his week marks the 119th birthday of Buford “Old Man� Scarsby, the world’s oldest living human and recipient of the 2004 Marco Polo Award for getting lost in a famous way. Despite many spirited attempts on his part to disappear however, the famously lost Scarsby remains found at his family home in Cutrow, North Carolina this week.

As hardly a newspaper-reading soul in the country could have missed, Buford was lost for over 45 minutes last August, after wandering off and climbing inside a hollow tree, where he was later found, terrified and smelling of owl. Family members blame the resultant “media circus� on poor communication between Buford-finding family members and the newspaper-calling members of the Scarsby clan.

Scarsby, born in 1886, has lived a rich and varied life, none of which he remembers. The one fact of which he is sure, however, is that he was born in 1886, thanks to a faded daguerreotype photograph of a newborn Scarsby wrapped in that day’s newspaper in lieu of the expensive blankets or towels of the day. This compelling evidence convinced world standards-bearing organizations to verify Buford’s claimed age, despite the fact no birth records can be found due to no one being sure of the man’s real name.

Family members began calling Scarsby “Buford� in the 1980’s, following the lead of Scarsby’s then-98 year-old wife Emma, who thought she was talking to Buford Cubbins, a local pharmacist. Since his great-grandchildren grew up calling him “Buford,� Scarsby’s real first name is thought to have been lost to the ages. Scarsby himself believes he forgot his name around 1982.

“Lemon time,� explained Scarsby, clutching a packet of powdered lemonade.

Though certainly the most famous, last year’s incident was hardly a first for Buford, who has been wandering off and becoming lost on a regular basis since his early 80’s. In one notable incident in 1992, while on a walk Buford climbed into the back of a mail truck and fell asleep on a sack of letters. Buford was returned to his family later that day, thanks to a return address sewn into his trousers after a similar incident with UPS in 1989.

Some advocates for the elderly have decried Scarsby’s fame, arguing that the media’s handling of his frequent confused forays into lostedness only serve to foster stereotypes about the aged. Relatives, however, claim that Buford’s ways have nothing to do with his age, citing as example the seven years he spent wandering around lost behind enemy lines in Germany during and after WWI.

Buford’s great-grandchildren, who now care for and corral the remarkably aged man, had hoped that Scarsby’s longtime wife and sometimes companion Emma might reveal her husband’s true name on her deathbed in 1993. Emma Scarsby, however, had different plans, leaving the world instead with her immortal last words, “cartoon pussy.�

Though certainly happy that the old man is staying in sight these days, Scarsby’s great-grandson Lewford Scarsby remains guardedly optimistic about the future.

“There’s no way we can keep an eye on him 24-7,� explained Lewford. “But we’ve gotten pretty good at learning this old guy’s tricks and keeping him reigned in. Ain’t that right, Buford?
Buford? Aw, shit.�

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.

Is it crazy to travel all the way to South America, by car no less, to finally find out what an old Van Halen song is about? If your answer is yes, then stop reading this column immediately. I don't want any of my readers thinking I'm crazy. Go read Rok Finger or something, I'm sure he's got a Metamucil story that won't challenge your notions of acceptably sane behavior.

As for Omar Bricks, I've spent the last two weeks On the Road. I capitalicize that because apparently some insane bastard in the 50's did the same thing as me and wrote a book about it, since I guess he couldn't pare his recollections down to column length. An indictment of his editing skills I'm sure, though no doubt those book sales paid him more in the end than the can of lima beans and sack of assorted shirt buttons I'm likely to earn for writing this column.

But regardless of what I earned, or what it cost in damage to other people's property, the trip was a major success. Omar Bricks got out of the cold-ass weather for two weeks and finally learned that the Van Halen song "Panama" has nothing at all to do with the tiny little Latin American nation, and that David Lee Roth was probably just fucking some girl named Panama, or her name was Pam Anna and Dave just wasn't paying much attention. But Panama itself is a bitchin' little country where they do things the Bricks way 24/7. Or at least I did things the Bricks way 24/7 when I was down there, and nobody seemed to mind too much. They didn't complain in any language I could understand, anyway.

Now I'm sure a few of my more anal-retentive readers are wondering how it's possible to drive down the Panama, enjoy some time there, and drive back all in two weeks time, since it's something like 4,000 miles round-trip. All I can say is that those fussy motherfucks have obviously never heard of sleep-driving. It's a pretty straight shot most of the way down to Panama, so as long as you tie your steering wheel to something solid in the car, you can snooze your way through most of the commute.

Not that I spent the whole drive dreaming about Salma Hayek and cheap Jose Cuervo. There was still plenty of time for mayhem on the ride down, including a stop at a parade staging grounds outside Mexico City to cover the Bricksmobile in flowers and papier-mâché, so there rest of the way down it looked like I was driving a giant floral bull, scary as all get out. You can bet no matadors crossed the street in front of me for the rest of that trip. Though I did run into an incident in Costa Rica where half the town thought I was driving a giant piñata and I had to haul ass to limit the bat damage to my car.

The Bricksmobile III—Red Bagel Edition stayed in South America, needless to say, after I drove it into the Pacific Ocean. Some asshole told me that Ecuador borders Peru, but he didn't tell me on which side. Yep, you guessed it: the other side. The side I drove off was all ocean, baby. Onlookers said I only survived because my car hit the water going so fast that it hydroplaned for about a hundred yards, giving me time to bail out like some kind of water-skiing action stud. Keep that in mind the next time some loudmouth down at the bar starts mouthing off about the virtues of anti-lock brakes.

Thankfully for the sake of my return journey, later that afternoon I happened upon a car left running outside a bank in San Lorenzo. Normally my capers stop just short of Grand Theft Auto, but I didn't think the dudes inside waving the guns all around would really mind, when I waved the dude inside waved back like "No problem." It's a whole different mindset down there, hard to explain. I'm not even sure they have that crime down there; it's more like Grand Auto Borrow.

The down-side is that I have no idea what kind of car it is, where it was made, or what kind of units all the instruments are in. It's fast for sure, but whatever 300 I got to on the way back, I don't think they were miles an hour. Unless I really floored that bitch while I was napping. The guy at the border said I'd never get that thing registered to drive in America, but that's what he gets for thinking I register my cars. You're just asking for trouble by attaching your name to an unpredictable machine that can cause more property damage than a cruise missile.

So I guess in the end we came out even, the world south of the U.S. taught me something about Van Halen, and I taught them something about automobile ownership. I guess that NAFTA shit is working after all. Bricks out.

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