To paraphrase The Rolling Stones, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of little wealth and questionable taste.

Hi! I am Harry, everyone’s favorite middle-aged college student. Oh, many of you may not think of 39 as middle-aged. I can state emphatically that it is not the years but the mileage that makes me say otherwise.

Why are you reading me right now? Many reasons. Some of you are killing time before class starts. A small amount of you are disturbingly anal retentive and need to read something while eating. And a select few picked up the Statesman knowing I wrote this column and would say something controversial.

To be serious for a brief moment – and it will be brief – I wanted to pass along a warm hearty hello and to explain what you may expect from this column as the semester spirals downward into a hellish pit of utter helplessness. This is more of a syllabus than an introduction. I don’t call it a syllabus because, and let us all be honest here, no one in college actually reads a syllabus.

What you can expect from my column this semester can best be described with words found in a thesaurus or by talking to an English major (better you than me). I will be verbose, haughty, churlish, pithy, profound, profane, sagacious, salacious, high-brow, low-brow, spiritual, fanatical, conservative, liberal, sincere, sinister, sentimental and, most assuredly, I will be magniloquent.

During our next few months together, I hope this column will engage every single one of you on a variety of subjects and controversial issues. I will challenge the university, the professors, the football team, the Nazi lifeguards in the HPER, Stew Morrill’s weak scheduling, Logan, Cache Valley, Utah, the United States of America, Albania, television, movies, music, religion, drunkards, smokers, cell phone users, homophobes, xenophobes, environmentalists, Birthers, English majors, Arby’s, people who put ketchup on hot dogs, my editors, and I most definitely will take as many cheap shots at BYU as my disdain for that pompous, overrated school will allow.

To wet your palate, allow me to finish this introduction with a small example of what I shall discuss in the months ahead.

I am currently typing this column in the computer lab in the TSC. Many people are involved in loud conversations with each other and on their cell phones. This also happens quite frequently in class and the library.

To those students who talk in these places, I have a very hard truth to reveal to you: Your parents have been lying to you your entire life; you are not special.

People around you in the computer lab who are typing do not want to hear about your weekend. People in your classroom who are facing the front of the room are paying attention to the professor. Those quiet people in the library with textbooks, writing stuff in notebooks, have a big exam coming up and would appreciate it if you get as far away from them as possible.

No one cares about what you have to say. You do not have a right to talk about mundane piffle near people who are trying to study or learn in places designated to study and learn. By continuing this behavior, you are embracing a level of sociopathic narcissism that would make a BYU student blush with envy. Please, out of common courtesy and civility, shut up.

Well, that was fun.

Harry Caines is a senior re-entry student from Philadelphia majoring in interdisciplinary studies. Unconventional Wisdom will appear each Monday. Comments can be sent to chiefsalsa@yahoo.com