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."

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If there is one thing we are guaranteed as Americans, failing all else, it's the right to sue. Even the prisoner in the darkest and dingiest cell has the right to file a lawsuit through a two-bit shyster claiming the prison conditions have done irreparable emotional damage which requires financial compensation.

I'm going to exercise that right, fellow Americans, because I have just seen a play so obviously based on my life that they should have called it Ching! Ching! I Owe Red Bagel a Lot of Money. Oh, sure, they tried to disguise it, calling the play instead Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale a Lot of Money, but I recognize my life when I see it re-enacted for me in proscenium stage setting.

First off, and this is so obvious it doesn't bear pointing out: Fred Scarsdale? It rhymes with Red so plainly I needn't go any further. The judge will hear that and throw the book at the playwright, and it will be a Michener book, I can tell you that much. Plus, I've been to Scarsdale one time to research my theory about the Grand Canyon being the ass crack of a giant rock creature, though that didn't really pan out. But that's in the play, too, if you were wondering.

Second, the play is about a tyrannical journalist and editor (me) with a mysterious background (me) and high standards that none of his staff can meet (also me) and who they plan to murder in his sleep for his reign of tyranny (bound to happen), and, as a subplot, fails in all his relationships with women because of strong mother issues (me, too) and his inability to maintain an erection. This final part is the only fictional element in the play, though if the judge starts to doubt the authenticity of my claim I can perhaps produce a couple of doctors who would verify the similarities.

The playwright is some hotshot former journalist and M-TV veejay just known as R. Dunkin. Though the name sounds a little familiar, I must admit, I have no idea where I would cross paths with someone who could write. My business usually limits me to meeting with conspiracists and Washington insiders, publishing experiment results from scientists with poor methodology, and bossing around reporters and columnists. Rok Finger attempted to write a play once, but I hear it was so poor he ended up giving it away, and it reappeared years later as Rent. Even if I thought Finger possessed the babymakers enough to write a play about me, I know it wouldn't be as powerful and well-written as the Fred Scarsdale thing, and it also completely lacked music.

I'll get to the bottom of this before too long, and when I do, there better be a big fat change purse waiting for me. I am not the sort of man who displays his life to the public for a minimal price in a community theater setting. Someone out there owes me a fat shiny copper and I'm going to get it or my name isn't Fred Scarsdale. Or Red Bagel, I mean.

In the meantime, as much as I hate to admit it, you should really go see Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale a Lot of Money at the Appleberry Theater in Vlanch, Pennsylvania. It is a well-done rendition of a man corrupt with power until, like King Lear, he is reminded of what is important by the hero of the play, Rafael Tumpkin. And if you're not big into drama or anything, you should still check it out because of the hot love scenes between the main character Fred Scarsdale and his strumpet reporter Jill Tumken. This stuff is too good to be true.

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Long about this time every year, the days just get too nice to be wasted sitting around the commune offices, modifying my wrist rocket or flinging boomerangs out the window in the hope that they'll hook back into Raoul Dunkin's window for an Aussie Good Morning. When it gets this nice, it becomes imperative to take the day off, but not the kind of weak-assed "authorized" days off that normal chumps take. Nope, Monday I decided it was time for an Omar Bricks Day Off, the kind where everybody thinks you're still at work but you're actually far away, pushing a greased pig in through the back door of a titty bar somewhere.

Now, though it may sound like all fun and panicked strippers to the novice, an Omar Bricks Day Off is actually a complicated undertaking. If word got to Bagel that I was going to fuck off for the day I'd be in some serious shit, because he'd definitely want to tag along and there's no way I was going to have that big sack of weird following me around all day. I somehow ended up at a boat show with Bagel one time and that Zagnut actually tried to buy the convention center, so he could lock the doors and claim ownership of all the boats and people in attendance. How embarrassing. So needless to say, I needed to bust open a big can of covertness, and fast, unless I wanted to spend the day listening to Bagel talk about how he was suing the television show Method and Red for stealing his character.

At first I tried to set up a mannequin at my desk, to fool people into thinking I was actually here but just really bored, but that idea quickly went over like a fat man in a hot air balloon. Every time I left my office to get more stealthing supplies, I came back to find that somebody had mistaken the mannequin for Raoul Dunkin and knocked its head off. After the third time I thought about trying to bolt the head on better, but with my luck somebody would set the damned thing on fire while I was gone, and then my ruse would be up and somebody else would have their whole day ruined when they found out Dunkin was still alive.

So instead I tethered a monkey to my desk and put a Jane Fonda workout tape in the VCR, which sadly was enough to convince most of the staff that I'd made it in to work for the day. It probably would have fooled Bagel too, except the ape went monkeyshit when the tape ended and it couldn't find the rewind button on the remote. I've heard conflicting accounts about the kind of mayhem that ensued, the only constant being that at some point, the monkey definitely ate Lil Duncan's brassiere.

So from what I hear, from that moment the hunt was on, with Bagel stopping at nothing convenient to find out where I'd gone and why I hadn't invited him. That's what I hear anyway, I was at the discus factory by that time, still under the impression that the goddamned monkey was doing his job.

At some point Bagel stopped by my house, jimmied the lock with the key that got melted in there during a hot-doorknob prank last year, and questioned Foghat as to my whereabouts. At which time Foghat passively resisted by pissing out an open window. Great dog.

From what I understand Bagel made his way to the uniform store from there, thinking that was a place I'd go, which was a plain stupid move on his part. I'd already been there earlier in the morning, and that trail was colder than a passed-out hooker on a winter morning. By then I was borrowing Bob Dylan's Jesus jacket from the Hard Rock Café on the other side of town, a move Bagel wouldn't intuit until hours later, when he caught wind of that afternoon's surprise Dylan concert in the park.

I finally gave Bagel the shake later in the afternoon by listing the lost frames of the Zapruder film on eBay; I hear the bidding got up to a quarter-million before somebody realized I had just scanned in the negatives from my trip to the Ferrari museum. Sure, it screwed my eBay rating, but it got Bagel off my ass long enough for me to ride in the Black Power parade, and that was well worth a couple of death threats in my feedback listing.

Even though I never got to the Louvre as planned, the day still ranked as a stellar Bricks fuck-off, and convinced me that I should really do this kind of thing more often. The question is: Would every day be too often? There's only one way to find out.

Bricks off.

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