Poll Shows Americans Willing to Relinquish Rights

recent poll has shown that, in the wake of the September 11 flight attendant's brunch gone bad, a vast majority of Americans would be willing to give up many of their Constitutional rights for a guarantee of some measure of safety and security and the chance to "sleep one full night without worrying about some goat-herder's son with bad breath slamming a loaded passenger jet into my apartment building," as one anonymous respondent put it.

Apparently, many citizens feel that a strong police state and the complete suspension of the Bill of Rights is the only way to keep terrorist activity from destroying our precious way of life. Among the rights that people polled would willingly give up are the right to privacy in their homes and persons, the right to avoid wiretaps and other electronic eavesdropping, and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. There was initially some debate on the issue of whether Americans would give up the right to "supersize" their fast-food meals, but that has been tabled at the present time.

Said respondent Connie Bologna, who identified herself as a professional escort for generous gentlemen, "I'd be happy to have about five or six strapping young law enforcement officers handcuff me spread-eagle to an iron cot and give me a full body-cavity search with their nightsticks or batons or billy clubs or whatever you call them. Absolutely. If it helps stop these terroristical attacks, I'm all for it. Where do I sign up?"

Another poll respondent, diva Ladyboy Smacky, commented, "You mean let the police get their hands all up in my stuff? Honey, that happens anyway. But if it means saving our country, well, just let me get my lube first. And fix my makeup, mm-hmm."

Added Bologna, "Oh, yeah, uh huh, honey, I heard the hell out of that!"

The poll was conducted at the Motherlode Bar on Post Street in San Francisco, and has a five percent margin for error, considering that tired queen Charlene and her boyfriend Ray participated, and everyone knows they lie about everything and never answer a question seriously. When it was suggested that the patrons of the Lush Lounge across the street also be polled, Ms. Smacky sniffed, "Who cares what those bitches think? Honey, I'd have to go find a rat just to give a rat's ass."

Chief Justice Rehnquist: Dead as Disco at 80

Kansas City Royals Win Little League World Series

Serial Killer’s Neighbor: “He just wouldn’t shut up about serial killing.”

Heather Graham’s Career Found Dead in Apartment

I don't know who passed the law saying you've got to love old movies or else you're a shithead, but I think they suck. Christ, half of them aren't even in color. It's just a bunch of pasty white guys standing around saying shit like "That was the last monkey in Montenegro," and drinking bourbon.

Now you know Omar Bricks is down with drinking bourbon. I don't even need an excuse like my son died or it's Tuesday or whatever, like most guys. I put bourbon in my soup, 'nuff said there. But watching some old dude who's been dead for fifty years drinking bourbon while he looks serious and silently works on forming a hemorrhoid isn't exactly my idea of a great way to spend a Saturday night.

The problem with most old movies is that jack shit happens in them. People just stand around and talk about things they should do. "We should hijack a blimp and have a gun fight while being dragged behind a train by our shoelaces!" "No, I'm too old and slow for that. Let's just drink some more bourbon." "Good idea." I don't know what in the hell was up with people back then, if they were too worn out and lazy after World War II or what, but they were pretty boring to watch.

And the directors back then didn't help either. Nowadays if you shoot some pregnant chick in a movie, they zoom the camera right into her belly to show that there's some gnarly animated fetus in there. Nice! In old movies they'd just have some white guy say: "You've shot my wife, who was with child. I am understandably upset." And then some other chick would get hysterical and pass out.

That was basically the only role for women in old movies, spazzing out when shit went wrong. Like if war broke out or it rained. And then some bland guy with a paralyzed colon has to get the shit done, by way of talking. You'd be forgiven for dropping dead from the excitement.

Tight-asses can complain all they want about shrinking attention spans these days, but Omar Bricks says the attention spans of yesterday were overrated. Retards have long attention spans too, you know. Moviemakers cashed in on this by padding their movies out with scenes that dragged on for days. People would talk, and then the camera would hang around for a few minutes in case they had anything else to say. And there was no music unless the credits were rolling or people were dancing. If people were dancing they'd dance so long you'd feel like you went to the prom with a broken leg.

The basic lesson of all old movies was that all white people are claymation robots. No wonder minorities don't trust us; they probably think we run on D-cells. It's hard enough for the rest of us to tell the real white people from the actual claymation robots, like Dave Thomas from Wendy's or Ernest Borgnine. Without inborn cauca-dar, I bet it's nearly impossible.

Not that I think old movies should be banished forever or driven off a cliff in a clown car or anything hilarious like that. If we didn't have old movies, film critics would have to start liking modern movies, which would piss them off for sure. Then those fancy pricks would be no better than the rest of us, and they'd have to join a comet cult or something. Or else find new ways to complain about modern movies, like saying they're not as much fun as going ice-skating or kayaking.

I just want people to get off my jock when I suggest that the original Ocean's Eleven can suck my brat pack or when I say I prefer Marky Mark getting his funkies in a bunch in the new Planet of the Apes over the saggy-assed rubber apes of the original. Nobody complains when I pick my cousin over my grandpa as a partner in the Bricks Ultimate Family Reunion Fighting Challenge every couple of years, but I guess it's cool to like old movies more than you like old people. Hypocrites.

Bricks out.

º Last Column: Way to Screw Up the Whole World with Your Religion
º more columns

Christmas is just around the corner, and that can only mean one thing in the Umbrage household: wait a minute, do I even have a household? Does one guy living in a studio apartment with a picture of a potted plant count these days? Usually it seems implied that there are some kids and/or hamsters involved, but I don't know if that's part of the textbook definition. If I count, then some guy living out of a suitcase down at the Y isn't far off, and that's a pretty half-assed household if you ask me. There should be some kind of minimum standards.

Kids I most definitely do not have, and unless the Spirit of Christmas comes around and kicks my ass over it some day I'm not giving it high odds that will change. Why exactly is it that some starving hobo passing out in your entryway is considered a nuisance, yet a pack of bratty little ingrates dominating your whole life, barfing milk left and right and making you listen to Raffi is looked upon as a blessing? I think we've got our priorities in some kind of uncomfortable Twister position there.

The thing that gets me is the people who pretend that they like kids. Right. Just like I love being stung in the dick by a hornet. Nobody likes kids, not even other kids. Put two of them alone in a room together and you won't get ten minutes into a porno before one of them hits the other in the head with a toybox or the corner of a brick. Forget about not letting them see R-rated movies; the average kid kicks more ass than Steven Seagal. They just don't have the sound effects and guys back-flipping off the Hoover Dam to make it seem impressive.

Face the facts, kids are mean like the Viet Cong. If adults acted like that the whole world would be like Jerry Springer during sweeps week. The show, not the guy. You wouldn't be able to walk out in the rain without someone yelling that you'd peed your pants, and then out of nowhere somebody would pull your shorts down and rub some spaghetti in your hair. Yeah, what a wonderful world indeed. What a freakin' miracle of nature.

I was out on a date with a girl the other night and she told me she had babies, all I can say is thank God that window was open or I might not have gotten out of there in time. I found out from a friend later that I'd misheard her and she actually has rabies, got bit by a flying squirrel or something, so I kind of felt bad about flinging myself out of the restaurant like I did. I might give her a call to go out again some time, maybe in a couple weeks when the pills have had time to make sure she's not going to foam from the mouth on my upholstery or anything like that. She was nice, and it's not like she has kids anymore.

I want to meet the guy who suckered the world into thinking that having kids is a good idea. Probably the same guy who invented the diaper or Pokémon. All I'm saying is that if this guy holds a seminar, consider me there. If I could get just one tenth of that magic to rub off on me, within a week I'd have people paying me money to watch them kick themselves in the face. Granted, I hope I'd eventually come up with a better money-making scheme than that, since I'd probably get tired of flying all over the country to witness face-kickings and people getting blood on me and all that, but it would be a start. And it illustrated my point pretty well, I think.

So yeah, you can keep your "household," if that's what it comes down to. I'll console myself somehow as I recline on my spitup-free couch and sleep in until noon. And I hope you like Candyland, you poor bastards.

º Last Column: Conversations Vol. 2
º more columns