hiter-than-white white man Red Bagel, founder and sometime-Editor of the commune was awarded his own publication's "You the Man of the Year" Award for the sixth year in a row, to no one's surprise. Bagel has been missing and presumed paranoid since the November re-election of evil incarnate George W. Bush, and Bagel's brother Gay presented the award posthumously to his own brother at a ceremony at the commune offices in Flatbush, New Jersey, even as Bagel's Caucasian manservant Rascal insisted his "master" was alive and willing to accept the award behind closed doors.

Gay Bagel, a miserable shell of a man, praised his brother with backhanded compliments on Red's lifelong career of spending a lot of time on something never once profitable.

"What can we say about Red that has not already been said in the poetry of stoned hippies everywhere," said Gay Bagel, reading from a fill-in-the-blanks form eulogy he acquired from the Internet. "My brother waged a war against the mentally stable everywhere in his attempts to spread the word of liars and morons. Without him around, the world is a little less prone to idiocy. But I've come here to bury Red, not to praise him, if I could but find the body. If I found him alive, then I would have come to bathe him and get him a clean suit, or at least have him cut his fingernails and stop dragging the name Bagel down into the sewers he smells like. I suppose all I really want to say here is: Red, if you are alive, anywhere, there are a lot of bills that haven't been paid yet and nobody can figure out how to get into the commune lockbox. All you here are witnesses—the man is this much closer to being declared dead, and soon I will be the boss of all of you."

And for the first time, the entire commune staff burst into tears at the thought of Red's passing.

Despite the sombering moment at the event, things cheered up when Rascal, representing Red Bagel himself, took the stage and promised us all our fearless editor was in the best of health, and thankful for his sixth consecutive win, making him the only person ever to win the YTMOTY, or "Yitmotty."

"Crikey, don't it beat all?" rattled the Australian manservant, who wore his best T-shirt to the ceremony. "Red misses y'all, I can assure ya, and soon as he feels it's 'all clear' to return to the surface, he's gonna join us for a three-week binge party of nothin' but lager, mates! Now… what say we drink up, for Red's sake?" Rascal, already drinking heavily before the announcement, devolved into a parade of Australian caterwauling understandable to no one, Australian or otherwise.

The event continued on into early evening hours, until most of us had drunken ourselves into a haze and all efforts to keep Omar Bricks away from the stereo finally failed. As 1980s nostalgia bombarded us through twin speakers, a few reporters spoke well of Red Bagel and his missing ass.

"There will never be another like Red Bagel—a man entirely devoted to his vision of a better America," said former Acting Editor Ramrod Hurley, now acting like a drunk. "An America of tomorrow, without fear and prejudice, without the suffering of the common man, and with a government forthright and honest with its own people. And now that he's gone, I call dibs on the boss job."

Hurley was bound, gagged, and wrapped in garish paper. The stamp on his head ordered us not to open until X-Mas, and I had to heartily agree.

he pharmaceutical niche player Algor released startling fourth-quarter projections this week, a reversal of fortunes many in financial circles attribute to the company renaming many of its medications for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Realizing that social embarrassment may play a part in the afflicted avoiding treatment for their cursed states, Algor saw fourth-quarter sales of their best selling herpes treatment ClearVue skyrocket after the drug was changed from its longstanding name of HerpEase.

Finally bending to pressure from marketing experts, Algor has begun renaming its other not-quite-popular-enough drugs under the now commonplace industry practice of drug names that have nothing to do with a condition or its treatment. By the beginning of 2005, the company hopes to offer a complete line of attractively-named treatments for the unfortunately STDed.

GonorRid, the company's industry-standard drug for the treatment of puss-laden malcontents suffering from gonorrhea, will be shipped to pharmacies under its new label of SmoothOperator beginning in January.

A similar fate awaits the company's pride and joy, Crabex, Algor's floundering treatment for pubic lice. After months of focus group testing, Algor has recently decided to rename the drug PartyZone.

Last but not least is SyphiLess, the company's breakthrough treatment for syphilis sufferers. Though Algor has yet to make an official announcement on the renaming of this drug, early leaked reports indicate that the drug will be called either Blissex or PissFree in 2005.

But will Algor's new approach be a success? To answer that question, we went straight to STD sufferers for the real dirt.

"Oh yeah, I'd definitely buy more if it was named something like Smurfies or something, that would definitely boost sales," according to porn impresario Tori Anus, a frequent Crabex user. "Then I'd stop getting those dirty looks from the dried up old bags at the Wal-Mart pharmacy. They'd just think I'd been fucking Smurfs or something."

Determined to dig deeper into the beans of the story, this reporter conducted further research among the loose women of 1-900-HOT-DATE, likely to be experts on the treatment of cock-borne illness. In addition to providing hours or stimulating conversation, Misty and Chakra also provided great advice about writing off the cost of the toll call as a business expense.

"Algor definitely has a hot idea on their hands there," insisted Misty, a buxom brunette with smoldering green eyes. "You're getting me hot just talking about it."

"Hot and naughty," agreed Chakra, a Thai-Scottish delight who insisted on conducting the telephone interview in the nude.

No doubt the executives at Algor have done similar research, since it's loads more fun than the alternative of company execs experimentally contracting STDs themselves to see if they feel embarrassed about getting treatment. So the New Year looks to be a happy one for Algor shareholders, who haven't heard news this good since the company changed its name from Cock Rot Ltd. in 1999, amid reports that investors were too embarrassed to purchase their stock.

T'was the night before Christmas, and all through Bricks Manor, not a creature was sleeping, because my neighbor's house was all the fuck on fire. I shit you not, communauts, this was one bizarre-smelling Christmas. I barely saved the fireworks I keep buried in my lawn, and Foghat took a big black Christmas shit after gorging himself on some kind of half-melted attic insulation. This Christmas wasn't lacking Santa, just sanity.

As the most plausible recorded version of that night's events goes, Omar Bricks had just settled down for a long winter's nap with his trusty basset hound Foghat at the foot of the bed, watching for gremlins, when from out by the lawn there arose such a clatter, I jumped up and screamed "What the fuck??" like a pissed-off ninja. Away to the window I flew like The Flash, not as fast but just as naked. Or was that The Streak? One of those guys. And anyway, yeah, the new house they'd just finished building on Dale's old lot was way the hell on fire.

For a second, brave thoughts of dashing in heroically and getting all my shit out of there whizzed through my brain, like a half-remembered action movie. Then I realized the flames were like forty feet high and that camping gear was borrowed anyway. Sure, I'd left some boxes of crackers and shit in there too, but they were probably all brown on one side due to the raging inferno that was lighting up the neighborhood like the Griswalds' Christmas decorations. And in all likelihood, eventually I would get more crackers.

So instead, Foghat and I broke out the lawn chairs and took in the show while those fire department nuts went all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the roof and shot us dirty looks for not sharing our toasted marshmallows. I think we had the entire fire department for three counties out there by the end of it, those guys get on their walkie-talkies and word gets out like it's a high school kegger. Most of them were just standing on the front lawn, trying to piss out the fire with recycled lite beer, so in all likelihood those guys actually had come from a high school kegger. But just the same, some of those guys were handy with a disposable camera, meaning Foghat and I did get some killer keepsake shots posing in front of the inferno plus some action shots of us dragging drunk-assed firemen away from the blaze like we were David Bowie-sized heroes.

So all in all, it was a good time and not a bad way to spend your Christmas Eve. That is, until the next morning, when I start getting calls from some crackpot arson inspector because the wiseass finally found my missing camping stove in the smoking wreckage. What a dickhead. Like I'm going to burn down an entire house just so I can collect the insurance settlement on a shitty Coleman propane stove. That dude must've got his arson license out of a box of Honey Smacks.

Tragic as my losses in the inferno may have been, I did have the satisfaction of being proved right in the public arena. That'll teach Martha Stewart to try and tell me you can't slow cook s'mores by setting a crock pot on fire. Once those arson vultures had dug out what was left of my crock and we cracked it open like a dinosaur egg, Foghat and I chowed down on the best s'mores this side of Valhalla. Shank that, Dragon Lady.

And truth be told, I had been a little sad after they finished building that house so fast, taking away my personal playground and cash cow, or as I came to call it, The Money Pit. No more guided tours or selling rolls of fiberglass insulation to tourists as souvenirs, no more crashing through unfinished walls like the Kool-Aid guy to the glee of neighborhood kids, and no more re-living the nail gun scene from Lethal Weapon with Foghat at two in the morning. Talk about your cold shower letdowns.

But now, by the grace of God, or at least the God of crock-pot fires anyway, I'll get to live it all again like some kind of glorious re-run. 2005 already looks like it's going to be an Omar Bricks kind of year. And regardless of what those contractors have been saying, I give them lousy odds at keeping the mysteriously destructive "neighborhood vigilante" out of the construction site this second time around. The trick is that you don't have to break into a house if you can fool the construction guys into building it around you after you're already inside.

Bricks out.

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