Yesterday, instead of writing this column, I decided to watch the end of George A. Romero's famous horror film, "Dawn of the Dead." For those of you unfamiliar with the 1970s classic, it features a pandemic of zombies who seek no other corporal pleasure than feasting off the flesh of the living.
As I watched the decaying bodies emerge from the shadowy depths of hell, I couldn't help but find the similarities between Dartmouth alums and "Dawn of the Dead" zombies downright remarkable.
It's funny how much can change in a year. This year, Carnival brought a slightly more somber hoard of zombie-like alums than have arrived in years past -- their hollowed-out eyes spoke of an underworld where a magical card doesn't acquire all of your food, toiletries and rent and where beer doesn't flow excessively, like urine into the abyss of AD basement sludge.
At this time last year, I was light-heartedly relating Carnival alum-chasing to some sort of festive winter sport, like rabbit hunting. Both furry-coated friends are relatively harmless, easy to catch and drawn magnetically towards green targets -- money or grass, pick your poison.
But give the economy a year of epic downward collapse and suddenly the alums are like a ravenous rabid infestation, pillaging our Dartmouth resources, and Farmer McGregor's got his rifle armed and ready.
This year, our Carnival forecast, much like our economic climate, was grim, to say the least. The TDX Pig Roast came to an early end after an '05 alum who previously worked at Lehman Brothers attempted to skewer himself on the pig-roasting kebob in a ceremonial self-sacrifice to the Recession Gods. There were alums scattered throughout fraternity and sorority basements across campus, desperately spooning with their pong paddles like overzealous mothers.
Alums were scavenging for leftover EBAs marinara sauce, that, in some parts of the financial district, is now used as a form of currency. There were the usual hoards of intoxicated graduates loitering at CVS, but this year, instead of stocking up on Red Bull energy recharge supply, they were frantically filling out job applications.
Last year, when that random alum dude took you out to the Canoe Club, all he could talk to you about was his Alpha-bro-founded start-up hedgefund. This year he was disconcertingly interested in you, your classes and specifically your women's and gender studies class on intersex fiscal equitability ... and speaking of which, isn't it empowering when men actually let women pay for their own drinks?
Oh, you agree? Well then why don't you empower yourself by taking the tab for his four cosmopolitans, and while you're at it you can further your feminist crusade by paying for the parking ticket outside on his Mazda Miata. Maybe you can even pay for his Mazda Miata.
Perhaps the best metaphor for this year's failed Carnival is, rather ironically, the snow sculpture. I was told that this amorphous mountain of snow (lest the tradition fail!) was intended to represent Mount Moosilauke, a testament to our upward progression as a Dartmouth community.
Personally, I thought it looked more like Mother Nature just took a dump in the middle of the green.
Anyways, I digress. So incidentally, this article has absolutely nothing to do with sex, because, quite frankly, sex was the last thing on all of our minds this Carnival. Unless of course, you're into zombie sex -- in which case, more power to you.
