how do i...

I have a text document with various lines like this:

            Something: Something else
            Other thing: Another thing else
So, in bash, how would I go about converting all lines like that into variables, i.e.

$SOMETHING="Something else"
$OTHER_THING="Another thing else"

`sed -e 's/\(.*\): \(.*\)/\$\1=\"\2\"/'`
wow I am way too stoned for this.