Mice scurry across the San Francisco subway tracks. Not rats. Mice.

Carry-ons are supposed to fit under the seat in front of you. How difficult a concept is this? People who lug around massive carry-ons are pathetic. Their exasperated, exaggerated sighs as they heave, jam and shove their enormous "carry-on" luggage into the overhead bins make a ridiculous mockery of true travel hardships.

It is as if modern travelers secretly long for the days when travel was an actual experience and not just so much rewarmed cinema verite. Some kind of misplaced nostalgia seems to infuse these people as they grimace their faces and screw up their courage to lift their 30 pound "purses" onto their shoulders and crush together impatiently, falsely burdened to board begrudgingly according to row.

People refuse to check their luggage on the principle that waiting the five extra minutes for their luggage to come trundling out on the carrousel is a hassle. The sick truth is that they long for hassle and hardship. There is a need that travel be an activity only for the best and the privileged. Now that travel is no longer a luxury available only to a few fabulously rich individuals people seek to distinguish their traveling selves as special by means of having survived a red-eye from Newark with the 90 pounds of carry-on toiletries supposedly deemed necessary for a proper weekend.

The truth is that traveling is still a luxury and it should be treated as such. But sadly, everyone seems to have forgotten how to live luxuriously. Checking luggage, sauntering unhurried down the quarter mile terminals all unencumbered save for a ticket and some reading material -- those things are decadent. If only all travelers were carrying books instead of lugging around god knows what trivial items leaking inside those giant black Arthur C. Clark 2001 monolithes-with-wheels then traveling might actually become the distinguished, pleasant, gentile luxury that befits an advanced civilization.

Self-flushing toilets are an outrage. No reason can account for them. They are not markedly more convenient. They are not demonstrably more sanitary. And they most certainly do not save more water. Every self-flushing toilet I have ever been unfortunate enough to approach has always been trigger happy. Flushing once in greeting as I shut the stall door. Flushing again mid-use, so to speak. Flushing a few more times as I gather my clothing back together. In short: it is not that difficult to flush a toilet that we need some gung-ho, nervous-nellie infrared sensor to prove that it too is capable of modern waste management.