otel heiress and mysteriously celebrity-like person Paris Hilton ruined the lives of millions this week with the announcement that in two years' time, she will retire from whatever the hell it is she does in order to start a family.

Mothers were crying in the streets and children were dumping out bottles of Hilton's best-selling "Sexpot" children's bubble bath in protest upon hearing the news, and at least twelve people had to be talked down from ordering extra dessert and totally going off their fad diets after the news struck.

Internationally, distraught internet bootleg fans lamented the long nine-month-or-longer wait to see Hilton's childbirth video on the internet. Millions expressed a vague sense of malaise at the thought that whatever Hilton is famous for doing, she won't be doing it any more twenty-four months from now.

According to local teenagers, after taking the "oops, somebody stole my sex video and now I'm really famous, isn't it funny how that works" route to career relevance pioneered by Pamela Anderson and ex-hair band dongmeister Tommy Lee, Hilton raised being famous for nothing to an art form, starring in a show about her being famous for nothing on which she didn't do anything, then specializing in ironic movie appearances that capitalized on her status as not an actress.

"She was in that, that uh, Troy movie," remembered ocelot trainer Doug Finken. "She was that pussy little brother that the Hulk had to bail out. Jesus, man, everybody remembers that."

"No way dude," disagreed Finken's companion, Artie Dolch of White Plains, Arkansas. "She was on that show Real World: Rich Bitches with Lionel Richie. How could you forget that shit? That shit was on TV for like, ten years yo. I never watched it though."

Others remembered Hilton's legendary career differently.

"I know she's got a casino in Vegas, that's for sure," explained a confident Lucia Weisman of the Bronx. "Is she European or something?"

"Oh man, she was hot in that one Winger video," added Staten Island's Frank White. "That one where she was eating that big fucking hamburger, you remember that? That bar-be-cue sauce was hot as shit."

Confident in our grasp of what slobs off the street think, we decided to head straight to the source: Paris Hilton's publicist, Liz Dick.

"She's a brand name," explained Dick.

Ookay. So, a brand of what?

"What's hot this week? Cell phones? Paris Hilton is a brand of cell phones. This week. Check back with us again next week, though, since I hear denim panties are on the rise. On second thought, don't call us again."

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I'm sure when you ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up, a lot of them say "dildo model." And who could blame them? But the sad truth is that, thanks to unrealistic expectations built up by the movies and popular songs, there are also plenty who would answer "Internet columnist" instead. Well kids, I'm here to tell you that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Internet columnisting, that is, I'm sure being a dildo model is pretty awesome.

The dirty little secret of the industry, the thing they don't tell you until it's too late and you've already picked your career, is that Internet columnisting involves a lot of writing. And not just all at once at the beginning, I'm talking about every week, whether you feel like it or not. Sometimes twice a week if Red Bagel has his computer confiscated by the Feds, which happens just as often as you'd expect. And you know, the job's not all just about hitting home runs and dating supermodels, either, like the Internet columnists on TV. You have to get your hands dirty. One time a scary-assed rat tried to make off with the disk I'd saved that week's column on and I had to club the damn thing with a telephone receiver until it gave up the goods. And if you think that's bad, try explaining to Ramon Nootles why you used his phone to kill a rat. As if I want rat shrapnel all over my own phone.

So, if Internet columnisting is a fool's utopia, what should kids today aspire to be? I've given it some serious thought over the years I've spent working at the commune, while looking through the want ads and building a potato gun in my spare time. And I have to say that if you think you can pull it off, go for being the Pope.

What in the hell did the Pope ever do to nail down a gig so sweet? I mean, there are a lot of famous guys out there with pretty cushy careers, from Ed McMahon to the Gerber baby and whatnot. But even the president has to walk around and wave and sign shit every once in a while. What does the Pope do? Wear a hat? Omar Bricks is all about getting paid to wear a fucked-up hat, people. Give me a break.

Not that Pope is the only cushy job out there. I have to imagine being a professional downhill skier would be pretty hard to beat; after all, gravity is doing all the work for you. Nice job if you can get it. And where was I when the TV bozos walked up to Robin Leach on the street and asked him if he wanted to host Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? Exactly what kind of qualifications do you need to walk around and point at shit, like "Hey, nice drapes!" or "Holy shit, you've got six cars!"?

And you just know he's crashing at all of these fancy pads when the owners are out of town. Sometimes when they have shots panning across the house to show all of the swanky shit these rich folks have lying around, you can see Robin in the background, looking for a spare key under the doormat. Not that I blame him, if I was there I'd pick one of those big-assed houses and just move from room to room every day. It's not like those people can keep track of what's going on in each of their eight thousand rooms all the time. And if they were that worried about it, they'd put keycard scanners or something on the doors like hotels did after they got wise to my scam.

So, to sum up, if you're staring down the barrel of a chance to be the Pope, I say shit yeah, go for it. But if you're like me and the church has filed some bullshit restraining order against you, you could do worse than being a TV host or operating the projector at a porno house or something along those lines. There are a lot of options out there. And by the way, if some talk-show guy like Leno or Chevy Chase or whoever comes up to you on the street and hits you up like "Hey man, I could use a sidekick to laugh at my jokes on TV, what are you doing tonight?" I say jump on that gravy train and hang on for dear life. I'll give you great odds that you never regret that career move when you're raking in the dough for sitting on your ass, chuckling and pulling the occasional finger. Only an idiot would turn that down, and God knows Omar Bricks won't make that same mistake twice.

Bricks out.

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Anyone who's ever showed up naked on the shores of Greenland expecting a lush tropical paradise, only to have his dong bit off by a penguin, is liable to be curious as to how the island got its misleading name. Likewise for any cold-loving Eskimo freak living in Iceland and wondering why his balls are sweating all the time and why everybody makes fun of his bulbous whale-fur parka while they're all kicking it in Hawaiian shirts and jams. The mystery of why Iceland is green and Greenland is icier than Catherine Zeta-Jones' chest cavity is something that has vexed tourists, indiscriminate immigrants and the uninformed for centuries.

The reasons behind this cartographical bait-and-switch date back to ancient times. In 330 B.C., the ancient explorer Pytheas sailed north from France to try and find some place to dump a dead horse that nobody wanted to take off his hands. Back in those days you couldn't just dump a dead horse by the side of the freeway like you can now, there were laws and steep horse-carcass-disposal fees. Pytheas's horse died of shock after walking on the explorer having sex with his wife's hat rack, and so even beyond the expense of paying somebody to dump the corpse off a high cliff, Pytheas was not looking forward to explaining to someone why the horse died with such a surprised look on his face.

So the explorer set out in his ship, with the horse's body in tow, beginning to smell even more ripe than a horse does when alive. Six days north of Britain, and a day south of the edge of the world where you could peek around to the other side and see the word search puzzle and maze game on the back, Pytheas found a beautiful uncharted island. After taking a quick look around to make sure he didn't see anybody he knew, Pytheas dumped the horse and planted his own personal "Found it!" flag, as a warning to any other explorers inclined to claim the island for their own, and their horses.

Iceland was populated mainly by embarrassing corpses and explorers' flags until the 9th century, when it was settled by Norwegians who brought with them a number of Celts in their luggage. Around this time the island came to be known as Tholböp, an Icelandic word meaning "Land of Easy Women." But the natives there eventually changed the name to "Iceland," so Vikings in the area would look at their maps and say "Fuck that, sounds cold!" and instead carry on their raping and pillaging in Greenland, where they would freeze to death because Greenland is nothing but a big hunk of ice floating out in the ocean. Nobody said the Icelanders didn't have a good sense of humor. This has been evidenced in the high percentage of Icelandic men named Snorri and in the nation's major exports: pet rocks and really hot women who look like Björk.

The half-dozen natives of Greenland didn't appreciate having their island's name changed without being consulted first, but the resulting bumper crop of dead Vikings washing up on their shores soon assuaged all of their concerns. This development served to found Greenland's economy, which was soon booming with the import of dead frozen Vikings and the export of Greenlanders who thought it might be nicer to live somewhere else. Those who remained lived the good life, as much as any life lived in constant oppressive cold on top of a giant hunk of ice can be called good, and they were content to sing songs about snow while huddled inside their igloos made of piles of dead frozen Vikings.

Greenland was originally known as Igapaquk, an Inuit word meaning "Eeh, it's okay." The first colony on the island was founded in 500 B.C. by a lost band of Inuit sailors from Canada who were very pessimistic about their chances of finding something better if they sailed on further. Legend has it that these early inexperienced pilgrims only stayed on Greenland because of a linguistic snafu which caused them to confuse the two meanings of the word "settle," one being to build a colony in a new land and the other to accept something shitty even though you could probably do better.

So now that the globe's great lie has been exposed we can move on to more pressing questions, such as what do they call really nice dishes in China? Stay tuned.

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