For those of you tired of trying to get excited about the caucus season, don’t worry your pretty little heads off. In four short days it will all be over.

On Jan. 25, you’ll wake up in an Iowa that hasn’t been the same since last summer, when our quaint, little section of the country was inundated by antenna trucks, catered beef sandwiches and the Iowa Republican Straw Poll.

After the caucuses are over, don’t expect to see anyone even remotely involved in politics for another three and a half years.

If you believe even one of the candidates is going to think or talk about agriculture again after Monday, I’ve got some news for you — you are an idiot.

The 15 minutes of political fame Iowa enjoys every four years will soon be as dead as disco.

Not that I am going to be too upset about it.

If I wanted to hear the non-offensive, poll-driven opinions of a handful of out-of-touch, middle-aged white guys, I’d just hang out at Beardshear for a couple of hours.

How is it these guys can spend all this money on image consultants and pollsters to construct exactly what kind of candidates they will pretend to be and still come out sounding eerily like Charlie Brown’s teacher?

Unlike the general election, where one vote is as likely to change the outcome as it is to change your oil, one caucus vote really can shake up the political martini to 007 standards.

For instance, students who happen to live in the dorms are lucky enough to be in a precinct where the Monday caucus probably will have an even lower attendance than the average Monday night house meeting.

A few dormies could storm their respective Republican caucus to make sure their precinct spends most of its delegates on Morry Taylor. If you’re feeling a little less racy or if you happen to actually BE a Republican, you can attend your caucus and vote for whomever actually trips your trigger.

A few words of warning before you jump head first into our beloved, first-in-the-nation caucuses, however.

Be prepared to spend time with a bunch of whackos. A caucus does not work like just any election or primary.

You’ve actually got to hang out for at least an hour with the same people who show up at stump speeches.

These are the same people who preface obscure questions about health care with “I’ve been following all the debates and I’ve been to a lot of these speeches, so I guess I consider myself a real political junkie.”

Be sure to avoid sitting next to people who are pouring over the notes they have amassed in the past year.

Before going in to the caucuses completely cold, realize this: The Iowa Caucus is not a well-oiled political machine, though it has improved a lot since 1968.

The caucus is designed to be a simple, grassroots event that is not broadcast on CNN or C-Span.

Do not be surprised when you figure out that the dude counting the votes is wearing a Dubya sticker.

Do not be surprised if, after 10 minutes of thinking about what Tipper looks like naked, you realize that when you registered to vote in Ames, you could just as easily have been from the moon as the 45.

Try not to get worked up about the platforms. The platform is supposedly a list of issues on which you want your party to concentrate. People who are very pro-caucus will tell you that this is the most important part of the caucus because this is where you can actually “shape and lead the direction of your very own party.”

The only problem is, your precinct’s platform is taken to the county convention to be discussed before the county platform is taken to the district convention to be discussed before the district platform is taken to the state convention to be discussed before the state platform is taken to the national convention to be discussed after which the national platform is completely ignored by your party’s candidate. Because now that he’s secured the nomination, he’s too busy trying to become everything to everyone.

The chances of anything you were interested in getting on the platform is low, and it wouldn’t matter if it did get on because no candidate cares about platforms – he’s got the nomination.

Despite its shortcomings, it is a good idea to go out Monday and get involved.

Even if the candidates don’t care about you as much as they like you to think, you’re going to get screwed anyway so you might as well wake the neighbors with a few screams.

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David Roepke is a junior in journalism and mass communications from Aurora. He is a Daily news editor.