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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!

Matt Holden

There is something incredibly unsettling about writing this "farewell article." On the one hand there's the total finality of it all-either I'm here penning my suicide note, or at least getting ready to fake my death (and by fake my death, I mean, lie to all my eager-for-May-18th relatives by telling them I'm "actually" "graduating"). But then there's also the fact that the end of my irreverent Federalist career is just a sign of worse things to come, most importantly, an end to this nice cushy umbilical sack of parent-supported alcoholism so delightfully referred to as an education. But it's nice that it's given me some time to reflect; some time to look back on the past four years. It's just as nice as looking back and realizing you spent all your life standing next to a vast meadow of flushing toilets, while you spent all that time eating your own shit because you didn't know what the fuck to do with it. Ah, how splendid it is to waste the college years!

Just as I undoubtedly will in life-for The Federalist, I will go out just as I came in. Of my dream of climbing completely inside a woman's privy parts, à la the famous mullet porn of my ancient youth, I speak not. Rather, my gutter-minded friend, I refer to how my first days at The Federalist had me seen as the crazy, bearded loner who sat on the edge of editorial meetings never speaking but generally looking like I certainly could, definitely would, and yesterday had killed a man or just generally giving people the willies whenever I asked them if I could come back to their room to show them my favorite dead animal porn bloopers. There was a brief period of tolerance, acceptance, and even love; but all that stupid shit was as fleeting as the pre-dawn stench of cleanliness about the Upper West Side-quick to be replaced by sweet urine, pretentiousness and moral ineptitude before sunrise. Now, like the Ouroboros sucking his own cock, I have made the temporal loop to fellate myself here in my last days at the Federalist. The current staff now sees me as the curmudgeonly naysayer, always screaming obscenities and nonsensical ideas from the corner of editorial bull sessions whenever I'm not graffitiing their work or threatening to knife their book bags. So I end just like my freshman self, just louder-and you can thank the booze for that.

By now it's painfully obvious that my byline has been absent from the Federalist for almost two years, with the exception of one emergency editorial (that is, a round of morally-thumping my-albeit, hollow, decaying, and hypocritical-chest to the detriment of my racist-rag churning associates!). There's a reason for that: though I still find the Federalist amusing from time to time, my particular medium of humor has gone far beyond what these pages of newsprint can hold. My last real articles for the Federalist show me approaching a level of comedy more conceptual, more of what one might call "pranks," but what I would call art.

In my years at Columbia, I have grown leaps and bounds in my use of the medium of stalkery and creepery. The strange Facebook messages I send, the bizarre Friendster testimonials I leave, the endless ROLM Phone ghost rings I send; they are all part of my art, rather than the childish boredom they often get decried as. It is in this practice that I have found an unusual appreciation for the most unlikely of men: the serial killer. I speak not of the weirdos and pervos-your Dahmers and Gacys (even as cool as Jeffrey's "Undead Army of the Night" project was)-but the true artists of the trade, such as my new hero and biggest role model: the Zodiac. Analyzing the correspondence of such visionaries as San Francisco's Zodiac Killer or even Jack the Ripper (if you manage to ignore that strange little hyper-misogyny quirk), you can't help but wonder whether these men began just as simple pranksters who decided to take their craft, nay, their art to an entirely new level; one that included the whole public in the concept and provided plenty of hilarity (at least for those standing at a safe distance of at least 3000 miles and 30 years away). These men demand and deserve the admiration of self-respecting artists such as myself. After all, the Zodiac didn't kill that many people, but he sure scared the hell out of plenty-and he inspired Dirty Harry!

It is this art that the Federalist cannot hold. It is this art I shall take to new heights out there in a wide open world just waiting for a mind as bold and creative as mine! Goodbye, Federalist Paper! Hello, worldwide infamy!