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In This Issue

• Idiotarod: Mushing Fun in NYC
• Desensitization: It Does a Body Good
• Shit Blowing Up is So Patriotic
• Letters to the Feditrix: Hot Pre-Teen Sex!
• Point: There's No State Like a Prostrate, Girls
• CounterPoint: Assloads of Bad Stuff
• I Could be the Spectator's Sex Columnist
• Hardcore CosmoGirls Have Some Things to Learn
• Point: Shocking Apathy for Homeless
• CounterPoint: Solution for Homeless is Lock and Load
• Burbery Scarves, Labia Elephantitis Linked
• Elimidate Plays Cupid, Stupid
• Anti-Life Comics: The Great Cookie War
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• Cowboy Bush
• Uncle PennyBags Gets His Due

American individualism, at least on the clothing front, has been all but extinguished. Since moving to New York from Orange County, CA, I've come to realize that not only has it been extinguished, it's been stamped into oblivion.

New York was and is supposed to be a haven from the disgustingly pervasive conformity and mindless consumerism I'd left behind in Orange County. The fact is that you New Yorkers are just as aesthetically sheepish as the average GAP-addicted American, though through popular films like "Big" and novels like The Basketball Diaries you try to make the world think otherwise. It took me a few weeks to realize this, but now I see you in all your copycat glory.

Two words: Burberry Scarf.

It first clicked yesterday, during my usual lunch of Corn Pops and Snickers bars, when I was staring out of my window while listening to Howard Stern weigh the pros and cons of screwing women with abnormally large labia. A guest gynecologist explained that labia-elephantitis can afflict up to 20% of women living in a building with chipping lead paint. The paint in my room is chipping. I tasted a few flakes and detected the sweet flavor of wall candy. That got me thinking: if my dorm has chipping lead paint, then probably most of the Barnard dorms do as well. Since most of the girls walking below me had that unmistakable "I'll - put - out - on - our - first - social - encounter" Barnard swagger, it was fully possible that up to 20% of them could be labia-elephantitis afflicted. I began to salivate, visually probing each passerby's crotch for signs of extreme convex.

It became apparent after several hours that giant-labia are all but impossible to detect from a sixth story window. The endeavor was not a total loss, however, for in that time I made one interesting observation: at least 20% of the pedestrians (women and men) were wearing Burberry scarves.

You've seen the scarves. They're those strips of tan or gray flannel intersected with black and red lines that look like bleached post-modernist paintings and emit a strange magnetism that makes you want to reach out and strangle their wearers. Many of you wear them and, sadly, many more of you want to wear them.

It's not as though I'm a tree-hugger or monkey-fucker or anything-I don't care whether T-shirts are made from Guatemalan infant hair or in EPA-sealed factories-but clothing trends are reprehensible. They lead to ugly places. Remember Hammer Pants (of the MC variety), or Fruit-O-The-Loom butt huggers, or anus rings? Ugly, dehumanizing places.

And yet here you are, New Yorkers, all wearing the same goddamn neckwear, no less, more enslaved by popular taste than the average Huntington Beach cheerleader. I thought New York was an epicenter of suave disinterest-in clothing, self-image, and other people. You don't measure up to your stereotype at all. It's pathetic. Why don't you wear Disneyland nametags and Goofy hats to boot? At least have the balls or inflated labia or whatever to proudly display your lemminghood.

I don't have a solution to the current Burberry epidemic, but I've seen the end result of such trends: Orange County. So, if you like fried platinum hairdos, plastic tits (on real women), and minions of Quicksilver-clad, Johnny Utah wannabes, please continue indulging this destructive fetish. Otherwise, if, like me, you enjoy a whore with naturally sagging breasts and unbleached, vitamin-depleted hair, if you like bums who can actually entertain and healthy, whole-hearted "Fuck you"s instead of "Hey dude!"s, please, put down the scarves forever.