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Report: ’Osama’ Least Popular Name for American BabiesOctober 1, 2001 |
Baltimore, MD Assad The Unseen/AP A brave new world will greet Hitler Caldwell study conducted last week found that among the most popular names for baby boys right now are "John" and "Jason." Least popular: "Osama." Scientists say not only has the name "Osama" the least popular name for American parents naming baby boys, it has fallen drastically this year from last year’s ranking. "Last year’s study showed that Osama was number 435th. Not very popular at all as a name choice for American boys," said study author and researcher Dr. David Banner. "But this year… oh, jeez. Jesus pleasus. Lookit that. Waaay down there. I’m not even joking." Other unpopular names on the list included, "Shitdick," "The Buttinator," "Regis," "Flaccid," "Ball-lick," and perennial least-favorite, "Hitler." "This is no good," said ...
study conducted last week found that among the most popular names for baby boys right now are "John" and "Jason." Least popular: "Osama." Scientists say not only has the name "Osama" the least popular name for American parents naming baby boys, it has fallen drastically this year from last year’s ranking. "Last year’s study showed that Osama was number 435th. Not very popular at all as a name choice for American boys," said study author and researcher Dr. David Banner. "But this year… oh, jeez. Jesus pleasus. Lookit that. Waaay down there. I’m not even joking." Other unpopular names on the list included, "Shitdick," "The Buttinator," "Regis," "Flaccid," "Ball-lick," and perennial least-favorite, "Hitler." "This is no good," said expectant mother Sheila Caldwell. "I had ’Osama’ all picked out and now, well, I’m not using that. It’s a shame though. I had all these outfits with ’Osama’ embroidered in the left shoulder, like ’Laverne and Shirley.’""Not anymore," said Sheila’s husband Matt Caldwell. "What’s that other one you said? Hitler?" the commune News would like to point out that if you were really such a big shot, you wouldn’t need a fancy Beemer to look cool. A rusted-out El Camino with Taz mudflaps would do just fine. Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown is the long-dead Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame pitcher who seems to have returned from the great beyond, fancying himself a reporter and scaring the hell out of the rest of the staff, except Ramon Nootles, who’s never heard of baseball.
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Appeals Court Rules Hilton Legitimately Too Pretty to Survive Prison Climatologists Cross Legs Uncomfortably at Mention of Bangkok Conference Merck: “Crazy-Ass Brazil Giving AIDS Drugs to People With No Money” Poison Probe Reveals 90% of Packaged Foods Actually Dog Food |
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 July 11, 2005
Genius, Inc.After last installment's adventures with the Omar Bricks Perpetual Motion Machine (an electric water distiller covered on all sides by throbbing punch-balloons) and the resulting disastrous core meltdown that destroyed the southern quarter of my neighbor Hamms' house last week, I realized the error in my recent thinking. True inventors don't set out to make the world a better place. True inventors set out to make the world give them a lot of money. So I decided that free energy for all (and especially for me and select close friends) could wait, since I can't waste any more time or brainpower on inventions that don't make a shitload of money really fast.
Answer? Last week I formed Genius, Inc., a think tank that consists of yours truly and my loyal secretary and bodyguard, Foghat. It's an idea factory, really, a new kind of company that doesn't play by the old rules, in business or in badminton. It's like Apple without all the gayness attached.
And let me tell you, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Omar Bricks is the first to admit that, while brilliant, not all of our early products have been entirely successful in the marketplace. Among the long string of inventions that the world was not ready for include the Live Mouse Computer Mouse, the Freeway Parasail and my pride and joy, BreathWreckers gum (available in Onion & Garlic, Cigarette, and Whiskey Double flavors).
But failure is the mother-in-law of success, or however the...
º Last Column: The Omar Bricks Perpetual Motion Miracle º more columns
After last installment's adventures with the Omar Bricks Perpetual Motion Machine (an electric water distiller covered on all sides by throbbing punch-balloons) and the resulting disastrous core meltdown that destroyed the southern quarter of my neighbor Hamms' house last week, I realized the error in my recent thinking. True inventors don't set out to make the world a better place. True inventors set out to make the world give them a lot of money. So I decided that free energy for all (and especially for me and select close friends) could wait, since I can't waste any more time or brainpower on inventions that don't make a shitload of money really fast.
Answer? Last week I formed Genius, Inc., a think tank that consists of yours truly and my loyal secretary and bodyguard, Foghat. It's an idea factory, really, a new kind of company that doesn't play by the old rules, in business or in badminton. It's like Apple without all the gayness attached.
And let me tell you, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Omar Bricks is the first to admit that, while brilliant, not all of our early products have been entirely successful in the marketplace. Among the long string of inventions that the world was not ready for include the Live Mouse Computer Mouse, the Freeway Parasail and my pride and joy, BreathWreckers gum (available in Onion & Garlic, Cigarette, and Whiskey Double flavors).
But failure is the mother-in-law of success, or however the bar-napkin quote goes, and in time the world finally caught up to Genius, Inc., leaving us with our first truly marketable product. SpamHat.
Genius, Inc.'s first product release to extend beyond the convenience store down the block from Bricks Manor is going to be SpamHat 8.0. It's really the first version, but people like to feel like they're buying some advanced version that's had all the bugs and bullshit worked out, hence the 8.0 at the end. Eight's a good number, since most things have been perfected by their eighth time around the block, except of course the Rocky movies.
SpamHat does exactly what you'd think; it filters out the sun's harmful rays and prevents you from getting hat cancer. Originally I was going to make an electric hat that filtered out junk email, but that turned out to be a real pain in the ass so I just kept the name and tossed all the computer bullshit and the '87 Ford windshield wipers I had bolted on, and we were ready to go.
There's also a piece of Spam sewn inside the hat, to keep your head cool. I mainly added this so I could keep the bitchin' name without getting involved in any false-advertising lawsuits, but then I came to realize it was actually pretty useful for head-cooling, attracting wildlife, and as an emergency snack. A safety note for bald dudes though: don't leave SpamHat in the freezer too long or else the Spam will bond to your scalp when you put the hat on and you're gonna be wearing it for a while. I'm also working on SpamHat Remover for such instances, but it involves pissing in a tube attached to the hat and I probably won't have FDA approval for that until late next year.
Next step is the marketing campaign and saturating the region with television commercials for SpamHat, which will commence as soon as I'm done training Foghat to hold a goddamned video camera straight. I swear, sometimes I think that dog expects me to do all the work. Bricks out. º Last Column: The Omar Bricks Perpetual Motion Miracleº more columns
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|  May 30, 2005
The Sad Fate of the World's Greatest InventionEveryone loves seeing movies in the theater, because the screen is so freakin' huge. Plus when you throw shit at the screen at home, usually you're the one who has to clean it up later, unless you're smart enough to throw something the dog's not too proud to eat off the floor, like steak. But regardless, Omar Bricks has always had one major problem with seeing movies in the theater, and it's not the rule about discharging firearms during the exciting parts or the mandatory frisking for fireworks. No, the real pain in my remarkably-tolerant ass is the way they keep the movie playing like fascists even when you've really got to piss but don't want to miss the best part of the movie, which filmmakers strategically place right at the optimal time for a piss break to ensure repeat business.
Normally I just end up pissing in a trash can in the back of the theater, where I can still see the screen, but that's not a perfect solution either. Sometimes the trash is really full and you get splashback like from a cheap Korean urinal, and other times some 90-year old woman chooses that moment to pop into the theater to check and see if this movie has that delightful Kevin Costner in it, only to grab a stroke-inducing eyeful of your man-monster. So this was clearly a national problem worthy of serious scientific inquiry.
That put me at a slight disadvantage, since the only thing I know about science is that you can't freeze gasoline. But God never slams a door...
º Last Column: Guanica º more columns
Everyone loves seeing movies in the theater, because the screen is so freakin' huge. Plus when you throw shit at the screen at home, usually you're the one who has to clean it up later, unless you're smart enough to throw something the dog's not too proud to eat off the floor, like steak. But regardless, Omar Bricks has always had one major problem with seeing movies in the theater, and it's not the rule about discharging firearms during the exciting parts or the mandatory frisking for fireworks. No, the real pain in my remarkably-tolerant ass is the way they keep the movie playing like fascists even when you've really got to piss but don't want to miss the best part of the movie, which filmmakers strategically place right at the optimal time for a piss break to ensure repeat business.
Normally I just end up pissing in a trash can in the back of the theater, where I can still see the screen, but that's not a perfect solution either. Sometimes the trash is really full and you get splashback like from a cheap Korean urinal, and other times some 90-year old woman chooses that moment to pop into the theater to check and see if this movie has that delightful Kevin Costner in it, only to grab a stroke-inducing eyeful of your man-monster. So this was clearly a national problem worthy of serious scientific inquiry.
That put me at a slight disadvantage, since the only thing I know about science is that you can't freeze gasoline. But God never slams a door without kicking out a window, and my lack of technical know-how has always been made up for with ingenuity, which is another word for balls. And that's about as good an explanation as any for how I came up with the Movie Theater Remote Control®.
Because when I started thinking about it, not being able to pause a movie in the theater was only one of a number of problems with our antiquated movie-projecting systems. You also couldn't rewind to see cool parts of movies again, or fast-forward through the lame parts to get to something good. And the lack of a volume control was a ridiculous oversight. Only an idiot would try to sell you a TV without a volume knob, but we've been buying that same bullshit from the theaters for years. It was time to wise up and kick the man in the pants.
Most of the tech for the MTRC® came from plans I found in a dumpster outside of NASA. Did you know NASA locks their dumpsters? True as shit. And did you know you can pick a dumpster lock with a Bic pen and a Zippo lighter? That's one to grow on, kids.
The early prototypes didn't work exactly as planned, in fact the first one ended up blacking out most of Flatbush during a screening of The Country Bears. Not that you heard anyone complaining. Version 2.0 was far more effective, only too much so, if such a thing is possible. The problem was that while I was fast-forwarding through one of the many lame parts of Hidalgo, the MTRC® was actually controlling all the projectors in the multiplex at once, so although at least half the people there were being saved from lame bullshit, the other half were missing the best part of Starsky & Hutch, or at least seeing it at twice its intended speed. That's when I learned that as cool as a car battery can be for ultimate juice, sometimes AAs get the job done more appropriately. Plus you don't have to design a special harness to sneak a couple of AA batteries into a movie theater under your jacket.
Version 3.0 was actually a step backward, but for some reason it ran the Icee machine in the lobby just fine, so I kept that one for future experimentation. Version 4.01 was the real winner, and came in a sweet lime-green finish as well. I was set.
And for a few months, I was in movie-going heaven. Even with the rewinding for cool parts, and pausing for a couple of piss breaks, most movies only ended up taking about 45 minutes, since you didn't have to sit through any of the trailers or bullshit "character development" parts of movies. Sure, there were always a couple of whiners in the audience who wanted to see Barbara Streisand crying in her soup, but those knobs were in the minority and they didn't know who to whine to anyway since it wasn't like I was advertising my role as the dude with the remote. But eventually, I have to admit I got a little cocky and people started to catch on since I was the guy yelling "Bo-ring!" whenever Michelle Pfeiffer came on the screen and suddenly the movie would zap forward to a ninja fight or whatever.
I guess word got out, since things really came to a head last year when I paused The Bourne Supremacy so I could take a leak and when I came back, those fuckers were looking at me like I just ate the baby Jesus with Vidalia onions. I swear, these pious motherfuckers don't piss? Am I watching a movie with the cast of Waterworld again? Well excuse me, you inconsiderate dicks, but not everyone here can recycle their whiz and drink it again. Some of us have to pay eight bucks for a Mr. Pibb that's at least three times the size of our own bladder, and some of us are too modest to piss it down the aisle like Southern royalty. Next thing you know they're going to tell me these egomaniacs have never intentionally thrown up in the sink of the men's room at a fast food restaurant to make room for seconds.
Even getting banned for life from that theater wasn't a huge deal, since disguises are half the fun of going to the movies anyway. But what really sunk my battleship was that after the word got out, everybody wanted me to make them a MTRC®. First my neighbor Mitch, then Red Bagel, and then Roland McShyster. I don't even know what that guy wanted with one; I don't think he's ever been in a movie theater in his life. I asked him if he wanted to go see Star Wars last week and he thought I was talking about a reality show cross between Star Search and The Running Man.
At first things were going great, and I was making some nice coin to dick around in my garage, which has always been a dream of mine. But before I knew it, everybody had a MTRC® (or Griswald Dreck's knock-off version, the JapZapper®) and going to the theater, even in a fun disguise, became a total nightmare. Nobody could agree on what were the cool or lame parts of movies, and with 300 people in the theater there were so many piss breaks that watching a movie was like trying to play Quake on a Commodore 64.
Hence the sad but valuable lesson I've lived and learned to pass on to you, commune flock: If you ever find yourself in a position of absolute power, don't fuck it up by assuming that everybody's got good taste in movies. Bricks out. º Last Column: Guanicaº more columns
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Milestones1921: Underground rumor begins that Lil Duncan, to be born in 50 years, will like the kinky stuff.Now HiringDeaf Mute. Duties include standing around, accepting blame for assorted office mishaps, and listening to Ramrod Hurley's stories about the one time he went fishing. Antidepressant prescription a plus.Top 5 commune Features This Week| 1. | Twins: God's Mistake | | 2. | HD-DVD, Blu-Ray Discs, Digital Tape, and 10 More Reasons to Stop Buying Movies | | 3. | Uncle Macho's Bathtub Tequila | | 4. | Touched by an Angel: "I Was Molested by Gabriel" | | 5. | Critic's Corner: How You Personally Ruined Western Culture | |
|   North Korea Pissed Their Real-Life Hunger Games Nowhere Near as Popular as Movie BY Gridwell Gray 3/26/2007 Shy StatesmenIt was late 2005 when I first met Pacman. He had been brought over for the seemingly innocuous purpose of inventory control in the headquarters of the U.S. Armory, securing paper. Lockheed brand paper. These kinds of shenanigans were hardly out of the ordinary, and caused so many thousands of death even the irony of calling them "shenanigans" tasted bitter in my mouth. So did the cheap Afghani chocolate I had been eating for the last three and a half years.
"You must be an old dog indeed," said Pacman, shaking my hand as we first met. Just like that I had a nickname—Rummy. Apparently he had an old dog named Rummy, and calling me old dog that one time made him think of that. Though he started calling me Chim-Chim by the end of our friendship. Not sure what that was about.
It was late 2005 when I first met Pacman. He had been brought over for the seemingly innocuous purpose of inventory control in the headquarters of the U.S. Armory, securing paper. Lockheed brand paper. These kinds of shenanigans were hardly out of the ordinary, and caused so many thousands of death even the irony of calling them "shenanigans" tasted bitter in my mouth. So did the cheap Afghani chocolate I had been eating for the last three and a half years. "You must be an old dog indeed," said Pacman, shaking my hand as we first met. Just like that I had a nickname—Rummy. Apparently he had an old dog named Rummy, and calling me old dog that one time made him think of that. Though he started calling me Chim-Chim by the end of our friendship. Not sure what that was about. Young dog, old dog. Pacman had no idea how right he was with that description. This endless, unbeatable war cycled through dogs like a bitch in heat, only none of us got stuck to the war and had to be hosed off by disgusted neighbors. It tore through all my friends in a hell of a short time, and we were only correspondents to the U.K. and Europe. I can only guess how they shredded the solders. It makes more sense why they call them dog-faces, although cutting their hair like Johnny Unitas doesn't help. Three-and-a-half years in Afghanistan, bleeding innocence everyday. Watching had once been a respectable strategic retaliation devolve into the violent dance of the hall monitor. No matter how many bullies you dragged back to a corner, three more were always waiting to come and vandalize what you had built back from the destruction. Like Nero I stood by helpless to witness Rome burning, as a special correspondent for The Guardian UK For Kids. Pacman, though, he was that most hated of all species among the intellectuals: A nationalist. He spoke daily on the gains made in the war, ground recaptured and thugs re-routed, paying no mind to the disintegrating good will surrounding us. Pacman read books by the barrelful—every time I saw him he carried with him another text of blind dedication to the U.S. perspective on the war. Either he really, truly believed in all of this jingoistic nonsense or he had a lot of couches missing one leg each. Either was a possibility. Despite his best attempts to socialize with me, Pacman had no lasting effect on me. Until he confessed to me he had fallen in love with my own Al-Dooby. I had known Al-Dooby for more than the past year, even before Shaleikmabadass fell. She was the one comfort I had in all the Middle East, the only thing that kept my cynical mind from going insane. She was polite and docile, like a British woman from the Victorian era, or a modern British man. She had the loveliest eyes, and the most beautiful face—I presume. Behind that burka, anything could have been going on. Might have been a man, I suppose. She smelled a bit mannish. But that hardly mattered as the rest of the world around me spun out of control. Pacman had stated his own intentions for her, and I would rather see him dead than see her get him. Her. I had no idea how much that wish would come to affect me. When I arrived home at my apartment, local police inspector Bob Souandabad was waiting for me. "Mr. Dilley," Det. Souandabad said to me. "I have unfortunate news. Your friend Pacman is dead." I shuddered. What if my thoughts had taken form, become ghosts of my vengeance, and pursued Pacman down a twisting and turning maze until they consumed him? Had I ended his game before it even had started?   |