Americans to Commemorate Sept. 11th by Bitching About Minor Inconveniences

ext Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a day of tragedy that made Americans pause from their normal lives and rally together in support of the victims. In addition to fears of new terrorist attacks on the anniversary, most Americans are uncertain how to commemorate the event. Already, however, most are expected to resume their habits of complaining about the smallest of problems.

"I hope they give us the day off at work," said Texas cell phone salesman Bob Whiterich. "It's like a national tragedy and crap. How are people supposed to work on a day like that? And if I knew I could take a couple of vacation days Monday and Tuesday and head to the beach with the family."

Most companies and government agencies have decided against imposing a holiday, feeling the anniversary would be spent better keeping businesses and services functioning as normal. Even plans for restricting air travel on Sept. 11^th have been declined, feeling the statement to the rest of the world, including Muslim extremists believed to have launched the attacks, is a stronger exclamation of solidarity and a country affected, yet not shaken in their resolve by terrorism.

Mark Turnskit, a 42-year-old UPS driver and volunteer fireman in Piermont, North Dakota, however, thinks that is bullshit.

"It's bullshit, man," said Turnskit. "We need a day to remember the importance of it all and stuff. I have a lot of friends back east, in Ohio. A cousin of one of them was married to a firefighter and I think he may have been in the World Trade Center disaster and stuff. I haven't talked to them in a long time—I don't write letters and all, you know, and I don't have their e-mail address or anything. The worst part is not knowing."

Added Turnskit, "I'm a firefighter, so I know what it's like. I could have been in that place just as easy as all the guys who were."

California telemarketer Steve Gerber has made no change in plans for Sept. 11^th. "What is that, a Wednesday? I don't imagine I'll have time to think about the loss of lives and how great it is to live in a country that is still the most secure and wealthiest on the planet. Maybe some time in the evening, after work, if there's something on the Discovery Channel talking about it or—aw, shit. West Wing is on that night, right?"

"I would take a minute or two to stop and think about life and death and all that," said Howett, Tennessee factory worker Milt Darling, "but the Dodge has been crapping out on me a lot, lately. I'll probably have to worry about getting a ride to work. Life's so fucking unfair, man."

Decatur, Georgia realtor Shari Cartier summed up the feelings of most Americans on the subject: "It will be a dark day. This has been the greatest tragedy in history of all time. Something like 6,000 people died—that's more than died in Vietnam, you know. But, c'mon, I got my own life to worry about. Those damn Peel St. properties aren't going to move themselves. And the kids can't take themselves to karate."

The most significant commemoration of the day, outside of New York and Washington, D.C., is likely to come from Perkins, Nebraska, where button collector and local crackpot Vernon Heston is planning on building a scale model of the World Trade Center towers out of Popsicle sticks. Although, according to Heston, if the price of Popsicles continues to skyrocket, the whole thing will be scrapped.

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A little bird recently asked me what it felt like to do 50. I answered that question with this question: What does it feel like to eat a bacon cheeseburger through a straw, dickface? That was right before I hit the little bird in the mouth with an encyclopedia. Actually, that analogy doesn't work unless I mention that the little bird was Boner Cunningham. You probably already guessed that from the encyclopedia he's always carrying around so people will think he can read. But no matter who the little bird was, nobody suggests Omar Bricks shops for chicks at the geriatric ward. Not if he wants to keep his teeth.

Only later when Griswald Dreck asked me the same question and I almost hit him with a framed picture of Dame Edna did I realize what they were both talking about. Really? I've written 50 Polio columns? Holy shit! A quick count of the notches carved into the edge of my desk confirmed it. Damn. Damn times fifty.

It seems like just yesterday that I was scouring the net, looking for columns I could pass off as my own. Come to think of it, that was yesterday. But I tried that shit back when I started working at the commune, too, and it didn't work any better then. Turns out everybody's heard of that old bag who writes Dear Arbys.

Though the official record may show 50 Polio columns published, the actual number written is probably double that. It may seem natural as shit now, but early on it took this Omar Bricks a while to find his "voice." As a matter of fact, the first ten My Friend Polios in a row were all rejected for one reason or another. The first few were because the commune already had a movie reviewer, and they didn't like the way I compared everything to Jaws. To which I still say you can kiss my ass. I still think Working Girl is like Jaws in an office building. Whatever.

My next attempt was rejected because they said you can't just write a column about how you deserve a blowjob. Apparently Rok Finger had already milked that tit dry years ago. I tried another column using the voice of this hilarious Latino character I had created but the commune bigwigs thought our apparently huge Hispanic readership would be alienated by the antics of Frankie Hotpants. I think the real problem was I was typing in an accent, and the milkfed silver spooners around here couldn't make out a word of it, so naturally they assumed I was using the column to take potshots at them in Latinese. Which I was, but they had no way of knowing that. Pricks.

After that I tried my hand at a "reality" column, just typing up everything that was happening around me as I wrote the thing. That turned out to be easy as shit to write, but made me enemies around the office faster than an Amy Grant concert tee shirt. Like the new guy was supposed to know everybody here was so secretive about their cock fighting and underground jai-alai tournaments.

My big breakthrough finally came one day in the parking garage when I was welding a giant metal dick to the hood of Red Bagel's car. Sure, I'd known it would be a hilarious gag for weeks, as I made arrangements to get the tools and had some kid in a high school metalshop class make the dick. But in the actual moment of pulling it off, by the pale glow of that arc-welder, I realized that this was the shit My Friend Polio should be all about. And a column was born.

Of course, that actual column never ran. Bagel immediately sacked the guy who he thought dick-welded his Camry, and I figured best let sleeping dogs lie dead on that one. But it didn't matter, the seed had been sewn. Or whatever the hell you do with seeds, it was planted and shit. At that point, nobody could have predicted what would come in the next 50 My Friend Polios, unless they were following me around all the time and taking notes. Then I guess they would have had a pretty good idea.

Bricks out.

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The foreskin: Nature's "Mr. Touchy." Nobody denies the role of the foreskin in making sex even more sensitive than it otherwise would be. Some scientists, like my former roommate Bill Gottlieb, estimate that without the foreskin sex loses between 5 and 95% of its sensation. That's a lot of sensitivity!

No wonder M.A.R.S. wants so many foreskins. Not Mars, the planet, of course, let's not be ridiculous; I mean M.A.R.S., the Militant Alien Researchers of Sexuality, made up primarily of Neptunians. Everyone knows the Martians haven't been active in universal events since the 1960s, being a race near extinction. Forgive my spelling of Mars instead of M.A.R.S. in the headline, but I know how it is—you mention Mars, everybody jumps to attention; you mention Neptune, people are trampling each other in an effort to get away from boredom city.

But this involves foreskins, people—the abduction of them, no less. Maybe the Neptunians aren't as boring as you thought, hmm?

The part of the story you were never told starts back in the 1930s, when plucky environmentalists, then called "Earthtotalers," lobbied on behalf of the ecology to keep foreskins from just being thrown out the window once they were circumcised. Apparently, besides the nasty habit of them falling on proper ladies who just happen to walk by hospitals, the high oil content of foreskins turned out to be causing major environmental problems. Between you and me, I think it has more to do with prohibition of the time. After all, you're paying $45 for a beer and a foreskin lands in it, well, your whole day is just pissed away. But the Earthtotalers claimed some major ecological issue and got Congress involved, and before too long doctors had to dispose of severed foreskins like mechanics dispose of oil. Which pissed off our invisible friends, the Neptunians.

Neptunians benefited heavily from the excess foreskins thrown callously away since as early as circumcisions began. Interestingly enough, circumcisions are not the product of aliens, a nice change from most history, but the second-largest cause is behind it: Two guys drinking quite a lot. Lebzahamus and Eprudimus, two early Babylonians, were drinking quite a lot as was their custom to forget their awful names, when Eprudimus bet the other he couldn't chop the end of his dick off before Lebzahamus could pull it away. Eprudimus won, but was so envious of the sharp new look Lebzahamus had that he decided to cut off his own foreskin. Both awoke sober the next morning and horrified at what they had done, but not before a disgusting new trend had caught on.

Over the years, strangely, nobody wondered where those foreskins had disappeared to when causally tossed away. Neptunians, is the short answer. Given their limited sexual performance, Neptunians were desperate for any sort of enhancement they could get, so human penial foreskins became a popular aphrodisiac for their people. There was enough of a decline in the availability of foreskins when humans realized in the twentieth century, "Hey, what the fuck are we doing chopping our dicks off?" But then with the advent of medical waste disposal, the market for foreskins on Neptune became extremely endangered. In fact, things are so bad now that the future of the Neptune race is in jeopardy. If that sounds a little extreme, you've obviously never made love to a Neptunian woman without the aid of a foreskin aphrodisiac.

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