Got a laugh out of the "badge of honor" bit but I'm not sold on it being some huge deal. Brake dust is just part of owning a car, same as dirt on the paint or bugs on the windshield. Unless it's caked on thick enough to throw the wheel off balance, it's cosmetic. What did you actually prove on the Civic, that a wash makes it look better?

Two decades of Thanksgiving fights gone in one newspaper scan, that's honestly kind of sweet.

Ugh that hurts just to look at. Same exact thing happened to my 68 coupe after it sat under a tarp for about a year and a half in my driveway. The roof and trunk lid both got those spider web cracks all over, looked like dried mud. Turns out the tarp trapped moisture against the paint and the sun baked it right through. What really got me was the primer spots showing through where the cracks went deep, no amount of buffing was gonna fix that. Ended up having to strip the whole roof down to bare metal and start over, which I was not planning on at all lol. Hope yours isn't as bad as mine was, you might get lucky if it's just the top layer.