These Guys Know How To Mosh

Arafat was buried today. The Times' take. I decided to compare it to my own experiences as a reveler.

"thousands of Palestinians climbing the walls of his compound, surging around his coffin and trying to bear it aloft." And I thought crowd surfing the lead singer of Unwritten Law was an accomplishment.

Continuing, ' Wails and chants of "We will sacrifice our blood and souls to redeem you," and "Yasir, Yasir,"': Hey, it's no "We're Number One!", but, maybe something's lost in the translation. Yeah, okay, I'm still with them.

"competed with gunfire from scores of young militants in Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement." OK, this is where they start being positively more badass than me. I've taken too much physics not to realize that shooting straight into the air is the same as shooting at yourself. I would never have the balls to do this. Not the burial of Michael Chabon or the wake of Ben Gibbard could ever inspire me to such cartoonical disregard of F=ma.

OK, fine, he's popular. He gets 20,000 people to come rally his body. If I died, three friends and a badger would show up at the funeral home, which would have forgotten to put my coffin out anyway. But, what else are you going to do as a refugee except cry over spilt blood?

Here's the part that gets me: "Daoud Kuttab of Al Quds University in Jerusalem also wanted to be at the funeral even though Mr. Arafat jailed him for a week in 1997, simply for broadcasting a legislative session about corruption."

!!! Some people might call this Machiavellian, but, no, he got them to love him after he had oppressed them. He is a model to every abusive boyfriend out there. "Hey, baby, I'm sorry, you know I love you, it's just, sometimes, you push me too hard, and, yeah, I go a little crazy. I might smack ya, or I might abridge your freedoms of speech, assembly, and press. Don't mean I don't love ya."