STRONG MEDICINE

This week, an anonymous under-grad pasted stickers on items at CVS pharmacy proclaiming that the products in question were developed using "cruel animal testing."

We at Dartboard want to thank the mysterious champion of warm fuzzy creatures.

Now the sane among us know exactly which products to buy. We feel much more secure buying merchandise from a company that isn't deterred from insuring our safety by fatuous sentimentality about lower orders of life.

One of the cruelty-tested products targeted was Crest toothpaste. This stuff has to be strong enough to kill Cavity Creeps, for Pete's sake!

Would you risk using it if its safety were only proven by "cruelty-free" conjecture? The CVS crusader might discount the happiness of lab bunnies when she gets a speck of Jim's-All-Natural-Cruelty-Free-Third-World-Friendl y-Gentle-Tooth-Cleaner in her eye and writhes in pain as the substance eats away at her cornea via some reaction unforeseen by the bunny-friendly safety testers who formulated it.

But the rational few should not condemn her too quickly. After all, with all Cambridge's loony shoppers shunning the tagged products, we can wait a few days for the inevitable markdown and cheaply snap up all the bunnicidal toiletries our callous little faces could ever need.

HAMLET, BOSTON STYLE.

Is he the mayor of Boston, the Ambassador to the Vatican, or the Prince of Denmark?

After a few months at the grueling post as the chief American groveler to the Holy See, Ray Flynn is ready for another post-governor of Massachussetts. Or is he?

As a vacillator, Flynn puts even wiggling, waffling and wavering Mario Cuomo to shame. Flynn has been teasing the Boston press corps for weeks about a possible run against Governor Weld.

He teased the selfsame press corps for months about a possible Clinton administration post; then he deliberated taking the Ambassadorship to the Vatican, which, after a mawkishly tearful "I-am-the-son-of-an-Immigrant-and-look-at-me-now" acceptance speech on the steps of his church, he suggested might not actually be good enough for him; the honor, evidently, wasn't so glorious once Flynn realized that the post is the grandaddy of all diplomatic sinecures.

Between what seem like weekly riddling sessions about his political intentions on Boston TV, and personal trips home to deal with a son recently committed to drug rehab, one wonders whether Flynn ever made it to St. Peter's Square.

Yet this congenital indecisiveness, though irritatingly tiresome, may be just what it takes to get elected governor. New York's Cuomo is girding up for another run for the Statehouse (at least that's what he says today), and his perpetual wembling hasn't prevented him from routing three succesive opponents.

Though Hamlet only wished that his too, too solid flesh might melt away, Cuomo and Flynn seemed to have actually suffered this fate.

Whatever lump of decisionmaking grey matter these two had in their whiny keisters has long ago evaporated.

LOTTERY FEVER

As all freshman know, and a few upperclassmen may remember, this week heralds the annual housing lottery. Blocking groups are hunkering down to rack their brains for strategies to beat the system. But not even 1,600 SATs can guarantee a reprieve from randomization.

They tell you that your fate is determined by a fair and impartial computer program. The reality is that housing assigments are actually decided by a bizarre entrail-reading ritual held at the stroke of midnight in Dean Epps' office.

Intrepid first-years should put away their HP calculators and get out their incense and a copy of the Necronomicon, or perhaps attempt to sacrifice a bull on the John Harvard statue. The Housing Gods cannot be swayed cheaply.

LIVING A LIE

House choices say a lot about a first-year's political views. The bleeding-hearts among us seem to have a peculiar attraction for Adams House; why is it that those who claim to trouble themselves with the fate of the downtrodden also scramble claw their way into the most luxurious dormitory on campus?

It is perhaps the most egregious hyprocrisy at Harvard, short of the policy that bars students from having pets while leaving tutors exempt.

If anyone truly wishes to live in sympathy with the less fortunate, Harvard does not lack opportunities. The House system might easily be billed as "The Slums of the Ages."

Winthrop House has the authentic overcrowded, dank flavor of a turn of the century immigrant ghetto; Mather evokes the impersonal oppressiveness of the projects.

Currier has all the tumble-down charm of the trailer-park on the edge of town.

Yet with all these opportunities to share the plight of the poverty-stricken, the caring and concerned seem irresistably drawn to Robert Kiely's commodious Bohemian hotel at the center of campus.

This confirms what an anonymous limerick has long proclaimed:

In sepulchral Adams House spaces

Guilt darkens the liberal faces

Of vagrants they sigh

And of "underclass" cry

But with 'em, they'd never change places.