Will write for food

The holiday season is almost here. That time of year when it's most important to think about those who are truly needy, those who are less fortunate, those whom fate has dealt a sorrowful hand. And by "those," I mean "us," your IDS columnists.\nAs you might have noticed, the news harvest hasn't been terribly rich lately. Sure, the semester started off promising enough. The controversy over the Rasmussen Web site provided palatable, if predictable, fare. And the high politics of reshuffling IU's upper administration was a tantalizing treat. But as we approach the conclusion of fall 2003, the well is nearly dry.\nNormally, we would simply import stories from around the world and find some way to make them relevant to you. But this month, it's a dustbowl out there. For example, how do you start a heated debate about a winter storm hitting the Northeast? Argue it should have hit the Southwest, because America needs a more equitable distribution of snow? Call for a boycott against sleet? Insist it was the Democrats' fault? And the other major stories are little better for our purposes, unless you're actually interested in Medicare and Michael Jackson ...\nYeah, that's what I thought.\nCertainly, my valiant colleagues have been struggling to turn news-Spam into news-filet mignon, but you can see the strain in their prose.\nThus, we need your help. We need you to incite new and exciting controversies for spring. \nI'll leave the exact controversy up to you. I'm sure that you can come up with things that only people addicted to licking frogs could ever imagine. Not that I'd know, ahem. But to get you started, I have a few suggestions.\nFirst, go have an affair with someone famous. Just look at the flap in Britain surrounding Prince Charles. And, thanks to British libel laws, those journalists can't even say with whom he allegedly had the affair (although you can find it on the Internet). Or, if you can't find anyone famous, at least find someone utterly inappropriate. Your account could probably spur a whole week of moral condemnation, employing the entire page. Sure, it may give things a bit of a sleazy tabloid feel, but hey, desperate times call for desperate columns and I, for one, am willing to make the sacrifice.\nSecond, create a new disadvantaged group. Obviously, the easiest way to go about this is to combine already existing groups -- develop a society for paraplegic, left-handed transsexual Sherpas, for instance. Of course many of the traditional distinctions are passé. How about an organization that worships "American Idol" through ritual trepanation? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like putting a hole in his head whenever he hears Clay Aiken sing.\n Third, protest something. Anything. It could be the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the activities of the World Trade Organization, the quality of the meatloaf in the dining halls, the color of the sky. Whatever, as long as it involves tent cities, and bongos, and effigies, and people chaining themselves to things, and folk singers doing bad impressions of Bob Dylan, and naked, hairy people dancing around a bonfire in front of the IMU. Wait, scratch that last one. They'll never allow a bonfire in front of the IMU.\nWhatever you do, please do it soon. If we don't have something good by February, the editors might put us in the closet with the spider monkeys. And those spider monkeys, they have sharp, sharp teeth.