Whiter-than-white white man Red Bagel, founder and sometime-Editor of the commune was awarded his own publication’s “You the Man of the Year” Award for the sixth year in a row, to no one’s surprise. Bagel has been missing and presumed paranoid since the November re-election of evil incarnate George W. Bush, and Bagel’s brother Gay presented the award posthumously to his own brother at a ceremony at the commune offices in Flatbush, New Jersey, even as Bagel’s Caucasian manservant Rascal insisted his “master” was alive and willing to accept the award behind closed doors.

Gay Bagel, a miserable shell of a man, praised his brother with backhanded compliments on Red’s lifelong career of spending a lot of time on something never once profitable.

“What can we say about Red that has not already been said in the poetry of stoned hippies everywhere,” said Gay Bagel, reading from a fill-in-the-blanks form eulogy he acquired from the Internet. “My brother waged a war against the mentally stable everywhere in his attempts to spread the word of liars and morons. Without him around, the world is a little less prone to idiocy. But I’ve come here to bury Red, not to praise him, if I could but find the body. If I found him alive, then I would have come to bathe him and get him a clean suit, or at least have him cut his fingernails and stop dragging the name Bagel down into the sewers he smells like. I suppose all I really want to say here is: Red, if you are alive, anywhere, there are a lot of bills that haven’t been paid yet and nobody can figure out how to get into the commune lockbox. All you here are witnesses—the man is this much closer to being declared dead, and soon I will be the boss of all of you.”

And for the first time, the entire commune staff burst into tears at the thought of Red’s passing.

Despite the sombering moment at the event, things cheered up when Rascal, representing Red Bagel himself, took the stage and promised us all our fearless editor was in the best of health, and thankful for his sixth consecutive win, making him the only person ever to win the YTMOTY, or “Yitmotty.”

“Crikey, don’t it beat all?” rattled the Australian manservant, who wore his best T-shirt to the ceremony. “Red misses y’all, I can assure ya, and soon as he feels it’s ‘all clear’ to return to the surface, he’s gonna join us for a three-week binge party of nothin’ but lager, mates! Now… what say we drink up, for Red’s sake?” Rascal, already drinking heavily before the announcement, devolved into a parade of Australian caterwauling understandable to no one, Australian or otherwise.

The event continued on into early evening hours, until most of us had drunken ourselves into a haze and all efforts to keep Omar Bricks away from the stereo finally failed. As 1980s nostalgia bombarded us through twin speakers, a few reporters spoke well of Red Bagel and his missing ass.

“There will never be another like Red Bagel—a man entirely devoted to his vision of a better America,” said former Acting Editor Ramrod Hurley, now acting like a drunk. “An America of tomorrow, without fear and prejudice, without the suffering of the common man, and with a government forthright and honest with its own people. And now that he’s gone, I call dibs on the boss job.”

Hurley was bound, gagged, and wrapped in garish paper. The stamp on his head ordered us not to open until X-Mas, and I had to heartily agree.