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Algerian Terrorist 'Hacks' Can't Escape Al-Qaeda's ShadowJanuary 20, 2003 |
London, England Snapper McGee Hopeful Algerian terrorists fail miserably in early terror training attempts to fit in without drawing attention. hey're young. They're dangerous. They're filled with hate for all Western culture and the influence it's had on Islamic countries. No, they're not Al-Qaeda; they're Algerian, and they're tired of being compared to Osama bin Laden's terrorist units.
If you haven't heard of these Algerian up-and-coming homeland security risks, it's not surprising. They've only recently made any news at all, and it took a far backseat to growing concerns about Iraq and North Korea, as well as troubling domestic issues like the economy and Joe Millionaire. They're relegated to the back page of the World news right now, and they're not happy about it.
"It's just like Americans to ignore you as a threat if you haven't set off a bomb in their country or anything," said one leade...
hey're young. They're dangerous. They're filled with hate for all Western culture and the influence it's had on Islamic countries. No, they're not Al-Qaeda; they're Algerian, and they're tired of being compared to Osama bin Laden's terrorist units.
If you haven't heard of these Algerian up-and-coming homeland security risks, it's not surprising. They've only recently made any news at all, and it took a far backseat to growing concerns about Iraq and North Korea, as well as troubling domestic issues like the economy and Joe Millionaire. They're relegated to the back page of the World news right now, and they're not happy about it.
"It's just like Americans to ignore you as a threat if you haven't set off a bomb in their country or anything," said one leader of the as-yet-unnamed group, who refused to be identified by name but used the alias, "Stonewall." "It won't be that way forever. One of these days our name will be bigger than Al-Qaeda—as soon as we agree on one. People will ask, 'Al-Qaeda who? Were they anything like…' well, then they'll say the name of our group, when we have one."
It's a strong feeling throughout the group, as well as other aspiring Islamic extremist terrorists out there: Al-Qaeda has become the Elvis Presley of anti-Western guerrillas, and it's a double-edged sword.
"On one hand," said one youth, known as "Itchy," "people are finally taking terrorists serious again, for the first time since those Iranian hostages in the 70s. But now the bar is set so high nobody can compete with them. A lot of us don't have the kind of funds and numbers needed to destroy an American landmark or symbol of Western wealth. We're the independent terrorists, the ones doing it for the real love of Allah, and we have the better arguments, the better fatwas, and when we die for the glory of Allah's cause we're receiving the most rewards. But that doesn't matter much if you're operating out of basements and searching couch cushions for money to finance your terrorist camps."
One of the reasons the Algerians agreed to meet and discuss their situation was to raise awareness of smaller garage terrorist units. The press has not been kind—even when they cover their actions, like the recent news story in Britain where a group was arrested for possession of Ricin and killed a British police officer, the reaction of the American media is cynical and smug. Newsweek referred to the incident on page 48 with the headline, "Al-Qaeda Hacks Kill Just One in Manchester."
"It's completely unfair," said a thin, wiry terrorist nicknamed "Atwall." "Ricin is pretty dangerous, you know. Had that plan been carried out by our brothers, there's no telling the kind of damage it could have done, throughout Britain and America. Well, not America—that overseas postage would have killed our budget. But still, all the major networks are scoffing, like, 'Why couldn't they get Anthrax?' That stuff's expensive, infidels. We don't have Saudi oil money behind us. Most of our funds come from the donation jars we set up in Algerian supermarkets. That and loans from our parents, which are due back in a couple of years, when we start showing a profit."
"It's true," added Stonewall. "You kill one person these days in the name of Allah and you can't even get on the third page of a major news magazine. You have to be like in double-digits to get that kind of coverage. Let's not even talk about making the cover. We're optimistic, but we know it's a long way off. First we have to get a good name."
According to the group, several suggested names have failed to please a majority of the group. Suggestions currently on the table are "The Red Flag," "The Al-Roka," and "Grassy Knoll," which the group likes, but feel like it would take too much explaining and limit how much they make major newscasts. the commune news takes it personal when the Sears security asks us to empty our pockets—they don't ask anyone else. Ivan Nacutchacokov is the commune foreign correspondent and his last name takes up two pages in his passport.
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 August 9, 2004
Omar Bricks' Day OffLong 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...
º Last Column: My So-Called Life Insurance º more columns
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. º Last Column: My So-Called Life Insuranceº more columns
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|  November 15, 2004
Alexander the Good-EnoughIf my inbox and the random uninformed street noise are any indication, interest in the ancient Macedonian king and conqueror Alexander the Great is at an all-time high right now, thanks in large part to the release of the Alexander the Great's Great Abs workout video last month. But some portion of the public's Alexanderlust is likely attributable to Oliver Stone's upcoming biopic, which garnered blood-red headlines recently due to Stone's decision to make the film's battle scenes more realistic by staging actual battles between armies of actors, leading to hundreds of casualties. America was outraged and excited, while the rest of Hollywood was relieved that there'd finally be some waitering jobs opening up around town.
But with renewed public slob interest always comes the usual swarthy stink of misinformation, and this time it has clouded around Alexander's so-called reputation as a great military leader. The trouble here is that most modern persons tend to think of sarcasm and irony as relatively recent inventions. But in fact, people in the ancient past were far more sarcastic than we are today, which has lead to more than a few historical misconceptions. Chief among these is the story of Alexander "the Great," an astonishingly mediocre leader who was given his title by a highly ironic public. Likewise with other historical misnomers, including the "Great" Wall of China, Atilla the "Hun," and the Ottoman "Empire."
The ancient Macedonians...
º Last Column: Damn, You Ugly: The History of Beauty º more columns
If my inbox and the random uninformed street noise are any indication, interest in the ancient Macedonian king and conqueror Alexander the Great is at an all-time high right now, thanks in large part to the release of the Alexander the Great's Great Abs workout video last month. But some portion of the public's Alexanderlust is likely attributable to Oliver Stone's upcoming biopic, which garnered blood-red headlines recently due to Stone's decision to make the film's battle scenes more realistic by staging actual battles between armies of actors, leading to hundreds of casualties. America was outraged and excited, while the rest of Hollywood was relieved that there'd finally be some waitering jobs opening up around town.
But with renewed public slob interest always comes the usual swarthy stink of misinformation, and this time it has clouded around Alexander's so-called reputation as a great military leader. The trouble here is that most modern persons tend to think of sarcasm and irony as relatively recent inventions. But in fact, people in the ancient past were far more sarcastic than we are today, which has lead to more than a few historical misconceptions. Chief among these is the story of Alexander "the Great," an astonishingly mediocre leader who was given his title by a highly ironic public. Likewise with other historical misnomers, including the "Great" Wall of China, Atilla the "Hun," and the Ottoman "Empire."
The ancient Macedonians were the most sarcastic people in recorded human history, a trait many historians believe lead to their downfall, since it eventually became impossible to tell when anyone meant anything sincerely at all. In those days "Alexander the Great" was always said with an eye roll and a drawn out vowel in the word "great," implying a sentiment like "Oh greeeeat, here comes that shithead Alexander."
Alexander was a handsome young man, by the standards of that day, which meant he was ugly. As a boy Alexander was tutored by Aristotle, but not correctly, since Aristotle enjoyed nothing more than proving his superiority by teaching bogus information and marveling at how stupid children were to never catch on. Aristotle's tutelage provided the foundation for Alexander's life-long misunderstanding of world events, which led to his conquering of allies Persia and Arcadia in 330, then the eventual conquering of his own nation during a bloody siege in 328 B.C.
Alexander took over the throne of Macedonia after the murder of his father, Philip the Merely Adequate, in 336 B.C. Historians believe that Alexander's mother Olympias plotted Philip's murder, thanks in part to the cryptic title of her later autobiography, Die, Cocksucker. Some point the blamey finger at Alexander himself, due to the well-known fact that he went out of his way to piss on his father's grave every morning thereafter for the rest of his life. Even when he was away at war, Alexander would send special scouts back from the front to "water" the grave every morning at dawn. But this was a common show of respect in those times, at least among the rare sons who hadn't been poisoned or wrapped in bacon and left unsupervised to wander in the lion pen by their fathers before reaching adulthood.
After succeeding his father as king, Alexander shocked the kingdom by not assassinating his retarded brother Arrivederchus, which counted as extreme liberalism back in those days. In actuality, Alexander liked to keep Arrivederchus around to help him look more "the Great" in comparison, and his somewhat autistic brother was handy for estimating casualty figures after large battles. This unprecedented show of open-heartedness also served as a public-relations boon after Alexander had most of the rest of his family assassinated.
Among Alexander's many achievements over the course of his career were the conquerings of the Tits and the Oldmans, and providing universal health care for single-parent families. Alexander made a name for himself primarily by conquering peoples who were just on the verge of collapsing already, then taking credit for an astounding military victory. When Alexander conquered the Dinks in 326 B.C., Macedonian soldiers actually had to roust most of the Dink army from their beds to inform them that they'd been conquered. This took several days, since the Dinks were profoundly heavy sleepers, and this harrowing campaign went down in history as one of the most grueling of Macedonian military victories.
Peoples were routinely being conquered back then, because no one really gave two shits about that kind of thing, and if somebody wanted to all the fuss and headache of being the ruler, then they could have it. Any enterprising or even vaguely competent military leader could make an easy name for himself conquering the many apathetic kingdoms that littered the map in those days. Long-forgotten peoples like the Choads, the Ninnies, and the Blue Finks existed in large part just to be conquered. Oftentimes a conquering army would send ahead advance scouts to organize the haphazard country folk into "nations" of people so that they could be conquered in a memorable fashion.
Even with that being the case, Alexander got a little carried away with it and ended up conquering most of the known world before he was done. That the "known world" consisted of only a 20-square mile radius around Macedonia was of little consequence at the time, since nobody knew that there were oodles of other peoples out there remaining unconquered in far-off places. Twenty miles is still a long way to walk, however, and the Macedonian soldiers never forgave Alexander for making them hoof it so far entirely on foot, due to his lust for horsemeat gyros.
Regardless, Alexander conquered many a feeble people, and his troops came to call him "King of Everything," because he told them to.
Alexander eventually died of a broken heart at the age of 32, on the outskirts of Macedonia in 324 B.C. Historians are split over whether this was a romantic kind of broken heart, brought on by the untimely and ultimately tacky death of Alexander's lifelong gay lover Homocleus, or if this was just a primitive medical term referring to the fact that Alexander's heart reportedly leapt out of his mouth like a bullfrog while he was being beaten to death by the very soldiers he'd dragged to all ends of creation on his asinine crusade.
Alexander was survived by his wife and their son, the byproduct of an uncomfortable seven-minute tryst made necessary by the high failure rate of man-on-man pregnancies in ancient times. Though homosexuality was the norm of the day and a lot more fun, men of power still took brides for the purposes of creating an heir, necessitating an awkward wedding night followed by twice-yearly postcards on major holidays.
After Alexander's death, his mother had virtually everyone else in the government killed in various plots, until her machinations became too complex and she inadvertently plotted to have herself killed in 318 B.C. In time, Alexander's son Alexander the Better Than You've Heard became king, only to be killed soon after as a result of one of Olympias's old plots that someone found lying around.
With the release of Stone's film, audiences will at long last flock to learn the truth about Alexander, or at least four or five will who aren't going just for a chance to see Colin Farrell's dong. º Last Column: Damn, You Ugly: The History of Beautyº more columns
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Milestones1853: The snorkel is invented, leading indirectly to the conception of commune reporter Lil Duncan several years later. STD specialists from the CDC would eventually send a robot back in time in an attempt to prevent this chain of events from occurring, but tragically this move caused the Short Circuit franchise of films in the 1980's instead.Now HiringMidwife Crisis. Not entirely sure what this is, but the guys thought it would be funny. So… Hmm. Uh… well, if you have experience delivering babies in a dramatic and dangerous fashion, then I suppose you should dust off your résumé. No freaks please.5 Worst Baby Names| 1. | Osama Bin Hitler | | 2. | Cap'n Jackass | | 3. | Fascist Clay | | 4. | Li'l Accident | | 5. | Not-Gay Bruce | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Roland McShyster 11/24/2003 Hello, America! Curious about what Hollywood's been hoarding in their vaults, waiting to spring on an unsuspecting public this fine Thanksgiving season? I hear ya squawking big chicken. Let's take a look and see if we can't separate the gobble from the sound turkeys make when they're not happy. On to the movies!
In Theaters
21 Grams of Fat
Cuban heartthrob Mauricio Del Toro sweats up the screen opposite sniveling wiener Sean Penn in this harrowing tale of a Subway sandwich gone wrong. Fans have been clamoring for years to know the juicy background story on how mumbling hunk Del Toro got so goddamned sloppy fat for his role of Big Fat Slob Lawyer #1 in the 1960's classic Feral Loving in Las Vegas, and...
Hello, America! Curious about what Hollywood's been hoarding in their vaults, waiting to spring on an unsuspecting public this fine Thanksgiving season? I hear ya squawking big chicken. Let's take a look and see if we can't separate the gobble from the sound turkeys make when they're not happy. On to the movies!
In Theaters
21 Grams of Fat
Cuban heartthrob Mauricio Del Toro sweats up the screen opposite sniveling wiener Sean Penn in this harrowing tale of a Subway sandwich gone wrong. Fans have been clamoring for years to know the juicy background story on how mumbling hunk Del Toro got so goddamned sloppy fat for his role of Big Fat Slob Lawyer #1 in the 1960's classic Feral Loving in Las Vegas, and this year they finally get their wish. 21 Grams of Fat tells the true story of Del Toro's innocent stop at a roadside Subway franchise and the Caramelized Gyro-Meat Sub that freakishly ballooned his ass up to Limbaughian proportions within minutes. Penn plays the pencil-necked counter jockey who sold him the sub, and the resulting tale or revenge and recrimination will leave you popping your heart medication and reaching for a thesaurus. If you've ever followed a fast food worker home and cut down the door to his mom's house with a skill saw in a berserk, flabby rage, then this is the movie for you. Unless that brings up some unpleasant memories, which is understandable. So maybe it's better if you've never done such a think and can just enjoy the film vicariously.
Battlestar Gothica
It has always struck me that Halle Berry missed her true calling by never starring in a bad Sci-Fi series, so it's comforting to see her finally correct fate's oversight. Answering the never-before-addressed question of what would happen if somebody went crazy in space, Battlestar Gothica also proves that while Halle Barry's increasingly public assets can spice up a routine action flick or a dull party, they do little to lend credibility to an ill-conceived space drama.
Black Santa
In what may possibly go down as the most offensive holiday movie ever filmed (notching in ahead of even Elvis' Dead Blue Christmas, Rudolph Giuliani in Red-Nosed Rehab and the chairman of the board, Santa Claus Cocksucks the Martians), Black Santa features redneck delight Billy Bob Thornton in riot-inducing blackface, stealing a role that probably should have gone to Eddie Murphy, DMX, or Whoopie Goldberg with a sock in her jockeys. Instead it's Thornton creeping down chimneys to deliver presents, only to be chased screaming out of the house and gunpoint in a world that's not ready to accept the fact that Santa is actually a black man. It's not easy being a black Santa in a white world, and it's really not easy sneaking your white ass out of the theater after watching two hours of white folks chasing a bag-toting black man across their lawn with a shotgun. I thought I was going to get some reparations stamped into the back of my skull for sure. Luckily for me there weren't any black people at the screening, though I'm not sure how eager other racial groups are for a sympathy riot. The two Korean women who were in the theater when I saw this one didn't seem too upset, at least not violently so, but I think I may have just caught them unprepared when I hit that fire door full tilt just before the credits rolled.
Dr. Seuss Shat in a Hat
At least they weren't pretending that the latest Dr. Seuss grave-robbery is anything but a crime against humanity when they named this cinematic turd du jour so fittingly. Mike Meyers picks up the grave-pissing-oning where fellow maladjusted Canadian Jim Carrey left off in this colorful assault on all that is decent and holy, striking a blow for the forces of shit everywhere. Learning a lesson from Now the Grinch Stole Christmas!, a film that made decent bank but alienated a generation of Dr. Seuss fans who remembered the book actually being good, this time around the filmmakers have chosen a title that suggests Seuss's original book sucked anyway, to give the impression that the film doesn't really ruin anything and you can buy your Shat in a Hat-themed tie-in pacemakers, burp rags, shotgun ammunition, prostate medication and other assorted shwag free of guilt. Thanks for freeing me from this burdensome faith in humanity, fellas.
The Haunted Manson
Apparently Eddie Murphy was unavailable for Black Santa because he had a prior commitment to keeping his cold streak going with The Haunted Manson, the first in what promises to be a long line of uninspired Being John Malkovich knock-offs. With all of that film's stoned reasoning and none of its charm, The Haunted Manson saddles Murphy and his cereal-commercial family with a distant cousin visiting from out of town, who seems at first to be a run-of-the-mill former cult leader and serial-killing ex-con, but turns out—just their luck!—to be haunted. Murphy's pretty funny as the stuffed shirt dealing with Manson's unexpected quirks and celebrity-murdering eccentricities, and Sean William Scott is loveably batshit as the baked noodle Manson. The CGI could have been better, as several of the dismembered bodies in the film are obvious fakes, but the picture is aimed squarely at a family audience that rarely scrutinizes such details.
Timeline
Don't you hate it when your dad accidentally goes back in time a thousand years and all he brings you back is a lousy pair of woolen undershorts? Such is the lament of whoever the nameless dweeb is that they stuck in the lead role of this painfully average paean to teenage lament. Apparently not only is it dangerously uncool to have a scientist for a dad, but if he doesn't bring you an awesome sword or golden goose or something back from medieval times, you might as well just curl up and die somewhere, gawd.
It just occurred to me indeed, that I forgot to heed, Universal's demand that all reviews, and all accounts in the news, of Dr. Seuss Shat in a Hat be written in verse, so they might to nurse, the last bit of magic from that tit, before we all come to despise it, so here it goes: the movie blows. You're welcome.   |