Warning to the untutored:

Do not try to tie a firecracker to a bunny rabbit, fail in your attempt to explode said rodent, and then post the photographs of the spectacle to the World Wide Web, as some teenage lifeguard apparently did recently in Castro Valley, CA (and knowing that he was from Castro Valley told me what I needed to know about why someone would do such a cruel and asinine thing to a defenseless animal).

Again, don’t do it. The Humane Society might catch wind of it, somehow, someday, somewhere. Hint: It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason.

The lifeguard was quoted as saying that a lot of people are judging him and his friends without knowing them. I wonder why?

Yesterday I saw a campus tour guide leading a large group through the Diag, attempting to make her comments about the Physics Building heard over the monologue of a preaching regular who was standing on one of the short stone walls surrounding the Diag and delivering a sermon to thin air about how you can be the biggest winner and the brightest person in the world but it doesn’t matter if you’ve sinned against God.

I don’t know why, but in addition to the lazier-than-usual vibe around town, these all feel like signs that summer is starting to enter its waning stage (even though the season’s only been here five weeks, it’s been here much longer in terms of the academic calendar):

• Lots of students gradually making their way back to campus and settling in for the coming year; some students are even using the libraries.

• Lots of guys wearing tank tops and women wearing belly shirts even on days when it’s not particularly that hot outside.

• Lots of feverish clean-up work going on around the student flophouses along State below Packard.

• Lots of For Rent signs.

There’s another thing I don’t understand. I freely admit I’m not yet with it when it comes to cell phones. I use them when they’re necessary, but not much otherwise. And I just don’t get why people use them in places like theaters and libraries.

A security guard apparently maced a couple of kids who were using their cell phones on Saturday night while “Catwoman” was showing at a movie theater in St. Petersburg, FL. I don’t think the couple should have been maced, but I think they should have turned their cell phones off. I was doing some research at Hatcher this afternoon and a woman sat at a desk in front of me carrying on a conversation on her cell. She was positively quiet compared to the jock who stood in front of the reading room nearly shouting into his cell.

If you’re in an emergency, I can see pulling out your cell phone and making a call in a library. But otherwise, why? Other than the fact that it’s quiet there and you just don’t care about anyone else around you overhearing your loud conversation. The library staff has probably become resigned to cell phone breaching the library space at this point; I have never seen any librarian (or anyone anywhere else, for that matter) pull aside a cell phone user and ask him or her to stop, because doing so would probably risk an incident of cell phone rage.

Okay, I’ve lost the ability to understand what it ws that I’m supposed to do in an elevator when it stops on a floor and there are people waiting to get in and I’m waiting to get out. It used to be that the normal behavior was for the people outside to wait to get in until the people inside got out. That’s gone by the wayside. I was in an elevator in Hatcher the other day and a whole troop of people started pouring onto the elevator before I could get out. I’m honestly clueless here. Do I just barge out and rudely shove the people waiting to get on? Do I stay on and push through the wall of people after they’ve already boarded? I don’t get it.