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Issue 18.9: DOOM
Posted: April 22, 2003

Building a Bomb to Put in the Fed's Open Arms

Searching to get some, young editor finds more than she expected

Amy Phillips

Right: the author. Left: greatness.

I joined the Fed because I wanted to get laid.

There, I said it. Whew. I feel better now that that's off my chest. But seriously-- why else do people get involved with student clubs, other than to meet potential fuck buddies? (OK, maybe some organizations help pad your resume, but I'm talking about the Fed here.) Arriving at Columbia a horny and desperate eighteen-year-old, I desired nothing more than for the steamy, well-endowed editor of an alternative student publication to throw me over a stack of newspapers and savagely administer his hot beef injection. Yet by the time that I found out that the Fed's editor-in-chief was a lesbian in a long-term relationship, it was too late. I had already been sucked into the black hole of cynicism, crashing iMacs and newsprint-soiled hands from which I would never be able to escape (at least not until now).

Actually, the paper did end up getting me laid, but that proved to be the lowest of the low points in my Fed career. Other low points: when the fire alarm went off during the first Bash; when Ned fired Jeff Harris; when I got a police summons for taping a flyer to a bus stop (an apparently criminal activity); spending hours editing an article down from 5,000 words only to have it be rejected; mailbox stuffing. But there were also lots of high points, too many to mention them all here. Let's just say that the people I have met at the Fed are the funniest people I have ever met in my entire life. They are also the sickest, angriest, fucked-upest people I have ever met, but that's what makes them so funny. I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't welcomed me into their fold. (Well, I probably would have spent more time at WBAR, but then my life would have been much less full of dead baby jokes, and who wants to live like that?)

The first thing I wrote for the Fed was an email asking how I could go about getting involved with this fine organization. In it, I tried my darndest to sound appealing, by claiming that I had chosen to stay home from Club Night At The Roxy in order to build a bomb in my room in Carman. When I arrived at the first recruitment meeting, the Fed staff treated me like a celebrity: "Oooh, you're the Bomb Girl!" "How's the bomb?" "You're da bomb!" "Does it work?" "Are you going to use it?" After I sheepishly admitted that I had been lying in order to gain their affection, the Feddies turned their attention to a different, hotter, freshperson. But they did end up printing my email in the paper.

As I began my Fed career with the debunking of an assumption, so I shall end it.

Here's another soul-baring confession: I love Columbia University. This may come as something of a surprise to most people, since I am on the executive board of the most anti-University publication this side of the Socialist Worker, and I am sitting here writing this while wearing a Columbia-ass-raping-You shirt (Available now! Only twelve dollars!), but I'm dead serious. I have actually had a great fucking time at this place, and I'm not really looking forward to leaving it. Sure, the last four years haven't been completely rockin', but all the problems I've had have been totally unrelated to the school itself. The fact that the administration doesn't give a shit about me has never bothered me, I don't give a shit about them either. I like being left on my own to fend for myself. If I had wanted to go to summer camp for four years, I would have gone to Barnard. Besides, if the University had kept a tighter watch on me, I would have never been allowed to get away with half the stuff I've done. For example, my thesis is about the White Stripes. That's right. I have spent my entire senior year intensely researching and theorizing a rock and roll band. And I am going to be receiving a degree from a prestigious institution of higher learning for it. (To be spoken in Nelson Muntz voice): "HA HA." This place rules.

And so, in the spirit of former managing editor Tom Bellin, who also ended his farewell article in this fashion, I shall leave my darling underclass Feddies with some parting pearls of wisdom:

1. While it may seem like a good idea at the time, Fedcest will only lead to pain and suffering.

2. See above, but replace "Fedcest" with "deciding to do a choose-your-own-adventure issue".

3. I don't really look like whatever photo/graphic/drawing the layout staff has chosen to accompany this article. Honest.

4. Obey every word Editor-In-Chief Sullivan says, or suffer my wrath from beyond the grave--er, from "the real world".

5. In the immortal words of Mr. Michael Ilardi, "You can lead a writer to the funny, but you can't make the writer use the funny."