he nation's African-American community had to bear another injustice over the weekend as it was revealed the sales on their own personal super-saving shopping event, "Black Friday," were moderate at best. Undoubtedly, the responsibility for the lower-than-projected sales will fall squarely on the shoulders of the black community.

"Sales were not as high as initially expected," announced economical tool and white person spokesperson Neil Van Hurst of Columbia University's School of Business. "This is owed mostly to continuing downward spending trends in recent holiday seasons." And its all the fault of black people, Van Hurst all but said.

"Black Friday," as it was named to instigate a race war, is the day-after-Thanksgiving sales event where prices at cheap retail outlets like Wal-Mart and K-Mart are dropped dramatically, inspiring fistfights among crowds of unruly shoppers, frequently African-American, according to news footage aired afterward. The sales are held extremely early in the morning before the sun comes up, when black people are found to be scarier to whites.

Total sales figures for the racially insensitive second busiest shopping day of the year, after White Christmas Eve, were estimated at $8 billion, down .9% from last year's sales and considered a disappointment by white moneymen who hoped to shake just a few more million dollars out of the pockets of black Americans.

Only Wal-Mart, a staple of the white cornbread community, reported sales that exceeded initial projections, sending the subtle damaging message that white people as a community are pulling their weight in our consumer-based society, while black people have failed to do their part to boost sales for white-owned corporations.

Overshadowing the mostly apathetic sales were several videotaped incidents of people in crowds, usually black or partially black populations, vandalizing stores, pushing, shoving, and being rude, and generally acting like dicks. Conspiracy theorists and other sane-thinking individuals have even proposed the priceless videotaped propaganda is the real reason "Black Friday" sales are held at all.

"Damn, G, that shit's the hardcore truth," said House, a friend of this reporter who supplies all the unfounded rumors for our circle of friends. "It's all part of the master plan—the same one they've been using on us for 400 years. We only just starting to get to the heart of the conspiracy. AIDS—they did that shit to us, for real. All the new money they started passing out, it takes our finger prints and keeps them imprinted in the special material. Then the C.S.I. motherfuckers in Washington have all our prints on record. Makes it easier to keep track of us. We through the looking glass, G. It's a mystery wrapped up in a riddle, all covered with enigma cheese in a taco shell."

Providing a more optimistic outlook for the black community is African-american community leader and the greatest living man today, Reverend Shell Halbert.

"We must strive to overcome the negativity perpetuated by the media and real life black people. We can act in our community, speaking directly to our leaders. We can act in Washington, to tell the politicians we vote and we are active and involved in our world. We can work with the media, to change the negative images bombarding us. And all of us, white and black alike, can calm the hell down when you're in an angry sale crowd. If you want a $29 digital camera, for God's sake, wait patiently for it, don't smack the woman in front of you in the head like a damn fool."

resident George "Foot-in-the-Mouth" Bush vowed that the U.S. would not give up the battle for Iraq until "every last American is dead and buried." Though it came out, hopefully, not as the president intended, it showed that growing discontent over the Iraq problem has not yet shaken the administration’s resolve to stay in there and really fuck things up until the Republican reign is over.

Speaking to a large group of soldiers at a U.S. military base in South Korea, also known as "the other front," the president pledged to keep a troop presence in Iraq "until the war on terror is won," demonstrating once again the president’s unfailing optimism/ignorance that a war on a concept is winnable. Look out, anger!

"The insurgents who strike at our troops… at Iraqi civilians… at the every constructive effort in the newly liberated Iraq… these cowards want the U.S. to withdraw its soldiers, so they can undo what we’ve already done there. We will not give them what they want," said Bush. Also not getting what they want are the millions of American citizen who had believed the troop presence would be withdrawn, and the thousands of American soldiers in the region who would prefer to spend their holidays with their families, alive and not being shot at.

The speech sounded almost too perfectly timed with a vote in the House of Representatives on whether or not to bring American soldiers home from Iraq, which ended in a resounding victory for the people who want them dead. The House voted down the initiative, proposed by hawkish Democrat Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania and denounced as a stunt by other Democrats, by 403-3.

Speaking for the majority, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (big-ass Republican, Illinois) said, "We will not stop supporting our troops when they need us most. We will not retreat. We will support our troops until every one of them is underground."

It echoed the promise of the president as he spoke to our boys overseas: "Even when every American soldier is killed by Iraqi insurgents, we will not surrender. We will give them more soldiers, fresh by the barrels, run too fast through the boot camps to be properly trained. And we will hold them there, like, ’Eh? Eh? Why don’t you kill these troops now? We’ll just make more.’ And we will continue with that response, until every last American is dead. This I promise you." The passionate speech was met with the most awkward applause ever heard in history.

The mixed message of the comment, mixed with the recent "Jesus was a fag" gaff by the president, has left some critics charging that the president no longer thinks himself fallible, safely in the beginning of his second term; others, on the other hand, charge that he just don’t give a shit anymore. This reporter sought the expert opinion of Newark University’s Noam Chauncey, not only to fill out column space, but also because it pisses off the bosses I despise so much.

"Public opinion has always been split largely down the middle on support for the Iraq War, and whether or not the American people believe the president is an asshole," said Chauncey, sipping a fine international coffee in his office at the not-fake university. "One issue decides the other. However, now the majority is moving toward War-no/Asshole-yes standing, which leaves the president with two options: One, to bow to increasing pressure and call the soldiers home, or two, to pretend he has a mandate to whatever the hell he wants while ignoring the world around him and the ever-present facts of reality. This president made his decision long ago. In fact, I don’t even know why you’re talking to me about it. We’ve known this for a long time and I’ve got shit to do."

The president cared so little about American response to his most recent approach, he promised us a quote for the article. Then, however, he had his press secretary pretend to search for something in his jacket only to pull out an extended middle finger.

Omar Bricks here, writing to you from the seventh ring of hell, or as it is known in mapese, Nashville. How'd I get here? What am I doing here? All fair questions. If you come up with any plausible answers, let me know.

It all started, if these kinds of things can ever be attributed to simple cause and effect, with a 12-hour repeat listening of the Eddie Rabbit tune "Driving My Life Away." This was caused, I assure you, not by conscious choice but rather Foghat putting the CD player on one-track repeat when he was listening to the new Counting Crows album the other day and I'll be damned if I know how to switch the thing back. By the way, I won't be held responsible for my dog's taste in music. As long as he limits his crap-listening to the hours when I'm not at home, well, that's his own deal with the devil and not my problem. Most people that visit Bricks Manor are impressed enough that my basset hound knows how to operate the CD player at all, but after I have Foghat make everyone omelets they usually forget about how impressed they'd been by the whole CD thing. Because they're too busy throwing up half-cooked omelets.

To be perfectly honest, I was so wrapped up in working on the development of my latest invention, a pneumatic fly-stunning air cannon, that I didn't even realize the song was on repeat for the first six hours or so. And by then my body rhythms had so completely melded with the song that I couldn't very well shut it off without risking serious epilepsy, so I rode it out until I fell asleep on the floor in a pile of freshly unwashed laundry. When I woke up, the song was still playing, but I don't count those hours in my total even though it thoroughly infiltrated my usual Driving Miss Daisy-themed dreams.

Before you start asking why in the hell I put that song on in the first place, let me explain that it's the only halfway decent track on the disc. The rest is all Bulgarian folk music and European techno, which is every bit as shitty as it sounds. The CD itself came in a Discman I bought for seven dollars at the Salvation Army, I didn't realize there was a disc inside until I got home. Even before this all came up the Discman purchase was revealed as a mistake, since I'd envisioned Foghat using it to listen to his shitty musical tastes in a way that didn't crawl up my own ass like a hungry banana slug. But if you've figured out a way to get a dog to wear headphones, you're handier with a roll of duct tape than Omar Bricks, that's all I can say about that.

Anyway, the song repeated for another hour straight after I woke up, by which time I couldn't even hear it any more, it had so completely rewired my internal landscape. But then the CD started skipping, probably the disc glues coming apart after so many hours of constant spinning, and the skipping music was causing Foghat to freak out, running around and pissing on everything at a slightly higher rate than he normally does. I had to get the disc out of the player with the toilet plunger, though from the way Foghat looked at me there was probably an easier way, maybe a button on the CD player or something. I don't pretend to have a PHD in consumer electronics.

At first it was a relief that the music had stopped, but then I started to feel my insides twist around like two snakes at an orgy, and I began to feel an irresistible compulsion to drive my life away. It was sort of like that scene in Naked Gun where Reggie Jackson gets hypnotized and runs around shooting everybody with a machine gun, yelling "Say hello to my little friend!" It was like my brain wasn't my own, I was just holding onto it while a buddy was in the can. Before I knew it I was behind the wheel and out on the open road, with Foghat riding shotgun. Then I put the shotgun in the back seat because I'll be damned if that dog hasn't been freaking me out with his marksmanship as of late.

All was well out on the open road, except for the fact that I didn't have any Eddie Rabbit tapes in the car, and none of the Mexican oompa-oompa tapes that came with my car were scratching that itch. This distracted me so much I didn't even realize I was driving to Nashville. I'd had some vague visions of Vegas in my head, maybe the sunset strip or Baja California... in all honesty it wasn't that well-planned of an excursion, but I think Nashville is too harsh a punishment for such minor indiscretions.

Everything you've heard about this place is true: it's full of rednecks, everybody moves slower than Ed McMahon getting up off the couch, and everyone's got real shit taste in music. Not to mention the high asshole-to-Bricks ratio. When I cruised the Bricksmobile IV through the pedestrian entrance at the CMA Music Festival, you wouldn't believe the number of assholes who were yelling at me to turn down the Mexican polka tunes. Look, Slocum, you think I'd be listening to this shit if I could get it out of the tape deck? I left the toilet plunger at home and I don't trust Foghat with that shotgun after he tried to use it to open a can of Kibbles 'n Bits back in West Virginia. Don't hate a player just because you weren't smart enough to get around the cover charge, Hoss. You'll get yours when I get behind the microphone on the main stage. Bricks out.

º Last Column: Christmas: Don't Try This at Home
º more columns