

It would be great if license plates said real stuff about the state. Texas would be like "We grow assholes daily!" and Florida would be "Most likely to secede!" Rhode Island's could be "Who?" You could give them all new nicknames, too. What's with Missouri being the "Show Me State"? Last time I was in East St. Louis there was only one guy to show me something and it wasn't enough to make me want to go back to St. Louis again, I'll tell you that. New York could be called the World's Biggest Target State. Wyoming could be called the Sounds of Silence State. Minnesota, the Amazing Shrinking Frosty Scrotum State, if that will all fit on one license plate, and Montana could be the FBI Standoff Capitol State.

It's amazing, I can just ring those off one after the other. I would do all the states but I'm not going to take up the whole column naming six more states. Not when there's more important things that are easier to remember.

I've been to almost every state on the continent, though I can't say with certainty if there's any I haven't been to. Keep in mind as part of my job I get knocked out or drugged and dragged across state lines a lot. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility I've been to Hawaii, Alaska, or even some of the U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and Canada. There are some times I'm pretty sure the engine is a plane and it turns out to be a diesel truck or something, so I'm sure I could have made the mistake in reverse a few dozen times.

If I had to pick one state to be abducted and taken to, forced to dig your own grave and then piss yourself scared before they tell you it's all a call-in radio show prank in, I would say Pennsylvania is the best yet. Now keep in mind I haven't seen more than a few other countries, so this is just amongst states, but these guys are, at least in my experience, extremely friendly to victims of call-in radio shows. If you get struck from behind in an abandoned parking garage and wake up to find yourself tied with guns trained on you, and you suspect it will all be a joke, try to remember to request Pennsylvania. Especially if you think you'll be forced to find your own transportation out. They're nice as hell to hitchhikers.

I liked it so much I'm going back next Thursday. But don't tell the guys at WROK, I want them to think it's a real surprise.

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Nothing can distract you from your miserable, carless existence better than a new watch. Especially a really bitchin' new watch that does shit.

Most people are happy to settle for watches that don't do a goddamned thing other than tell the time and look swanky on their wrists, but not Omar Bricks. I've always demanded more from a wristwatch. Over the years I've had watches that said the time out loud (to save my valuable looking time), watches that told the temperature, the direction, the altitude, my heart rate, and watches that recorded me saying some spooky ventriloquist shit that I could play back during meetings when my mouth obviously wasn't moving.

I had one watch that worked as a remote-control for the TV. This was pretty sweet, but what I really wanted on that worked as a remote-control for a remote-controlled dune buggy. That would have been the cat's ass. But I guess I was a little ahead of my time in that desire because they never made one.

As a kid, I'd generally been satisfied with lame-assed time-telling watches, until the third grade when I collected enough box tops and sent away for a watch that played the video game Frogger. Holy shit, I thought at the time, now there's a watch. My current green plastic watch was clearly in need of replacement, as the picture of Fozzie was badly flaking off. Most kids were going the Swatch route, since those things came with some gay-assed band of plastic that kept the front from getting all scratched and kept you from having to figure out that arcane hand-based system of time telling, since the protective band blocked your view of the rest of the watch anyway. A few others had thrown their lot in with the Mickey Mouse watch, but I knew that was verging into ass-beating territory in the higher grades so I steered clear of any of that happy bullshit.

Nope, the Frogger watch was the one for me. As the six to eight weeks of estimated shipping time dragged by, I daydreamed about school days spent Froggering away in the back of the class while the rest of those dopes learned fractions. And they'd never be the wiser, since it's not like I was dragging a full-sized arcade version of the game into the classroom with a coat thrown over it or anything. No way man, I was on the low-down, for all they would know I was back there trying to adjust for daylight savings time or jerking off or whatever. It was the perfect plan.

After seemingly forever, the watch finally in the mail, in a bubble-wrap envelope no less. Talk about Christmas coming twice in one day, the long-awaited watch and bubble wrap. Shit. I busted the watch out, laughed at the Taiwanese instructions, and within minutes I was in Frogger heaven. Or something. In actuality, playing the watch wasn't anything like playing Frogger, but it had some stickers of the frog from the game on it, and that was pretty cool. And if you had an active imagination, you could imagine that one of those black dots that was blinking on and off was the frog from the picture, sort of, and it was kind of like what playing the game would be like if you had severe brain damage.

And hey, it was on a watch, and pretending it was Frogger was a whole hell of a lot better than studying the Spanish Civil War. So I was on sunshine street for about three days, until one day the watch took a hit during a tetherball grudge match and that piece of shit fell apart. Then, to make matters worse, that little asshole Toby Sklar got a PacMan watch out of a box of Kix as if on cue and everybody was lining up to kiss his ass after that. Everyone could see that the actual game looked exactly like the Frogger watch game, just a bunch of black dots blinking on and off, but there was a Pac-Man sticker on the wristband and Pac-Man had always been more popular than Frogger. And it wasn't broken, he definitely had me there.

So I did the only thing a third-grader can do in that situation, I hit Toby in the head with an apple, and when he fell down he landed on his arm and the watch broke.

And that's the problem with watches that do cool shit, those fuckers break like Korean cars. Not long after you figure out how to use all the cool features, you get shut in an elevator door or you get in a construction site fight and there goes the damn watch. You can play hockey with watches that don't do anything, they always last forever even when you don't want them to.

This is a trend that's about to come to an end, however, because I just got the bitchinest watch there is. This thing tells the time, temperature, altitude, barometric pressure, cardinal direction, GPS coordinates, how far away you are from bacon, Sig-Alert status… Hell, for all I know this thing could free South Africa. Plus it's got a nightlight that would blind Stevie Wonder, I don't even think it's night any more when I turn that thing on.

Rest assured that this is now Omar Bricks' Watch For Life, nothing's happening to this bad boy. Plus, the thing's the size of a soup can so there's no way it's going to get all banged up from being worn on my wrist like a common timepiece. I'm thinking of keeping it in the box, that thing seems pretty well padded.

Now I just need find somebody who knows what time it is. Bricks out.

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