Sludge

March is less than a week away, and that means less snow, more rain and even a hint of sunshine. While this might make the naive first-year hopeful, or the displaced North-westerner nostalgic, we know better. The rain may one day bring flowers, but for now it only means one thing: sludge, and lots of it.

It's just that time of the year. The hopes of a New Year--health care reform, peaceful Crimson-Lampoon relations, "Remains of the Day" and straight A's--are melted away by muddy reality--CIA spies, stolen chairs, "The Getaway" and more B+'s (see next week's Scrutiny).

It's enough to make us long for summer, when the air may be muggy, but at least the ground is dry. So it's only natural that we're turning our thoughts toward potential summer "opportunities." Like being a researcher for Let's Go. Or landing a high-paying job like those in this week's Alaska Scrutiny, where in-cidentally we find more sludge. Only this time, it's all dead fish sludge, which brings us back to the mud all around us.

Not to say that we don't like all of this sludge; we do our fair share of mud-slinging. But we know enough not to don our white canvas shoes just yet. For now, we'll stay inside our room, do our Weber reading and Chinese homework and be glad midterms haven't started.

Yet.