We read this book with interest. Especially instructive were what to say when deflowered by famous crooner.

Famous crooner visits town on one night stand, and through a series of lucky breaks, you get autograph. After deflowerment, he leaves town and when you tell story to girl friends, they do not believe you. You refuse to be laughing stock. On crooner's return engagement at local theatre, you storm his dressing room with mob of skeptical girl friends. You show autograph to crooner to refresh his memory. He says, "That's not my handwriting." You say: "Then may I come back for your real autograph later?"

(Miss Hyacinthe Phypps, the book's author, editorializes: "Obviously, someone in this situation is completely confused.")

Illustrations are also suitably intriguing. Particularly well-rendered were "the fraternity boy" and the "blind date" (dressed, as they always are, in double-breasted plaid mac and leghorn hat.)

If we had one quibble with the estimable book, it is that we wish the author had been able to address conundra of the modern age. To wit:"Deflowerment by Webcam," "Deflowerment by Sparkly Vampire," "Deflowerment by Gay Friend While Both Drunk," "Deflowerment at Locavore Restaurant When You Don't Know Partner's Provenance" and "Deflowerment by Giggling Animated Belgian Penis."

In sum, however, this is a useful and instructive manual, a necessity to any well-stocked library, and possibly the most inappropriate graduation gift since the Sex and the City box set.

The Recently Deflowered Girl: The Right Thing to Say on Every Dubious Occasion [Amazon]

The New York Times looks at the world of "etiquette vigilantes," people who feel like the best way to fight rudeness is to combat it directly:

These days it seems that as the rudes have gotten ruder - abetted by BlackBerries, cellphones and MP3 players - the scolds have gotten scoldier. True, many people have grown complacent about having to endure others' musical tastes or conversations - or more accurately, half of their conversations. But among the disapprovers, withering glances and artfully worded comments have given way to pranks and other creative kinds of revenge.

On Broadway, the actors Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman took turns breaking out of character during a September performance of their show, "A Steady Rain," to admonish an audience member who refused to silence his cellphone. Patti LuPone, too, has recently garnered some of the most enthusiastic ovations of her career for stopping shows to publicly berate people for similar offenses.

Celebrities have also been on the receiving end.

Last month, the Argentine opera singer Gabriela Pochinki was arrested at a French bistro on the Upper West Side when she allegedly scuffled with the restaurant's manager after several customers had complained about her loud cellphone chat.

The idea is to shame people into behaving well, but as some experts have pointed out, this isn't exactly a foolproof proposition. What if a person doesn't respond to having their behavior pointed out? The Washington Post did an entire article on the proliferation of watching porn in public, and time and time again, the offenders were not at all concerned with the reactions of those around them:

On a recent cross-country trip from Los Angeles, Jana Matthews thought she'd lucked out when her friendly seatmate cued up a cartoon on his laptop. Her four children were enthralled; she hoped listening in might keep them occupied. Then the cartoon characters started doing things that cartoon characters should not be doing. Naked things. Naked, noisy things, unfettered by the restraints of human anatomy because the participants were, after all, hand-drawn.

After unsuccessfully trying to divert her kids' attention, Matthews asked the guy whether he would mind watching something else. After a little grumbling, he put on some headphones and turned the screen away. But he was still watching. She knew he was still watching.

Sometimes, people refused to be ashamed, which creates a whole other situation:

Sandi Benedetti, a bartender in Northeast Washington, was catching some extra sleep on a long morning Metro ride when a guy in a business suit took the seat next to her — the only one available on the rush-hour train.

"He sits down, reaches into this leather bag, gets his laptop, and suddenly I'm hearing Ah Ah Ah Ah AhAhAhAh!" She tried to ignore it, but the volume was loud enough for other passengers to hear it, too. "The guy in front of us turns back and glares at me! Like he thinks I'm with this guy! And then the woman across the aisle, too."

She thought about saying something, or circling her finger at her temple in the universal crazy gesture — anything to demonstrate that she had no part in this guy's morning wakeup call. But Benedetti is an adventurous gal, and as the train chugged on she began to ask herself when a bizarre event like this might happen again. "I was already being blamed for the porn anyway, so I figured I'd just play along."
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She leaned into her seatmate and started watching.

"Dude smiles at me," she says, "and then we both just watch together. Stop before mine, he packs up the computer and gets off. We never said a word."

That's not exactly what I would count as a happy ending.

Now, like most people, I would like other folks to behave a bit better. But as someone with more than a passing interest in etiquette (I used to pour over everything I could find on manners as a kid, back when I was learning how to class-pass) I share the chagrin of manner experts like Judith Martin and Anna (great-great-granddaughter of Emily) Post:

Those who subscribe to the age-old advice of our forefathers look very askance at this kind of antic.

"It's been the plague of my life," said Judith Martin, who is better known as Miss Manners. "People very proudly tell me how rude they were to someone who was rude to them, and they expect me to pat them on the back."

Such behavior only "doubles the amount of rudeness," in the world, she said. Worse still, she said, it's not likely to work: usually the revenge-seekers just alienate the offenders, making them defensive about whatever they were doing.

Better to fight rudeness with sticky sweetness, said Anna Post, a great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post and a spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute (yes, there is such a place).

"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar," Ms. Post said. "Just because someone is rude, you still have a standard to hold yourself to."

True! Etiquette, far from the "which-fork-goes-where" memorization techniques that people like to trot out, is really just about behaving gracefully in a social situation. Being kind, defusing tense situations, and lubricating social visits is the purpose of having good manners - not bludgeoning someone else when they don't live up to your personal expectations.

Much of the friction around rudeness in public does hinge on personal expectations. While I think most of us can agree that doing things normally reserved for the private realm (watching pornography, playing with boogers, sharing STD status updates) would make other passengers and passer-by uncomfortable, we are also fine with throwing some conventions (applying makeup in public, talking on a cell phone in a public, non-enclosed space) to the wind. Also, much of the application of etiquette depends on the person - some people seem to take a perverse pride in correcting others, but that tends to flow along perceived lines of power - I see more shy teenagers get checked than boisterous ones, and more managing of the behavior of the young than the behavior of older people.

The etiquette in each situation really depends on who is telling the story.

Recently, I was on the Amtrak Acela train from DC to NYC, a study in horrific manners. In addition to those that will push past you to land a particular seat, you are then subject to the whims of your seat mate for most of the ride. I was listening to music while the woman across from me was napping. She woke up, and then said "Do you know I can hear your music?"

She meant for me to take that as a notice to turn the sound down. However, it already was down - if I'm indoors, I generally keep my music to about 50% of max. Obviously, she was trying to sleep - but wasn't that also the purpose of having a quiet car on the train, with low lights and a prohibition on cell phones and other loud noises? I informed her it was down, and went back to my work.

A little later, she got off and another passenger got on, loudly informing me that I needed to move my seat since she needed to sit facing forward, not backward on the train. Now, two immediate - and opposite - impulses came to mind. The first was to be accommodating to anyone who legitimately needs a special seating arrangement. Obviously, I am able to switch seats, and all disabilities are not visible to the eye. However, her insistent demand and hovering grated on my nerves - she didn't appear to be actually in need of such a seat, but was trying to force her preference on me.

Luckily, a kind woman across the aisle from me intervened, pointing out that the woman had the train direction wrong - she actually wanted the empty seat in front of me, as the train was moving in that direction. Without even a thank you, the woman plopped herself into the seat across from me, arranged her things, and proceeded to talk loudly on herself about things that didn't seem urgent or important.

As Post and Martin would say, I knew the proper thing to do - I turned to the other woman and thanked her for observation. Then, I let my passive aggressive side out, and cranked the volume up on Pitbull.

As the Rudes Get Ruder, the Scolds Get Scoldier [NY Times]
Publicly, a whole new lewdness [Washington Post]

When Troy Patterson wrote a light-hearted piece about "girl-watching" in DoubleX last month, it provoked a predictable controversy in comments. Some women brought up serious larger issues of objectification, sexualization and the fact that the male gaze is by no means always innocuous and should not be trivialized. Others said they were flattered by respectful glances. Some men wrote in to say that their looks were natural and expressed nothing but admiration of a far wider range of characteristics than women might assume. Objectification, predatory behavior, sexualization - these are all things we've discussed, and bear discussing more, although it's not what I want to talk about now, to the extent they can be separated. My own feeling, frankly, was that anyone worrying about keeping his gaze respectful isn't the one making my walk home from the subway a daily ordeal. And contrary to what guys may believe, we can generally tell the difference between an insolent, visually-stripping leer and an admiring glance.

And then there are those guys who make such intense eye-contact that it becomes almost weirder than if he'd just looked down and gotten it out of the way. I get wanting to look, and for me it's not even sexual. People look at each other. And women's bodies are beautiful. They draw the eye, and sometimes you just want to look, stare even. It's like Isaac Mizrahi once said, "I mean, breasts! They're beautiful! All breasts!" Now, he's a habitual gay boob-grabber, which is a whole other thing and Not Okay, but I feel him: maybe it's because we all had moms, but what's not to love about female curves? Sometimes there are days (granted, usually when I'm in an emotional frame of mind) where everyone is so stunning and in such wholly different ways that I get tears in my eyes. (These tend to be the same days the bounty of produce at the greenmarket makes me sob.)

Of course, women have other reasons to look. Sometimes it's about comparisons. Not so much qualitative, for me, as "she's about my size - could I get away with that length?" or, "she looks like my friend," which I suspect isn't something men do, because I know men in my life have been less than scintillated when I've made such looks-like-friend-whom-you-may-not-know observations. And then of course there's clothes. I love looking at outfits, getting ideas, admiring creativity and proportion, seeing "runway-to-reality," guessing what people do. Do I check out men? Sometimes, I guess - but like men's clothing, it's so much less interesting! I might think a guy's cute, sure, or dressed like an ass, but by and large I find it a lot less engaging. Men, at least in America, tend to be less expressive with their bodies and faces and certainly with their clothing, and for the most part make for dull viewing.

I don't mean to suggest I sit around like some peeping Tom with binoculars. But if I'm eating on a bench, it's the ladies I'll watch. And sometimes, yes, it's awkward. You simply can't stare at a woman's body for a long time without it being inappropriate, and you simply can't look down women's dresses, even if it's totally asexual and she's wearing a really low-cut dress and it's just like an arrow pointing down and, like shouting in church, you just want to do it because it's bad and it's there and you could and it's forbidden. Or nipples. If there are visible nipples it's really hard, both because you empathize and because, well, there they are! I can only imagine what it would be like if there were also a sexual imperative at work. Similarly, sometimes you catch women staring at your breasts. And even if it doesn't feel sexual or predatory, it's a little weird. Because you've caught her doing something, and you both know it, and you don't have necessarily the visceral sense of violation you would if it were a man, and you wonder if maybe the weirdness is just conditioned because, what? They're just breasts - but it's weird nonetheless. The difference is, when it's a woman, I probably won't reflexively cross my arms. Something Bayley wouldn't really get.

Taking Pleasure In The Female Form [Telegraph]

Related: A Dandy's Guide To Girl-Watching [DoubleX]

Clooney recounts an experience with a rather nasty woman, who felt she had the right to tell Clooney just about everything she found horrible about him:

"The other day I was at a party and a woman I didn't know came up to me and said, 'I hated your last movie.' I said, 'Oh. OK. Uh, thank you for your opinion.' She said, 'And I don't agree with your politics.' I said, 'OK. Well, we all have our own point of view, right?' She said, 'And you're a lot older in person than you seem on screen. She was just standing there saying all these things to me and, at last, I'd had enough. I smiled very politely and said, 'You know... those 35 extra pounds of weight you're carrying... they look just fantastic on you.'

She was astonished. She said, 'What did you just say to me?' I said, 'I'm paying you a compliment. I think all that extra weight looks terrific on you.'

She was furious! Called me an a***hole. I said, 'No, look here, I was just standing here minding my own business and you walked up to me and insulted me. Which one of us was out of line here?'

While Clooney's "yeah? Well you're overweight" response isn't the classiest thing I've ever heard, and while it's annoying he felt the need to attack her weight (instead of say, her politics or her dress or some such) to make his point, his overall point is fairly valid: the world is a fairly unkind place, and the concept of "telling it like it is," which Clooney hates, seems to be taking over the world. I think everyone has at least one friend (or former friend) who lacks a filter for such things, the one who drops "well-meaning" insults like, "You'd be so pretty if you just..." or ends every nasty comment with "I'm just sayin. I'm just being honest, because you're my friend."

Clooney recognizes that his fame makes him more susceptible to such comments; after all, he lives a fairly public life, and people often feel that they "know" him enough to come up and insult him to his face. But he argues that such behavior is becoming commonplace, and that people fall back on "telling it like it is" as a means to justify their lack of respect and common courtesy: "I sometimes see a sort of unkindness that's spreading through the world these days," he says, "We've somehow got hold of the idea that we all must have an opinion on every single thing that happens, and even worse, that our opinion must be voiced, no matter how hurtful or offensive it can be."

In the end, Clooney just wants everyone to be nice. Stop "telling it like it is," he says, and try saying something positive instead. I say we take him up on this challenge. Mr. Clooney, you are welcome to stop by and compliment us anytime you wish.

George Clooney: How I Feel About Manners [DailyMail]

7. Boys - read: not little boys, not boys who need supervision, but boys old enough to leer - in the ladies' room. Says Hortense, "Find a family restroom now, or find a family therapist later, know what I'm sayin?"

6. Wet toilet paper. Says Tatiana, "I just hate life whenever some thoughtless prick has got all the toilet paper wet, like by leaving the roll in a floor puddle." Clawing a dry hunk off is not an appealing option.

5. Toilet paper, everywhere. Where does it come from? When a toilet won't flush, is it considered some kind of tacit signal to drop an entire roll's worth of paper in the bowl and drape the remainder over the sides and floor, just so no one will try to use it? Is it a "seat-covering" run amok? Is it to cover evidence? And why does this happen so much? In any given ladies' room, at any given time, at least one stall will be out of commission due to t.p.

4.T.P. Sabotage. Says Margaret, "it's irritating when someone makes eye contact with you as they're walking out of the stall, sees you go in, and still fails to say 'btw, there's no toilet paper.' Talk about a solidarity fail! Are they too refined to say "toilet paper?" Do they go by the hazing system, rationalizing that if they suffer, you should too? Where does the madness end?

3. Not flushing. Would it kill collective womanhood to make sure everything's gone away? I'm not saying it's a scenic view, but think of it as a public service; maybe your at-home facilities are completely reliable, but not all toilets are created equal. (Anyone who's grown up in a house with dud plumbing is neurotic about this, as I know all too well.) Often a stall will be considered "out of order" for hours before a cleaner or someone has the gumption to actually flush the toilet, proving nothing's wrong. As Anna points out, no toilet paper in evidence - in either toilet or stall - makes this even grosser.

2. Used Pads/Tampons shoved behind seat/paper dispenser. Periods? Great. Strangers' used sanitary products? A bridge too far. As Margaret adds, "sometimes there's no trash bin in the stall, which is annoying too, but in that case I think wrapping it in toilet paper and carrying it to the garbage next to the sinks is a more sanitary option." Tatiana also calls out those tampons "wrapped and dropped on the wet floor so they make red ink blots."

1. Pee on the seat. Let's make that "liquid," actually. Says Dodai, "blood or urine on the seat is basically like saying FUCK YOU." We get it: you don't want to touch the seat. We're glad you're so sanitary, you've screwed the rest of us. As Megan puts it, "how hard is it to kick the seat up with your shoe and hover over the bowl?"

Then, also yesterday, after work on a crowded subway, a woman reached over to tap me on the shoulder and say confidentially, "You have mascara under your eyes."

Now. No one wants spinach in her teeth. No one wants her dress tucked into the waistband of her tights. No one wants icing on her cheek. Very few want a long piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottoms of their shoes. I appreciate being alerted to these things. Mascara flaking onto my cheeks? I think I can handle it.

I'm not quite sure what about my 1950s ski sweater, boy's pants and filthy Chucks, or my armful of grocery bags, made her think that I was someone who would be bothered by this. If I'd stopped to think about it, I probably would have assumed that my ten-hour-old drugstore makeup job was a little the worse for wear. After she told me, I thanked her, and felt like I needed to make some pretense of having standards about these things, so I juggled my bags and took a half-hearted swipe at my begrimed cheeks.

Which ladymag is it who does that feature where women go out on the street in some state of humiliation - an enormous fake period stain on white pants, for instance - and see if passers-by come to their aid? ['Glamour'. -Ed.] I've never really understood the rationale behind this particular column, but I guess it's some kind of study of human nature, a mini "what would you do?" The rationale for alerting other people to this sort of thing is, generally, that the embarrassment of telling them is vastly outweighed by that which it will save. You do it because you would want someone to do it for you. And this is one of the many reasons that I've always preferred the somewhat more circumspect Analects interpretation of the Golden Rule, "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you," as it seems a hedge against craziness. Because obviously this woman (whose grooming, it should be said, was flawless) would have wanted someone to tell her if her mascara was flaking - which it wouldn't be.

When you think about it, there's a pretty limited range of things that our society considers so unilaterally unacceptable that we can know with assurance that no one in her right mind could mindfully tolerate. Food on face and teeth. Open zippers. Popped buttons. All of them, really, the tiny things that keep civilization in check - keeping us just a few zipper teeth and buttonhole stitches from a Roussea-esque wildness of gobbled food and naked, Edenic prancing. When we see these things, our sense of personal and societal responsibility is such that we must act, we cannot sit by idly and watch someone commit the sin of obliviousness. By the same token, we'd never tell a bum on the subway that his fly was open - we assume he's opted out of these niceties of civilization, and wouldn't feel the appropriate wave of scalding shame. If we saw an old lady with lipstick on her teeth, we'd hardly make an issue of it; to do so might imply a larger failure. No, in a way it's a measure of respect to remind someone of these things - it implies shared standards, values, understanding. Which is why a communication breakdown like the mascara incident is so weird - was she wrong, or was I? Anyway, I made a stop at Sephora.

Someone wrote the following into the NY Times' etiquette column:

I was heading out of a local bakery, lost in thought. It turned out that a lady had opened the door for me, and I failed to register her kind gesture. When I turned back to thank her, she curtly said, "You're welcome," before I could speak. What do you make of this?

Oh, cruel, cruel! The unkindest cut of all! Is there anything worse that knowing in that moment that you have been judged and found wanting? That a lifetime of careful courtesy and people-pleasing and scrupulous good manners is erased in a moment, and you've somehow let down yourself, your mother, and your generation? For the courteous doormats amongst us? Not hardly.

Of course, you also come away hating the entitled, "you're welcome" smart aleck - yes, he is despicable, too. And then you have anger and shame and guilt all roiling inside you and it takes a lot of ranting (which no one ever sympathizes with!) and a lot of pudding to make it right. Do I speak from experience? Could be. Let's take a visit to the grocery store a few days ago. I had three items - a sponge, an onion, and a bag of navy beans. Since the guy behind me had only a quart of milk, I ushered him ahead of me. Then, since the woman behind him had a fussy baby and only a couple of cans, I waved her ahead too. Finally, I was about to place my own few provisions on the conveyor belt, when a belligerent old woman behind me said, resentfully, "If someone behind me had only one thing, I'd let her go ahead of me! It's the polite thing to do!" Of course, I gritted my teeth and let her put her Carnation milk down ahead of me - she swept by me imperiously, like she'd taught me a thing or two - but I was fuming for the rest of the day.

Obviously, I suffer from the sin of pride. Pride in my own righteousness, which is pride of ancient proportions. And the point of courtesy is to help others and make the world run more smoothly, not to cover yourself in low-rent laurels every time you hold a door. In my saner moments, I know this. But when I feel the sting of unfair judgment, it almost seems as though there is no point at all. I have a terrible temper, but it's a weird, unpredictable kind of temper that doesn't come out at appropriate times and then I snap without warning about strange things. The time I screamed at the old woman is legendary in my family. It happened a few summers ago, when my brother and I were walking one hot summer day through Lincoln Center. I accidentally stepped on the back of an old lady's canvas huarache - what we call "giving a flat" in our house. I apologized at once. But she appeared unmollified, turning to scowl at me as she pulled the canvas over her heel.
"I said I was sorry," I repeated, feeling the rage begin to heat my cheeks. She glared again and began to walk away.
"Did you not hear me?" I said, raising my voice. "DID YOU NOT HEAR ME APOLOGIZE, MADAM? MADAM?" I'm told that here I chased her down the sidewalk. "IN SOME CIRCLES, MADAM, IT'S CONSIDERED COURTEOUS TO ACKNOWLEDGE AN APOLOGY FOR A COMPLETELY UNINTENDED INSULT. BUT, OH, OH, I SUPPOSE THE SIN OF ACCIDENTALLY STEPPING ON SOMEONE'S HEEL IS WORSE THAN PUBLICLY REJECTING A SINCERE APOLOGY? I TRIED! I TRIED! IT'S PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO ARE DRAINING EVERY DROP OF KINDNESS AND CIVILITY FROM THE WORLD! YOU! YOU!"

The old woman had long since moved down the street. Everyone else had heard, though. My brother gently pulled me away. Later, of course, he related the whole thing to everybody and they thought it was hilarious and off-putting in that "oh, she's nuts" sort of way. People ask me a lot why I can remain calm in the face of actual problems or or insults, but little breaches of courtesy like this set me over the edge. I think it's because it's a reminder that, as the original question-poser said, there are no second chances. You're not judged on a lifetime but on a moment, which is an infuriating reality, and a hard one for those of us too conditioned to please others. That, and that "your welcome" thing is just obnoxious.

Social Q's [NY Times]

The woman quoted above is, MSNBC tells us, at the vanguard of a new movement: recession grammar police. Some people have always been good spellers and had excellent grammar. Loads of folks are bothered by errors. A few have always been kind enough to correct their friends and loved ones. But apparently the economic downturn and the corresponding lack of control people feel over their lives has driven language vigilantes to new heights of activism. The results are sometimes funny, frequently annoying, and occasionally illegal.

To hear MSNBC tell it,

The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in books, broadcasts and puckish blogs that poke fun at common gaffes and proffer usage tips for those not in the know. Language love is celebrated via T-shirts, Facebook pages and shiny new holidays such as National Grammar Day. Even Oprah’s gotten in on the style and usage scene by asking Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty to clear up confusion about compound possessives.

But for every "'Blog' of 'Unnecessary' Quotation Marks" (yes, that's what it's called) there's an irritated co-worker chafing at constant criticism; for every copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves sold there's a nursed grudge; for every article on famous authors' spelling errors, there's apparently an obsessive dad who carries color-coded pens and corrects strangers' bumper stickers. As for the illegality, that came about when a couple of folks corrected a historic hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park.

Those who bridle at a misplaced pronoun probably feel themselves on some level to be guardians of the language, a bastion of order in an increasingly anarchic universe. (The fact that Jane Austen, doyenne of order, apparently couldn't spell may or may not reassure them.) Perhaps this is why people are sometimes more than merely annoyed by such criticism: it suggests a fundamental failure. Then too, there is the issue of implicit educational superiority, a naturally touchy subject. The fact that the critic is always right — that there is, in fact, an objective validity to such criticism — can only serve to increase the recipient's sullen truculence. Then too, there is something to be said for appreciating a touch of anarchy: most of us get a kick out of the occasional Tonight Show-style malaprop, and the woman who refuses to eat anywhere with a misspelled name (she counts "Krispy Kreme" and, yes, is the same one whose quote opened this post) is probably an anomaly even amongst high sticklers. Whatever the stakes — and one can certainly make a good argument that proper usage is far more than a mere nicety — anyone who worries about the fraying of society's fabric must acknowledge that civility is at least as crucial.

Fastidious Spelling Snobs Pushed Over The Edge [MSNBC]
6 Wordsmiths Who Couldn't Spell [Mental Floss]

While Burger King's recent attempts at surreal edginess — "Whopper Virgins," anyone? — aren't going to raise many eyebrows, the fact that "Whopper Sacrifice" involved a notification that you'd been cut for a burger caught Facebook's attention: as everyone knows, people aren't normally told when you un-friend them, one of the few things that keeps the delicate ecosystem functioning. And, not unexpectedly, the scrutiny has opened something of a philosophical can of worms: what is a "friend?" Should you cull ruthlessly, or be generous? And what's the protocol? Justifies a marketer behind "Whopper Sacrifice" to the NY Times, “It seemed to us that it quickly evolved from quality of friends to quantity...which was interesting to us because it felt like the virtual definition of a friend became something different than the friends that you’d want to hang out with.”

Well, yeah. Nowadays those who keep their lists down to an exclusive circle of real friends are in the minority; even if you don't solicit friends yourself you're likely to be found by random elementary-school classmates or old coworkers — and it seems unkind to deny someone who's taken the time to search you out! Most people I know maintain an "everyone within reason" policy and have resigned themselves to distancing Facebook from anything truly personal. And among people under 20, it's standard for "friend" lists to top 300. Some folks I know feel somewhat misled; at first they accepted all requests because they felt honored; now, a year later, they see these relationships as reflections of a culture's diminishing currency.

And then the editing starts. Some Facebook expert tells the Times he "recommends culling your friend list once a year to remove total strangers and other hangers-on. Keeping your numbers down gives you more leeway to be selective about whom you approve in the first place." Part of the rationale for this discrimination is that, as a piece in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear, sites like Facebook are increasingly prone to hacking. "The popularity of social networks and social media sites has grabbed the attention of cyber crooks searching to pilfer passwords, called "phishing," and steal sensitive personal information. The hackers are exploiting users' sense of safety within these sites," and a smaller network could mean, hypothetically, a smaller risk.

But, at this juncture, is such an approach really practical? Whatever people wanted Facebook to be, now isn't it what it is: less a portrait of who you are than a loosely-drawn map of your history, your interests, your associations? Does anyone go to someone else's page expecting to see only bosom friends? No: for the most part you assume you're seeing a collection of friends, acquaintances and strangers, and we've become as adept at reading and interpreting these as a more straight-forward breakdown. If you want privacy, quite frankly, don't join a networking site anymore. As to unfriending, I get it, but it does seem to me a tad cowardly: much more honest, it seems, to reject someone in the first place. Whopper or not.

Friends, Until I Delete You [New York Times]

Beware of Facebook 'Friends' Who May Trash Your Laptop [Wall Street Journal]

At a recent dinner function, I was seated next to a stranger who told me about her divorce, abortion, gynaecological troubles, abusive childhood and teenage sexual experimentation all before the main course was served. I responded with polite interest and sympathy but cheerfully declined to reciprocate with confessions of my own. Later, I learnt that this woman had found me "uptight" and "secretive".

Maguire is not the first to talk about this phenomenon, of course, but her perspective, that of a writer who's tipped her toe in overshare, is an interesting one. She mentions a Variety piece in which the author excoriated Matt Damon for keeping his family life private, an act of unfairness that seems to Maguire emblematic of our sense of public entitlement.

But chronic oversharing is not just a celebrity disease. Producers of reality and lifestyle television shows have no trouble finding people desperate to talk about their sex lives or air their overeating issues on camera and those who can't get a television gig can simply start a blog or YouTube channel....And then there's Facebook, where relationships are announced, questioned and destroyed in tiny, instantly published snippets.

We can debate the implications of society's lack of boundaries till the cows come home and, whatever our thoughts on TMZ, maudlin personal essays or uncomfy interviews - when it's ok, when it's not, whether money figures in or it devalues personal relationships and true sharing - at the end of the day we're forced to agree that it comes down to personal choice. Maguire's point is that choice is the operative word: people can spill their guts, but it shouldn't be mandatory. More to the point, someone shouldn't be considered 'uptight' or somehow disconnected from their emotions because they don't share this openness. As Maguire puts it, "Today we all live with the expectation that we must happily spill our guts for whoever cares to slosh through them. Once considered a virtue, discretion is now viewed as either a character flaw or a sign that you're hiding one." What I think most people will agree is that we've all gotten unreasonable: we may judge people for overspilling, but we still read it, and indeed, expect it. And then feel comfy airing our own thoughts about their behaviors in public forums.

But at the same time, when we, and Maguire, talk about these issues, we're still using the moral language of previous eras, much of which is simply anachronistic. Any celeb can tell you that the face the public sees and knows bears little resemblance to their real selves. The 'selves' every high-schooler might show the world nowadays is probably not the essential soul his parent imagines (and this, is, of course, part of the worry.) Perhaps unconsciously, most people now have a kind of public face that was simply not necessary in previous times, and while this is probably no palliative to a social critic, it's also true. If we feel an entitlement to celeb lives, I wonder if part of the reason isn't that we've had to adopt some of their guises and wiles, the art of sharing and keeping, of exposing and staying yourself. And if we can do it, why shouldn't they? Too much information [Sydney Morning Herald]

The simple yet brilliant idea was dreamed up by one Andrew Jones, an automotive industry consultant whose wife "had" to fly to New York from Palm Beach to make sure she'd have a unique getup for some charity function. According to Politico, " the site includes a place where users can log the designer, color, length, neckline description, material and other characteristics of their dresses. There's even a spot to upload a photo."

So far a hundred ladies have registered gowns — understandable when you consider that Laura Bush had to change when she showed up at the 2006 Kennedy Center honors to find three other dames in the same Oscar de la Renta. (And shouldn't the protocol have been for the other ladies to change? Maybe she lived closer.) After all, there are only so many beaded, mother-of-the-bride apropos Washington-style dresses in the world! The Star-Telegram confirms the frump factor: "Registered dresses are mostly ankle length, many with plunging necklines. Labels range from an ankle-length blue dress by Banana Republic to a scoop-neck, to-the-floor ivory gown by Halston. Shades of purple, orange and red seem to outnumber the old classic, black."

While the success of the scheme obviously depends on everyone registering their outfits - which we simply can't see grandes dames of a certain age doing — it's a smart modification of something some upscale stores have been doing for years; and what is, after all, standard practice for designers. In order for the concept to really take off, it will probably have to work in concert with those populations. Actually, while we can see how it would make sense for a press-heavy event like the inauguration, the natural market for something like this seems to be high school proms. Think about it: a tech-savvy population drawing on a much smaller pool of options, with probably more humiliating duplication consequences. Can you imagine the rush to claim the choicest Betsey Johnsons, the pouffiest Jessica McClintock? While this would obviously lead to a few brats putting dibs on numerous dresses and then making a decision at the last second, well, who's to say some senator's wife isn't doing the exact same thing? The internet can bring out some people's dark sides.

DressRegistry.com [Official Site]
Web Site Lets Women Register Their Inaugural Dresses [Star-Telegram]

Say Bye Bye To Dress Duplicates [Politico]

Here's the whole query:

Dear Amy: My husband and I are very friendly with a couple that we enjoy very much. We vacation with them and spend time with them in social gatherings. We love to entertain and are very good cooks. Whenever my friend and her husband come to our home, they always eat everything, and they usually have second helpings. My friend loves to entertain as well and does it well. You always feel very relaxed at their home. Our problem is that she used to cook wonderful meals, but now everything she cooks is fat-free. Her menu is always tasteless. She cooks it all in the morning and reheats it before serving it. She always makes a comment that she cooked too much because there is so much food left over. I would love to tell her it's because no one wants second helpings. My feeling is that most of her guests feel the same way we do. I don't want to hurt her feelings. Do we suck it up for the evening or say something? My husband said that we should just not accept invitations to her home for dinner and just go for parties, and eat before we get there. We were invited for Thanksgiving dinner, and the dinner was awful. Once again, she was overloaded with leftovers. How would you handle this situation? - Friend in Need

Amy says that, in the name of friendship, "Friend" must indeed make the best of the crap food - because "the most important aspect of being a guest is to allow yourself to have a good time, partaking of the fellowship of your friends, even if you don't particularly enjoy the food." Further, "your friend might have health issues necessitating her switch to low-fat cooking, or her tastes and abilities may have changed during the time you've known her."

In my opinion, there are a few details here that must be considered. 1: "friend in need" is something of a boastful jerk with misplaced, petty priorities - and yet, I trust her implicitly. 2: There is nothing worse than being trapped somewhere with horrible food, especially on Thanksgiving. 3: If the bad cook - who has no excuse since she used to be a good one, and how could her "abilities" have changed? - can't eat normal food, she has no business inviting people over and forcing them to conform to her diet. Harsh? Maybe. But if she's going to pull this kind of crap, then her friend can be equally selfish and turn down her invites (since, apparently, going to a restaurant is not an option and their relationship is completely based on foodieism.)

That said: obviously "Amy" is right and if you're a nice person you don't hold tasteless food against your friend and put the most charitable possible spin on her behavior. If you're not actually that nice but know you need to pretend to be, here is what you should have in your purse: beef, turkey or salmon jerky; dried apricots; almonds; if at all possible a Nature Valley fruit bar. (Some advocate a hard-boiled egg but I have had unhappy experiences with broken shells.) If you aren't on the go for a long time, a BabyBel cheese is a good addition, and the ball of wax is handy to have for molding under the table into miniature Easter Island heads. All of these can be downed during a clandestine trip to the powder room. Also: whenever at a deli, grab some of those little salt and pepper packets so as to easily doctor tasteless food on the sly. I know of what I speak: if, like me, you have certain close relatives who have been known to serve one ancient, unrefrigerated, dessicated carrot sticks, week-old supermarket rotisserie chicken with a soupçon of mold on the drumstick, and undefrosted clam chowder, such measures are a necessity.

Ask Amy: When host's food isn't to guests' taste [The Philadelphia Inquirer]

• Oh God: It is Spanx for your arms! Or rather, industrial strength tape to hide your excess skin on your upper arms.• More women are entering sports journalism but they are mostly expected to look hot, not to know anything about sports.• Here are some photos of Madonna's rumored Brazilian boy toy, Jesus Luz, who doesn't look a day over 16.• From Yves to Men's Vogue, Refinery29 made a list of the top 50 fashion-related brands/magazines/people that the world lost in 2008.• Don't just wrap up presents this holiday season: Trojan has launched a new holiday campaign where artists create short videos to promote condoms and Trojan donates condoms for every time a video is watched. • The Fug Girls list off the ten things they learned from celebrity fashion this year. Top of their list? Shopping a lot doesn't make you a fashion designer and always do the opposite of Solange Knowles, sartorial-wise.• Racialicious has republished the personal essay "The Not Rape Epidemic" from Yes Means Yes.• Two English women who worked in the Land Girls army during WWII reunited recently only to find that they lived just minutes away from each other.• Stella McCartney is opening up a shop near the Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris.• Craving a Burberry umbrella? Not sure on what is the proper etiquette for umbrella sidewalk-sharing? Read the Bumbershoot Manifesto.• Everything you ever wanted to know about the sexual life of spiders, but were too afraid to ask. • British scientists are working on a "sex chip" to stimulate pleasure centers of the brain with electric shocks.• With the economy going down, will women splurge on simple luxuries like lipstick over previous extravagant splurges? Economists think they will and they are calling it "the lipstick effect."•

I had just finished eating take-out BBQ (pork ribs) with my fiancé (still hate that word), and had given some of the scraps to my dog because I knew it would be the most exciting part of her week. We were laying in bed watching TV and I got smacked in the face with this horrible, hot fart that was so disgusting that it barely seemed possible that it was even organic. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye to see if he was gonna mention it, but he just kept staring straight ahead at the television. A few minutes later, another, more lethal one arrived. This time, I got up and walked over to the other side of the room and pretended to look for something in my purse. He obviously didn't want to talk about what was going on with his ass, and I thought that since he was too embarrassed to talk about it, it would be even more more embarrassing for me to confront him on it. And I figured that if the smell was any indication, he must be in severe stomach pain.

Thirty minutes and about 15 more incidents like that later I started to get really annoyed. The farts were getting worse and more frequent, and it felt like they were altering the temperature in the room... and the stench was such that it was literally clouding my ability to complete a crossword puzzle. Finally, after another bomb was dropped, I slammed my book down in annoyance and looked at him. In a super bitchy tone I was like, "It stinks in here."

Then he said, "I know. I think Edie [the dog] is farting like crazy." I was like, "Wait, that's not you!?"

He said, "No way! I thought it was you, because I know you just got your period and you have diarrhea and I felt bad for you at first but then I realized that this is so bad that it can't be human." My heart warmed up like a pork-ribs dog fart at the idea that he 1.) knows that I get diarrhea on the first day of my period and 2.) he accepts it as a way of life. We kicked the dog out of the room and locked the door.

The moral of the story is that if we hadn't been so polite to each other, we wouldn't have had to sit in unimaginable stink for a good portion of the night. The problem though, is that farting, accidental spitting, hanging boogers, stinking up the bathroom, etc. are such taboo topics that even etiquette experts are too polite to discuss solutions for how to deal with such situations, so we're left to our own devices to make it up as we go along.

The silver lining is that now I'm mulling over my own etiquette rule for this (not just with my fiancé but with anyone that's stinking up the room with their asses): Ask the person you're with, in a really sympathetic way, furrowed brow and all, if they are feeling alright. Coming off as understanding of a belly ache will diffuse some of the embarrassment, and will also give them the hint to either plug it up or leave the room when they have to release. Then everyone will be able to breathe a little easier.

And yet, as we know, not everyone is. Some very dear friends and relatives and other assorted grinches are glum and, however inexplicable this may seem, these encounters can't be avoided indefinitely. I learned this the hard way this morning, and ended up in tears of frustration and rage. So listen up: however tempting it may be to do a victory dance and rub their faces in the mud and toss "loser!" around like grass seed, here's a better idea.

I read through a slew of old-timey manuals — A 1938 Emily Post, my trusty Miss Manners 1940's Today's Etiquette, The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette and 1937's Etiquette for Every Day, to bring us advice on this subject and created a digest of sorts.* The etiquette books are right about one thing: try to avoid it. Put it off as long as possible. Wait until passions have cooled. Avoid calls. Don't pretend solicitude, don't try to be adult, don't try to convince anyone or assume anybody's mind has been changed by the outpouring of joy and enthusiasm that's swept you up. This isn't only to preserve family harmony; rather, it's a way for you to enjoy things for a little while before reality intrudes.

-Stick to a Script. As with any tricky conversation, this is invaluable advice. Stick to talking points: this is what I did last night; yes, I'm happy; I know this isn't what you wanted but let's all try to be optimistic. (This last bit of inclusive language sounds extra-mature.)

-Keep It Short. THIS IS ESSENTIAL. Things can only go in one direction and that's pear-shaped. Holidays are coming and big fight should be avoided at all costs. Manufacture an excuse to end the call beforehand if possible.

-Do. Not. Gloat. Nearly impossible, true. But empathy is essential here. There's nothing worse than a bad winner.

-Have an exit strategy. This comes courtesy of Anna Post, who advises lines like, "I guess we just don't see eye-to-eye; or: I'll have to consider that; or: For me, it's private."

-End on a good note. If it's a family member, "love" is always a good option. If not, a warm "take care," shows you to be a mature adult who's a fitting representative for her candidate.

*It should be said this all presupposes a certain degree of reason on the part of your conversational partner.

Emily Post was the scion of an old and respectable New York family, a great beauty who made a triumphant marriage that soon went sour. After a blackmailing scandal that outed her husband's infidelity, Post started a professional novelist's career. She wrote Etiquette as an alternative to the labrynthine rulebooks that came before.

During the Gilded Age, the rules of etiquette had become increasingly baroque; to be considered well-bred, a lady had to know not just how to wield a knife and fork but where to seat the guest of honor at a formal dinner, how to arrange a receiving line, when to send flowers to whom, and what to wear to a morning function, an afternoon function, and a ball. (As one etiquette writer of the eighteen-eighties observed, "Not even a saint could, from ‘inner consciousness’ alone, evolve a conception of the thousand and one social observances of modern fashionable life.")

In contrast to these esoteric rule books, as The New Yorker tells us, “Etiquette has characters — the Worldlys, the Wellborns, the Toploftys — who periodically appear and reappear to make introductions, hold christenings, and ask friends to their great camps for the weekend." Post's book emphasized conformity — getting along with the customs of your surroundings. Claridge says this allowed anyone, paradoxically, to become an insider, or at least blend in.

When I was a kid, my mom was strict about manners, but we — not to mention my dad — were never sure why. The order of utensils and protocol of introductions seems arbitrary in a world where no one knew or followed the rules. In a sense, etiquette seemed to have lost its purpose — an easy path to conformity. Etiquette was important because it put you at ease, because you knew what to do in a given situation, because rules and structure, when you know them, provide comfort. In a vacuum, the actual ins and outs of protocol are essentially meaningless.

However, a few years ago I ran across something in another old etiquette book — I wish I could remember which — that suddenly really made all this a lot clearer. The gist was: the basis of all good manners is kindness - putting others at ease, making sure no one is uncomfortable. To the extent rules facilitate this, great; but they should exist to make people comfortable rather than the reverse. It's easy to point out lapses in manners or breaches of protocol, but that kind of petty snobbery shouldn't have anything to do with actual etiquette. If you read Emily Post, this was at the root of a lot of her rules, too —paradoxically designed to grease the wheels of social interaction rather than keep things stilted.

Obviously the kind of conformity Post preached can feel anathema to those of us raised on the gospel of individuality, even an artificial imposition of gratuitous strictures designed to further stratify society. Certainly it evokes a society anything but open to diversity. Yes, obviously her work is a time capsule, an anachronism — therein lies much of its fascination. But bridge luncheons aside, I feel like you could argue this about any set of rules: someone needs to set them out; used well they impose order and comfort, but they can be perverted and employed for exclusion. That someone could set them out so authoritatively and immediately be accorded respect seems particularly American — we're always looking for guides and rules, much as we scorn them. And reading her book, it's hard not t have a little nostalgia for a time when using the right fork could alleviate anxiety; it's certainly cheaper than therapy!

Place Settings [The New Yorker]

• Resort Dressy: Think Ralph Lauren, uptight WASPS in movies who need to have their minds blown by free spirits.
• Wild Chic: "Wild" is always horrible code for "cheetah print." Think "Miami divorcee."
• Safari Chic: The hosts may envision 70s YSL, but they'll get Khaki. Animal prints optional. Looking stupid mandatory.
• Ferrari Hot: Red, slits, cleavage. Basically, "Italian mistress."
• International: "It's a Small World"
• Creative Black Tie: "Creative" is code for "stupid vests." Possibly whimsical chapeaux, too.
• Festive: This always evoked those holiday Express-style outfits, like pencil skirts with little red angora sweaters. Sequins may be involved. This also emcompasses "teacher sweaters."

  The following are dress codes we would like to see:

• Monopoly Chic
• Staten Island Festive
• Appalachian Hot
• Munchkin Land

  Uncreative Black Tie, Please: The End of Goofy Dress Codes [Wall Street Journal]

My friend Ryan just dedicated a blog to pictures of couples engaging in PDA. It's called "Your Love Hurts Me." And it is probably a testament to his character that my friend Don steadfastly refuses to make out in public, even when he is really really drunk. Which leads me back to the subject of Memphis principal Daphne Beasley.

Is there a more depressing place on this earth than the high school hallway after school during homecoming season when there's a couple sucking face at every third locker and your crush doesn't know you're alive??

Okay, Baghdad is a more depressing place. Our old reliable Yemen isn't looking too great either.

Principal Allegedly Outs Gay Students [ABC News]
Your Love Hurts Me