I believe I mentioned this on Twitter, but one of the biggest Japanese manga publishers has come out with a manga about Mr. Improbable and the Ig Nobel Prizes. Part 1 came out this week, part 2 next week. And I get to be in it, as Mr. Improbable’s loyal sidekick:

That’s not how I wear my hair anymore, but they did an excellent job with my eyebrows. I may take this in to the salon the next time I go to get them waxed.

People, I hope you all know: I never intended to have a life like this. I grew up in a series of aggressively normal Midwestern suburbs. Granted, I was kind of the Sookie Stackhouse of the Midwest: people knew there was something different about me, and weren’t necessarily comfortable with it. (I never had a convincing accent, either.) But this …

I don’t take it for granted, that’s all I mean to say. I know not everyone gets to be a manga sidekick. I know not everyone gets to be paid to write a story about their dog in a national magazine. I wake up sometimes and realize that I was born a Midwestern Christian, daughter of a good union man and a stay-at-home mom, and now I am a genu-wine member of the east coast Jewish media elite. I thought there might be more money involved in that then there’s turned out to be, but you can’t deny it’s still a hell of a long journey.

I’m grateful. I’m mightily amused. I laugh at least once a day at the sheer absurdity, the improbability, of my life. And I know God hears a prayer in that laugh, a prayer that words can’t articulate.

… thank you.

Today, I decided to combine Milo’s morning walk with a trip to the library to return a book. This meant that I was juggling, in addition to Milo’s gear, a rather weighty hardback.* So I appreciated your stopping to let us cross the street.

I gave you my usual thank-you wave, and only subsequently realized that because of all the things I was carrying, I waved at you with the hand that was holding a fat, bright blue poop bag.

Although I am not an anthropologist, I am a social scientist, and I do not know of any cultures in which waving dog excrement at someone’s face is a sign of friendly gratitude. That is, however, the spirit in which it was intended.

I hope you understand.

*The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, if you’re interested. It’s remaindered now for less than the amount of the fines I have undoubtedly racked up on it. It’s a bit of a slow read.

One of the fun things about sharing a home office with one’s writerly spouse is that one never quite knows what level of consciousness said spouse is in at any given moment: deep concentration, a desperate desire for distraction, or anything in between. I caught Mr. Improbable during one of the “deep moments of concentration” a little while ago, leading to the following exchange which I then documented on Facebook:

When he read the entry, Mr. Improbable didn’t even remember the “conversation,” such as it was. Whatever he was working on, it must have been important. The next day we took a coffee break together and I showed him exactly what I meant by non-emulsifying soy milk:

He got it. (And no, this is hardly a Friday style blog. Our camera broke, and I’m waiting on a new one to arrive before I start that back up again.)

Yesterday I went to my health club for a massage, and I got there a bit early to shower and take a sauna. In the steam room, I started up a conversation with a woman who, it turned out, was a career counselor with whom I shared a lot of the same interests, professional and intellectual. We agreed to get together in a more formal and less humid venue sometime. I told her my name and “Miss Conduct” and how to reach me through the Globe, and as I always do after finishing up a friendly and interesting schmooze, automatically stuck out my hand and shook hers.

Now, I am not going to go into the lurid details of my past, but I am a twice-married woman, and suffice to say I have done many things with naked people, but I do not think I have ever shaken the hand of one. It was surprisingly discombobulating.

Although, it occurs to me now, if it struck the other woman as strange at all, it probably seemed much more strange to her. Your first naked handshake with a stranger is one thing; your first naked handshake with a stranger who is an etiquette columnist is probably another thing entirely.

So much for my dreams of stylish glory! When I took Milo for his walk this morning, a woman in the park asked me, “Are you an MIT scientist?” When I demurred, she replied, “Well, you dress like one.”

Burn!

I guess that’s what I get for going out in my cargo Dockers and Project Steve t-shirt! Don’t tell Peacebang on me, okay?

(Incidentally, this woman was sitting on the ground, next to her cat in a carrier. Did she take it out so it could enjoy the nice weather? Cat people, is this something you do?)

One of the things I look forward to every fall is the beginning of theater season. Tonight, we’re going to see “Mr. Roberts” at New Rep, our first show of the season.

I used to work in theater when I lived in Kansas City, and when I moved to Boston, it took me a long time to figure out what theater companies were good. As a grad student, I didn’t have a lot of money to play with–and let’s face it, theater tickets are expensive. Most folks will rent or go see a movie that they know they may or may not like, but if you’re plunking down theater money, you want more of a guarantee.

So if you’re new in town, too, or just don’t get to see as much theater as you’d like, here’s my recommendations. Mr. Improbable and I have season tickets to all three of these companies:

Central Square Theater. This is a new theater in the heart of Central Square, that houses two separate companies: Nora Theatre and Underground Railway Theater.* (Yes, the inconsistent spellings drive me nuts, too. Personally, I’m a believer in “-er” style theater. We’re not British, a fact rather decisively established over 200 years ago.) Nora does more traditional plays, while URT has a more community-based, experimental approach — not in some godawful way where they’re going to make audience members come on stage and relive their birth or anything, so don’t worry about that. It’s perfectly normal theater, but there might be some puppets, and the script might have been written by someone who lives in your town. You can handle that, can’t you?

Central Square Theater also has an outstanding subscriber package this year: you can get tickets to all six shows for only $150, and they even throw in parking and a free drink! And their 2009-2010 season has wonderfully diverse offerings, from a Pinter classic, to a holiday combo of two one-acts by Grace Paley and Truman Capote, to a brand-new play about evolution, to a play about — an advice columnist! Oh yes, we’ll be cooking up some fun publicity events for that one, I assure you.

Actors’ Shakespeare Project. I’ve written about these guys before: they’re simply brilliant. This is Shakespeare the way I’ve wanted to see it done all my life. ASP plays in a lot of different venues, so that can be fun as well, seeing how the actors employ different, and sometimes quite challenging, spaces — ASP doesn’t limit itself to actual theaters to perform in. That would be too easy.

New Repertory Theatre. These guys used to be in Newton, and are now in the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. This means that before the show, you want to go get dinner at Casa de Pedro. (Isn’t it funny how much more classy that sounds than “House of Pete”? I recommend the “cod a la Ozzy Guillen.”) New Rep is the most conservative of the three companies I mention: they do a standard mix of old and new plays, comedies and dramas, and one musical every year. And they do them well, with great fidelity to the script and superb production values.

Season tickets are still available to all three theaters, and I have to say that if you can afford it, this is the way to go. It’s much easier to organize than buying tickets on a show-by-show basis. (And don’t worry about the fact that you don’t know what you’re going to be doing on the third Thursday in May yet, so how can you possibly commit to “Hot Mikado”? You can always exchange your tickets for a better date if it turns out you can’t go when you thought you could.)

*Full disclosure: I’m on the board of URT, which is why I recommend but won’t review their plays.

And again, from the Globe, an op-ed on renting versus homeowning by Nicolas Retsinas, the director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Among his other arguments, Mr. Retsinas states:

Although the pitfalls of homeownership are clearly visible, there are advantages (some real, some only perceived) of homeownership. Homeownership gives the person a genuine stake, physical as well as psychic, in a neighborhood. Because homeowners are not so mobile, people form stronger ties with neighbors.

Overall, I am sure he is correct, and anyone who has lived in mostly renter-occupied neighborhoods (I’m thinking of my first two years of grad school, living in the Allston student ghetto) knows what it’s like when the majority of residents feel no accountability to their property or neighbors. And I must admit that, as a social scientist myself, it can be very annoying when you tell someone about an overall statistical trend and they immediately start spewing out the two or three exception to that finding that they personally know about.

But since I’m not at a cocktail party with Mr. Retsinas, but rather here in the comfort of my own blog, I’m going to do exactly that.

Mr. Improbable and I are renters in part because we are committed to our community: a community that we can’t afford to own property in. We probably have enough money to get our own place if we were willing to move 45 minutes or so out of town, but our connections to Harvard run broad and deep–it’s where I work, it’s where we put on the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony (tickets for which are available now!), it’s where we’ve met many of our friends and colleagues. And, of course, we have our pizza guy and the great coffee shop on the corner that doesn’t have wifi, so you can actually get some damn writing done instead of noodling around on Facebook for hours, and Milo’s doggie friends, and all of that.

We love our neighborhood, and we can only live in it if we rent.

I wonder if that’s true of other people in some of the area’s high-priced real-estate markets, as well?

According to CNN, “The Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a ‘banana-eating jungle monkey’ has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.”

Of course the poor dear wasn’t being racist, his comments were taken entirely out of context. People who aren’t from around here simply don’t understand. All the officer meant is that, as most Cantabridgians know, academia is a jungle. To be as successful as Skip Gates, one must be nimble and clever as a monkey to climb the ranks of professorship and grab the sweet fruit of tenure. Such work is stressful, of course, so the wise academic will make sure to eat plenty of bananas to protect them from high blood pressure and peptic ulcers. Really. I’ve referred to Steven Pinker and Drew Faust as banana-eating jungle monkeys, oh, I don’t know how many times. And why do you think the Harvard Faculty Club is nicknamed “The Rainforest Cafe”?

Honestly. Some people just want to see racism, they really do.

Hat tip: Kate Harding

Today’s hourly forecast from Intellicast.com:

Scene: The neighborhood playing field. Milo is getting his morning exercise and meeting some little girls in the neighborhood. He then does the other thing I bring him out in the morning to do.

Little girl: Does he do doggie doodie a lot?

Me: Yes. Considering how small he is, I’m always surprised how much poop is in him.

Little girl: My baby brother’s like that too.