frican politics managed a rare chance to draw the attention of the western world when good-natured white boy Mark Thatcher, son of Der Iron Girdle former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, finally answered accusations he and other exceptionally-Caucasian financiers backed a coup of the African nation of Equatorial Guinea.

Equatorial Guinea, a sub-Saharan country in Africa, established its independence in 1968 from Spain and has lived under a dictatorship ever since. In 2004, a group of mercenaries were arrested and charged with plotting a coup in the country when their plane landed in Zimbabwe, those on board demanding they find a movie other than Kangaroo Jack to play for the rest of the trip. Authorities in Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, and South Africa charge a complicated web of white sugar daddies have fueled the coup attempt, and that Thatcher was among them.

Moss Chevalier, one of the wealthy foreigners implicated in the charges, denied personal involvement in a conspiracy, but praised the mercenaries and their efforts.

"Equatorial Guinea is a country suffering under the thumb of an oppressive ruler. Its people die in impoverished conditions while he channels the wealth of the country into his personal coffers. I have a great admiration for the generous—dare I say handsome—financiers who are risking their livelihoods to bring democracy to this long-suffering nation."

Coincidentally, Equatorial Guinea discovered off-shore oil in 1996, greatly boosting the country's economic value.

Overthrowing governments for oil are nothing new, even quite the rage in recent years, but the Equatorial Guinea case is a trendsetter for being a coup allegedly paid for entirely by citizens, rather than the traditional route of grassroots movements within the country or foreign governments. With the current U.S. administration trying hard to privatize Social Security and medical insurance coverage, could the privatization of colonialism be far behind?

"Obviously countries rich in natural resources have faced a history of invasion by private companies and corporations," said University of Trenton History Professor Bobby Shockes. "This goes back to the early days of capitalism, as well-backed private merchants brought their own bodyguards and miniature armies so they might claim native lands as their own. Traditionally, though, these eventually call for government intervention to protect them, such as the United Fruit Company incident in Guatemala, when the U.S. interceded on the company's half against the rule of that government in the 1950s. But this changes all the rules. The message here is a positive one for businesses and wealthy individuals: 'Don't wait for the people or our government to make for better business conditions—do it yourself!"

On Friday, Mark Thatcher left a South African court in Cape Town, saying it was "patently clear" he had no involvement in the attempted coup. The trial for the coup itself, ended in November 2004 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, while Thatcher's friend, Simon Mann, is serving a sentence in Zimbabwe for his role in the coup. Thatcher's involvement centered around the purchase of a helicopter that purportedly would have flown opposition leader Severo Moto from his exile in Spain to the seat of power in Malabo, upon success of the coup. Thatcher now plans on using the helicopter for personal Cape Town weather reports, or perhaps selling it to pay off the 3 million Rand fine he received for violating South Africa's anti-mercenary laws.

The White House chose not to respond to indignant questions from this reporter if they were interested in using the new privatized invasion style for Iran and Syria, or if they would prefer the time-tested CIA shadow-intervention plans.

n a move that surprised the slow and feeble-minded alike, President Bush appointed diplomat John Negroponte as America’s first Director of National Intelligence this week, in an attempt to shore up the nation’s failing mental defenses.

“Now this may be a case of the pig callin’ the posy pink,� folkified Bush, our national leader and self-described folk hero. “But y’all is dumb as shit.�

Surprised and appalled by his own re-election, sources report Bush quickly decided something needed to be done about national intelligence, and the lucid and well-coordinated Negroponte was the obvious answer. Speaking in complete sentences and rarely attending to bodily itches with his house keys are said to be the strong suits that brought Negroponte to the president’s attention.

Negroponte, dressed in matching colors and with all button-holes and buttons lined up correctly on his vest, accepted the new position of Intelligence Czar graciously.

“It’s about time you dumbasses got your shit together,� announced the charitable-yet-firm Negroponte. “Though the fact that you all did something this smart frankly worries me. Is there a bucket of crap dangling over my head or something?�

According to the strangely-named Negroponte, whose last name does not mean “Black Dude� in Spanish or Italian, national intelligence has been going downhill for almost fifty years, pretty much ever since The Andy Griffith Show debuted in 1960. As a corrective measure, the new Intelligence Czar has called for the immediate canceling of all reality TV, switching all broadcasts of the Spice Channel to PBS, and outlawing country music. Whether these early remedies will be successful, however, remains to be seen since slack-jawed apathy remains so firmly rooted in the national character. Word on the street indicates that Negroponte may have his work cut out for him.

“What Russian royalty have to say about intelligence is a mystery to me,� sniped freelance quote-whore Dennis Murphy. “He should put on his big fuzzy hat and go back to Eskimoland.�

A surprising number of men on the street (and two dumb-looking women) seemed to confuse the concept of an Intelligence Czar and the famous Russian leaders of antiquity. Several half-educated men were convinced all the Czars had been murdered by the Bullshitiks in the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the commune has decided to refrain from using colorful or figurative language in the future, to avoid further misunderstanding and possible bloodshed.

Oppressed Bullshitiks, however, can find Negroponte at the White House during his office hours.

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.

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