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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!

Wall scribbles are becoming a common form of expression around campus.  The old pun-ridden meal trays in John Jay have been "tray-ded" in for newer ones made with plastic that's tougher to scratch.  Thankfully, the urge to etch seems to have dispersed to more obscure locations.  This spate of low-key graffiti has enlivened our environs and warrants a closer look.

Looking up into the corners of elevators I have repeatedly found a provocative question written in capital letters with a black marker:  "CHINA?"  The lifts in Hogan, Broadway, River, and God knows where else all ask: "CHINA?"  Am I supposed to affirm or deny the nation of China?  Or should I tell China someone has asked for it?  Is the scribbler just wondering how I feel about China, or perhaps whether I could go for some China right about now? "CHINA?"  Of course, China.  Not the scribbler but I myself ask "CHINA?" and China answers, "CHINA?"  China is now the only question and the only answer, an Asian Yahweh, "CHINA AM."

Should I take the elevator to the fourth floor?  China, obviously.

This sort of global power assertion does not presently occur in the Hamilton Hall elevator.  None of the third-floor bound Lit Hum kids ever has the wiggle room to raise a Sharpie.  However, Hamilton's wide staircases facilitate leisurely doodling on the cork boards.  On the western ascent, a dreary "it's only about the $" laments the predominant monetary telos of modern education.  On a higher landing, a defiant white chalk anarchy symbol trumpets its artists' pragmatic plan to destroy the system.

Ascending the eastern staircase one finds praise for "ACID" followed by a quick political exchange:  "STOP WAR NOW" in white chalk, answered with a quick "fuck you" in ink.  This battle of light and dark plays out a floor higher, where another white chalk "STOP WAR NOW" is met with an inky "IT'S OVER DUMBASS."  This counterpoint is itself opposed by three messages: "there is a brutal occupation, DUMBASS," "If you think that, you live on another planet," and a friendlier yet smirking "funny kinda peace, my friend."  Someone settled the argument by writing "POO" with staples over part of the exchange.

Now we tour Butler.  Its glimmering, spotless bathrooms contrast nicely with the tainted shame of the stalls' patrons.  The third floor loos were once dubbed Swastika-Town, USA after a student found the Nazi icon carved all over the lavatory.  The hate-scribbles and the Butler Masturbator once made the library the most terrifying place on campus. Thankfully, CU Security removed the swastika after weeks of yelling at it to go away. Then they nabbed the wanker red-handed (yes, he used razors when he did it).  By the way, when are skinheads going to realize that putting their calling card in a room full of unflushed turds and dried piss may not be all that imposing?  At any rate, today Butler is free from threatening graffiti, unless someone wheeling into the handicapped stall in the fifth floor men's room is offended by the giant autograph of "Bob" from "NY."  I heard Bob's a Nazi.

Most of the scribbles in Lerner convey more substantial messages.  On Lerner 3, three writers have pondered "love," etched into the stall wall by a first person and re-used by the next two in branches.  These three Number Two-ers feel the need to ensure us that "love is all you need," and love "is the answer," but likewise, love "is the delusion that one woman is different from the next."

Some of the text in Lerner's third floor men's room, like Lerner itself, stands out for its simple, wretched ugliness.  For instance: "Fuck white people."  Now this is just crude and poorly thought out.  Am I really supposed to fuck every white person I see after relieving myself?  That's gross and tiring.  Thankfully, another author only expects me to "fuck the Irish."  A poem attached to that discourse asserted, among other things, that "WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SLAVES" and "WE WILL DANCE ON YOUR GRAVES."  

A swastika had been scratched out, once again ruining the Nazis' ingenious propaganda plans.  It was inspiring to see such vulgar baseness over-powered by the above-mentioned thoughts on love, the resounding declaration of "FNORD!" and an update that "the B.M.O.C. strikes again."  Yes, we have a Big Man on Campus, and by mischievously clogging our toilets, he defeats us.

In another stall, a letter:  "Dear Columbia, You suck. - Fu."  This is either an insult from the Fu School, or someone was using a hyphenated acronym form of "P.S. Fuck You" to increase the reader's outrage.  Whatever the case may be, we really need to "END THE OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE [next line] BY ARABS."  The free-flowing political chat is exhilarating, is it not? Didn't see that "BY ARABS" coming did you, Columbia liberals who pinch off stank deuces in that particular toilet?  No, you didn't.  Another etching announced with resignation that "It's a shame about Ray."  I heard Nazi Bob killed him.

The Lerner 4 men's room features two Nightline stickers in separate stalls.  It was smart of Nightline to target individuals relieving themselves in the student center, possibly the most depressing scenario at Columbia.

Some might call Columbia's graffiti stupid and pointless.  Actually, two scribblers wrote that "this is the most pointless graffiti ever" and "none of this means anything."  I for one read such dismissals and think of the little cave at Lascaux, where people long ago wanted to depict their lives on walls.  How far we have come.

I look into a stall and see a simple scribble: a peeing penis.  Ah! Another penis has been drawn by another man living another life, a second penis peeing onto that first penis!  A tear, the tear of the human spirit, rolls down my cheek and into the toilet.  I slowly take out my pen knife and carve into the wall yet another penis, a penis which pees forth onto my predecessors' penises in a grand fugue of penises peeing across time, peeing across all humanity!  How far we have come, together!

And up on Lerner 5, on the back of a stall door, two simple words:  "Plato TRAY."