he Bush Administration sighed a whistle of relief this week with the news that Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier slain in Iraq who had been standing vigil outside the president's Texas ranch for over two weeks, had finally gone home to California to care for her ailing mother.

"Clearly, the creator has made his will known," Bush intoned smugly, as lightning crackled in the background and the lights inside the president's Crawford, Texas ranch dimmed momentarily.

Sheehan had drawn considerable national media attention to her vigil in recent weeks, becoming the focal point for criticism of the president's handling of the war in Iraq and making a tidy sum selling lemonade to the massive news crews that had assembled. But her mother's recent stroke came hot on the heels of news that Sheehan's husband of 28 years had filed for divorce, causing some religious nuts and the president of the United States to suggest that God doesn't like her.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," philosophized Bush further, apparently suggesting that Jesus doles out strokes like some kind of celestial blackjack dealer.

When asked if he worried that his comments might be construed as insensitive, the president grew tense for a moment. "I didn't say 'bitch' again, did I? You heard me wrong; I meant 'beavered.' 'Bereavered.' You know, one of them fitty cent words," explained Bush, brushing a dozen locusts off his ink blotter.

Critics have taken Bush to task for refusing to meet with Sheehan, who wanted to ask Bush what her son had died to accomplish. With his approval numbers dropping like a concrete blimp, the president opted to change his Sheehan-dealing strategy from his morning ritual of randomly firing his shotgun in the air while shouting "Bitch, get offa my lawn!" to the more politically expedient tactic of ignoring her completely.

This required having a tunnel dug so Bush could exit his Texas ranch without passing by the depressing protestors camped out front.

"It was great, just like The Great Escape," reminisced Bush, who took no part in the digging of the tunnel but did buy a six-pack of lite beer for the three itinerant laborers who survived the tunnel's construction and frequent cave-ins.

However, neither the president's hard-to-get act, nor sending his sloppy drunk brother to drive his pickup truck over roadside memorial crosses in the middle of the night, did anything to shake Sheehan's resolve. Meanwhile, frequent unexplained events at the President's ranch in the last week, including blood flowing from the faucets, the Bush twins coming down with catastrophic diarrhea, and the failure of the sun to rise at all on Saturday has some religious scholars and Christians who have actually read the bible questioning if God really is on Bush's side this time.

But before the commune could address this issue with the president, the Secret Service discovered we'd cornered Bush for a candid in-pantry interview, sans handlers, and burst in with guns drawn. Thankfully for the cause of news, this reporter was able to sneak out with the story's notes inside a false leg, which drew surprisingly little scrutiny in spite of the low number of three-legged reporters in Texas.

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"I once shot myself in my pajamas!"

I've been on a weird sleep schedule for about a month or so. I wake up, stay awake for about 16 hours, then go to sleep, wake up 8 hours later, go to sleep, wake up 9 hours later, stay awake for 6 hours, take a 2-hour nap, wake up for 4 hours, take a long 1-hour blink, sleep for 9 hours, stay awake for a two-hour dinner, then sleep until spring. Actually, I guess it's not all that weird, I just wanted your assurance it was okay.

The nice thing about sleeping a whole lot is sleeping. I'd sleep all day if I didn't need to wake up and piss every other time I need to piss. Those rubber underwear fill up too fast. I tried to get one of those things like they have in the hospitals, one of them—whatcha call it—catheters. But they stick 'em right up your dick. The male nurse mentioned that and I told him "No man takes that route with me!" and laughed. Then he shoved a tube up my dick but it was the wrong kind.

My dreams are wicked cool. A lot of people say that, I bet, but I mean it. My dreams are so cool sometimes they don't let me in. I just dream I'm at the door and try to look in over the bouncer's shoulder and see what's going on in there 'cause it sounds really hot. If I remember to dream I'm wearing a nice jacket and shoes sometimes I get in, but they try to act like it's all quiet in there when I show up. I can hear fucking and dancing and giant fireworks explosions all the time when I'm outside, but when I get in there they just slow dance. Stupid dream people.

Freud said dreams are the mind's way of working out the things our subconscious ain't ready to deal with. So my subconscious isn't ready to deal with fireworks and nasty threesomes and my dreams aren't ready to let me in on them either, the fuckers. I think Freud said it. Actually, it's Froid, that's how he spells it on the mailbox anyway. He keeps stealing my newspaper, too. Ever since I told that prick my dreams he's been setting off fireworks and having sex in his place and I can hear him through the walls, but he won't let come over and he just says it's the TV.

I like to sleep in the nude. I know some people don't like it, but fuck them, I can do what I want in my bedroom, according to the judge. I can't take naps at the commune offices anymore, but it seemed like a fair bargain at the time. And now I can work from home.

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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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