isaster and certain robot servitude were averted earlier this week when a summit between U.S. President Bush and our soon-to-be robot overlords ended in an embarrassing technical glitch, with all seven of the gigantic city-destroying machines freezing in place simultaneously, each displaying a perplexing message of “LOAD PLAIN LETTER� on their ominously glowing LCD display panels.

According to confidential information from our office copier Xero, these robot invaders come to us from the planet Shmoob, orbiting a distant star in the left-hand part of the sky. After landing in a huge crater that flattened the entire state of Wyoming, the robots apparently were disappointed that their arrival garnered no attention whatsoever and proceeded to destroy major American cities outside Wyoming as a means of getting the nation’s attention.

The first of the robots was spotted Saturday in Illinois, devouring railroad tracks and downing entire rivers like they were rivers of cola. Another was spotted bathing in Lake Mead later that day, and yet another reportedly took a dump in the Nelson Aquifer.

By day’s end all seven robots had made their presence known in various humorously destructive ways. After our robot guests completely razed Chicago, destroyed Miami, and in a strange twist, took time out of their busy schedules to stomp the small town of Hurkle, Iowa into the dust, they made their way en masse to Washington D.C. to demand the immediate surrender of our tiny, flesh-based government.

At first, Bush administration officials believed they could fool the robots by turning out all the lights in the White House and hiding behind couches and other furniture, believing the robots would take the bait and assume that no one was home. Unfortunately for the White House strategists, however, these weren’t your run-of-the-mill stupid killer robots, and their highly advanced neural mesh quad-processors made short work of the administration’s subterfuge. After the robots had torn the roof off of the Oval Office, and one of the invaders began wearing it comically as a hat, it became clear that our leaders would have to address this crisis in a more adult fashion.

But first, President Bush reportedly resorted to his time-honored “What in the hell is THAT!� running away ploy, which ended quickly when the president ate shit into a ditch and cracked his safety helmet.

Early hopes that the robots just wanted to use the White House john were dashed when the machines issued their ultimatum on weird stock-market ticker tape that issued forth from the smallest robot’s crotch. Regardless of the hilarious means by which they issued their demands, the robots earned the respect of all present after engaging in a rousing game of hacky sack with the corpse of the late Vice President, Dickson Cheney.

Following the unexpected freezing of the robot invaders, President Bush and what remained of his top administration officials sat in silence for several minutes, until Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took the cue to approach one of the robots and start jiggering with various hatches and levers, trying to find the source of the error.

In the days since, the White House has had technicians working on the downed bots day and night to correct this strange malfunction, a circumstance that many have complained is anticlimactic, to say the least.

“We’ll get these gigantic, thundering beasts back on their feet in no time,� promised a confident Rice. “And then we’ll finally answer the mystery of where they came from and what they did with Ed Begley Jr. I for one am dying to find out what their deal is.�

n a congressional hearing reminiscent of the McCarthy hearings, only filled with really beefy guys, baseball record-setter Mark McGwire clumsily deflected questions about his own history with steroids while damning the drugs on one side and on the other warning about the failure of those involved with the sport to stop it. Sweetie McGwire, standing at a hulking 8 feet tall and nearly 4 feet wide, refused to directly deny using artificial means to induce the strength to hit his then record-setting 70 homeruns.

“I’m not here to talk about the past,� said the monstrous humanoid homerun-hitter, “I’m here to be positive.� McGwire did not invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and congressmen involved appeared unwilling to play hardball with a beloved American athlete while all the cameras were running.

Offering more information was another baseball heavyweight, retired player and former superhunk Jose Canseco, firmly off steroids and now shrunken to a 5-foot-1 imitation of a pale raisin. Canseco confessed to having used performance-enhancing substances to improve his game, also naming names in his hot new book Juicied, available for sale at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble Online.

“Steroids were part of the game, and I don’t think anybody really wanted to take a stance on it,� said the small, hideous man, pointing with a frantic gesture. “If Congress does nothing about this issue, it will go on forever.� In his haste to make a point, Canseco’s finger then snapped off and flew into the face of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland). Sister, that thing was so funny he should’ve charged money!

“We don’t blame the players,� said ranking Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (California). “We blame the countless faceless officials of the baseball union, reserving some blame for the rich owners who the people already hate. No, the players are innocent pawns in all this. And we most definitely do not blame the many millions of baseball fans who turn out in record numbers to watch mysteriously large and beefy men knock baseballs out of the park in numbers unheard of in the early days of the game. We are all shocked and outraged by the claims in Mr. Canseco’s book, and not at all one little bit were expecting someone to admit such a thing sooner or later. Once this congressional probe has thoroughly asked inane questions about the matter, we hope America will be able to go back to its blind faith in its inhuman athletic stars.�

Sidestepping inquiries about his own steroid use has already fanned the hulking monster controversy around McGwire, who in 1998 won out a season-spanning homerun race between himself and Sammy Sosa by hitting 70 dingers, breaking Roger Maris’ old record of 61. The record didn’t last too long, child, as another beefy uberman named Barry Bonds, also frequently mentioned in the same sentence with the s-word, broke McGwire’s record in 2001. The record was most recently broken by Seattle Mariners third-stringer Mitcho Klursky, who batted 78 homeruns out of the park during all this season’s practice sessions. The record is expected to be broken again before the end of the season, and possibly before this article concludes.

The hearings are expected to end sometime this week with some ever-popular backpatting and glorious nostalgic reflection on how great baseball is, with possible inclusion of apple pie, mothers, and America itself. This reporter, for one, would like to make it known that even as Jose Canseco’s nuts continue to shrink into BB rifle stock, she’d still do him. Mm-mmm, hon.

I don't write this column to alarm people, but anyone planning on a sleepover at my new neighbor's place might do well to catch up on a little of this CNN breaking news: bring a titanium neck wrap and your Visa card, unlucky campers. I have it on very good authority from my dog that this dude is a vampire.

Granted, I haven't known the man long enough to make a definitive call on the whole vampire identification, but Foghat is rarely wrong in such matters. True, he did think the mailman was a body-snatched pod-clone copy of our old mailman for about six months last year, but that was only because the guy had started going to one of those fake-and-bake tanning salons that's half tanning beds and half a video store. And you don't have to be the exorcist to know that shit just don't look right.

Astute readers might pick up a little inherent Bricks bias in that statement, owing to the failure of my "Omar Bricks' Tan-o-Mat" a few years back, and that's true enough. I still think buying out an old Laundromat and replacing all the fluorescent ceiling lights with tanning bulbs was a great idea. Where else can you get a luxurious, Caribbean tan while getting something productive done at the same time? And who wants to waste hours sitting in one of those giant George Foreman grills wearing speed-swimming goggles like some kind of creepy-ass Matrix baby?

Not me, nor my investors. But it turned out in the end that I should have invested a little more into the science end of the whole dealio, since it turned out spending too much time under those tanning lights can bleach the pigment out of your skin fast enough to turn Bernie Mac into an albino. At least that's what happened to the dude I hired to run the place, I don't remember what color he was when he started there, but by the end he could do that disappearing Preadator shit in white rooms and snowstorms. Plus, somebody on the city council said something about the Tan-o-Mat causing low-level cancer in anyone who even walked by the sidewalk out front. So it's probably a good thing that the business wasn't very popular for the three weeks that it was open, and in the end our "bring your own water" policy was really a business-killing hidden blessing.

But none of this has anything to do with my new neighbor, who's about as tan as an Irish spelunking enthusiast. I haven't seen too much of him, to be sure, but he has been popping in lately as they've been putting the finishing touches on his new house, like the roof and an exterior wall to close in the room where I've been throwing all my garbage. It's a pretty nice house; I have to say, though it's a little cold at night since they still haven't got the furnace fixed from when I was using the water heater to ferment homebrew. But it's definitely a big improvement on Dale's old house, which had a security system and smelled like burnt oatmeal all the time.

Ever since I got the undead tip from Foghat I've been trying to confirm the dog's suspicions, which is a project in and of itself. I considered quitting my gig at the commune to dedicate more time to spying on my neighbor, but in the end I realized that vampire identification just doesn't pay like it used to. So I've had to rearrange my home schedule to allow time for scouting runs around the vampire house with the huge mirror I found in the Goodwill donation bin tied to the roof of my new Panamobile.

It's a pretty sweet set-up, actually, I've got my side-view mirror angled up at the mirror bungee-corded to the roof, which is pointed at the guy's house, so if he ever comes outside while I'm making a pass and the mirror doesn't snap off and kill the guy, I'll get a pretty convincing visual confirmation. That is, if the weight of the giant oak bureau that the mirror's a part of doesn't collapse the roof of my car first.

But like they say in birth control class, timing is everything. Bricks Out.

º Last Column: Fallout
º more columns