Arafat Voted "Hunkiest Palestinian"

or a record 28th year in a row, Yasser Arafat, leader of the mega-popular boy band PLO, has been voted "Hunkiest Palestinian." The award, which often leads to lucrative endorsement deals and speaking engagements, was not unexpected. Mr. Arafat had token opposition from members of PLO-spinoff bands Hamas and Hezbollah, but no one seriously expected any of them to challenge the reigning MC Mullah of the Gaza for the winner's turban this year.

In a café here on the West Bank, 16-year-old rock-throwing enthusiast Rajouba Aswan said about Mr. Arafat, "He's the OG, man. He's to die for." Friend Jamil Barghouti, 17, chimed in, while adjusting an explosive-laden vest. "That's right, yo. Yas-Dog – I mean, Mr. Arafat – is da bomb."

Cited by West Bank teenagers as reasons for voting for Mr. Arafat as the Imam of Palestinian Hunks were, among other reasons, "the way that big bottom lip of his quivers when he talks," and "his rad beard, dude." Also mentioned were his "big, sad puppy dog eyes," and his "cool sense of fashion."

Asked for comment, Mr. Arafat responded, "I am humbled to be once again chosen, praise Allah, and I would like to send my thanks and blessings to all the young G's and martyrs out there, to all my peeps and homies. May Allah smile upon you, and may your quota of 70 virgins in paradise be each one beautiful and have all of their own teeth."

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Every one of you are cordially invited to attend the wedding of Rockwell T. Finger and Rutherford Ginger Baker this Sunday, at the Flatbush Mall of 'Merica. Invited, of course, as long as you actually receive one of those little cardboard notes saying you can come. They all should be in the mail by now, according to Ginger. They are handwritten, so we can save all the money for the honeymoon in Haiti. We are going there to save money for buying something we really want, like solid gold dollar-sign rims for our automobile.

If you haven't received an invitation, it probably means you're shit out of luck. We'll be sending out the shit-out-of-luck cards tomorrow, to verify to everyone. There are a lot of those. But fewer guests mean more catered food for us and our eight or nine close friends we invited.

Unfortunately, someone—I think that no-goodnik Omar Bricks, or probably one of those other many, many no-goodniks who work here, posted our wedding invitation on the commune bulletin board. Ginger doesn't believe many of them will come to the wedding anyway, since I'm generally hated here at the office, but we're serving fried baloney and hosting square dancing (with a real caller!) so you can imagine I'm fearing a rush of uninvited guests. Damn, I didn't want to have the squad dancing caller! Like putting an open bar at a wedding. But an old friend of mine from the Russian mob was available, so we decided to ask him.

It occurs to me only now I probably shouldn't have contacted the Russian mob again at all, given they have tried to kill me in the past for turning state's evidence against them. Let alone invited them to the wedding. I was so excited I didn't think clearly when I made up my list. Oh, well. Hopefully they'll be the sentimental sort and let our murky histories with each other slide. It's a joyous occasion, after all.

My betrothed and I have decided to write our own vows. We got off to a rocky start, but I think it's going exceptionally well now. At first, I admit, I sort of confused the vows with New Year's resolutions, promising her I would cut out chocolate and lose ten pounds by Christmas. But she corrected me, and didn't even use violence—what a woman!

So then I wrote the vows I'm using. I promise to take her in sickness and health, as long as the health outweighs the sickness by an 85% margin. I also promised to buy her a little red wagon for putting things in and dragging them from place to place; I wanted one so badly when I was a kid, and I swore then that no wife of mine would ever do without one when she was hauling groceries home from the store or doing other work-oriented wife things. I also promised her ten cents on the dollar, should we ever divorce, which I think is a pretty fair deal. You try reading that in a mall full of loved ones and see if there's a dry eye in the food court. I doubt you could find one.

Also, she doesn't know this, but I snuck a peek at her vows, too, even though she wanted to keep them secret. If you'll excuse a little bragging, I also edited them pretty cleverly. Hers went on a little too much, talking about searching all her life for a man who really understood her and would treat her like a princess, blah, blah, blah—stuff everyone's heard before, and pretty cliché. I cut a lot of that down, and I also snuck in some sexy rejoinders, just to keep the crowd from falling asleep. Like, "I also pledge to be your eternal love slave, you handsome beefstick. I vow to do the nasty nightly." Not that I want nightly nasty. The wedding's just a show for the audience anyway.

So once again, I hope to see each and everyone of you there, because I love you all like my family. That is, if you're one of the selected few who are related to me. The rest of you just ignore all that, and whatever you do, don't come to the wedding.

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This week's Nedmiller Column is excerpted from "Spastic Diaper: The Ned Nedmiller Story" by Rolando Burf. Continued from last week.

And it might still be that way today if it weren't for one Nedriff Nipplebelt Nedmiller. When Ned heard of the buffalo problem, he locked himself in his laboratory, pronouncing that he would not appear again until he had the solution. Neighbors wondered at the strange noises coming from Ned's lab at all hours of the day and night: the singing of saws, the burping of crows and the vague smell of a swimming pool on fire. Someone called for a constable when a rumor circulated that Ned was melting down school children into paraffin wax, but just as the fuzz was about to knock on Ned's door, the man himself flung open his doors and announced to the world that their problems were over.

The device that Ned presented to the world looked like a cross between a smallish piano and a largish dentistry utensil, on wheels. It had a crank on one side and a flared cone on the other. And on top there was a mannequin head wearing a hat. On the side, hand-lettered in on it's black surface in black paint (or so he told the people), it said "Ned Nedmiller's Framjambulous Laughing Machine".

Refusing the spectators' pleas for a demonstration, Ned hopped aboard the Laughing Machine and rode it west, toward the Plains. It was a four-week journey, but thanks to the help of a flock of pelicans, and Ned's invention of a land-sail, it only took him a month and a half. He arrived to find the Chinamen, sitting about and scratching their heads, as a stoic buffalo stood, motionless, at the eastern termination of the Walking Rail.

Without saying a word, Ned positioned his Laughing Machine in front of the buffalo, wet his thumb to check wind direction, and gave the crank a furious crank. Laughter of every size and denomination, every type and at all points along the spectrum of sanity, poured forth from the laughing machine's cone. Chortles, titters, guffaws and even silent shaking filled the air. Three times the laughter produced by a fart in Congress spilled out of the Laughing Machine. Laughter so contagious that all of the Chinamen began to laugh along, and those who had yet to drop their tools and daydream now dropped their tools and doubled over in laughter.

The buffalo first looked at Ned (who nodded) in a confused fashion for a moment before it began to laugh. For those who have never heard a buffalo laugh, I suggest climbing inside an industrial textiles washing machine, starting up the cycle, and then letting loose the warthogs you've been hiding in your pants. Then you'll have bigger fish to fry than wondering what a buffalo sounds like when it laughs.

The buffalo laughed and laughed until finally it collapsed onto it's side and shook with buffalo laughter. Ned promptly shut off his laughing machine and when the Chinamen had recovered, they went about their merry task, building their Walking Rail all the way to New England. Ned accompanied them the rest of the way, providing laughing machine support whenever they came across buffalo, brown bears or hillbillies.

When they finally arrived in New York, Ned and the Chinamen were given a tickertape parade, and a recording contract with Capitol Records. In a show of gratitude, the Mayor of New York gave them all complimentary tickets for the maiden voyage of the first luxury liner built entirely by the blind, the Titanic.

The problem was, the Titanic was sailing to New York, not from it, so Ned and the Chinamen quickly hitched a ride on a grand blimp called the "Hindenberg 2: NO SMOKING" all the way over to England, where they were just in time to ride the Titanic back to New York.

Ned and the Titanic were like peas in a pod, and he entertained the guests and crew day and night with his inflatable pacemaker and a metal box that he claimed to contain Spain. He was voted "Best Grandmother" on the Titanic and was given a commemorative kick in the head. Unfortunately, these blissful days were not to last.

Out of nowhere the "biggest skeeter this side of the Rio Grande" latched onto the ship and started "jimmyin' open the fuselage with his tremendous skeeter-beak". Ned knew that time was short and heroism was in high demand, so he leapt into the fray with only a freakishly large Q-tip and a loincloth on his side. When all was said and done, "them skeeter" had been swabbed into submission and nine months later Ned would unexpectedly give birth to a small Laotian boy named Ring-rong, who would go to work in the diamond mines, and was years later buried under a landslide of engagement rings. Unfortunately for all aboard though, at that moment some joker pulled the plug on the Atlantic and "them Titanic" went down the drain, never to be seen again. Ned survived only by holing up in the belly of a whale named Tim, who later washed up on the shores of Costa Rica, proving his long-standing claim that he was allergic to Danes.

Over a hundred years later, the Walking Rails are still the mode of trans-continental transport preferred by most 10 year-old runaways. None of this would be possible without Nedrum Nightynight Nedmiller, and it's truly time that the city of Pasadena, California erects a gigantic knee brace in his name.

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