Sports (and the often barely withheld violence around them) have become one of the few modern ways to connect with strangers. They give an amazing number of geeks things to talk about. In the old days we settled for, "Hello, how are you?

Gays feel about popularity the same way teenage girls do. Is it that we really want friends we can count on, or do we just want guys around us whom we can share our curlers with?

Realize that the banality around us that passes as "hipness" or "mass culture" is as satisfying as "mass food"-only it comes in much more unappetizing portions.

Learn to detest things that do not allow you to be yourself, and embrace things that make that self larger, more thrilling, and voluptuous.

Hold the door for an old man. Old ladies can take care of themselves; they've been doing it long enough.

The lowest form of barbarism is smugly to berate someone for extending an act of kindness.

Fashion is the art of making the unimportant indispensable.