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In This Issue

• Students Wrestle for Squid God
• Summer Job Pays to Choke Chickens
• Dolphins: Not Just for Sex Anymore
• Letters to the Feditrix
• The Confessions of a Burgeoning, Fecund Fury
• Suicides Are Fun for Those Who Don't Participate
• Military + Animals = Hours of Deadly Fun
• When Will Columbia Girls Go Not Ugly?
• You Wouldn't Know Hot Ass Even If You Bit Mine
• Necrophilia: Hey, It's Not Like They Mind
• Columbia Hipsters Leave Brooklyn to Strut Stuff
• Want Me!!!!
• I'm Still Drunk After All These Years
• He's Like Larry Flint, but Super Gay
• At Least the Fed Thinks I'm Cool...
• An End to the Planet
• Steve and Cornelius Are Now Chicks, Like to Play with Own Va-Jay-Jays
• Building a Bomb to Put in the Fed's Open Arms
• Oedipus Family Circus
• The Staff of 18.9
• THEY WATCH

Matt Holden

The author.

I've been avoiding writing this article all week, hoping that if I waited long enough, some Mephistophelean nightmare would slither into my life and offer the chance to sell my soul in exchange for a story angle capable of making me look half as competent as my fellow graduating seniors. I'm beginning to fear that my editor will give up on me entirely if the pentagrams and satanic litanies don't kick in soon. But how can I say anything funny about my relationship with the Fed when I can't even comprehend half of it? One minute you're a sweet young freshling who edited every publication in your high school, looking for a college paper to write for after you realize that the obvious one expends 90% of its effort trying to stamp out all evidence of creativity... and the next thing you know, you've been a Fed staffer for seven semesters, they're getting ready to kick you out, and you have 700 measly words to figure out what the hell you've been doing with your time.

Despite having worked for the paper for longer than most of its graduating seniors, I've still managed to do impressively little for it besides pretending to have copyediting skillz, making everyone feel guilty about using the Science Fiction Society as an easy mock, and aborting two or three near-complete articles for every one that I managed to finish. Yeah, I'm a loser, but I'm pretty much okay with that, for the following reason: every staffer that we've kept for more than two issues has been so intimidatingly cool that I don't mind them making me look bad. It's almost too much -- not only are they talented writers and artists, but they're also argumentative, culturally knowledgeable, listen to painfully cool music, and they're really freakin' cute [Ed. Note: huh?]. Maybe the Fed has spent the past two years trying to stamp out its reputation as "Columbia's Subversive Newspaper", but what other paper would consistently indulge my penchant for dressing like a harlot on school property, or be so receptive to the idea of ripping off their clothes and jumping into a vat of fake blood? Best of all, the Fed's weekly meetings make it more than just a pipe dream to stalk, like, 10 people simultaneously.

Normally I'd be paranoid about joining a paper just to be a groupie, but watching the incredibly smart and capable bunch of kids that has joined the fold since the Fed was desperate enough to let me on staff, I've never been so happy to be rendered obsolete. With this crew around, I could flake out all the time and no one would hate me for wanting to hang with them anyway! In fact, my flakiness was a pretty essential part of my involvement. What with 2.5 majors and spending obscene amounts of time running some silly geek club that actually needed me, I never had enough time to give this paper the attention it deserved. My theory is that the Fed's complete unreliance on me made it the ideal outlet for my slackitude. Without that, I'd probably have gone too mad to manage any of the other things, so I owe this paper more than it probably knows.

Who knows what I'll do without the brilliant chaos of Sunday night Fed meetings? Sure, I'm terrified about finding a job, but much more scared of how much it'll suck to lose you guys once you've forgotten that I'm gone -- but I should stop there, before I accidentally devolve into the sappy sentimentality that I've tried so hard to squelch in the hopes of tricking the ed. board into liking me. Now one of you super-functional freshmen can take the associate board position I've been squatting in all these years and finally put it to good use. And just think: the real world may be conspiring to remove me from your midst, but if you keep pouring your minds out on paper, I can take you home and spend time with your rockin' selves whenever I damn well please.