The March hare takes a look around

Slowly, hesitantly, the proprietor -- well rested for the most part, but still too groggy for his own good -- arises from his narcoleptic slumber. His eyes blinking away the residue of a sleep that has strolled near the edge of the thick black line somewhere between catnap and hibernation, he gradually emerges from his hideaway and looks ahead boldly into the distance, eager to interact with a new world he hopes to be far more hospitable than the one he left behind just a month before.

That's when he notices the orange. An untrained observer might have turned a blind eye to the quiet menace, but the proprietor is well versed in -- and ever vigilant for -- the color's insidious ways. No longer content merely to obscure hunters in the wilderness or to scream "roadwork" to the four corners of the earth, the orange has infiltrated the unwitting bracket, unjustly besmirching an innocent No. 2 seed with a late-season collapse most foul.

Repulsed and bewildered, the proprietor clambers back into his hovel to wait out the tribulations. Two more weeks of hiatus, and one more post to serve as an open thread until the reawakening.