April is the cruelest month

Ahhh, feels good not to be facing the grim emptiness of not
knowing what comes next, carrying that tentative anxiety in the pit
of your stomach, stumbling toward graduation without a clue about
the future. Can you imagine that with less than a week left in
classes some poor fools are still hanging out on the proverbial
line, hoping a Vice President of Human Resources at some toilet
brush distributor or wire hanger manufacturer will take pity on
their generic cover letter?

So where to for your favorite heartthrob columnist? I really
should wait for the contracts and my hefty signing bonus to arrive,
but oh what the hell, it’s as good as done deal anyways.
I’m just too keyed up to keep it to myself any longer.

Anyways I have been taken on (trumpet fanfare) as a crime beat
reporter for the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska. I’ll start
immediately after graduation. No, I will literally have to drive
immediately from the commencement ceremony on May 1 to the
Kalamazoo International Airport where I’ll board a two-man
prop-plane which will take me as far as Portland, Oregon, after a
few brief layovers in rural North Dakota and Wyoming. Once I arrive
in the Northwest, I board a bus bound for Vancouver where I’m
to catch a lift on a salmon boat in route to Ketchikan. Assuming
the spring thaw hits as expected, I’ll make the pilgrimage
via dog sled to Skagway and then trek on moose-back the rest of the
way to Anchorage.

My craggy manager editor is Tanner Buckster, a cigar-chopping
ex-Marine originally from Louisville, Kentucky, who’s never
really adjusted to the climate change. Although he’ll talk a
tough game and ride me endlessly about deadlines, I’m sure
we’ll form a unique bond by which he’ll allow my to
follow my instincts on crazy one-in-a-million leads. I picture
myself becoming a local investigator of unsolved mysteries and
strange anomalies, revealing the dark underbelly of the untamed,
frozen wilderness, kind of a “Magnum PI” of the
tundra.

Standing up for justice and journalistic accuracy won’t be
easy in the wasteland of ice, so I’ll have to recruit a
ragtag group of mismatched friends to assist me in the inevitable
adventures I’ll encounter week-in and week-out. There will be
Reggie Proudsoil, a half-Indian one-armed tracker and demolition
expert who will show me the ropes of Anchorage’s notoriously
mean streets. There’ll be kind-hearted Archie Peally, an AWOL
Royal Canadian Mountie hiding on American soil from trumped-up
horse-assault charges. Plus the sexy polar bear researcher, Dr.
Amanda, who will turn away my advances with her razor sharp wit and
pepper spray. And let’s not forget the mysterious unnamed
80-year-old prospector who has mystical visions of future crimes
every time he comes into town from his claim in the hills to buy
mule feed.

Ah yes, it promises to be quite the fulfilling life, rallying
against the corruption of evil Gov. Frank H. Murkowski and the ever
encroaching Russian mafia. So keep an eye out for my wacky
exploits, which will no doubt garner national media coverage. A
Pulitzer is inevitable, a movie-deal as good as signed. If
you’re a handsome movie star looking to play me, you might
want to go ahead and contact me before I take off because once the
mystery solving gravy train starts a rolling, move your wrinkled
ass out da’ way Angela Lansbury. I’m coming
through.

— Editor’s Note: Scott just pulled his final
all-nighter of his undergrad career to finish a massive, overdue
term paper. At the exact moment he finished that mess, he received
an e-mail turning him down for a job as a junior editor at a full
figure women’s fashion magazine. Depressed, he collapsed on
his keyboard and when he awoke found this nonsense spewed out on
the screen. Having already missed his sworn deadline, he quickly
sent this off without reading it. The only wisdom he wished to
impart was this: “Don’t let them send you to
Grandma’s so she can teach you gin rummy and make you
bland.”