he United States Department of Homeland Security has been given the difficult task of dealing with the recent spate of hurricane attacks and, after weeks of standing back and assuring the public everything would be alright, settled into the more familiar job this week of arresting non-white people, taking into custody New Jersey boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. The arrest, according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, is only designed to verify Carter is in no way connected with recent Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, or any other potential natural disaster threatening the country.

With a proven record of preventing catastrophes on U.S. soil, the Department of Homeland Security seemed the natural choice for protecting the populace from acts of God as well as acts of Allah, but some are already accusing the government-sanctioned Klan of overreacting with the Carter arrest. After all, according to detractors, Carter is a 5’8" middle-weight African-American man in his late ’60s, and doesn’t even have a windspeed, compared to the 150 mph windspeed of some of the recent hurricanes that have dealt damage to the Gulf Coast area.

"No one’s accusing Mr. Carter of anything," Chertoff told the press, "at least not yet. But if the safety of the American people is in question, I have no qualms about unlawfully detaining an old black man until the danger subsides. And if it means reducing the amount of disaster-related coverage cluttering up season premiere week, I believe the American people will back me up on this."

It isn’t Carter’s first famous bout with the law. The one-time contender for the middleweight boxing crown was jailed 30 years by a racist judicial system that convicted him of murder and robbery based on false testimony and a sham trial. It is, however, the first time Carter has been mistaken for a category-2 tropical storm, but these days he isn’t surprised at all by what white lawmakers will attempt to get away with.

The Department of Homeland Security refused to give a projection for how long they will hold Carter, and exactly what they hope to find out from him in regards to other weather-related assaults on the U.S., and they reminded the media that thanks to legislation passed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, they are no longer accountable for anything they do, so shut up or they just may come after us next.

But if there’s anyone not sitting down for Carter’s legally-questionable detainment, besides Carter, it’s America’s celebrity community, always quick to champion a very public cause of injustice. While Bob Dylan was too busy writing new songs for Victoria’s Secret commercials to come to Hurricane Carter’s aid once again, his son, Jakob Dylan, did offer to fill his dad’s monstrous shoes.

"I’m organizing a benefit concert to pay for Mr. Carter’s legal bills, and we’re pushing to get him a new trial," said the forever-in-dad’s-shadow rock singer. When reminded Carter had not yet been brought to trial once on any recent charges, Dylan conceded it was true, but they had to have something to say in between songs at next week’s benefit concert.

"We’ve got everybody coming to help out," said Dylan. "Nash is going to be there—that’s right, of Crosby, Stills & Nash fame. We couldn’t get Willie Nelson for this one, but we did get Nelson, Ricky’s boys. And I’m in talks right now to get Patrick Swayze to perform a revamped version of his hit, ’She’s Like the Wind,’ but we’re in disagreement over the busfare. Keep your fingers crossed. We’ll get you out of this, hurricane!"

And if a B-grade roster of celebrities like that doesn’t keep Hurricane Carter fighting mad at the system, nothing will. Fight the power, brother—again.

learly delighted to have an offensive position at last, President Bush lashed out at "safety ign'rant" airlines and the FAA for its low-wheel requirements on commercial aircraft. According the president's amusing new platform, safety could be increased a bunchfold with the addition of 8-10 new sets of landing gear on standard airplanes, and hopefully would prevent scenes like the dramatic emergency landing of JetBlue Flight 292 on Thursday.

The commercial airline flight JetBlue 292 ran into difficulty landing when its foremost landing wheel arrogantly faced the wrong direction and forced a tense landing situation. The event was made all the more worthy of national attention when it was revealed passengers/potential victims aboard Flight 292 were watching their own ordeal on satellite television, one of the perks the airline offers passengers willing to risk becoming human charcoal on their flights. In the end, the plane landed successful, jetting down the runway covered with foam and emitting sparks in a thrilling scene of real life danger only seen previously on repeats of Jackass.

The White House jumped on the story, beginning on Friday with the president's casual comment that the plane would have been a lot safer if it had been a bus, and not quite so high in the air. The peckerwood president had no further comment then, but continued his assault on the airlines Saturday with a slightly more thought-out commentary.

"It's a shame the airline industry would risk the lives of so many of its passengers to save a few bucks," said our monkeyesque leader of the free world. When asked to elaborate, the president spared no one. "I say, more wheels. Why not? Put 8 more wheels on them sum'bitches, or what the hell, put 10. Flight 292 was lucky to land on two wheels. I bet those passengers would have had an even better chance for each wheel more you added on that thing."

Some critics of the president claim Bush is not rushing to embrace a serious airline issue so much as desperately fleeing the political quagmires of Iraq and failures to respond to recent natural disasters, to which the president says "horsehockey."

"I'm a pilot myself," said Bush, stating a half-truth. "Back when I flew a plane, I petitioned my commanding officers all the time for more wheels on Navy jetfighters. Our boys need to be protected from potential crashing disasters, and when you have more to land on, you have a better chance of landing. It's a scientific fact. And if it's not, it sure sounds like one."

The airline industry was slow to slapdown the president's criticism, probably out of some gratitude for the huge-ass bailout he approved for them in the post-9/11 environment; but JetBlue, the company who owns the world's most famous plane with muleheaded landing gear, did reject claims its planes were currently unsafe.

"Mechanical faults are always an unpleasant reality of the airline industry," said JetBlue spokesperson Chico Rudatti. "We do all we can to make sure our planes are safe before they get into the air, but once they're up there—fuck it, you know? Shit happens. Our pilots are trained to react calmly and with all their skill, and as you can see, they can make the difference between a successful landing and a company-killing crash."

Asked if they plan on making any upgrades to their aircrafts in light of recent events, JetBlue did concede it might start using the V-chips in their TV sets to lock out all airline-disaster-related programming on foreign and domestic flights.

I've been working at the commune for way too long.

Sure, this was true after about day three, but now it's way beyond true. Some office skinflint just reminded me that this week is the fourth anniversary of the commune publishing on a regular basis, which is something like celebrating the day you got bit on the nards by a shark. The scary thing is that Omar Bricks was here even before that, back when we were all working on the much-preferable "When the Fuck Ever" publishing schedule pioneered by High Times.

It was never my plan to stay here for so many years. Actually, my original plan was to pose as an employee for a day so I could drive my dirt bike around inside the office after everyone else had gone home. I also thought I might be able to make off with some fax paper to sell on the black market, since that shit's expensive and employee theft isn't generally considered stealing. It's like a pitcher cheating in baseball, wiping his nose on the ball or shooting the batter with a blowdart or whatever—they consider it showing initiative.

Even the business dudes who get caught with their dick all the way into the cookie jar still get off relatively easy, compared to real criminals. They embezzle millions and end up with a sentence of five months at some white-collar fat camp, with all the quiche you can eat. Whereas if you stole that kind of money from a casino or something, they'd chop your balls off with a lawnmower, or at least track you down and coerce you into pulling off another fantastically unlikely international caper to pay back to dough.

Anyway, in the end that was all a moot point since the commune didn't have a damned thing worth liberating. It was like trying to get blood from a stone, or dogshit from a dead dog. Everything that wasn't bolted down had already been carted off by the commune's longer-tenured employees, or perhaps had never been there in the first place. But who puts together an office with only one chair? Just that first day, the chairfights were like something out of Lord of the Flies. Hell, I didn't get my own chair until I'd been here for two years, and that was only because we raided Crochet!'s offices for supplies and whatever strong-backed temps we could herd into the elevator.

I did get to ride my dirt bike around the office and tear shit up that night though, and that almost made a day's worth of Rok Finger's rants about why nobody makes black toothpaste worth it. I'm still not sure why I came back for Day 2, I guess mostly to see if I could pull it off, but that ended up being a pretty weak challenge. I just acted like I'd always worked here, and nobody'd been paying enough attention to doubt it. I even won "Employee of the Month" my first month here, since I was the one who found the key to the men's room after Sampson L. Hartwig baked it in a cake and tried to use it to get his dad out of jail.

Back then I was still worried about the legality of fraudulently seeking employment in a field in which you have no training or expertise, so my "Employee of the Month" plaque had my fake name on it, Phil Donahue. Actually, that plaque's still up in the break room, and last year we all had to listen to Gay Bagel lecture us all on living up to Phil's example, which was pretty funny since it's my picture on the plaque. But Phil's become something of a legend around the commune offices since he's the perpetual Employee of the Month, due to someone blowing up the plaque-making equipment trying to make an Omar Bricks Bowling Jesus trophy during my second month here.

Incidentally, Ned Nedmiller still calls me Phil, whenever I see him down at the wishing well with his metal detector. Jesus, I've been working at the commune way too long. Bricks out.

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