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In This Issue

• Facebook News Feed Charts Relationship's Ups, Downs, Wrongs
• Dr. Doom Next CU GOP Speaker
• Old Dogs, New SAT Rubrics
• Columbia U. Celebrates Halloween
• Cooch Drinks Hootch, Scootches
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Meanness
• Interviewing Marauder
• Escalators: Now at Your Local CIA Black Site
• Celebrity Trading Cards
• Real Parties for Which You're Not Voting
• Sound Advice for Celebrity-Starved Democrats
• A New PAC a Day Keeps the Devil Away
• Tables Turn on Foley's Accuser
• Five Senate Races to Watch
• Santorum v. Santorum
• Ten Things Not to Call an Opponent’s Campaign Staffer
• Forbidden Love
• Socialism Creeping
• CU Football Confesses Famous Losing Streak “Never Actually Ended”
• AVG
• The Fed Caption Contest
• Superman!
• Would You Know My Name If I Saw You in Prison?
• THEY Watch

Michael Brayden

Graduate students at Lehigh University have made a shocking discovery: current use of the escalator as a mode of transportation is far from its original purpose. The escalator is in fact a complicated, mechanized torture device. The students learned this through a chance discovery of the journal of Jesse W. Reno, an 1883 graduate of Lehigh's engineering college.

In 1892, Charles A. Wheeler patented ideas for what he deemed a "moving staircase." His concept was later stolen by Reno, who saw, according to his journal, the "true potential" of Wheeler's invention.

"Reno quickly removed all the ‘infuriatingly bothersome safety precautions' Wheeler had put in his diagrams," said Thomas Chinaski, one of the graduate students, "In his mind, they simply got in the way of the machine's true purpose." This "true purpose" was, of course, torture.

This news came as something of a shock to escalator enthusiasts around the globe.  Several escalator-loving families have banded together to form Families for Escalators Everywhere Together (FEET), which condemns the new discovery. The organization is spearheaded by the Finkelhorn family from Hoboken, New Jersey. John Finkelhorn, the family's patriarch and self proclaimed "go-getter," offered his opinion.

"I do not accept that this is the originally intended purpose of escalators," he said, "I do not plan on telling my family about this study, because it is blasphemous."

In Reno's original plans, victims would be forced to run up the machine in what is now considered the wrong direction. To capitalize on any of the victims' slips or stumbles, Reno proposed that each of the steps be comprised of a row of metal ridges. These ridges would be "sharpened to such a degree as to be able to cut through flesh and clothing."

Submitted Bobby Finkelhorn, age six, "I love running up down escalators!"

According to the journal, the edges should not be razor-sharp but instead be aimed at making "more of a jagged rip or tear rather than a clean incision, toward the purpose of causing the maximum amount of blood to surge from the wound.  This may also increase the probability of infection."

"The edges help guide the stairs, and I like that," said Jeanine Finkelhorn, Tommy's fifteen-year-old sister and official Club Smarty-Pants, "Whoever designed this was a very nice person."

Another misconstrued element of the escalator's construction is the moving handrail. "According to Reno's instructions, the hand rails were supposed to move in the opposite direction of the steps," says Chinaski, "The Otis Elevator Company [to whom Reno sold his invention] thought that this was simply a mistake."

Apparently, the rubber handrails were intended to function as straps; the victim's wrists or hands would be put between the rubber and the solid, stationary part of the railing. This would be very painful because the victim's wrists would resist the motion of the handrails, "hopefully," as Reno puts it, "causing all manner of small fractures in the multitude of bones in the hand and wrist and, ideally, causing the joint of the wrist to be slowly twisted about and torn asunder."

Official Club Special Lady Mrs. Ronette Finkelhorn added, "I enjoy the simple pleasure of a firm and comfortable handrail."

The second cause of pain from the handrails is the fact that the contrary motion of the escalator's steps would tear the flesh of the victim's torso and legs. Says Reno, "Without delay, the subject's skin, and eventually his fatty tissues, would be shredded in such a fashion as to make medical attention of any sort utterly useless, for the dermis in the affected area would be almost entirely removed."

"WHEEEE, ESCALATORS!" said three-year-old Billy Finkelhorn, official Club Poopy-Pants.

Reno did not create this device for the pure joy of torture; he hoped the mere sight of one of these horrifying behemoths would "inspire such mortal terror in the subject so as to make him instantaneously abandon any and all oaths made to his compatriots and motherland."

"I love escalators!  Can we go play on one now?" six-year-old Bobby frequently implored his mother.

The journal ends with the statement that "only an individual possessing the naïveté of an idiotic six-year-old would not realize the horrible power of this contraption."

"Yes, we can," replied Ronette, "Escalators are safe and fun."