n an unprecedented display of commitment to job outsourcing, the White House announced Thursday that several of its own positions, including the vice presidency, would be outsourced starting in 2005. The declaration came as a shock at a time when the subject of job outsourcing has raised controversy about job loss in the United States.

Citing statistics showing increased profits and reduced overhead in outsourcing, and addressing the prominent issue of the growing multi-trillion national deficit, the Bush administration promised outsourcing key administrative positions, not only in the White House but Congress and the Supreme Court as well, to overseas companies would bring the federal budget back in line and produce "exciting, proactive solutions to government problems."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan held a press conference Thursday and provided documentation from presidential advisors showing the many positions to eliminated domestically and re-staffed elsewhere, with India and China touted as very likely candidates. The press noted McClellan's own position was listed among those being phased out, to which the press secretary responded, "Well, obviously this isn't written in stone yet. Not all of them, like that one."

Outsourcing has long been a way for companies to reduce overhead by sending work to be done in locations outside the country, where the cost of living and wages are much less, since they don't have unions and a voice in government in such places. Until the last five years, however, outsourcing was prominently for blue-collar jobs too difficult to give to machines and yet too costly to pay Americans to do; only recently have the upper echelons of management realized white collar jobs basically fit the same pattern and can be done cheaper in other countries, meaning maximizing profit, assuming anybody is left employed to buy the products here.

Just how high a position can be outsourced? The White House says it can go all the way to the next-to-the-top. When asked what he thought of his role in the administration being given to someone else, Vice President Dick Cheney studied the memo and laughed nervously.

"That Georgie," sighed Cheney, "he's got a wicked sense of humor. Funny. Funny guy."

At the press conference, McClellan insisted the vice presidency would be easy enough to train someone else to do.

"You've basically got one real job," said McClellan, "casting the vote in the Senate if there's a tie. Yeah, that happens a lot. Not something you can phone in from New Delhi, that's for sure. It's not like giving press conferences—that kind of thing has to be done daily, a never-ending job."

Other positions being mentioned for outsourcing included White House speech writers, economic advising, secretary of defense, Department of Homeland Security (started as a joke anyway), and Central Intelligence. Among the more controversial choices was the selection of the Supreme Court for outsourcing. According to Legal History Professor Dunbar Gates, an expert on the Constitution from M.I.T., the legality of the move could be challenged.

"Bush may be setting himself up for a lawsuit to outsource positions of the government he didn't appoint," said Gates. "I'm no expert on the Constitution or anything, but he might want to check with a lawyer."

Responded Bush Saturday to commune inquiries: "We'll let the new Supreme Court decide that next year."

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I don't remember anything from last night, I was comatoast. I'm not kidding, I fell in with this fast crowd of Olympic blood-dopers I met at GNC when I was there pricing one of those camelsack things you wear on your back so you can piss on the go. And everything's pretty much all a blur after that. It got a little weird at one point, I think I woke up in a closed library with torn-out book pages papier-mâchéd all over my naked body, but thankfully the next blackout warped me back home. So all's well that ends, like they say. I think I may have ran a marathon in there somewhere, because my feet are hella sore, but I'd still say partying with reckless Olympians isn't bad as far as hobbies go.

Especially when my other main hobby is throwing away paperclips, pretty boring. I'm not kidding, my trash can sounds like a sleigh bell whenever the janitors try to move that thing. Whenever I get something that's paperclipped together, that little metal doohag goes straight in the trash, because fuck you if you don't think I can keep my shit together without your help. I resent that, and if I wasn't making your memo into a naked origami chick, that shit would be filed right where it belongs, under the corner of my desk that's all lopsided from when I had my office outside last summer. I still laugh when I think of those wimpy little neighborhood kids dropping my desk while they were schlepping it back up the stairs. You don't know funny until you've seen six little third graders screaming and scurrying away from a desk that's cartwheeling down a stairwell like some kind of berserk wooden monster.

Speaking of the office, I guess the big news around here is that Red Bagel's dad died last week, some kind of buffalo-smoking accident. And I know exactly what you're thinking, but I already asked and apparently he ran a buffalo jerky shack in Wisconsin somewhere. Though if you ask me that sounds like an answer designed to avoid the question, and I'm still not convinced the man wasn't some kind of High-Plains pervert. I decided not to push the matter further out of respect for the dead, but you know I'm going to hit the 'Net hard to get to the bottom of these buffalo-smoking allegations.

Anyway, the big Sixth Sense whammo surprise of the whole deal is that it turns out Bagel's dad actually owned the commune, he won it in a poker game with a mute Indian or some shit years ago, and so now it's been passed on to Red and his half-brother Gay Bagel. No shit, a surprise brother! Makes me wonder who's gonna come out of the closet when I die. Next thing we know this Gay Bagel shows up and spontaneously craps out a kidney when he realizes the commune has accidentally qualified as a non-profit organization for three years running, due to the fact that we don't make any money and Rok Finger once had a girl scout sleepover party at his house.

While they were gurneying Gay Bagel out of here and the EMTs were looking around under the desks for that kidney so they could put it on ice, he was mumbling some shit about making a ton of profit-milking changes around here so that his inheritance wasn't pissed down a river. Something like that. I don't know if that means we're going to get some new columnists with big tits or what, but I'm all for giving that a shot. Far be it from Omar Bricks to stand the way of progress, I might even have time to download JPEGs of some ideal candidates while I'm researching this buffalo-smoking story. Shit, I may even end up breaking Red Bagel's 57-month streak of "commune Employee of the Month" awards while I'm at it, hot damn.

Bricks out.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I'll start this story off by saying I don't know how I got to Las Vegas. These things just happen, and you either roll with the punches or you pull on a t-shirt that says "BIG, WHINY BITCH" and play the part. Since I was already wearing a pretty stellar Midnight Run tee, I decided to do Vegas like I'd gone there on purpose.

First thing's first, I've got to say the 9/11 tribute at New York, New York that you've been hearing about is a definite can't-miss. Every night at 9:11pm they fly a remote-control plane into the "twin towers" wing of the hotel and set off a shitload of fireworks and explosives, and Omar Bricks isn't ashamed to admit he got a little choked up standing on the sidewalk with all the other Vegas losers, clapping and cheering as the hydraulic towers went down and they shot some spare change and clothing fragments into the crowd and some of those Cirque du Soleil freaks did backflips off the roof. Leave it to Vegas to remind us what it's all about.

As far as the other casinos go, I still say the Mirage hasn't been the same since Roy had his nuts bit off by that tiger. Now they're advertising "Sigfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat," which sounds like about as much wild fun as a hysterectomy. I do understand the pussy move to less-threatening stage animals, but I don't think it's working out too hot since when I wandered into the show, one of the dolphins had just pulled Roy into the tank and was thrashing the shit out of him while Sigfried half-heartedly slapped at the beast with an oar. Funny shit, but probably not what Roy'd had in mind when they cracked open the full-body cast before the show.

I hear they're thinking of trying out ground sloths next, since that's one of the only animals Roy isn't afraid of now, but I'll bet you ten bucks one of those things finds its way into their hotel suite in the middle of the night and beats the shit out of Roy in slow-motion while he's sleeping. I tried to get the Mirage to give me odds on that, but they're not taking any more Roy-abuse action until he gets out of the hospital, out of respect and all that noise. But I'm thinking the Luxor might take my bet, those Egyptian hardasses have held a grudge against the Mirage ever since the Luxor-Mirage employee rumble back in 1998. I think they're understandably upset since the gaming commission ruled that they couldn't keep the Mirage employees as slaves after winning the rumble.

Speaking of the Luxor, I spent the better part of one night trying to sneak into the hotel pyramid's elevator, since I heard the crazy fuckin' thing goes sideways, down into the center of the earth. You know Omar Bricks had to see how that shit goes down. Too bad for the lame-ass truth: Turns out they guard that thing like the Pentagon men's room, you can't even get in without a room key or a much better grasp of the Vulcan neck pinch than I can take credit for. I won't lie and say it's the first pyramid Omar Bricks has been thrown out of, but at least in this one they let me out on the ground floor.

I've always thought that Vegas is basically large-scale mini-golf with beer, though they'll usually kick you off of the mini-golf course for bringing in hookers. Advantage: Vegas, there. This time I decided to test my theory and golf the strip, like in that video with the guy who sings like Elmer Fudd. You kind of have to make up your own par, since it's not posted, or if it is, the sign's been plastered over with titty posters and plans to build a new casino on the sidewalk in front of some existing casino. That's the downside of a town with no rules: the course etiquette blows.

Now nobody would claim Omar Bricks is a world-class golfer, maybe the class of the commune offices, but that's like winning a beauty pageant in a burn ward. Mainly I just swing hard and wait to laugh, if you hit the ball hard enough, something funny is almost guaranteed to happen. Especially if you're blindfolded, sounds are even funnier when you have to imagine who's making them. So I don't know where this cop got off suggesting that I was the one who hit a golf ball into the penthouse at Caesar's Palace. If I had that kind of aim, I'd be shanking that shit on ESPN. Not to mention having Nike paying the big bucks to put their logo on every piece of clothing I'm wearing and shaving it into my hair, like Tiger Woods. I don't know how golfers get away with that shit; if porn stars had those kind of commercial cajones they'd have condom brand logos tattooed on their balls.

Long story short, I had just hit a nine iron up the Eiffel Tower at the Paris when a cop asked me if I had a permit to hit golf balls into a crowded hotel. The dude scared the shit out of me since I'd just been ignoring him standing there; I thought he wanted an autograph or advice on grips. I showed him my ski pass from Vail Mountain, which usually gets the job done since most people don't like to read. But this guy was some kind of bookworm freak and he figured out the pass didn't say anything about playing the Bellagio fountain as a water hazard, so I spent the rest of the day ducking the cops and hitting the casinos in an oversized Ronald Reagan mask.

If you do go to Vegas some time soon I'd recommend checking out the Treasure Island boat show, if you can throw a baseball hard enough you can spend your Saturday night being chased by guys dressed up as pirates, which is good for at least a few months of local fame. A word to the wise though: those phony fucks don't hold themselves to any kind of real pirates' code when it comes to street fighting, and they're not above calling in some hard-hitting showgirls when the going gets rough. Bricks out.

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