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In This Issue

• Graffiti: High Art with Penii
• War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Columbia is Friend
• COPS: Keeping You Safe, At Any Cost
• Pigs, Drugs, and Electric Shocks
• Letters to the Feditors
• Operation: Fed Freedom!
• Mike Ilardi: From Carman Mutant to Fed Helm
• Farewell, Mr. Lippert
• The Pope Vs. Katie, Round II
• Pranking Feditor Fades into Archival File Cabinet
• Oodles of Doodles
• The Last Days of Mary-Kate and Ashley
• Gangrenous Jaguar
• The True Story of How the Big Bad Bunny Stole the Easter Animal Election From the Cute Piggy
• What All the Cool Immortals Are Reading
• John Jay Flees, Kids Rejoice
• Arts & Entertainment : Del McCoury Band
• THEY Watch
• Meet the Staff of 20.8
• Get to Know Us!

Michael Bredin

Russell Spitzer

Room 101 also hosts African Dance on Thursdays.

The guy with the bat drops down on one knee. My vision clears just enough to let the three blurry, grinning heads combine into one ugly mug, like a Magic Eye that winds up being a scabies-ravaged scrotum.

"Are we ready to talk, Mr. Carey?" he asks. The blood in my mouth tastes like aluminum foil. Probably all that iron, I tell myself. I've been taking supplements. I spit it in his face. Maybe he'll set off a metal detector on the way out and have his day ruined.

How did I get so careless? Did I really think I'd get away with it? How did it all... get started?

I'd come home the night before in a daze, my head full of fog and my liver full of bourbon. I stumbled past the sophomore pre-meds of CAVA dragging out the freshmen pre-meds busy retching into their chemistry books. By the time I'd slithered into my bed, it was five in the morning.

The warning I'd gotten outside the gates from a hooded figure with a suspiciously Quigley-esque accent sputtered through my drunken slumber like a bad radio rip of "The Final Countdown" put on repeat: "They know, Mr. Carey. They've seen it. They know what you've done."

They say all cops knock the same way. That's only true if they actually knock before kicking your door in.

At six A.M., the ugly mob of the Columbia Security Forces burst into my room. They grabbed my comforter and wrapped me in it, unceremoniously hauling me towards the service elevator. I screamed for my roommate to call somebody, anybody, but he barely even moved. If you live in Carman long enough, you can sleep through anything.

The first few hours in Room 101 beneath Low Library were simple enough. No questions, no comments, just a few thugs and their blunt objects. At about ten, a well-dressed gentleman came into the room, bearing one of Lou Gehrig's bats. And now I'm lying here.

"I hope we're gonna be done here soon," I tell him in between slugs. "You wouldn't want me to miss Frontiers Of Science."

That gets me another clock to the jaw. "You'll be missing some teeth, as well, Mr. Carey, if you don't tell us what we want to hear."

"What are you looking for?" I ask him. "Yeah, I used half of the school's bandwidth to download five thousand copies of Sin City."

"Not even close."

"I... uh... wandered south of 100th Street more than once in a week?"

"You're on thin ice, Mr. Carey."

"I... uh... didn't read a word of Pride And Prejudice for Lit Hum?"

Another crack, this time to the ribs. "You were always a troublemaker, Mr. Carey, but all your previous infractions combined are nothing compared to this. Guess again."

"I really don't know!" I gasp out.

"Let me jog your memory," he says, spinning me around. The poster of Bollinger on the wall lights up, its eyes projecting a security tape onto the opposite side of the room. "Happy-go-lucky Chas Carey strides into Hewitt Dining Hall after an hour at the gym. He wants his dinner. But, oh, no!" he hisses. "There's no more wheat bread in the sandwich line! So what do you think Chas Carey does?"

"He... he goes over..." It dawns on me. "Oh no..."

"He goes over..." says the guy, a look of triumph on his face, "to the Kosher Dining Section. And fetches... two pieces... of wheat bread. Which he then... brings back... to the regular section... and places... ham and bacon... on top of it!" His voice screeches like a castrated version of Prince. "This is not allowed, Mr. Carey. kosher and non-kosher foods do not mix. This is like nitro and glycerin, Fox News and CNN..."

"I was hungry!" I explain weakly.

"Mr. Carey, things are kept kosher for a reason. We cannot afford you meddling with safety and security. You will be... rehabilitated."

"You can't do this! I'll... I'll run to NYU! The downtown front! The resistance!"

"NYU? Oh, Mr. Carey, did you ever consider that all we need to keep you complacent is a fake rivalry? President Bollinger created NYU to distract you dissidents."

"I'll... I'll announce it on my radio show!" I yell. "I had two listeners once! I've seen the graphs!"

"All forged. We are masters of fancy graphs that display nothing, Mr. Carey. How else do you think we recruit athletes? No, you will learn, Mr. Carey. We will repair you."

A few days later, I sit in Lerner Hall. Someone notices my Diet Pepsi is empty and rushes to refill it. On the computer screens, the Columbia website announces a crushing victory in securing tenured professors over NYU. My eyes cloud over. Oh stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two Pepsi-scented tears trickle down the sides of my nose. But it's all right, everything's all right, the struggle is finished. I'm winning the victory over myself. I love Columbia University.