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In This Issue

• Water On The Knee
• The Annihilator of Mathematics
• Demonic Speak-n-Spell
• The Fed Interviews Jon Voight
• Letters to the Feditors
• Sam Jenning, or: Eating Children For Profit
• Immigrate This!
• Where In Our Hearts Is Carmen Sandiego?
• The Life and Times of Carmen Sandiego
• Redder Rabbit?
• Good Golly Fucking Gumdrops, I Like Candy!
• The City’s New Hot, Sexy, Superhot Nightclub!
• Where's Waldo?
• Logical Journey into Eugenics
• Think Columbia Sucks? It's Your Fault, Doofus.
• A Farewell to Harms
• A Farewell To Bill
• Tracy Briskit, Fed Queen
• Make Your Own Safe Space!
• Columbia Trail: Safe Space, Bathroom in 347 miles
• Cook with Barney!
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 21.8
• The Staff of Volume 21

Shaina Rubin

Students of Columbia University: we have a grave, grave issue on our hands. Any and all of you who touched a computer throughout the 80s and 90s should begin to take the proper safety precautions in the event of an alien attack. This includes, but is not limited to, the building of an underground bunker and the purchase of alien-proof headwear. (For instructions on both, consult your local Barnes and Noble.) We have just gotten word that intelligence has interrupted correspondence between a young Swedish girl (identity withheld) and an extremely threatening alien being. For your safety, we have included translations of both of their letters:

Dear Arithmetic Blaster,

I am very bad at the mathematics in the school. This always made my father angry. After one of his weekly late night meetings with my teacher, he come home with our classroom’s computer and a computer game with your name on it. He told me I must to play it and get better at arithmetic. He also say something about always wishing he had a boy instead, but I stopped paying attention because I was too excited to finally have a toy. Although it took about fifteen minutes for the large floppy disk to load onto our new computer box and for me to figure out the code in computer language, I knew it would all be worth it.

Your game was very easy at first. I knew all the answers. My father, he almost smiled when he watch me! But then 8-3 came on the screen. I didn’t know it! Before I even had time to count on my fingers, an explosion rumbled out of the computer. I was so scared! I thought I was being blown up! I cry a little. Now, when I’m at school, I start sweating when I see the word “math” on the board. Sometimes, when my teacher hands out our worksheets, I hide under desk, attempting to protect myself from the math fallout. You did not make me to have fun during math, you made me terrified of it! Why did you do that, you bad, bad, alien?

-Seven year old girl

The chilling response follows. Those of the faint of heart should refrain from reading:

Little girl!

You are a foolish, foolish earth-dweller! You anger me with your pithy insults and your comically ambiguous Eastern European-sounding letter. My comrades and I find you despicable. Thus, you shall be the first to perish when we arrive on your planet in the coming weeks. The game to which you refer, Math Blaster, was brought to earth as a means of getting you and the other smaller beings of your world to trust us, so we can bring you back to our home planet. Young humans, such as yourself, fit easily in our child-fuel engines on our space math-crafts. We have depended on earth-dwellers’ tiny carcasses since our species’ conception in 1985. We believe all of those who aren’t smart enough to answer simple addition and subtraction problems correctly do not deserve to live. You, little girl, will be taken soon. Yes, soon you, like the limit of one over X as X approaches zero, will not exist! (This is a popular joke about human children on our planet. I am sure you cannot understand it, based on your previously displayed incompetence.)

Since we are arriving soon, you can do nothing to protect yourself. Our higher intellect ensures we will find you. I shall see you soon and kill you.

Thinking it was unwise to be so honest with a little girl on an unprotected transmission,

The Math Blaster