Saddam Hussein's Dog Shot

.S. soldiers sifted through the rubble of a doghouse on the outskirts of Mosul Saturday, celebrating the successful completion of a daring raid that ended with the death of Saddam Hussein’s infamous poodle, Ralphie. Early reports indicate the soldiers were tipped off by an opportunistic local merchant intent on collecting the $5 million reward offered by the U.S. government for information leading to the death or capture of the former dictator’s prime pooch.

“Now more than ever all Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back,� President Bush said, modifying slightly a sales pitch from a commercial for Dodge trucks he’d heard that morning.

“A dog that had helped oppress the Iraqi people for years has been put down, and put down with extreme prejudice,� Bush continued, possibly referencing Apocalypse Now by way of Old Yeller.

A public outcry followed when Bush made similar statements after the deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons Odai and Qusai last week, proclaiming the regime to be history despite the fact that Saddam himself was still at large and U.S. forces were coming under attack on a daily basis. But Bush assured reporters that with the death of Hussein’s poodle, the regime really was totally gone now. Even more so than before. Bush added that Saddam himself was powerless without his bumbling pervert sons or canine best friend. Unless, of course, Saddam is captured or killed, in which case he would be revealed as an all-powerful monster capable of shooting laser beams out of his eyes.

This latest raid was an even more impressive show of force than the last, when U.S. soldiers cornered Hussein’s sons in the bedroom of a house and dispatched everything short of a tactical nuclear strike to “apprehend� the two men and a teenage boy, who were reportedly armed with two handguns, several rocks and a bad attitude. The doghouse in question, one of several “safe houses� Ralphie was known to have in the area, was hit with several Tomahawk cruise missiles and “blown completely to shit� according to military personnel. Army officials said it was too early to comment on whether or not photos of the dead poodle would be distributed to the Iraqi public as proof of his demise, since this would depend on how much of Ralphie they could successfully scrape off of a nearby tree.

Despite the optimism of the Bush administration, however, Saddam Hussein remains at large. Local rumors have Saddam disguised as everything from a very ugly woman to a butcher, baker or candlestick maker. One highly slurred report insisted the former dictator was inexplicably disguised as American diva Aretha Franklin, which would be hilarious. But for the commune’s money, this reporter says Hussein is probably roaming the countryside dressed as Osama Bin Laden, all the better to elude U.S. forces.

The local merchant who offered the tip, Kamal al-Majid, gave one quote before he was taken into protective custody and most likely transferred to the Witness Relocation Program in America.

“It was my decision that the people of Mosul had harbored this dog long enough. He stood in the way of the creation of a new Iraq at the hands of our generous pig-dog American infidel friends. Also, he shit on my sidewalk this morning and that I cannot abide! So now he must go to his great reward in the land where all bitches are in heat.�

In the interest of hilarious irony, it is this reporter’s hope that al-Majid’s new life in America somehow involves running a pet store or being involved in veterinary care in the field of loose bowels, if such a thing exists.

In related news Sunday, marines castrated a Shetland pony thought to be loyal to the regime.

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The solution to The Great Omar Bricks Transportation Dilemma of 2002 came to me in a dream last Friday night. In the dream I was running away from this big car-wash monster thing, some kind of snuffleupagus made from those shaggy spinner things that wash the cars.

It wasn't really chasing me; more like sliding slowly down a hill. But I was running in place on those damned metal rollers like always, so the carwash was gaining, minute by minute. I don't know why I didn't just hop off the stupid rollers, but it was a dream thing so that solution didn't occur to me then any more than having sex with the Easter Bunny does to you right now. Before you read that.

In front of me there was a window, and on the other side of the window there was another me, some kind of good-looking son of a bitch Omar Bricks clone who was just sitting there, building a car out of pizza boxes. Now, at the time I was pissed that I was handed the shit end of the stick on which Omar I got to be in the dream, but then I killed the monster by having sex with that girl from the BMW commercial, so it all ended pretty good.

After I woke up, it dawned on me. With money a little tight in the Bricks household since the out-of-court settlement, why flush away even more precious green paying some overpriced beerbellies up in Detroit to build a car for me when I could build it myself? I've seen some of those guys and believe me, it can't be that hard.

One thing led to another and I decided to set up a production area for Bricks Motors in my garage. Now you might have thought that since the Bricks garage didn't have the Bricksmobile in it any more, it was just sitting there empty. But it was not. I don't know how, but shit piles up in there like assfat on an Eskimo. So I spent most of the day dragging junk out to the curb, including a dozen kiddie pools that had some kind of weird residue built up in them and half a parade float that I somehow ended up with. It wasn't the most fun I've ever had on a Saturday, but it was nice to finally pull the flush-handle on that hellish garage mess.

But the problem was that by the time I got all of that shit cleaned out of the garage, it was dark and I couldn't see a damned thing to draw in chalk on the floor where the car should go. Those Detroit auto-building slobs might be fat and stupid, but they had one thing Omar Bricks didn't: lights and shit.

Now, at first I was reluctant to just run out and buy some lights, figuring I might be able to build some torches or something to light the garage, like in the old days. But after some problems with the rafters not being fireproof, I decided that you can't build a car without spending a little money. Even Henry Ford probably had to buy some tools and lunch and whatever.

I went down to the store and found a floodlight that was perfect for the garage, plus it had a little devil on the package. Can't go wrong there. But the cheap cocksuckers didn't include a power cord, and they wanted me to shell out an extra fifteen bucks for an adapter. Well, in Omar Bricks' book, that's like tipping a stewardess: Strictly for assholes who are trying to show off. I had an adapter somewhere at home that I'd bought at a garage sale a few years back, and I was pretty sure it still worked. So those rip-off artists at Sears went home fifteen dollars poorer that day.

I'm sure you're all crawling up your own asses in anticipation of what happened next. Well, sorry to crap on your commode compadres, but it's gonna to have to wait until next column. I'm not gonna snow you on this one, I have to piss like Montezuma's Revenge. And since the commune shitter's backed up like a fat man's colon, this entails a waterlogged Bricks jog over to the Popeye's up the street in a hurry. While I'm there I plan on getting into some popcorn chicken, and you can kiss my ass if you think I'm going to hike all the way back here after a full meal.

So consider it suspense, or whatever floats your boat.

Bricks out.

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Long about this time every year, the days just get too nice to be wasted sitting around the commune offices, modifying my wrist rocket or flinging boomerangs out the window in the hope that they'll hook back into Raoul Dunkin's window for an Aussie Good Morning. When it gets this nice, it becomes imperative to take the day off, but not the kind of weak-assed "authorized" days off that normal chumps take. Nope, Monday I decided it was time for an Omar Bricks Day Off, the kind where everybody thinks you're still at work but you're actually far away, pushing a greased pig in through the back door of a titty bar somewhere.

Now, though it may sound like all fun and panicked strippers to the novice, an Omar Bricks Day Off is actually a complicated undertaking. If word got to Bagel that I was going to fuck off for the day I'd be in some serious shit, because he'd definitely want to tag along and there's no way I was going to have that big sack of weird following me around all day. I somehow ended up at a boat show with Bagel one time and that Zagnut actually tried to buy the convention center, so he could lock the doors and claim ownership of all the boats and people in attendance. How embarrassing. So needless to say, I needed to bust open a big can of covertness, and fast, unless I wanted to spend the day listening to Bagel talk about how he was suing the television show Method and Red for stealing his character.

At first I tried to set up a mannequin at my desk, to fool people into thinking I was actually here but just really bored, but that idea quickly went over like a fat man in a hot air balloon. Every time I left my office to get more stealthing supplies, I came back to find that somebody had mistaken the mannequin for Raoul Dunkin and knocked its head off. After the third time I thought about trying to bolt the head on better, but with my luck somebody would set the damned thing on fire while I was gone, and then my ruse would be up and somebody else would have their whole day ruined when they found out Dunkin was still alive.

So instead I tethered a monkey to my desk and put a Jane Fonda workout tape in the VCR, which sadly was enough to convince most of the staff that I'd made it in to work for the day. It probably would have fooled Bagel too, except the ape went monkeyshit when the tape ended and it couldn't find the rewind button on the remote. I've heard conflicting accounts about the kind of mayhem that ensued, the only constant being that at some point, the monkey definitely ate Lil Duncan's brassiere.

So from what I hear, from that moment the hunt was on, with Bagel stopping at nothing convenient to find out where I'd gone and why I hadn't invited him. That's what I hear anyway, I was at the discus factory by that time, still under the impression that the goddamned monkey was doing his job.

At some point Bagel stopped by my house, jimmied the lock with the key that got melted in there during a hot-doorknob prank last year, and questioned Foghat as to my whereabouts. At which time Foghat passively resisted by pissing out an open window. Great dog.

From what I understand Bagel made his way to the uniform store from there, thinking that was a place I'd go, which was a plain stupid move on his part. I'd already been there earlier in the morning, and that trail was colder than a passed-out hooker on a winter morning. By then I was borrowing Bob Dylan's Jesus jacket from the Hard Rock Café on the other side of town, a move Bagel wouldn't intuit until hours later, when he caught wind of that afternoon's surprise Dylan concert in the park.

I finally gave Bagel the shake later in the afternoon by listing the lost frames of the Zapruder film on eBay; I hear the bidding got up to a quarter-million before somebody realized I had just scanned in the negatives from my trip to the Ferrari museum. Sure, it screwed my eBay rating, but it got Bagel off my ass long enough for me to ride in the Black Power parade, and that was well worth a couple of death threats in my feedback listing.

Even though I never got to the Louvre as planned, the day still ranked as a stellar Bricks fuck-off, and convinced me that I should really do this kind of thing more often. The question is: Would every day be too often? There's only one way to find out.

Bricks off.

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