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In This Issue

• Columbia Expands, Gentrifies Outer Space
• Spectator Artist Plagiarizes Fed's Ben Schwartz
• Farewell from Feditrix Kate
• Media Decency Campaign Attacks Stern
• EC Fire Alarms Pester, Endanger Students
• Don't Get Impregnated By Young Republicans
• Letters to the Feditor
• Sci-Fi Poo Theory
• Sports Beer: Not Good For Sports
• Butler: The Engineering Frontier
• Unarians Help You Go To Space Life
• Totally Fab New Planet Suggestions
• Bush and Cheney's Excellent Adventure
• Fed Student's Guide To Meningitis
• Columbia Girls LOVE Barnard Prez Schapiro
• Funny Comic #543: Adventures of Ice Bitch
• Able & Baker: Monkeys in Space
• Honoring Jesse Strouth- A Highly Derivative Cartoon
• They Watch

So yesterday I spent the whole day at Barnard Health Services getting treated for "moderate alcohol induced dehydration." I did this to myself after finding out that this year's Fed Bash had been sabotaged by They. Then, tenderly drinking my ginger beer and nibbling on Saltines, I watched George Romero's The Crazies with a few other Feditors. How else could I end an illustrious (or should I say notorious?) career on The Fed? I've proven my alcoholism and learned from a shitty terror flick that everyone, even our most dearly beloved, even those in places of authority, are susceptible to insanity. Or maybe it was that society's insane? Yeah. That one. Whatever, I just like the part where the little granny stabs an army Hazmat guy to death with her knitting needles.

It's been a long year for The Fed. First off, we had to start a trend of printing unfunny and horribly offensive cartoons. Anyone notice how Carnegie Mellon‘s The Tartan and Rutgers‘s The Medium totally copied us? Get with it guys, offending people was so February. And, as we found out, not really worth the trouble of it. Crazies.

But this year changed the history and the character of our wayward publication forever. While we don't mind offending people, we never meant to hurt anyone and in extraordinary irony, we got clumped together with They. Many people have used this as an excuse to confront me about the millions of other offensive things The Fed has published. Someone actually complained to the administration about a true interview with an Asian girl who liked to fit herself into high school lockers. Sure, he was concerned about stereotypes about Asian people being small, but he was placing his concern in a completely wrong, unproductive place. You see, regardless of what ethnicity this girl was, it was true! She liked to stuff herself into lockers! What's wrong with that? Crazies.

But in response to these people, I'd like to say that offensive humor can be, when done right, quite progressive. It deflates overly serious issues, sucking out a lot of the hot air and rhetoric and bringing them down to a human, practical level. I think if you can laugh at something, you can fight it. After all, breaking the rules of good taste is just breaking, mocking, even deconstructing another one of the (often stupid) rules of society. Seriously take a look at Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Chappelle's Show, and classic SNL. But I will admit that there's a difference between offending and hurting, and clearly The Fed staff are not the professionals that those comedians are.

In that case, we were trying to fight off the crazies, only to find that we were actually the crazies ourselves.

This year, The Fed made national news, and I became a campus celebrity or enemy, take your pick. So I've had my 15 minutes of infamy. I feel like after this, what do I have left to live for? I've done it all! I almost went into the fetish business, I've wrestled in blood, been treated for alcohol problems, and I had my moment in the spotlight (under the interrogation lamp?). And I lost all faith in authority figures (lookin' at you, Pres. ‘Ro) and the press.

The Fed doesn't need me anymore. I've accomplished all my dreams. Well, all but my dream of chasing down my harassers on a giant, flying white dog-dragon, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. I'm 22 and already I feel like a granny. I look at the new staff taking the reins and I feel like a proud matriarch, all the wee ones doing so well, growing so fast, so funny, so cynical. They don't need me anymore. I can just sit back in my rocking chair on the porch, knitting a scarf and occasionally stroking my shot gun, and one day disappear on the back of Falkor. But, don't worry, kids. Until then, I'll ward the crazies off with my knitting needles.