NASA Photographs Infuriate Shut-Ins, Conspiracy Geeks

ew infrared images from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter featuring the long-debated formation known as the "Face on Mars" have sent shockwaves through the shut-in and conspiracy geek communities. Anxious and unbathed web surfers who expected the infrared pictures to provide new revelations about the features voiced their disappointment, saying the new images are bullshit because they don't show any kind of recognizable face at all, just a couple of bumps in the dirt.

NASA claims this is because there never was a face, stupid, only a trick of light and shadow fueled by desperate weirdoes who haven't worked in years. Fans of the face contend that it was only the lack of "night-vision" imagery that failed to expose the Sphinxlike visage they have come to know and love. NASA responded with a patronizing smile and a hand gesture indicating "okaaay."

The debate over the Face has simmered for the last twenty-five years, since NASA's Viking orbiters transmitted pictures of the Cydonia region that appeared to show a half-shadowed, helmeted face staring up from the planet's surface like some kind of cross between Kermit the Frog and Han Solo. Since then, additional formations have been identified as the "Alien Conspiracy Pyramid," "the Mounds of Xena" and so forth — and fans of the Face have argued that the formations showed evidence of a vast Martian civilization populated by breathtaking huge-breasted women incapable of resisting the charms of virginal 30 year-old earth men.

In the past five years, sharper imagery from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter popped a big-ol' hole in that over-inflated fantasy balloon, confirming the mainstream view that the Face and the other formations were nothing more than a whole lot of wind-eroded dirt, much like everything else on Mars. But die-hard fans of the Face refused to give up hope, disregarding the newer photos as hoaxes and propaganda, and confusing everyone in their apartment buildings by going as "The Face" for Halloween.

The new Mars Odyssey images are unique in that they were taken using infrared light, unlike the visible light used for the Viking and Global Surveyor images of Cydonias. This allowed for day or night photography unhindered by shadows. Many fans of the Face, however, took issue with NASA's methodology.

"We got gypped," griped Thomas Reinhold of Jackson, Miss. "They totally lead us to believe they were going to be doing some nighttime infrared imagery, not just daytime. What if the face only comes out at night? Didn't think of that, did you, NASA?"

"He said what?" questioned Tony Rice, a member of the Arizona State University imaging team that worked with NASA on the project. "Jesus. Thanks to AOL, every kind of mook can get on the net now."

The Arizona State imaging research team denied any unique features belonging to the mesas that make up the Face. "What do we have to do, draw you people a map?" Rice questioned. "Oh, wait, that's right. We already did that. Morons."

No stranger to being called morons, the Face fans press on with their hunt for the truth.

"Those white-coated government lackeys over at NASA can conspiratize all they want, but we know the truth," boasted Elmer Noonan of Vine Grove, KY. "We've seen the pictures. The first picture, anyway. All the other ones after that were bullshit. A total governmental cover-up, straight out of the handbook. If it hadn't been for that Libertarian dude working at NASA back in '76, we never would have got to see that original image of the face. I bet those NASA guys have been kicking themselves every day since they released that thing. Ha. Jerks."

"We're putting new stuff out there every day for the public to look at," Rice said while playing with a hole in the bottom of his shoe. "I don't know what their problem is. Oh, right. The conspiracy. I almost forgot. Well, you're going to have to excuse me while I conspire to drive my shitty little Tercel over to Arby's and eat a roast beef sandwich for lunch."

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Omar Bricks has never been afraid to get his hands dirty. On the contrary, more often than not it looks like I've been playing patty-cake with a tar baby. I consider it a badge of honor that I've always been willing to roll up my sleeves and get into shit others considered best left untouched, and have always walked on my hands where others feared to tread. But this gyro sauce is a different matter altogether. This shit makes Lava soap seem about as useless as an eight-year-old wet nap. I need some napalm, and I need it with aloe.

You truly can't understand the horrors of discrimination until you've gone through a day with your hands smelling like a Greek man's testicle cheese. People won't look you in the eye, the glove store locks their doors when they see you coming, and dogs faint when you enter the room. This is also the first time I've understood the meaning of that "People are Strange" song by the Doors, I'd always thought that guy was singing about visiting Oklahoma. Turns out his hands just smelled like the inside of a bulimic Yeti's yak bowl. No wonder that dude did enough drugs to kill a roadie.

This whole misadventure started out innocently enough, last week when I was throwing water balloons full of piss at some Mormon missionaries who made the mistake of trying to infiltrate the commune offices. Don't get me wrong, it's not the usual Omar Bricks style to be so free with the bodily fluids, but we were all out of water. The city shut our building off following Red Bagel's TV appearance when he told everyone the government was adding tooth whitener to the city's water supply. So it was either going to be piss-balloons or blood-balloons, and unfortunately for the Mormons, my bladder wasn't bursting with blood at the time.

It turned out the missionaries had been working at the commune for weeks, hatching a terrorist plan to lead us all to Heavenly Father's love. In retrospect, it should have been obvious, since they were the only two guys in the office dressed like they worked in an office, and they were the only people who didn't refer to Bagel as "Sir Fucks-It-Up."

But all in all, everybody here was too busy avoiding all awareness of work reality to pay much attention to the missionaries, that is until the tall one made the mistake of trying to convert Ivana Folger-Balzac and she hit him with the fire axe we keep in the kitchen for opening cans of food foraged from Crochet!'s food drive bin downstairs. This started some kind of unholy Mormon-on-commune rumble, which ended well for the missionary who fell out the window at first sign of trouble but poorly for the one who was left to try and Jackie Chan his way out of the office. Luckily for him, Ramrod Hurley took the brunt of the violence, and most of the piss balloons, because he made the mistake of wearing a tie into the office that day and no one likes him. At some point the missionary got away, or else was stomped into a copy machine or some dark corner of the office from where he has yet to emerge.

Either way, all the rumbling worked up a powerful appetite within yours truly, and I decided to celebrate by trying out lunch at the new Greek place down the street. I figured gyros sounded good, since I like food that spins, but unfortunately the one I got was broken. What it did do, however, was stink up my hands like goat shit in a cucumber patch. I tried washing my hands with soap, lye and banana custard, but none of it did a damn bit of good. And when I got back to the commune offices, everyone kept calling me Boris. I couldn't tell if they were being sarcastic, or were just blinded by the Boris Utzov-like frunk emanating from my own raunchy-ass hands and thought Boris had returned from wherever the hell he's been since our bus trip.

After a few days of this indignity, however, this morning I happened upon a solution that killed two birds with one stone, solving both my stank-hands problem and my I've-never-run-through-an-office-building-with-my-hands-on-fire problem in one beautiful blur of lost time. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what happened myself, but do an internet video search for "Flaming Office Mime" and you can judge for yourself.

Bricks out.

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I used to have a music teacher who wouldn't tell you your grade, he'd just play that note on a tuba and you had to figure it out. Bastard. Not that I really cared, I just wanted to get a D flat so I wouldn't have to take the damned class again.

From what I read in the papers, not much has changed since then. Sounds like the bastards are still in charge. The latest hoopla is over these two college coaches who porked Lady Disgrace right out on the national stage and both balled their way right out of a job. One had a thing for underage college girls, for the other it was strippers, but those are just two ends of the same Madonna/whore complex. Some would hesitate to compare seasoned professional strippers to the Virgin Mary, but they haven't spent much time with underage college girls. They make Madonna look like the other Madonna, it's amazing.

Most commentators are taking these events as further evidence that college athletics are totally out of hand. As if Cro-Magnon jocks with bulging forehead muscles earning degrees in astrophysics for passing the academic equivalent of a roadside sobriety test wasn't enough, now the coaches think they're above the law of common decency themselves. And those commentators do have a point, though I don't really think college athletics were ever really in hand. It's always been a screwy system, but if somebody had told me years ago you could get a scholarship for being good at P.E. class instead of math, I probably would have tried harder at crab-walking through that damned obstacle course.

Anybody who has to deal with the public at all knows that the U.S. populace on average writes at about a third-grade level, and I'm talking about third graders who are more concerned with having perfectly crimped hair and the flashiest charm bracelets than excelling in their studies. People complain that the informality of email has led to the downgrading of written communication to the sub-literate level. What they don't realize is that before email, most Americans had no use for written communication beyond a sticky note on the refrigerator asking who tried to flush a pineapple down the toilet. Email hasn't dumbed down America's writing, it merely exposed how brain-shellacingly shitty it was in the first place.

But that having been said, I still think the real problem these shenanigans are indicative of is the issue of America the Oversexed. I'm not really sure if people are actually having more sex than they used to, but they certainly feel as if they're expected to. Nothing in America has any value any more unless it has sex appeal, it doesn't matter if it's a movie about Watergate or a jar of pickles. Anybody who's having sex with his normal-looking wife is made to feel like he's letting his country down, and God save you if you aren't having sex at all. Might as well put on one of those giant beefeater hats and quit kidding everyone, comrade.

If we really want to cut down on public figures having sexual partners we don't approve of, perhaps we should limit their exposure to a popular culture that demands all men should be having sex with 16-24 year old girls. Men displaying a shaky grasp of social mores would have their popular culture licenses suspended before they mistake an intern for a humidor or write "sorority kegger" in their dayplanners. You wouldn't wave a vodka and tonic under an alcoholic's nose, so why taunt these guys with Tom Green movies and Erotic Survivor?

Just an idea. It could work, and it's sure as hell a lot easier than teaching these young girls some goddamned self-respect. Man.

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