The instant you enter one of these shiny vertical mausoleums you are struck with the sensation of infinity; but no matter how much the perceived and illusory space, if you are bound to travel with any other person or persons inside the mirrored trap, the trip, like Sartre put it, is a nightmare. Hell may either be eternal solitude or other people; here, it is both. It's enough to drive one to drink while fastidiously focusing on the seam between metal sheets of shiny industrial boxiness.

The reflective interior of the elevator gives one no relief from the burden of looking at other people. Elevators are already uncomfortable, precipitous places, where the odds of you getting out alive, while unimaginably high, seem impossibly low for the duration of the journey. Who knows when the air will run out, or the cables will snap, or when Gary Busey will get on to inflict noogies and Indian burns on the unfortunate. Reflections amplify the awkward and the pretended nonchalance into an Escheresque madhouse, and the only relief while inside is to shrink within oneself until the psyche itself is a tiny quivering ball of hope that the bell will ring and your floor will finally arrive.

Getting in an elevator is already an act of pure will and bravery. There is the mathematical gymnastics one has to perform in the case of one or multiple riders--how one distributes oneself so as to maximize personal distance and minimize eye contact is just one challenge. The Matrix of Modern Spatial Relationships dictate strict rules for both urinals and elevators. But the mirrors upset the fine balance between social politeness and brusque get-f**ked look.

Then there is the awkward button pushing; if you both reach for a button, who gives way? Do you ask what floor in return for their Gallic selflessness? Or do you simply press your button, leaving the responsibility and more awkward act of secondary button presser to your dwindling companion?

Finally, there's the horrible people multiplier effect that a mirrored interior brings. Even one extra person in the vacuum can produce replicants extending further and further into the distance, while yours does the same. Getting on a crowded elevator is already frightening enough; do it facing the mirrors and the people and the legions of Hell spawned in the geometric background and they'll think you were both brave and foolish to cross the threshold.

If we have to be brave, can't we also be drunk?

It's precisely these execrable vegetables that so perplex worshipers of the CSA box, that urban institution that gives the community (C), in return for their pre-paid financial support (S), fresh agriculture (A) from the local farm. Spinachurally, you can't choose what the local farm grows, and if you don't like what you get, tough squash. The CSA-listers suffer Catholic-level guilt over these vegecrables rotting in their fridges, so like Saudis trying to suckle a sugar mama, they resort to zany measures, such as substituting turnips for macaroni in mac & cheese.

Where the bell pepper do these vegecrats think we live, Chavezuela? Are we still living with our parents (wait, you probably are), forced to gulp down veggies more stomach-turning than Helen Thomas? This is Obamerica, dammit, and you can replace enjoyable food with any vegetable you want, provided you buy it at Michelle's marked-up farmers market.

By paying a premium for the privilege of being told what to eat, you conformity-sustaining abdicators are removing any market incentive for farms to grow things you actually want. There's no reason John Q. Hoe has to plant such despicable crops - it's not like farmers are getting $56 billion in radish subsidies to make fuel that is frenemies with the environment. They grow this crambe because it's cheaper for them, and you, the nouveau leeks, won't argue when they insist turnips can be quite good, rather than the result of Man's Fall.

Aware of growing distaste for command-style authoritarianism, some CSAs are now offering "market-style" options that give members "some degree of personal choice" in what they get. You can tell kale to go to hale, presumably.  But the farmers "encourage" members to take a "prescribed" amount of what they want.  To quote a wise father from the '70s, how about you take my foot up your ass? The Band of Brothers didn't die so you could resurrect the Soviet breadline in Marin County.

You might as well fork over your paycheck to farmers not enslaved to the Iowa congressional delegation - in other words, foreigners - who actually appreciate the open market, grow what sells, and give the local boutique farm some old-fashioned competition. If you still want to feel superior to your neighbors, just wait 5 years to get a spot at your local community garden.

If you're a morally upright person, you should reject that degree like the useless, degrading, and insulting piece of fakery it is. It is educational fraud at its most blatant and most despicable.

Millions of people wasted their lives and a ton of dough thinking college was going to be, for them, the next stage of their personal evolution, the stepladder to success.

In reality, for most of us, college was more of a sucking vortex of money and time devoted to pursuing academic trophies that would have no bearing on our careers or requisite salaries. Yes, America, college is a waste of your time, and you only have to point to the thousands of successful businessmen and women, inventors, and even scientists who never went to or finished college to know that the only thing required to enjoy a piece of the pie is determination, luck, and money.

Those same self-made winners often reap collegiate rewards after they have proven themselves to be bigger than the academic institutions; avoiding the classrooms that shape the rest of us into the drones we become does not impede these people of industry. They receive honorary degrees, professorships and distinguished research fellowships despite not putting in their dues at the temple of the Alma-mighty Mater.

Hey, why study hard and cram those credits into as few semesters as possible, all for a degree that you'll probably never use, when you can get qualified for free? Mike Tyson did it, receiving an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. And all without beating up a single woman. And Robert Mugabe, genocidal African dictator, holds several international educational titles and degrees, none relating to the fields he's specialized in over the last twenty years (ethnic cleansing, kleptocracy management, and beekeeping). Hell, Long Island University awarded one to Kermit the Frog. Let's allow that to sink in. A sock puppet has higher academic credentials than I do.

Honorary degrees bestowed represent the hypocrisy of the elite, the application of a subjective and utterly relative standard in a bankrupt educational system. It is the reverse affirmative action of qualifications, giving to those who have already made it, elevating those who are already taller than everyone else. To paraphrase Colbert, it's like receiving a credit card without having applied for it.

Honorary degrees are the winking chuckles of academic institutions, the index finger to the nose, a gesture of contempt parlayed on all who muddied the halls of education with federal loan money they still struggle to pay off, or Mommy and Daddy's twenty-year savings. When institutional heads award such flattery upon their célèbre darlings who made some impact without their hallowed help,
it is the subtle but unmistakable acknowledgment that college, whatever its perceived import, is not in reality necessary.

On a positive note, this in turn makes a lie of any claims of unequal educational opportunities as the cause of social inequalities and a general lowered expectation for the so-called victims of such educational malnourishment. But while the lie of higher education should be exposed to ridicule if not destruction, to do so by accepting a degree you have not earned is in fact the bigger lie.

The celeb nude and encumbered with child photos are almost a mainstay in the mag world, hunkered somewhere between woman-oriented and titillating, what I call the "quarter-Maxims," Vanity Fair perhaps being the exception. But it's not sexy. It's like looking at a Jeff Koons blow-up balloon animal sculpture, all bulbous and shiny and set on a background of white. The practiced pose is awkward; the pretense of having been surprised (and thus the covering of the breasts) is preempted by the vacant stare off into the distance, or weirder, the sexual "come hither" look. Someone came, and someone conquered, just not any of us looking at the magazine cover.

The craze infested even the most reliably blue collar among us. I've seen photos of friends and wives of friends who've all done the Naked and Pregnant photo shoot, usually with fifteen layers of stockings shading the lens to accentuate the glow from some off-screen source lamp.

Then there are the photos where the woman stands like a Greek goddess statue while her man, perhaps naked or at least shirtless, is bent in supplication, kissing the swollen belly bearing the fruit of his sack endeavors. If there is such a thing as moderate fetish, this is it. Nothing about it is overtly sexual or even sensual, but there's a kind of Mapplethorpeyness to the thing that makes you wonder if the next pic you flip to will be a naked guy urinating on a horse while another naked guy is hogtied and hanging from a wall hook behind him. It's the sort of photo that makes you wonder if the models in the frame are aware that what might be evocative and bond-building for them is simply creepy for everyone else.

I know that a photo preggers au naturel is supposed to be empowering, and taking pride in one's body even when subjected to some of the most horrific forces nature has in its arsenal against physiology (gravity and weird genetic diseases perhaps being sadder) is commendable. But if there's any way we can leave those prints on the cutting room floor, it'd be a relief.

And what do the visiting hibernators among us do on a subway escalator? Stand there. That's it.

Perhaps this is nothing to flop-sweat at a shopping mall when you're carrying the George Foreman Food Preparation Suite, and a faster trip home means an early start to crushing loneliness mitigated by Access Hollywood. But on the National Mall, escalatorquette (not as catchy as sh*tiquette, I know) means the difference between DC workers putting up with you and committing a flagrant foul worthy of Amare Stoudemire.

We're a restless and annoyingly energetic bunch in the District, and subway escalators are just an extension of the Stairmaster at the Obscenely Gilded Appropriator-Turned-Lobbyist Office.  Standing still means being late or insufficiently early to work, and on a deeper level, dragging down society as unproductive social-service suckers. That's the point of an escalator, right? To bring you up when you've done nothing to earn it? And alternately, to carry you down forlornly, like a whimpering dog in a learned-helplessness experiment instead of a teeth-baring Gerard Butler fighting a Persian transsexual?

By refusing to accelerate your journey up to and down from ground level, this city's professional class views you, the Escaloser, as just another clan of flyover flunkies that we have to bail out.  You are frittering away your productive years in decaying economic zones, zipped from home to (unemployment) office surrounded by recirculated air and reprocessed food, instead of joining the public sector and its enablers, filled with fit and fun Frisbee-flinging foodies, which brought this economy back to life. We despise your kind. But it's your life, if you can call it that.

So if you're wielding a fanny pack and a digital SLR with a flock of hyperactive children in tow, here are some tips.

Stay on the right side of the escalator. Talk to each other looking up and down, not side to side. PAY ATTENTION when you get on and off, and be on the lookout for people hurriedly approaching, because they'll need to pass you. Physically restrain your children, and threaten to take them to the American Indian museum if they don't behave.

And do as the Romans do by yourself huffing up and down the escalator.  We'll respect you for it, before gleefully voting to cut your ethanol subsidies.

Unlike most twenty-somethings, I don't mind a good bit of sagey wisdom from a crotchety spinster or grayhead. I love hearing them talk, love the pitch of their voice as they take command of their memory, dredging up some life example from their own past that applies to this situation, this moment, the moment they think applies to you. Taking whippersnappers and jackanapes to task or unburdening their own weighted wisdom upon you is the province of the aged, and youth are douchey enough to warrant it most of the time.

However, like nuclear disarmament or expiration dates on milk and eggs, one has to draw a line somewhere. Blanket acceptance of the Infirm Advice Quotient leads to stretching one's patience into inhuman dimensions, the invention of new non-specific head-nods to indicate non-specific agreement, and eventually the unfortunate but sadly necessary awkward smile as you slowly back away. The unaffiliated aged will wax on and on, pulling freely from stories that do not apply, their hands sometimes shaking as they wrestle the past into submission for this catch of youth who isn't impolite enough to run away.

Grandparents, like the devil you know, are "Persons of Years" who possess familial relations and thus carry relevant data about you, from which they can form opinions and therefore offer critical advice to you, advice that doesn't bear the stench of generic platitudes pulled from the aisles of Target's Hallmark and Papyrus selections. Similarly, the elderly who you know in passing, from interactions in public spheres, and adult friends of friends are equally qualified, however distantly, to dispense their cogitations and corrective axioms.

The problem is not that senior citizens give advice. It's when they give advice freely, unsolicited, to absolute strangers to whom they neither owe nor qualify for giving advice to, that the problem, like a Cuban in a Cadillac, floats your way. In those cases, feel free to fire back with some spry advice of your own; its not as if they were never young once.

I don't object to these on principle. But I cast a preemptive spell on those joint tax entities-to-be who make my fridge look like an Oprah gift segment or MoMA exhibit.

Weddings have a predictable Chronology of Idiocy: Reserved, chaste ceremony before drunken, lines-crossed reception before next-morning walk of shame. The prequel should be at least as decorous as the nuptials, or more so if Chris Brown is involved. Anything resembling the permanent euphoria of Rip Taylor should go in the rejects pile.

Check the goo-goo eyes photo to the right. It's tasteful - modest grins, respectable clothes, subdued gestures. Pastoral scenes suggest to the recipient that this union will be naked and unashamed. Contrast it with the manic photo above - Gene Simmons tongue extension, flashing the rock, dental-cleaning mouth gape, and male-on-female cheek kissing straight off a romance paperback. The "American Beauty" brick wall and placards put this in the league of emotional onanism. Emonanism? It makes you want to walk through a construction zone to avoid this couple.

The illustrated postcard, from Jeremiah's recent nuptials, closes the loop on the ideological circle of consummation kitsch. The missing photo suggests Mr. and Mrs. Imperialist are dyed-in-the-wool Thriftsters, too socially conscious to spend money on a professional card when they can Make Poverty History, and yet like Blondie and Bedhead, obliviously vain, rubbing their literary funkiness in our faces. It's a Monty Pythonized MySpace page.

Like a comedian wearing a fur coat in front of his Mexican landlord, these cards scream "Want me, love me! Shower me with kisses!" You're allowed to be the Black Hole of Attention on the big day, sucking all conversation and earnest glances into your orbit, loyal subjects and random coworkers lauding your love, meticulous grooming and choreographed weeping. Until then, play nice with others on my fridge.

Not that the media isn't a co-conspirator. Calling the latest city-destroying earthen bowel movements "Aftershocks," each registering more than 5.1 on the Richter Scale, is like calling the Holocaust a minor blip on an otherwise flawless Nazi human rights record. With the Atacama Line at "fault" here, pushing the entire continent 4cm to the north seems like no big deal. But here's the true impact of that shift:

More tsunamis will be attributed to Chilean influence this year than the current record holder, Indonesia, leading some to speculate that this might even be a bid on Chile's part to take over all tsunami operations in the Southern Hemisphere. With more than 2 million people displaced by the quakes and over a thousand dead, Haitian authorities have accused Chile of attempting to draw support and aid away from the Caribbean. Meanwhile, Brazil, previously the shining star in South America and the up and comer in several large commerce markets, grumbled that the aftershocks prompted Brazilian citizens to call in reports of tremors that may have been responsible for small fire outbreaks.

Chile's actions haven't gone unnoticed, and it may be time to do something drastic. Perhaps the first step will be to relocate the city of Concepcion, which has moved over ten feet to the west since the first quake struck, back to its original location. Authorities have already decried Chile's "blatant geologic imperialism" and vow to respond.

The fact is, Chile is finally waking up to its own sense of self. These quakes are nothing less than a bottom-up restructuring of its internal structure. This is a wake up call for the rest of South America, which will need to do the same if it wants to compete with the newly caffeinated Chile.

And it's groin-grabbingly adorable.

They hop around on your lawn, fluffy tails twitching like an epileptic drag queen, sniffing for nuts like [poor-taste joke removed]. Rotating food in their little paws while they look around nervously, squirrels remind me of myself when I chow down on an empanada from the shop near my office. There are few things I enjoy more in the morning than watching these cranked-out proto-bunnies leap between trees, chasing each other in desperate pursuits, like James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow.

Approach a squirrel in the park and chances are he'll sort of run alongside you at an angle, not sure whether to be intimidated or want to play. He'll scamper over and stand on two legs as if sizing you up when you hold out food or just throw sticks at him, as I did at the Capitol last weekend. Squirrels never look dirtier than you did after playing in the leaves, and you never notice their dung in public, unlike those chattering disease-bags that befowl our waterfronts and statues. I lured a squirrel on my porch once with Cheetos and all he left behind was a heart-warming puddle.

Some may theorize that squirrels are hellbent on world domination, as an attractive but paranoid coworker of mine did. They could very well rise up in menacing tripods and claw us into their munch-holes, but what's the worst they could really do? Perhaps a wealthy madman could train them to attack low-level municipal officials who stroll through parks without a bodyguard. You can do that for free with Tea Partiers.

There's a spritely grace in squirrels, like watching a slumber party with the Spice Girls. Until the day you come across a dead one, feet in the air, rigid as your stepfather, they seem more like the seraphs of Scripture than svelte rodents. Nietzsche may think God is dead, but I know He exists, because I see his furry spirit children playing every day. And I ain't talking about Zach Galifianakis.

The most important lesson we learned as wide-eyed tykes inclined toward a grown-up's authority - how to line up in the event of a school fire - faded as we got permission to leave the house and go out with friends.  And what do you do in public with friends?  Walk two or more to one side.

This is no problem - indeed, it prevents accusations of "stop looking at my butt, perv" - until another person or group approaches from the opposite direction on a narrow path.  Sidewalks in particular are prone to this entirely avoidable gridlock, for which there's a simple solution:  Single-file passing.

Why the hell is this such a rarity?

Because we're too damn special to merge into a single walking lane, apparently.  Or to even acknowledge we might be in an oncoming person's path, absentmindedly chattering away about Justin, Rihanna, or (in our nation's capital) the Illinois GOP Senate primary.  Notice how those approaching ignore eye contact as they draw near, as if they're pretending not to notice a clipboard-waving activist (a laudable action) or, in geopolitical terms, dumping subsidized textiles on the global market with no regard for Third World development.  Yes, making me step into the grass, mud or street so your friendly front line can stay intact is morally equivalent to economic jingoism.

Yet we good-natured approachers inevitably move out of the way to avoid a game of sidewalk chicken with a nerd-pounding jock, clawed Valley Girl or mother wielding a stroller, whose emotional and chemical stability are not to be assumed.  No reason to risk a confrontation for something as insignificant as manners in passing, right?

But you don't beat a bully by turning tail and telling the teacher and your mom, who will advocate communication.  Balls to that.  Watch Revenge of the Nerds, get a sensei, and practice your response for the predictable "what the hell?" exclamation when you careen into a double-wide entourage.

"I'm sorry, but I have the right of way" might puzzle your upper-middle-class shopistas long enough for them to decide it's not worth parsing your statement and simply walk by single-file.  "Get the f--- out of the way" risks fisticuffs with frat boys - this is a good situation for having a predetermined witness who can testify to your antagonist's unprovoked bellicosity in the event of blows.  Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, you could simply chat exaggeratedly on your phone while shooting rapid-fire glances into shop windows and plow into traffic.  "Omigod, like, sorry, I was so stoked about these chamomile bath soaps!" invites an understanding look from a pretty pileup of bubbly blondes or gregarious gays.  It's probably best to avoid issuing a citizen's citation using an official-looking badge, as local police and mall cops don't appreciate others homing in on their petty reprimands.

Like a suicide bomber or a Mormon on a yellow bicycle, all it takes is one encounter for people in their crosswalk hairs to perk up and be on the lookout for self-appointed enforcers of manners in the future.  Won't you join me in this decentralized, never-ending flash mob of civility?