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In This Issue

• Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
• Crazy Pill-Popping Cult Lives On
• A Brief History of the Apocalypse
• Letters to the Editor
• The Newest Ball-Suckin' Tea Craze
• Young Lady Changes Sex, Founds Frat-nerd-ity
• Columbiatron Chatbot Advises For Success
• Reasons Why Those Two Seniors Got Caught Cheating on the GREs
• DVD Features Will Make This World a Better Place
• Thousand-Foot Monsters "Battel" for the Future
• Duuhnuh.... Duuhnuh... Dunudunu... SHARKWALK!
• Dean Quigley: Oracle, Comedian, Swell Guy
• Jesus Freaky Christ and His Many Dopplegangers
• I Done Mediocre
• Future's A-Gonna Be Swell
• Sports Riots Portend Downfall of All Mankind
• The Four Stages of Zombification
• Super Novi Bros.
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• Now With Added Filler!
• The Staff of 18.5
• THEY Watch

Matt Holden

The outgoing editor triumphantly reflects on his time at Columbia.

Thanks to early graduation, it's time for me to take that proverbial one-way trip with a proverbial shotgun and bottle of whiskey into the proverbial forest of adulthood. Before I do that, though, I will use the form of the farewell article in order to fill space on page seven.

The only regret I have about my time as this paper's editor in chief is that I really didn't do anything worth mentioning. In a semester when my greatest stressor has been the dearth of new porn clips on Kazaa, I can't help but feel that there is a whole lot of work to be done that I have essentially avoided. The paper needs new equipment, new staff, and new issue topics, and I have had minimal impact on all three. And I am going to be sorry. I mean, let's think about the future here. When my kids ask me what I did during those turbulent years from 1999 to 2002, I will have to look them straight in their eyes and say, "Daddy printed articles about boobies."

It's not my fault, though. I blame the not one but two supernatural curses that render me essentially ineffective. The first afflicts every member of this paper's executive board, damning him or her to a lifetime of sloth, unemployment, homosexuality, or Crohn's disease (really!). The second is laid by my hometown, Allentown, PA, which thwarts everything that its citizenry does, inside or outside of the city's borders. It's creepy.

Because I was feeling nostalgic, I looked back over the Feds that were produced prior to Fall 2000. Yikes. Among other things, how come I never realized that I was so terribly unfunny? And how come I never realized that the layout was so bizarre? Thanks to dedicated efforts all around, however, we have gotten much better. Furthermore, if the paper continues to improve at the rate that it has since my freshman year, I can only hope that the staffers of tomorrow will sneer similarly at our current product.

Also, assuming that this paper changes missions as frequently as it has in the past, the Fed will become a successful smooth jazz ‘zine within a year or two. This is good, because it pretty much guarantees that we will avoid stagnation, and because it will keep alums on their toes. As a case in point, this paper has already received over a thousand dollars in anonymous donations from members of its predecessor, the Federalist, who willed significant amounts of money to what they thought was still a conservative stronghold in a liberal campus. We sure fooled them! Stupid dead people.

The one thing that really sticks in my craw is our complete inability to retain the majority of people who showed up at the beginning of the year. Where did they go? Were they just trying to tease me? Why doesn't that actress from the Disney channel ever come around anymore?

Well, as the grandmotherly adage goes, "if ifs and buts were fruits and nuts, then la la la la la." Or something like that. I am proud to be the first non-female (that is to say, male) editor-in-chief of this paper, and I hope that I will be remembered as the one who opened this position to other non-females (both male and miscellaneous).

I hope that I will be remembered as a congenial leader who leaves before he can do anything, like William Henry Harrison, and not as a syphilitic slaveholding leader, like fellow Pennsylvanian James Buchanan. The people who are responsible for this paper now are far more capable than I am, largely because they can get along with others, and also because they are less likely to huddle in a corner in group situations, all the while seething with causeless hate. And, judging by the freshmen who chose to stick around, we should be good for a few more years yet. To Columbia's alumni gift-giving office, I bid a hearty "smell you later," and please do not call me ever.