t's been a good year to be NetFlix. The online DVD-renting and video-streaming service has continually posted increases in profits each previous fiscal quarter, sometimes gains as much as 88%. Despite claims that increasing postage prices and the difficulty of obtaining streaming content may hinder future profit reporting, NetFlix continues to make big money while offering less to subscribers than in previous plans. The announcement of higher-priced plans, the separation of DVD rental/streaming packages, and setting limitations on streaming devices have all been designed to offset any future losses and increase profits, but today NetFlix CEO Reed Hastings announced it wasn't enough, and has made a bold proposal to raise subscription prices on people who use neither service.

"NetFlix is facing a struggle in the future, to continue to bring high-quality entertainment to our loyal subscribers, those who rent traditional formats by mail or watch via our state-of-the-art streaming service, we need to increase our income," Hastings announced from his undisclosed location in the NetFlix bunker in California. "I see no reason to further burden our faithful customers with the costs. Which is why I am enacting a daring new plan to increase subscription costs to those who do not subscribe to us."

Under the new NetFlix plan, subscribers to the DVD-rental service will pay $7.99 for 1 DVD at a time and $11.99 for 2, while the unlimited streaming-only plan stands at $7.99, and those who choose not to watch movies in either format from NetFlix only pay $2.99.

"At long last, starting in November, NetFlix is bringing the thrilling experience of a recurring NetFlix charge that our subscribers have long enjoyed to all those who have not yet become NetFlix customers," said Hastings.

Response has been mixed from non-customers and consumer watchdogs alike. Nell Farthingford, a spokesperson for the consumer advocacy group Wait/What, said of the new NetFlix price increases, "Wait? What?"

Farthingford clarified why consumer advocates like her are concerned about the new plan.

"I'm not math expert, but it does sound a lot like people who don't receive any service from the company are being forced to pay them for nothing." Farthingford did concede, "However, if I'm already paying them $2.99, it's only another five dollars to get unlimited streaming content on my PS3, X-Box, Wii, iPhone, iPad, or NetFlix-ready device. That's not a bad deal."

Outrage swelled around the internet on message boards, where outrage is born and nurtured, with some people complaining that the media company is exploiting those who do not patronize them to increase their already-large profits. Following price increases in November 2010 and June 2010 on people who actually watched movies, tempers run high for those who are unhappy with NetFlix. As always, though, a few responders could see the business sense of the deal.

"It's only a three dollar increase from what you were paying before," said MovieLuv.net forum user rhAsTings. "Quit your cryin. If you don't like it, you don't have to not use it. Just subscribe today."

Stockholders have already exhibited excitement of over the potential gain of $2,574,000,000 in the third quarter, and insiders at NetFlix are reportedly shitting themselves wet at the prospect of increasing their presence overseas, raising their number of non-subscribers to an estimated 6 billion by the end of next year.

Hastings said, "I see no reason a simple hut-dweller in Botswana should not be afforded the same luxury that a meager trailer-dweller without internet will soon enjoy—the joy of becoming a NetFlix bill-payer. Today we have the United States… tomorrow, we take the world!"

Upon receiving news of the NetFlix proposed price plan, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos dramatically smashed a china cup against his Kindle and bellowed, "You will bow down before me, Reed! You… and your heirs!"

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Not long ago was the day when Ned was quicker than electrical intercourse. Damn the Yankees if Ned wasn't the fastest thing this side of the mongoose races over at Lambert Field, and anyone who says different is trying to sell you a boxcar full of Injun silverware. Ned could skin a rattlesnake in a minute, paint two states in an hour, and make minute rice in 13 seconds. "Hot Damn!" is what they once said about Ned. When it rained, Ned never once got wet since he was ziggin' and zaggin' between those raindrops like a turkey in a pumpkin patch. As a matter of fact, one day Ned drank a pot of hot coffee and was so hyped-up he swam across the Mississippi and back without once getting wet, neither.

But some say Ned got all greedy with his speed, and that might rightly be true. One day, on a lark, Ned stole away the sun into his shoulder-satchel and tucked it behind the moon, just to see the looks on people's faces when they couldn't find the sun that day. Well, it was a powerfully funny scene indeed, as them roosters crowed at all the wrong times, them people were eatin' chocolate tarts when they should have been eatin' their breakfast hams and everyone got all in a huff. Austria invaded Switzerland and all them geese flew straight into the moon, honest to Amos. Nedder laughed until he was horse and his horse laughed until he was Ned and then the horse rode Ned through town, a-yellin' "Otis Redding is Coming! Otis Redding is Coming!" and all the people thought that was one sour apple indeed.

From that day after not the sun nor the moon, nor the clouds nor the sea, none of them trusted Ned a lick. When it rained it rained sideways and them clouds furrowed up their brows and made sure Nedder got wetter than a seal in a vat of Vaseline. When the moon it did shine, it shined right in Ned's eyes, and the sea lived to make Ned sick.

Ned's refrigerator filled up with fog, and his basement got full of box turtles. All his clocks quit tickin' and went "boink" instead, drivin' Ned to the verge of Virgil. His toilet filled with hair and his hair all fell out and his pogo stick developed a terrible squeak and all his neighbors loved Polka. Them was the worst of times.

So Ned learnt his lesson, that life don't move at the speed of no train, an that a sloth in a grain silo has one hell of a lot of fun, if you believe them ol' stories. Now in these days them raindrops fall on Ned's noggin like that drummer boy gone bad, and Ned likes it this way. The sun does a dance in Nedmiller's pants and the sea rocks Nedrum to sleep. And excepting that hot air balloon incident, Ned and the moon get along just fine, thanks.

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Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last twenty years doesn't need to be told this, but just in case I have any hermit crabs among my readership, let me state this loud and clear: Omar Bricks is not afraid of a controversial tee-shirt.

And if there really are hermit crabs among my readership, I encourage you to drop an email and let me know what the hell is up with that. I'm serious, that's some crazy beer commercial shit there.

But speaking of tee-shirts: I don't mean the generic, run-of-the-mill "controversial" tee-shirts that you see every fifteen year-old wiseass with thirty bucks and a smirk wearing at the mall. This column has no time for Big Johnson, Osama Bin Hidin', or any of that immature teenage shwag. And if your shirt's asking a question, it sure as hell had better not be about how the daschunds got in the pool, or however the song goes.

Nor am I specifically addressing the clever subversion of corporate logos that say Fuct instead of Ford or McDahmer instead of McDonalds or the many clever variants on Pepsi, though I do think those are pretty sharp. And believe me, Omar Bricks is all about those corporate scumbags getting their just desserts via a clever tee-shirt.

What I'm talking about here is the holy hell I recently had dished to me after I started wearing my new shirt that has a picture of a Chips Ahoy bag on the front, but it says Tits Ahoy instead. And before you start in with your weekly "Omar is a sexist smear of dick-drizzle" letters and your lightly perfumed feminist mail bombs and your diatribes about how I wasn't breastfed, let it be known that this particular shirt was a gift from my own mother, the venerable Mama Bricks herself. If you want to take up your sexism campaign with her, I say go right ahead, but be warned that she's highly paranoid and quick with a pair of nunchucks.

Now, I'm sure some would argue that I was just looking for trouble when I wore that shirt into the NOW convention last week, but anybody who's read the police report knows that I stumbled in there looking for a place to pee. A string of words to the wise and heavily inebriated: don't stagger into a feminist convention with your little benny hanging out unless you're wearing a Lillith Fair tee-shirt or have a Little Orphan Ani Difranco tattoo on your forehead to make everything balance out. You'll thank me for that one later.

But the thing that this ballroom full of garden-shear-wielding feminists didn't understand (besides the fact that screaming "Holy Shit, it's Axl Rose!" before you run away is the oldest trick in the book) was that they're barking up the wrong tree when they get their estrogen up over a simple celebration of femininity like a classy Tits Ahoy tee-shirt. What really should have worried them would be if I had staggered into that ballroom wearing an Oklahoma! tee-shirt and a hoop earring or something, because that would mean their mating pool just got one guy smaller. And if I were a lady I'd be watching what I said very carefully, lest I pushed the male sex over the line and found myself home alone on Saturday nights while all of the guys were out at a Freddie Prinz Jr. movie, if you know what I'm saying.

But some people just don't get it, and they're going to drone on about how my shirt's degrading to women, and blah blah blah. Reality check: what's really degrading are those Tom Cruise haircuts, ladies. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You look like a bunch of junior-high kids on a debate field trip. And those business suits should be the next to go. Nobody in this reality wants to make time with a lady dressed like Lee Iacocca, and you're going to liberate yourself right into a personals ad.

In the end, this is just a long way of saying that the emperor's new clothes are here to stay, at least until this shirt picks up a chili stain or two. Of course, both my secretary and the commune's mail clerk quit the first day I wore it to work, though not for the stick-up-the-ass reasons that you're thinking. I guess that last mail bomb just scared them more than they let on at the time. Needless to say, I think I'm going to have to put the temp agency on speed-dial. Bricks out.

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