5:00a: Wake-up in a cold sweat with acute nausea. Ask yourself for the 53,732,481 time if this is what you want to do. Tell yourself enthusiastically: “Yes, of course! Getting married has been my top priority since I was baby with formless thoughts.” Go back to sleep, relieved.

7:30a: Wake up for real, take a shower and welcome your bridesmaids. Ask Bridesmaid #1 why she brought a travel container of Starbucks blend coffee, when you, the bride, requested a tallskinnyvanillalatte. When she starts to cry, tell her it’s okay – but, roll your eyes, so she knows that it actually is not okay.

Hello, my name is Nick Hilbourn and I’m a professional English major. I would like to move away from the humor column format to talk about an important social topic: stabbing.

Common decency does not stop at the dinner table. Even as we speak, people are being stabbed without so much as an ‘excuse me’ or ‘hello, how are you?’ It is the downfall of society when something as small as a simple stab cannot be done without a bit cordiality.

I love dogs, and I dote on my children. But when our daughter started to beg for a dog for her sixteenth birthday, I was determined to resist.

“All I want is a dog. Nothing else. Nothing,” said Charlotte, used to getting her way with her parents. What Charlotte really wanted was a cat, but her father, Jack, claims to be allergic to them. Being resourceful, Charlotte went on the American Kennel Club website to find a breed that was as much like a cat as possible. She found what she was looking for and began to ply me with offhand remarks like “Pomeranians are exceptionally trainable” and “Sixteen is one of the most important birthdays of all.”

Some may call me old-fashioned. Some may call me backwards. Some may say I am standing in the way of the inevitable march of technological progress. I say to those people, “bah!” “Foh,” I say to them! Dear sirs and madams, our society is not experiencing admirable growth, as some may have you believe, oh no! We as a people are being drawn ever increasingly downward into a horrible pit of decadence, chicanery, tomfoolery, and no small amount of monkeyshines. One may be tempted to disagree. One may take the convenient path and brush off my warnings. One may lazily leave society to rot whilst he swills cheap brew and watches muscled men homoerotically grapple in an eight-sided cage. Mind you, gentle statesmen; these are no mere ravings of a madman. There is clear evidence of the backsliding of our society. One needs look no further than the deplorable state of formal letter writing in contemporary times. What was once an exercise in intellectualism and civility has all but vanished, replaced instead by communication so crass I can barely stand to think of it.

If you’re like me, and I think you are, you are not social, but you dream of being a little bit famous. You are awkward, but you are also delusional. Am I right? You’re trying to get out in the world without ever leaving your apartment. Yes? Well, it is time for you to thank a god – and that 17 year old Russian kid – for thinking up Chatroulette. What could be better? You can stay at home and talk to other people, while creating and branding a personality. And since you’re like me, I know that you actually hate talking to people. So, skip the talking to people! Just make a persona for yourself. Get yourself known!