U.S. Government Continues Strategy of Releasing Horrific Truth Bit by Bit

he U.S. Government is maintaining its winning streak of leaking disturbing information to the public over decades, as this week two extreme dealbreakers came to public attention and the public once again answered with a resounding "enh."

First the American public was allowed to learn a memo circulating through the White House may have been an early alert to president Bush about the Sept. 11th disasters. A grumbling American public pretended to be surprised and outraged, lining themselves up for the seemingly superfluous revelation later in the week that populated U.S. Navy ships were the subjects of germ warfare testing in the 1960s.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded Friday with a firm, "Yeah. So?"

The covert operation, called SHAD (or Shipboard Hazard and Defense) among the hip Pentagon insiders, involved spraying toxic chemicals onto U.S. Navy ships to test the effects of germ warfare combat on troops in battle. Chemicals used included sarin, VX, and staphylococcal enterotoxin Type B, a viral strain guaranteed to "totally fuck up any soldier's weekend," according to one foul-mouthed Washington source.

Once again, the SHAD operation took place from 1964-1968, during the peak of the Vietnam war, not during the Gulf War of the early 1990s. Those chemical tests and their long-term damages are still classified information and aren't due to be released for at least another twenty years.

The revelation continues the U.S. government policy of allowing four or more White House administrations to pass before alarming truths about military and government experiments on people are told to the public. Particularly conducive to the release of alarming information is the mood of the country towards the current administration and how slow a news week it is. Information in danger of distracting the public from real issues, like Congressional sex scandals or anti-terrorist rhetoric, is often sat upon until a later release is available.

"We apologize to the American people, the soldiers, and the families that experienced any pain or damages due to the… well, you know where this is going," said Pentagon spokesman Gnute Harmschell, letting the press release fall against the carpet. "I will now take any pertinent questions about Chandra Leavy's remains, the Pakistan-India troubles, the War on Terror—trademark that—or the Catholic priests scandal. Hell, how about Star Wars or Spider-Man? Box office records are busting left and right, people."

On a sad, related note, The X-Files ended its 9-year run on Fox Sunday. During its time on the air the show entertained millions, made stars of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, started a film franchise guaranteed to make Fox money in the future, and softened America's reaction to the shadowy operations of its own government. Nerve gas testing and ignored terrorist intelligence information are welcome substitutes as long as there's no hard proof of extra-terrestrial bodies in Hangar 18.

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One night several weeks ago, I got home after a grueling day of communing to find a strange-assed envelope in my mail box, wedged between the usual offer for Sea Monkeys and a Carmen Electra poster catalog. At first I thought I might have won a Harley or maybe my report card from the third grade had finally shown up. No such luck. When I studied the return-address more closely, I realized it was from the Jury Commissioner's Office, and that could only mean one thing.

The game was on.

Ever since the I was in shortpants, watching my dad do battle with unseenfoes over the telephone line, I'd waited for this day. The time had come to do what any honest, red-blooded American would do when they got the call: to match wits with the American justice system and try like hell to get out of jury duty. This is what our fathers have fought and died for time and time again, compadres: the right to outsmart The Man and avoid having to find parking downtown.

I decided to warm up by trying my old stand-by dodge. I called the number listed on the back of the summons and, in a bone-chilling facsimile of my mother's voice, told the jury duty operator that Omar would be unable to make it, because he had the measles or some shit. Looking back now, it was probably throwing that "or some shit" on the end that sunk my subterfuge, because the operator said I'd have to reschedule for another date. I thought fast and tried adding on that I had whiskey-dick as well, but she seemed pretty unimpressed by that improvisation.

I knew then that the old stand-by wasn't going to cut it this time, not by a long-shot. It was like trying to carve a jack-o-lantern with a piece of cooked spaghetti: damn useless. I was pretty surprised, too, because the exact same ploy worked wonders that time when I had to get out of a date with the ugly-assed daughter of one of my uncle's business partners. Shit, by the time I got to the whiskey-dick part I don't even think she wanted to go on the date any more, but these jury duty mugs had far tougher nuts to crack.

Several subsequent calls to the jury duty line proved equally unsuccessful: it turns out that swearing like a motherfucker, being a Communist or having a thick Mexican accent are all honky-dory if you want to be a juror these days. Go figure.

I went to the drawing board and read the pamphlet that came with my summons, figuring I had to beat these hard-asses at their own game. According to the pamphlet, there were only three excuses that would get you out of jury duty: you don't speak word uno of English, you're so damned old you scare little kids, or you've already been on a jury in the last two years. Now I know what you're thinking, and believe me I thought of it first: between that wet pajama contest I judged locally and being in the audience for that taping of Divorce Court last year, I should be good for another four years at least. Not so, claim the Jury Nazis.

Since they had to be such assholes about the whole two-year thing, I decided to play a little hardball and spent the next two weeks answering the phone in a made-up nonsense language that was like some kind of cross between German and the ingredients of a Snapple. Once again, those clever motherfuckers got the drop on your friend Omar by calling at eight in the morning when I was dead asleep and had momentarily forgotten about the whole "No English" ruse. So much for project "Nein Sorbate Verboten."

I briefly considered making some kind of old-man suit out of croissant mix and talcum powder, but after a particularly nasty talcum mishap I got pissed off and just called those uptight pigfuckers and told them that it's my constitutional whoozumwhatzit to have them kiss my pale white ass, with whipped topping if you please, and that in the mean time I hoped they all choked on a turd. It was a bold shift in strategy, I admit, but for a while I thought it might have worked and that I'd scared them off.

Then one day I received a notice in the mail saying that if I didn't show up for jury duty, I'd be held in contempt of court and fined $121. Woah. Now, I don't know how they arrived at that figure, I suspect they were peeking into the old Bricks Checking Account again, but suffice it to say they were now officially speaking my language. These were some stone-cold bastards.

After a rousing rental of "A Few Good Men", I decided that jury duty probably wouldn't be that bad, and that maybe I'd luck out and get some kind of case that involved a dude being smothered by fake boobs or something. Really, any case that involved topless testimony would've been cool by me, I'm flexible.

And to tell you the truth, in the end, I actually had a good time. And man was I glad that I'd thought to wear my judge costume from last Halloween, because they treat those regular jurors like assholes. I got a much better seat and even got to give some dude the chair for eating his neighbor's horse in some kind of funny-assed cultural misunderstanding. The rest of the day probably would have been a blast too if the real judge hadn't shown up and had me re-assigned to some boring damned murder trial. Since when does it take a whole friggin' week to figure out that the dude with the chain-saw did it? I'd planned on two hours tops, with maybe a break for a romantic interlude in the middle. Some fussy sacks of juror-scat might argue that it would have been over sooner if I hadn't been playing the "Do you have a verdict?/Your honor, we have a dickfour" game with the judge, but that only added twenty minutes, tops.

And the memories, as they say, will last a lifetime. I think the taser scars probably will too.

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Omar Bricks is in favor of legalizing all drugs, if for no other reason than it would be hilarious to see what kind of cover Kraft would put on a box of Smackaroni & Cheez. My vote is for some dumbass-looking dinosaur that's all slouched over, nodding off in front of a TV that's playing The Jetsons. That would be some hilarious irony, because what in the hell is a dinosaur doing watching The Jetsons? That shit's futuristic even for us, but for him it's like double-futuristic, it's just absurd. If I were a dinosaur I'd just fart at that kind of absurdity, it'd be too much to handle.

Mark my words, we wouldn't have to be give all these spazzy little grade school kids prescription speed if they were getting smack on crackers in their Naked Lunchables. None of those hyper little dipshits would be acting up at all, throwing scissors or singing the "diarrhea song," any of that, they'd be too busy nodding off and staring at their shoes. And I bet they'd be better at art class, too. Give those little junkies some fingerpaints and cake decorations and I bet you could sell that shit at the art fair, or at least in a head shop or something.

It would also be worth it just to see what kind of commercials they came up with for the hard-core drugs, like crack. I can just see some stressed out housewife dragging around a minivan full of screaming little shitheads, and then she gets a flat tire, then some fat hobo guy barfs on her blouse, and then it's freeze frame and she turns to the camera and says "F-this, I'm smokin' some crack!" They show her lighting up and enjoying some Entenmanns's brand crack or whatever while her kids play with the spare tire by the side of the road, and there's some tiny superimposed type about how you may experience a side effect where you become a crack whore and blow a donkey, etc.

Most of the drugs would probably go the beer commercial route, showing some goateed slob getting all the skanky ladies because he's got the good blow. They'd probably have to get creative since I don't think they can show harmonica-style blowjobs on network TV, but I'm sure you can imply it pretty easy. A little dark makeup around the eyes would probably do it; everybody knows what a coke whore looks like.

I'm not even sure who would get the rights to sell blow, though of course Coke is the obvious choice. They could do some of those classic blind taste-test commercials, with some guy doing a line of coke and then a line of Draino, and as he's flopping around on the floor like a fish he gestures that he preferred the coke. I don't know about the rest of America, but I think that would be more than enough to convince Omar Bricks that coke is it.

I hear Kraft's trying to get out of the junk food business, so I think they'd be a natural to take over the junk business. Nobody's going to bitch about them making America fat anymore if all of their products make you think your food is yelling at you. I can just see their commercials marking the transition, like some guy gets busted at customs and the dude with the rubber gloves pulls a sack of Oreos out of his ass. Ha ha. Then, of course, the stuffy English customs dude shrugs at the camera and pops one in his mouth, that's the punchline. They may regret having told me that "Double Stuff It Up Your Ass" wasn't a catchy slogan when that day comes around.

The rest of the drugs would fall into line easily enough. Big Tobacco would of course get pot, and they'd find a way to make it addictive. Gatorade could handle angel dust, unless Powerade or Red Bull shivved Gatorade in the corporate shower and took over their territory. And we'd have to give Schweppes control of some bullshit drug, like ether, so they wouldn't get a whiney about the U.S. having a narcotics monopoly.

Hmm, Narcotics Monopoly! Damn! Don't look now, but Omar Bricks is getting an idea that could revolutionize the board game industry forever. Somebody get Parker Brothers on the phone, they need to file a patent for Roofie Twister, and pronto.

Bricks out.

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