From one of my most wonderfully cranky friends, as posted on Facebook:

Do your boss a favor, and forego the long, detailed description of each and every symptom you are suffering. Please also don’t fill her cube with the beleaguered exhalations of the afflicted, heavy with virus. Call or IM and GTFO.

Good call. I think my friend should write an etiquette book, too. She’s an extroverted misanthrope, whereas I am an introverted, um, pro-anthrope. We are the perfect yin/yang of social relations.

IT’S SIMCHAT TORAH, BAYBEEZ!!!!!!

I love Simchat Torah. I love it, I love it, I love it. It is my favorite Jewish holiday. Even last year, when I was too sick to make it to the High Holy Days, go to my in-laws for latkes on Hanukkah, or observe Passover, I still went to Simchat Torah. It took a lot of painkillers to get me through it, but I did it.

I’ve got a question up on Miss Conduct blog about what your personal Simchat Torah would look like. What would you go dancing in the street with?

Of course, just because I like Simchat Torah doesn’t mean I’m good at it. I love communal dancing. But the Jewish-mother cliche of “You could put an eye out doing that”? I’m pretty sure it came from people with my lack of coordination trying to dance with heavy scrolls.

To the tune of “Tradition”:

Who every time will trip over die kinder
Tread upon the rabbi,
Klopf you with a scroll?
And who ev’ry time
When chanting Amidah
Will go at least two times off key?
Miss Conduct! Miss Conduct!
Miss Conduct!

Pictures of me all swirly from last year’s celebration. And my manga shooz.

“You can be a victor without having victims.”

–Fortune cookie I shared with a friend Sunday night.

I love that so much. It’s a huge part of the whole Miss Conduct ethos. Just because you’re a winner doesn’t make me a loser. “Lift as you climb.” It’s why I love Esther, why I love Trixie from “Deadwood.”

Share the win.

Bizzy bizzy day! I have a paper due for my Harvard job, and the Ig Nobels are this Thursday! So go check out the action on the other blog, where I have a nice extra bit of wisdom from Sunday, and also a Monday question about dogs and flowers.

And a dog and flowers for you, lovely readers:

… is online here.

So, last night I went to see a play — I’m not going to link to what I saw, in case this would embarrass anyone, which it shouldn’t — in which there was a reference to Rahab, the virtuous prostitute in the Hebrew Bible who helped the Israelites conquer Jericho. They pronounced it “Rehab,” which I thought was a pretty cute joke.

Except drinks with the cast later revealed that it wasn’t — they just didn’t know.

Sigh. Do you have to be a fundamentalist to wish people knew the Bible better? Certainly not. It’s one of the cornerstone documents of Western civilization, there’s so much of art and literature and music that you simply can’t appreciate unless you have a good grounding in the Bible.

(My neighbors got a dog named “Vashti” a couple of years ago, and thought she was named after a Hindu goddess. They totally didn’t get my joke “Good luck teaching her to come when she’s called.”)

Anyway, I posted this on Facebook, and got this hilarious response from a friend of mine: “Had a Bible teacher who once heard a sermon in which the preacher meant to be talking about the Shema, but kept calling it ‘the Great Shamu.’ Like, over and over.” Let me tell you, a protein shake hurts when it comes out your nose.

There’s got to be a joke in there somewhere about the Orca of the Covenant.

George Orwell, “The Road to Wigan Pier,” on the food choices of the poor:

Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea!

A friend of mine posted this quote by Judith Martin to my wall on Facebook:

“It is exceedingly rude for anyone to guess from a lady’s size that she is pregnant. Should your wife go into labor in front of Miss Manners, she would merely say, ‘My dear, whatever is the matter? Can I help you?’ (Eventually, of course, she would have to say, ‘Oh, look who’s here.’)”

“Dexter” starts this Sunday, and to put it mildly, it will be interesting to see how the show evolves after last season’s shock ending. I’ll put the rest of this after the jump in case anyone hasn’t finished the fourth season yet.

All of us Facebook fans realize that the “like” button is insufficient. A friend posts an article about some political outrage, so you “like” it. A friend complains about her sinus infection or broken dishwasher in a particularly amusing way, so you “like” it. Then you have to make the comment below saying, “Not that I ‘like’ genocide, but I’m so glad you posted this important article” or “I’m not happy you’re sick, but you have such a great sense of humor!” even though the other person knows perfectly well what your “like” meant, and you know they know it, and they know you know they know it, but you still have to explain it because otherwise it feels weird.

There’s already a campaign for a “dislike” and a “that’s what she said” button, but I think this is setting the bar too low. Given the advances in technology, should not Facebook be at least as nuanced as a Magic 8 Ball?

Here are some buttons I’d certainly find useful:

* Disturbingly intrigued by
* Irritated yet compelled (you know people would use this all the damn time)
* Wish I hadn’t known that
* And yet, we are related
* Wow, you’ve changed
* Wow, you haven’t changed

What buttons would express some of your common thoughts upon reading the updates of your Facebook friends and family, dear readers?

Hey everyone! I’m going to be appearing with Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin) at the JCC Boston Jewish Book Fair Festival Day on November 21! Mark your calendars now! From the website:

Join the arbiters of manners, conduct and decorum, Judith Martin (Miss Manners) and Boston Globe columnist Robin Abrahams (Miss Conduct) as they discuss Martin’s latest book on weddings, dish on today’s manners (or lack thereof) and solve the perennial dilemma about which fork to use.*

The entire event sounds really great, with a lot of wonderful authors. There’s something about the juxtaposed pictures of Ms. Martin and me on the event website that make us look as though we’re going to be fiercely debating one another, with her on the side of engraved wedding invitations and duck a l’orange and me on the side of Facebook and Trader Joe’s. Somehow, I doubt it will wind up that way.

But you never know! Could be a catfight! You don’t want to miss that, boys, do you?

*I do not understand this last clause. There is no dilemma about which fork to use.

… will be somewhere in the vicinity of here. (I’m traveling and thus set this up in advance, so I don’t have the direct link). I wonder what kind of angry comments and mail I’ll get this time. Food always makes people angry.

Have you seen Second City’s “Sassy Gay Friend” series, in which a sassy gay friend talks some sense into famously self-destructive female characters from literature? They’re hilarious — I mean, yada yada yada gay stereotypes and all that, but it’s very funny, very pointed, and most of my gay friends laugh hysterically at them and then go back to working for important things like marriage equality.

In this episode, Sassy Gay Friend takes on one of the most horrifying tales of all time: Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree”:

Seriously, how awesome is that? And how much do I hate “The Giving Tree”? The Tree gives, and gives, eventually allowing herself to be mutilated into a stump, by a boy/man who abandons her and returns only when he has exhausted her resources and his own. It’s like a kids’ primer on domestic violence; it should have been titled “He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss, Charlie Brown!”

A little while ago, I posted the following update on Facebook:

Robin Abrahams got hit on–not harassed, *hit on* quite respectably–by a very cute, YOUNG construction worker on a walk today. Does the ego good!

(I then, because I am a big word nerd, pointed out in comments that I did not mean “respectfully,” I meant “respectably,” as in “Damn good try, young man!”)

Anyway, a single male friend of mine asked, “So, what did he do?” I suspect my friend may have wanted to know for more than academic reasons. So I will tell him here, and all you other men who might be wondering, too, what he did.

I was walking down the street. The young man was on break, leaning against a fence, smoking a cigarette, appreciating the scenery. When I became part of that scenery, he gave me a look that let me know the addition was welcome. Not a leer, not a smirk, simply a lingering gaze that let me know he knew I was there, and didn’t care if I knew he was, either. I thought he was a pretty good addition to the landscape, myself, so I gave him an appreciative look back.

As I approached, he said “Hello.”

I replied, “Hi there.”

He said, “How’s your day going?”

I said, “It’s going fine.”

That was it. Of course, the sidelong glances and tone of voices made it clear that what we were really saying was:

“Looking good.”

“Looking good yourself.”

“I’m free if you want to chat.”

“I’m married, but you’re tempting.”

But that was it. No clever pickup lines, no comments about each others’ appearance, no sense on the part of the young man that he felt entitled to my time and attention. He was just enjoying the view — and enjoying being enjoyed, in turn — and opening a door to further conversation, if I were so inclined. And if I were single, I may indeed have been. At any rate, it certainly gave me a lift, and even though I kept on walking, I think the moment of flirtation might have put a bit of sparkle in his day, too. That’s how you know it isn’t harassment: we both felt better after our encounter.

Life is complex. Do I not always say that? But some things are simple. This is one of them. If you don’t have them at “Hello,” you never will.

Or does this picture make Pope Benedict and Queen Elizabeth look like an old married couple who have grown to really, really hate each other?

(from today’s New York Times)