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In This Issue

• Crosstown Traffic
• In Fit Of Pique, Teaching Assistant Projects All Hatred, Fear, &c. Onto Students
• Global Warming Is For Lovers
• An Interview With Don Imus
• Fed Guide to Supreme Court Justices
• A Very Federalist Guide to Your Overstressed Finals Season
• Classifying Joint: Looking for Owkr? Look Again.
• Foreskin Cancer Converts Millions to Judiasm
• In AD 2047, Spacetopia Debate Was Beginning
• Record Low Admissions
• Short On Cash? Try These
• Tales of the Inexpressible
• Awkward Man
• The Fed's Libel Lounge
• THEY Watch
• A Subscription Offer From Your Friends at The Fed
• The Staff of Volume 22

Kareem marooned on traffic island on 115th and Broadway - diary entries.

Day 3 marooned on the Broadway traffic island at 115th Street

It was nearly three days ago to the hour that the ordeal in which I presently find myself began. Going from Lerner to Ollie’s with a number of friends for lunch, I was trapped on this island when the flashing hand appeared on the traffic signal. Mes amis were braver than me, venturing to finish crossing the street in the few seconds they had left. Alas, their voyage was doomed; the traffic lights on Broadway turned green and a bus mowed the three of them down just one lane from salvation. This spectacle unfolding before my eyes, my heart sank—partly because I’d just lost my friends, and also, I admit with some shame, because of the realization that I was alone.

Broadway is now terrifying to look at, let alone cross, surrounding this island as it does with a limitless expanse of dark asphalt, its surface massaged by the gentle, constant waves of traffic. Cabs refuse to pick me up, insisting that I get in at the curbside. The knowledge has swept over me that this trial may not be a short one. I told no one where I was going, and so I don’t expect any search parties to find me.

I have busied myself finding food and shelter. Fortunately there is a trash can here in which people often leave unfinished drinks and scraps of food. As a backup, I have used leaves from the plants here to construct a sort of funnel, which channels rainwater into a plastic jug that I found in the foliage deep in the middle of the island. The nights are lonely, and my future is uncertain in this new place I fear to call home.

Day 19 marooned on the Broadway traffic island at 115th Street

The past weeks have been an epic learning experience. Two days ago, I completed my shelter, a hut built from plastic bags and cardboard which uses trees I harvested on the island as a frame. The dwelling protects me nicely from predators and from the elements, and in the short time I’ve spent in it, it has acquired something of a cozy air.

I have also taught myself to hunt. Using a heavy throwing stick, I killed a dog which had wandered onto the island, and I was able to butcher, cook, and consume it without attracting the unwanted attention of scavengers.

Day 42 marooned on the Broadway traffic island at 115th Street

My frame has taken on a gaunt appearance. Food supplies are in no danger of running out, but what I’ve now come to accept as a meal is never enough to fill a man’s stomach properly.

But yesterday brought great fortune! A group of men came onto my island with a young, meek man in their custody whom they seemed to have forcibly detained. Peeking out from behind a bush, I was enraged at their savagery. The poison dart gun I had created days before with the help of an unwitting, improbably located tree frog came in handy as I incapacitated the men and freed their captive. We threw their bodies into the ocean, and without speaking, the young man kowtowed before me, recognizing that I had saved his life. I stood him up and christened him Earth Day, for the day that I had found him. Since then, I have been teaching Earth Day the things I have taught myself in this new life: hunting, building, and Christianity.

Day 45 marooned on the Broadway traffic island at 115th Street

On this, Earth Day’s fifth day here, it emerged that he had a cell phone. Furthermore, I found him well inland, talking on it—I had assumed the noble savage was unacquainted with English. Earth Day’s family lives nearby, and once we had cleared up a nasty bit of confusion (the fellow castaway had believed me to be holding him involuntarily), his mother agreed to come pick us up from the island. Thus ends this adventure.