fforts to rebuild Iraq achieved a success Friday when U.N. officials, voiced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, pledged funding for the reconstruction from the official United Nations "swear jar."

The swear jar, instituted in the 1960s during initial squabbles between Israel and surrounding Islamic nations, became a staple of public negotiations at the U.N. building in New York. Familiar statements such as, "Please, ambassador—there are ladies present," or, "Does the Prime Minister kiss his mother with that mouth?" became outlets for relief of tension with the high-strung representatives of many nations.

The legacy of the swear jar since its inception has spawned many rumors with U.N. fans, or "Unies," as they are called behind their backs. In 1967 the popular story was the swear jar had accumulated $432,000, all of which would be used for a hootenanny-slash-barbecue that summer, until Cold War relations worsened and the jar was put aside for possible war reparations to the eventual winning side. In 1978, after years of U.N. members dipping in for candy bars and vending machine sodas, the swear jar funds were down to $1.3 million, despite accruing an estimated $3.9 million in the time since public discussion of its allocation, and popular sentiment at that time was to use the bounty to build a new recreation room with new pool tables, a 27-inch TV, and a sofa with its upholstry intact. In 1990, during the first Gulf War crisis, the U.N. elected to move the swear jar money to a ceramic Mickey Mouse bank so everyone would be less likely to replenish other funds from swear-earned income.

At Friday's donor dinner, which is fun to say, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed attendees from the United Nations and requested approximately $35.8 billion through 2007 or "best offer" for the rebuilding of war torn Iraq, in which we did most of the tearing.

Angry nations and their angrier representatives expressed disinterest in springing for rebuilding out of their own pockets after explicitly making their aversion to the war public. Miniature squabbles resulted in the aftermath, adding an estimated $43 to the swear jar before lunchtime, but U.N. executives managed to chill out the crowd with a copy of Bob Marley's Legend album.

With the uproar squashed, Secretary General Kofi Annan sparked a quiet hush in the room when he turned to Treasury Secretary Candy and asked, "How much is in the swear jar?" After conferring privately with the secretary, Annan nodded and turned back toward the microphone, pronouncing, "I think we can swing it."

Most countries found the pledge agreeable, but the allocation of the swear jar funding did have its opponents. French ambassador Henrí Bois-Bois was quick to voice his dissent.

"If the U.S. expects the rest of the Western world to step in and pay to make its repairs when it gives us no voice in preventing a war, we are setting a dangerous precedent by agreeing to do so," stated the dignitary. "Also, there are many of us who had not given up hope on getting jackets with our names on the back done up. Those are not going to pay for themselves. Does the U.S. propose to pay for those in exchange? This is so unfair."

The swear jar allocation, if it happens, could be the largest expenditure of U.N. community bank since financing a pizza party to settle the Falkland Islands dispute with money found in the rec room couch cushions.

mm, mmm, mmm! Wal-Mart stores around America were hobbled Thursday when bucking young federal agents swooped in and arrested hundreds of illegal alien contract employees to deport them back to wherever they came from, with a friendly, "Better luck next time!" Friday, Wal-Mart explained the hiring practices that allowed so many illegal aliens to be working in their stores: "It's much cheaper."

"Regular labor," said sexy Mike Dunphy, the regional spokesperson for Wal-Mart of America, "is extremely costly in this day and age. Federal law requires you to supply benefits and a certain minimum number of hours for full-time employees. Also, you have to pay exorbitant amounts in overtime for employees working more than 40 hours a week—which can be pricey. Fortunately, Wal-Mart can get around this in most cases by hiring part-time employees, for whom the law offers no protection, and staff our stores with those employees without paying benefits. If we give them few enough hours, we don't pay them overtime, we can sufficiently run our stores for a reduced cost and string along employees for years before they realize they'll never get a full-time position."

All illegal aliens arrested in the federal probe, Dunphy was quick to point out, were not direct employees of the Wal-Mart corporation, but contract employees through other firms, allowing Wal-Mart complete exoneration. The hiring of illegal aliens, the Wal-Mart corporation noted, is against everything they publicly endorse.

"The Wal-Mart company and its subsidiaries has never employed illegal aliens," stated Dunphy, "directly. Now, we're not responsible for who our contractors hire to clean our stores. All we know is we're talking some serious coin to staff people to clean our filthy stores all night. If a contractor comes up to us and says they can get the stores cleaned for a ridiculously low price, what are we going to do, ask them how they can afford to do it? Of course not. Wal-Mart shoppers aren't asking us how we got those Sanyo TVs so discounted. We cut the costs and pass the blame on to you. Did I say blame? I meant savings."

The illegal hiring allegations come at a bad time for Wal-Mart, and Mike Dunphy in particular, who was losing his job at the end of the day. The corporation has recently begun downsizing after years of non-stop growth since its boom in the 1980s. Many believed Wal-Mart a teflon company after it survived past recessions without a scar, and continued to expand, but the announcement that hundreds of jobs would be cut came as a harsh call to reality for some. Damn shame.

"It's no surprise to those of us who work for Wal-Mart," said Dunphy, over cocktails at a local dive. "For years the corporation has barreled ahead to expand in areas where they've already eliminated most of the competition. Creating the illusion of growth is more important than real growth in the modern economy. Bringing superstores to small towns that could barely support a regular Wal-Mart, practices like that. It's like you're outrunning a drunken ex-wife with a butcher knife, sooner or later it catches up with you. The bitch is always right on your ass, economically speaking. You got pretty eyes, angel."

Wal-Mart had not been announced culpable for the employment of contractors who hire illegal aliens at press time, but federal officials said they hope it did not raise the cost of jeans in their area.

Contrary to popular belief and a lucrative office pool, Omar Bricks will one day again own a car. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day and for the rest of my goddamned life, even if I have to stick a wheel up Henry Ford's ass and ride him to work like a unicycle. It will come to pass.

Seeking to end the Curse of the Bricksmobile once and for all, I set out this weekend intending to play the field and test drive a few of the many suitors for the title of Next Bricks Ride.

At first I was really excited to test out one of those new electric cars, thinking that would be a blast in the pants. But of course that turned out to be a crock, turns out just because it's electric doesn't mean it can defy gravity like those slot cars we had when we were kids. You know the ones I'm talking about, they would race up the wall and back down, unless of course you took the very top piece of the track out, in which case they would race up the track and knock a picture frame off the wall, leaving a bitchin' electric burn mark on the wall like Frankenstein's undershorts. And the best part was you could do it again, after you found out where the car ricocheted behind the toilet in the bathroom. That was my favorite toy when I was a kid, and I spent countless hours figuring out the different angles you could put the track at to get the car to shoot toward a friend who was swinging a whiffle ball bat, or to see if you could smoke one by the mailman's head. Tyco missed the chance to make a freakin' mint by marketing those things as a Thelma and Louise playset back in the 90's, I'm telling you.

So anyway, after that it's the usual bullshit about "You wrecked our car into a bank," and all that "he said, she said" nonsense. I say if you're going to let people test-drive fruity electric cars next door to a bank with a giant sloped façade, well you wrote your own script for that saga. But you know how people are, always carping about some imagined offense and looking for a chance to sue.

Personally, I don't think electric cars are ever really going to take off until they make them more like bumpercars. Because that one I drove was flimsy as shit. I rammed this guy because he was wearing a 49ers hat, and when I got out to say "Don't worry dude, it's an electric car!" I realized the thing was nearly totaled. Whatever the master craftsmen who made those bumpercars knew about durability has clearly been lost to the ages. They must have opted to start from another branch of electric car evolution, the golf cart. And fun as those things are, only a jackass would ram two of those things together as a funny joke. They need to go back and start from scratch with the original bumpercar as their model, and just make them faster. That'd be badass. They can even keep that big pole that sticks out of the back, it'd be perfect for a flag or hanging wet laundry. By the time you got anywhere, your clothes would be dry and would smell like the city as a free bonus.

I thought maybe one of those hybrid gas-electric cars would be a better deal, like you could be stealthy silent but still backfire when you needed to, for effect. And I guess the one I drove would be all right, if you were playing a nerd in a movie or something. But for practical everyday use it was pretty weak. That thing was so small I'd have to buy a bike lock to keep some juiced-up ex-con from carrying the thing away while I was inside organizing my pocket protectors. I'm not kidding, I pulled off a Flintstones stop at a light once to impress the ladies and my shoes didn't even smoke.

But the real problem with the hybrid car came when it was time to refuel. Walgreens had a sale on D-cell batteries, so I figured tossing a half-dozen of those in the tank ought to do the trick, right? Well, if you're on the same page with me there don't even think about test-driving one of those hybrid cars, because it's not going to end well, trust me.

After that debacle I decided that gas was going to have to meet my car-propulsion needs for the foreseeable future. And you know what that means; I made a bee line straight for the Hummer dealership. Because if you're going to drive an car that runs on old-fashioned gas, you might as well drive the one that uses the most of it. We don't have time this week to go into how my Hummer test drive went, but tune in next issue when we'll discuss the prosecution's case and why they make those Taco Bell drive-thrus so damned small.

Bricks out.

º Last Column: Surprise Brothers and the Blackout Marathon
º more columns