olice announced Friday that they had apprehended a suspect in the murders of up to 10 killings, the notorious BTK killer, as DNA evidence may prove. The alleged BTK killer made no confirmation of his accusations, but did call national news media “fuck ups� who couldn’t even “get a simple three-letter name right.�

The suspect, Dennis Rader, blasted newspapers and television media for screwing up the killer’s chosen name since the earliest days of the first BTK victim. Between 1974 and 1986, or possibly even as late as 1991, the BTK killer (BTK standing for “bind, torture and kill�) compiled 8 victims, with two more potential victims being examined by police, and went through at least 6 public name changes as the media attempted to pigeon-hole the serial murderer.

Upon the death of the first four victims, an entire family, early pioneering journalists attempted to name the perpetrator “the Family-Size Killer.� When the next victim was discovered, three months later, the media hoped they had a serial killer on their hands, and dubbed him, “The Wichita Stabbing Strangler.� City officials glowered at the negative publicity, and demanded they change the name. Newspapers were in favor of “The Jayhawk Stabbing Strangler,� while news media won out with “Mr. Poky-Squeezy.� Upon the serial murderer being confused with a local birthday party clown of the same name, they changed his name again to “The Country-Fried Killer.� Around the same time, police confirmed letters being sent to them were likely from the perpetrator of the crimes, requesting the title “The BTK Killer.�

Even then, the news media fucked it up. A typographical error on the police memo lead to the killer being called “The BK Killer� for the rest of the year, and scared off many people from eating at all local Burger Kings. Other residents, who received their news from the radio, were misinformed about the “The DQ Driller,� and stormed area Dairy Queens to dig in to the new treat.

Angrier, even more irate letters arrived for the police and national media, all in caps, with the name “BTK Killer� underlined, and specifically noting the meaning of the letters in very contrary language. Some broadcast news outlets then, possibly on purpose, released the name as “The Beady Cake Killer.� Allegedly pissed off, the perpetrator sent even more contrite letters to police and the media, using some especially nasty words that rhyme with “rocksuckers.�

The BTK Killer continued to have trouble with his public name over the years, as media outlets alleged different meanings of the BTK notation, including “Bloody Tick Killer,� “Brown Taint Kicker,� “Bottled Tar Keeper,� “Billionaire Testicle Kruncher,� “Black Titty Kisser,� “Barmaid Toasted Kelp,� “Bunched-Toe Keds,� and “Blacula Tossing Kid.� Some even speculate the BTK Killer ended his string of murders when he did because he was sick and tired of being confused with Wichita tire merchant Birchfield Thomas Kinnear. This reporter was then asked to quit speculating and leave the police press conference if I had nothing worthwhile to contribute.

Suspect Rader did address the subject of the BTK Killer’s many names, while not admitting any connection to the murders themselves.

“Birchfield Thomas Kinnear? Please,� said Rader, in a statement released by Wichita police. “That makes no sense at all. If the BTK Killer was Kinnear, why the hell would… whoever he is… call himself that? If he murdered Kinnear it would make sense. And probably the only reason he wouldn’t have gone ahead and done that, not that he didn’t think about it, was he didn’t want to be forever confused by a callous, forgetful, illiterate industry of news people.�

Rader had been sought by police for questioning about the crimes, and was pulled over in a routine traffic stop when the police found his car parked illegally on the shoulder as Rader spray-painted the words “It’s Bind, Torture, Kill! IDIOTS!� on a Motel 8 billboard. The alleged murderer, however, refused to explain how the killer could stand having a name as redundant as the Bind, Torture, Kill Killer.

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Like many of you, I've attempted to mail death threats to various celebrity personalities only to get to the post office and find the desks closed. Without human help, like most of us, I resort to these mechanical stamp-dispensing machines, and like most of us, with only large bills I have to buy stamps with a twenty and what do I get in return? I handful of gold Sacagawea coins. And as is no doubt a common occurrence, I immediately think I've been swindled with Showbiz Pizza Place tokens and trash the entire post office, leading police on a manhunt for several days until things cool down. But it doesn't solve the big question: What's with these dollar coins?

Explaining how and why they get into the vending machines would be a long and arduous process, and I would be stepping on the toes of a Gerald Rivera Fox News special that's currently being developed. Instead, I'll give a quick history of the dollar bill in coin form.

Anyone with piddling knowledge of U.S. history can tell you of the great bout of floods in the west during the late 1800s, and I just have. Early settlers shared the sentiment of our forefathers that dollar coins were a tool of the monarchy for keeping us in line. You could hear rich people coming a mile away by the clang-clang in their pants and that's how the king knew who to grab and shake until all the money came out. Americans, particularly the rich white ones who were making the laws, thought paper dollars were a great way to keep it quiet who had money and who didn't. And just so they could hear the poor coming, everything less than a dollar was made in coin form. Originally all coins were made from gold and really ended up fucking up a good system since a penny cost $3 worth of gold to make when they first started. The freshman American government decided to switch to low-cost metal alloys for coins of various worth before they started to lose their asses.

However, because of the great Western floods, any settlers of the West and tourists would soon find their clothes soaked and their money soiled. The great Western floods brought about a lot of adaptions in American products, particularly the highwater pants I wore in my youth, but we'll save that for future columns and possible therapy sessions. One of the biggest adaptions was the return of the dollar coin.

Originally only available in the west or localized flood areas, the dollar coin became novel because you could bite it and pretend to know a lot about money, even if you were a dipshit. Especially in the west, it was also cooler to throw a coin on the bar and buy a beer for the entire town, even though sometimes the bartender wouldn't know about the existence of dollar coins and assumed you were trying to scam him with a nickel, resulting in frequent ass-beatings and bar-bannings. But the dollar coin maintained what we could call "cult status" in America for a number of years, particularly among a sect of Reverend Moon followers in the 1970s known as the "coinies."

Sacagawea herself, if you're curious, was not a real Native American woman, but based on an Asian girl Franklin Mint founder Ben Franklin was sleeping with. For the design, and name, a group of Franklin Mint pranksters picked an easy Indian girl rumored to have slept with all travelers going west, including Lewis and Clark, and her name was Gawea. "Sack-a-Gawea for me!" was a popular cry among frontiersman of the day and made for a great inside joke for clever people who got it.

In today's paper and plastic economy, dollar coins aren't very practical and can't be doodled on or have phone numbers printed on them, which is all that people use a dollar bill for these days anyway, so the dollar coin is still produced for coin-collecting dweebs and old people who love shiny things. Typically they're so small in number most banks carry few of them, and prefer to deal in paper money since most bankers grew up with a Monopoly obsession, but dollar coins are still around, if you look hard enough, and you come across tons of them if you ever make the mistake of going to the post office with nothing less than a twenty dollar bill.

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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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