You can change the fonts and colors in Wordle to make your word clouds look all sorts of different ways. I liked this because it looks like writing on a cast! Appropriate for a chapter about the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

I’ll be doing a benefit reading and signing of Miss Conduct’s Mind over Manners for ReadBoston on Tuesday, June 30 at 7 p.m. at 1732 Centre Street, West Roxbury. Tickets for the “ChickLit” event, which includes dinner and wine, are $40 and benefit the literacy initiative. You can RSVP by calling 617-918-5289 or emailing ReadBoston@cityofboston.gov. Hope to see you there!

… I’m always saying it. Because it’s not enough to know the right thing to do (ethics) and the socially appropriate way of doing it (etiquette). It’s also important to be able to arrange the environment so that people do the correct thing without having to think about it too much (engineering).

The tricky bit with engineering is that it influences people’s behavior far more than they are consciously aware of. Here‘s a fun article by Malcolm Gladwell about how stores are engineered to take advantage of people’s natural movement patterns. (Read it. You want to know about butt-brush theory, you really do.) No one is immune to good engineering–obviously, you can set out for a day at the mall with a vow to spend only $20 and stick to that, no one is saying you can’t. But there’s an awfully good chance that you’ll blow your allotted $20 in a well-engineered store. And that your butt will have remained unbrushed.

I’m thinking of this now because I realize I’ve fallen prey to good engineering myself! When I asked you all to talk to me about comments policies, one of the things I asked was whether or not you liked it when the blogger also left comments. Silly me! I thought this was a matter of policy. I had actually convinced myself that on the boston.com blog, I had a philosophical rationale for not leaving comments: that I wanted this to be your space, and wanted you to feel as though the teacher had left the room, and you were free to talk amongst yourselves with minimal policing. This was my laissez-faire blog-comments policy, so I thought.

Well, hah hah on me. Turns out I only wasn’t commenting over there because the blog software is klugey! It’s easy to comment on this blog … so I do. So much for my grand philosophy of Why The Blogger Shouldn’t Comment.

That’s a thing to keep in mind. Not only do we respond to good engineering like running water following the path of least resistance–we tell ourselves stories attributing our reasons to internal psychological factors. I do this and I study this kind of self-delusion for a living. It amuses me, but it also brought me up short, to see how prone to this post-facto theorizing and storytelling I am.

Technical difficulties kept today’s chat from happening, but I did get a few questions in–so I’ll answer them here:

Where is the proper place to place one’s purse when at a restaurant?

Wherever it is most secure and least in people’s way.

A friend of mine wrote a one-act play, and asked if I would give her feedback (you can probably tell where this is going already)–I agreed to it, of course, and the play in question turned out to be a VERY far out work–I do not understand anything about it. I love the occasional Erik Ehn-esque strangeness, but I’m not at all sure if there is even a point to her piece. I am at a loss for how to give her notes at all. “There are some moments that are so poetic, but I’m not entirely sure I’ve grasped the concept” is as best as I come up with. That seems incredibly inadequate feedback for someone’s labor of love. Any advice?

Ask questions! “What are you going for in this scene? Who were your influences? What is Character X’s motivation?” In general, though, prevention is the best solution–don’t ever offer to give someone feedback, or agree to a request for same, unless you know they can take feedback.

This one is from my parents – One of the women in their social circle has recently taken to a more affectionate greeting for my father (hug and kiss). Of course, he didn’t notice, but my mother has! Is this one of those situations where someone simply feels closer to another, and thus greets them more warmly? Or should everyone start kissing? Advice?

No one is obligated to get into a sort of affectionate arms race simply because Helen Handshake decided to come all over European. Keep on as you were. In the unlikely event that she is making some untoward gestures of affection toward your father, it will drive her crazy if no one notices.

My question is kind of silly: it’s about how to be “sociable” when people are brushing their teeth in the women’s room at work as I’m washing my hands. I say hi, and try to keep it at that, because their mouth is otherwise engaged– but the silence seems kind of awkward. It seems too formal to leave it just at “hi” with people I have a good close working relationship with, so I add a little equally-as-awkward comment about how they’re my good dental role model for the day and how I should be brushing after lunch too. But that seems kind of weird to say too. Yes, I’m probably overthinking this. How should I handle this? Thank you!

Are you frequently overcome by the desire to make small talk with people who have dental implements in their mouths? If so, you might consider training as a dental hygienist. If you just like talking to anyone whose mouth is full, becoming a waitress might also work. (Yes, you are overthinking this. “Hi” is sufficient, then pay as much focused attention on washing your hands as your coworker is to brushing her teeth.)

I’ll be chatting today at noon on boston.com. If you can’t make it, you can read the transcript afterward. If you can, do! Chats are fun.

So this post on etiquette as a blunt instrument, or the difference between hurtful comments and questions and rude ones, got me wondering: what are ordinary, innocent statements/jokes/questions that drive you nuts? That are personally hurtful, or at least annoying, to you, but that can’t really be classified as “rude”?

I’m going to hope this (rather attractive) gentleman has simply not read “Othello.” What’s particularly bothersome is that his handle suggests that at least one other person thinks “Othello” is a good name to signal “romance.”

The food chapter? You guessed right, you clever person!

Here’s the opening of that chapter:

“Food is the first thing, morals follow on.”*
— Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera

In Brecht’s world of thieves, whores, and orphans, morality may have been a luxury only to be considered on a full belly, but moral questions in twenty-first-century America start well before you get to the table. Chicken or tofu? Grass-fed or corn-fed? Kosher or trayf? Imported organic or pesticide-sprayed local? And is “free-range” just another word for nothing left to lose?

*Another popular translation from the original German, “First you must feed us, then we’ll all behave,” strongly suggests that the translator never hosted a children’s birthday party.

Today’s column addresses the disconnect between an American woman and her Brazilian friends, who often “cancel plans at the last minute, for reasons that surely could have been foreseen.” They, and her Brazilian husband, all claim that this is typical Brazilian behavior.

Different cultures do have different relationships to time. Shortly after I wrote this column, I read the intensely interesting Beyond 9 to 5: Your Life in Time by Sarah Norgate. Norgate cites another researcher’s experience in Brazil:

In another anecdote [author of Geography of Time Robert] Levine talks about his visiting professorship to Brazil, where he was puzzled that only a few students turned up for the start of his first lecture. Over the course of the “scheduled” two hours, the students walked in, smiled, said hello, sat down and carried on settling in apparently as normal. No one tried to creep in or saw the need to offer an apology; they just came to the lecture when they were good and ready. Punctuality was of no concern; instead the overriding ethos was time’s flexibility–also known as “rubber” time.

I gave a talk last night, and I was asked three questions. More than that, really, but three that I want to focus on. They were:

1. Has anyone told you that you look like a female Spock?
2. Can you explain why you don’t want to have children?
3. Are you going on a book tour?

The first two questions are, I think most people would agree, distinctly rude. The rest of the audience certainly seemed to think so, squirming in their seats and muttering, and the poor organizer damn nearly fell over herself apologizing for whoever asked the first one. (I don’t know who asked it. When I give talks to private groups, I’ll usually have people write questions on index cards and pass them up to me after I speak, because I’ve found that little bit of anonymity makes things easier. After I’ve answered the questions on cards, folks feel emboldened enough to raise their hands.) We don’t evaluate women’s appearance to their faces, and we certainly don’t tell them they look like aliens. We also don’t question the reproductive choices of others. The book-tour question, on the other hand, is exactly the sort of intelligent, other-focused followup question that is the hallmark of civil conversation.

The first two questions delighted me beyond all measure, and the third made me miserable.

Which finally gave me the “aha” I’ve been struggling toward for some time now: that etiquette is a blunt instrument. What is hurtful is not always rude, and what is rude is not always hurtful.

I was massively entertained by the Spock question (which wouldn’t have been out of place at a science fiction convention, like the one I’m speaking at next month, but this was a Jewish women’s organization). Yeah, lady, I DO know I look like Spock’s little sister. (Or big sister, depending on which Spock you mean.) If I was bothered by that, I wouldn’t have chosen a bob haircut with short bangs to offset my narrow eyes, high cheekbones, and dramatic eyebrows. I’m a big Trekkie and Spock was probably my first crush as a pre-teen. Seriously, who doesn’t think Spock was hot? I’m only sorry that I didn’t keep the card to put on my refrigerator. Inappropriate or not, the question struck me as funny, flattering, and accurate.

The second question, too, was okay by me. It was asked in an honest fashion, not like “OMG you don’t want babeez what is WRONG with you?!” The woman just wanted to understand a state of mind that wasn’t fathomable to her. It’s still way the hell too personal a question to ask anyone but a close friend, but I’m comfortable with my choice, and I don’t mind discussing it. In fact, I find it both philosophically and scientifically interesting. Is it even possible to describe lack of desire? And why would a person, from an evolutionary point of view, fail to want to reproduce? (My guess is that because birth control is a relatively new invention, evolutionarily speaking, there’s no pressure to want children per se. There’s only pressure to be competent enough to raise them if and when they appear.) I’m happy to open up my life in order to help moms and non-moms understand each other better.

That book-tour question, though–God, do I hate getting asked that. No, I’m not doing a tour. My publishers don’t think it makes sense for me to have one, and while I could put a tour together myself, I don’t have the temporal, financial, or organizational resources to do so. But it makes me feel like I’m not a real writer. Real writers go on tour. Real writers go on “Oprah.” Don’t remind me. Don’t even tell me what you hope for me. Yes, I think I’d be great on “The Colbert Report” too. You know him? Want to put in a good word? I’m skinlessly sensitive at the moment to anything having to do with the discrepancy between my dreams of greatness and the adequate but not stellar present.

But “Are you going on a book tour?”, much as I hate it, is still a reasonable and polite question to ask. So suck it, Miss Conduct. It may be hurtful but it isn’t rude.

Obviously, there is a correlation between hurtful and rude; the rules of polite behavior represent an attempt to cut out that which would be hurtful to most people most of the time. But everyone has their own idiosyncratic vulnerabilities and can be hurt by behaviors entirely within the bounds of etiquette. And everyone, too, has particular areas of great tolerance for particular sorts of rude behaviors. Perhaps you don’t mind picking up the check, and find your freeloading friend’s habit of sneaking off to the men’s room when the tab comes to be hilariously transparent, a bit of entertainment well worth the price. Perhaps you’re a freewheeling sort of host or hostess who really doesn’t care if people RSVP or show up on time. Personal questions or even frank assessments of my appearance have never bothered me. I suppose it’s a combination of the lack of inhibition and objectivity about the physical self that characterizes so many theater people. We all have a different set of buttons, and some of them are on a hair trigger and some are missing entirely.

This distinction is something, I realize, that I’ve struggled to articulate in my columns. I sometimes get letters from people who are hurt by behaviors that are not rude. Often, the LWs (letter-writers) want me to condemn the people who are behaving in a hurtful way. But I can’t do that, because those people are not actually doing something wrong. I can acknowledge the hurt, that’s for sure. Even when I think someone is really off base, they still have a right to their feelings. And if the relationship is a close one, I can suggest ways of talking about the bothersome behavior. We have the right to expect our friends and family to honor our quirks, within reason. But we’ll have a better chance of getting them to do so if we realize that this is what we are asking–their indulgence for our quirks. We aren’t scolding them for not adhering to the rules of etiquette if they, in fact, are.

Similarly, I’ve occasionally gotten letters from people upset about a breach of etiquette, yet who do not seem to be, in fact, hurt at all. Given how very many battles there are to fight in this world, fighting for abstract principles of manners that you don’t fundamentally care about strikes me as a waste of time. The most controversial version of this was my response to a man who disapproved of his wife’s habit of talking on the phone during dinner. He disapproved of it. He expressed no hurt about her neglect, nor any particular desire to talk to her himself. He merely seemed offended that she was breaking a rule of etiquette.

So I told him, in essence, to get over it. Just as we expect more than etiquette strictly demands from those whom we love, we should be willing to accept less than etiquette demands if there are no emotions at stake. That’s how it works with those whom we love and who love us: we learn which buttons to avoid and which ones we can happily pound away on all day.

And it’s absolutely vital to sanity to realize that when you step out of your circle of loved ones, you no longer have the right to that kind of customized treatment. People will say things that are hurtful to you, and if those things are within the common bounds of civility we’ve defined as a society, you cowboy up and answer them politely.

We think of etiquette as refined; we associate etiquette with fragile glassware, sensitive palates, subtle locutions. But etiquette, however delicate its trappings, is a blunt instrument.

It’s grim times in TVlandia for those who don’t have cable. If you’re hankering for some quality drama, check out “Kings.” The show has, unfortunately, been cancelled, but the final six or so episodes will be running starting this Sunday on NBC. You can catch up on the earlier ones online (and you should watch it from the beginning).

“Kings” is a show that is so perfectly to my taste it is almost a parody of my taste: an alternate-universe drama, heavy on the politics, based on the Hebrew Bible, done in Shakespearean style, starring the incomparable Ian McShane. Mr. Improbable didn’t even believe me when I told him about it.

If you’ve seen it, I’d be curious to hear what you think, so leave me a comment. I’ll blog more about the show later. I think some aspects of it work and some don’t, but it’s one of those artistic endeavors in which the failed elements are as intriguing as the successes.

Via Wordle …

It’s about religion. And people. Christmas kind of comes up a lot.

I shall call it Golden Rod Rainbow Stripe Shawl Sweater Shrug Cardigan, and it shall be mine, and it shall be my Golden Rod Rainbow Stripe Shawl Sweater Shrug Cardigan.

I was really touched by how many of you expressed your confidence that I have a unique ability to manage this garment, much as though it were a frothing Rottweiler and I were Cesar Millan taming it through my calm assertiveness.

And those of you who voted “hideous”–don’t come all over apologetic should you ever encounter me in the flesh and knitwear. I asked. And Miss Conduct follows her own advice, and never asks questions she doesn’t want the answers to.

And yes, I will post some pictures when it arrives, and you shall be free to mock me. (Say what you will, the Golden Rod Rainbow Stripe Shawl Sweater Shrug Cardigan is not as bad as this outfit. My First Lady fashion fangirlishness took a serious blow when I saw that picture.)

Heads-up, gang, I’ll be on the Alan Colmes radio show tonight, from 11-11:30 Eastern Time. I think we’ll be doing call-ins, so feel free to ring up with your questions!

But I’ve got a good links roundup and a survey question on the Miss Conduct blog.