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In This Issue

• Abortions: Fun for the Whole Family!
• ROLM Phones Get SEAS Losers Laid
• Drunk Girls Ogle Dead Presidents
• Letters to the Feditor
• ESPN Fills Aching Void... With Sports!
• The Fed Announces Appointment of New Editor in Chief
• Astronauts Astro-Rock
• Fascists Hate Smokers
• Jungle Love, Courtesy of Local "Commie Kikes"
• Boxed Wine
• Nerd Elves Play with Each Other, Nerf Crotch-Bats
• Thinspiration: Looking for Militant Anorexic Love
• Militant Breastfeeding Cult No RateMyRack.com
• Our Militant Roots: A Federalist Article from '87
• Would you like to hear Jerry Falwell's Penis Talk?
• Barnard Girl Speaks... But Who Listens to Those Stupid Broads?
• Perfect Strangers: The Bond That Ties
• Whoroscopes: I See My Future in Your Pants
• Fight for Your Beliefs
• Wacky Fun Whitey with a Mission
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 18.6

"Mike Noble, I swear to God, I will fucking kill you and your children!"

Prank phone calling is not just a hobby, it is an art. When I started in this game, I was no more than your typical Bell bully, calling girls and breathing heavily, or ringing my enemies to make vague threats, whispering and claiming to be "the Shadow." But, like many artists, when I came to college, I began to look at myself more objectively. I questioned my motives, my methods, and the maturity of my telephone mischief. In no time, I was making calls that not only made me snicker, but made me think. Unfortunately, my ascent was a little too quick (cue the Behind the Music theme song). My calls became so complex and conceptual, that they were often only funny to me. I became the Andy Kaufman of phony calls.

My first involvement in real art happened when I worked as an apprentice to the great avant garde caller, John Farrell. At 3 A.M. before the last day of finals in the Spring of 2002, during a grueling twelve hour performance on Barnard's radio station, WBAR, John had the ingenious idea of calling random students and making them sing along to AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." Using the station's phone system, we caught people confused, angry, and drunk. During that same performance, I was introduced to the form that I would take as my own, and eventually bring to exciting new heights: the conference call. Conference calls can come in several variations, but the basic conference prank consists of dialing one person, and before they can hang up, connect them to another person. The confusion and hilarity proceeds from the fact that neither of these victims initiated the call. I will not explain in more detail than this, for fear of crippling Columbia's phone system, but if you're really curious, just check out the handy dandy ROLM Phone Guide that came with your room.

We only made one conference call that night, between my unsuspecting roommate and a Canadian girl. They were two complete strangers, but they stayed on the line for a few minutes and had a pleasant conversation about Canada. Here I made one of my first observations: complete strangers tossed into the mutually weird world of an unexpected call will often have meaningful conversations with one another. This was admittedly not ha ha funny, but sociologically surprising funny nonetheless. Thus it began.

It would be more than six months before I would take my own solo stab at conference calling. My first successful call once again involved WBAR, but here they were my subjects. I began by connecting the DJ on air with the station's general manager. Both were rather confused, thinking the other had made the phone call, but before long, both accepted on faith that some God-like force had just happened to connect them. I proceeded to add as many WBAR DJs as I could think of to the call. With each new DJ added, the chaos, confusion, anger and hilarity on the line grew. But my fun was cut short by the onset of Thanksgiving break and the mass exodus of potential call-ees from campus. Unfortunately for Fed contributors Tina Berman and Percival Chan, I discovered that they had not left for the weekend.

The first conference between Percival and Tina backed up my earlier observation about the conversations of complete strangers. In this case, Percival and Tina ended up talking for four hours, much to my chagrin, as the humor of the call ended after about five minutes. With this and subsequent Percival-Tina calls, I also observed that subjects tend to complain about how annoying the calls are, but don't seem to realize they can hang up at any time. Often, my repeat subjects would be heard saying, "Oh man! I hate these things! They're so annoying! I'm so busy right now. So what's up, dude?"

These tendencies -- to socialize in the adverse environment of the conference call -- have made me formulate the theory of "the party line." That first WBAR call, as well as subsequent calls involving suites or groups of friends, have often become what can only be described as a telephone party. There's laughing and gossip, people are glad to hear new people pick up, and sad to hear others hang up. These parties can often accept total strangers. One night I got bored that a conference of Fed staffers turned into a party line, so I began adding strangers to the call. The first, named Andy, who I randomly plucked from the directory, asked who was calling for him and was greeted by several voices shouting, "It's the party line!" Andy stayed on the phone for another fifteen minutes or so, and even flirted with the Fed's current Editor-in-Chief.

The phenomenon of the party line has made me reevaluate my art. Whatever guilt I had for fundamentally being a prankster disappeared as I realized the social service of my calls. I began to connect people without pranking in mind at all. For instance, someone would ask me on Instant Messenger if I knew when Bob was going to a movie. Without even responding that I couldn't care less about an inbred ingrate like Bob, the curious party would be connected to an unsuspecting and very stunned Bob. Another person asked me for help with some Calculus homework and faster than I could say they were a dork for taking a math class and stupid for not knowing the answers, I connected them to a random SEAS student (who I might add, was very delighted to hear the voice of a real live girl on the other end). So, see, I'm not an annoying jerk. I bring people together.

There are several rather simple routines that don't take as much work as my more conceptual pieces. I've found that connecting suitemates is always fun. Their calls usually go something like this: "Hello." "Hello." "Hello?" "Yeah. Who's this?" "What do you mean who's this, you called me!" "No, you called me." "No..." "Wait, Greg?" "Bill?" "Oh hey, what's up?" "Dude, this isn't funny, you called me." "Shut up, dude." "Hey, you know, it was your turn to clean the kitchen last week, and you never did." "Shut up, dude!!!"

My art wasn't restricted to just individuals; I could even use institutions as subjects. Some of my best calls were between the request lines for WBAR and WKCR. Both DJs usually got very angry, especially the WKCR sophisticate who often assumed the WBAR punk was playing some immature joke. Unfortunately, I never succeeded in connecting Koronets and Famiglias.

The foundation of my art was the anonymous mystery of the sudden conference call. The precise timing involved necessitated that I use Instant Messenger to know that people were definitely in their rooms. This and my fear of accidentally dialing an RA with caller ID eventually made me drop the total stranger calls, and remain mostly in the realm of people I knew. This sounded the death ring for my art. People began to frequently ask, "I bet this is Mike Noble's doing, isn't it?" Apparently I have a reputation for being an insufferable asshole.

The calls began to fall apart. The mystery was gone. Everyone I knew was aware that a conference call was the work of Mike Noble. No longer could I bring random people onto calls for fear of reprisal: the party liners would always ask new victims if they knew Mike Noble. Backlash began to appear on my own phone. Percival started connecting me with male phone sex operators. Another one of my victims sought another tactic, hitting me with a barrage of Ghost Rings (weird erratic ringing courtesy of the MSG WTG button). But at this point, it didn't matter, for I was sinking as an artist. I began using my technique for practical purposes. Whenever the guy next door began snoring too loud, I would ghost-ring him awake. I also used the ring to dampen the mood of the couple down the hall who liked to have really noisy sex. This may sound amusing, but something has gone painfully wrong if Picasso begins painting fences.

Like many an artist with an all too meteoric rise, my story has a happy, yet pathetic end. The conference calls are over, but I have returned to where I started, calling people up and playing rock music for them, which is endlessly and inexplicably hilarious to me. I have also returned to being just a plain old jerk, as I've started reprogramming every phone I come into contact with to dial one poor sap every time someone hits the MSG WTG button. What has all of this taught me? Conference calling may be a flash in the pan as far as prank phone art goes, but its potential in the area of social meddling is endless. More worried mothers should consider purchasing ROLM phones, if only for the purpose of randomly conferencing their loser sons with nice young girls.