I met her at a rest stop in Blandford, Mass. this past Sunday. I was standing in front of a wall of snack food at the gift shop when I saw her slowly pacing through the adjoining Sbarro’s, squinting through her glasses at the grease-soaked pizzas on display.

I went numb.

I’d caught just a glimpse of her, out of the corner of my eye no less, but I knew it was her instantly. It was a sub-conscious recognition, as if I’d already memorized her every dimension, as if hours of television exposure allowed me to keep a mental blueprint of each of her distinguishing traits.

7:00 a.m. is too early. Course Enroll, what pre-enrollment is commonly referred to at Cornell University, should not be so early in the morning. A better time would be more like 9:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. is early but it isn’t too early. You can wake up at 9:00 a.m. and enroll in courses and continue with your day, seamlessly. For example, if you have a class at 10:10 for which you typically wake up at 9:25, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to wake up a half-hour earlier, at 8:55, to enroll is classes. 8:55, by the way, to allow for five minutes of preparation. This involves turning on your laptop, connecting to the internet and dealing with that general early-morning fogginess.

The vomiting sure didn’t help. With the intensifying stench of bullshit emanating from the whole Balloon Boy Fiasco the Heene family, specifically their sleazy patriarch Richard, needed a near-perfect performance from B. Boy on the morning talk-show circuit. He’d have to pour on the cuteness. He’d have to kill ’em with innocence. He’d have to make America want to reach through their TV screens to pinch his little cheeks, tussle his hair and send the little rascal on his way.

Thanks Oprah. We give you one job — drop by Denmark with the O-Team and use your magic to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. One job! And what happens? We get eliminated in the first goddamn round of voting. Somehow Tokyo beat us out for third place despite the fact that they planned to fund the Games by expanding the scope of their dolphin-hunting industry to encompass all adorable marine life.

In 1993 Michael Jackson was forced to pay $25 million to the family of then-13-year-old Jordie Chandler largely because Chandler was able to identify with great accuracy distinctive features of the King’s penis.

MJ had a warning system of alarms and surveillance cameras set up outside the bedroom where he unapologetically admitted to having “sleepovers” with young boys.

A photo album full of pictures of naked boys was confiscated from Neverland. He had a drawer in which he kept a collection of his little friends’ underwear.

Michael Jackson represented the dregs of humanity, a scumbag of the dirtiest order, a man who was repeatedly accused of fondling, sucking-off, masturbating to and with young boys.

What a mistake of a human being.

Those young and inexperienced are ripe for manipulation. Santa, E. Bunny, T. Fairy, etc. Little kids will believe anything, and they’re cute that way. But we forget that youth and inexperience don’t end after we slip out of puberty. No, that manipulation continues, only this time it’s not so cute.

Manipulations cut deeper now. Our realizations are no longer about night-riding, jelly bean-giving bunnies; they’re about how honesty and hard work don’t mean anything. They aren’t about where babies come from; they’re about how that presidential candidate we believed in so adamantly, for whom we campaigned so tirelessly, turned out to be a total fuckin’ fraud.

Overgrown quads crawling with ticks. Cracked sidewalks unplowed in mid-winter: impassable. Showers caked with inch-thick mold. Classrooms dusty, dirty and unkempt. Dorm bathrooms still reeking of last weekend’s now-hardened vomit. Dining hall buffets empty. Scared, starved students calling out to mommy in bewilderment. A university unhinged, rendered inert.

This description of life without Cornell workers is overly dramatic, of course. A lame attempt at shock and awe. But what would become of our school without the services provided by these workers? How much are their services worth?

After nearly four semesters at Cornell, I’m finally getting going on the whole picking the major thing. I’ve engaged in the requisite flirtation in a variety of subjects, dipping my wick in everything humanities, from film to government to Africana studies. And now I’ll finally settle down, albeit carrying the scars and diseases of my academic promiscuity, with what I thought would be my major all along — English.

Mustachioed Iraq War cheerleader and capitalism-at-all-costs New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s latest op-ed, entitled “Are We Home Alone?” calls on government officials to act “larger than the moment,” to provide its ailing, apparently infantile country with “inspirational leadership.” The millionaire hack laments classically lamentable American mainstays like partisanship and politics as usual and the public’s distaste for the nightly news. He talks about the need to stop vilifying public figures and italicizes the words our country in a way that connotes those suicide-inducing “This is ouurrr country!” Chevy commercials. This guy even wants the Big O to deliver a fireside chat, F. Delano-style, to bolster the ol’ national spirit.

We’re fucked unless we get people spending again. Tax cuts, government initiatives, refunds, rebates, shovel-ready projects — all forms of stimulation designed to pad the American wallet, to give America a little walkin’ around money as they jazz up the ol’ infrastructure, to get people spending again. This is our real solution to the depression.

Ultimately, we don’t need bailouts or tax cuts or green jobs, but spending. We, the American people, gotta get spending like it’s 1998. Politicians may disagree about the means of stimulation, but there is no doubt that America has to get back to what America does best — consume. Buy shit, people. Spend that hard-earned dime on something real nice, because it’s only as good as what you can buy with it.