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Dear Miss Manners

Dear Miss Manners:

I recently sent a gift to a friend as a housewarming present. I have yet to receive a thank-you note for the gift. Now I'm expected at another party that she is throwing this weekend. What does proper decorum dictate that I do, giftwise?

--Generous in Geneva

Dear Generous in Geneva:

Well, well, well, you sent your friend a gift and you didn't get a card. Wait, wait, let me guess what kind of "housewarming gift" this was -- an assortment of soap samples from The Body Shop? One of those little wooden boxes you take out every year to hold all the beautiful Christmas cards you get from your beautiful friends? Be lucky a thank-you note is all you didn't get, because what you really deserve is a good swift kick in the face, you bourgeois-perpetuating, neighborhood-gentrifying, wish-you-could-live-your-life-in-Pier-1 piece of shit. Proper decorum for the party dictates that you bend down, pucker up and kiss your friend's rosy ass, because they're one more friend than you deserve, you suburban-wannabe-bastard.

Dear Miss Manners:

After much shopping, I have finally found the perfect set of silverware. The only problem is that they're so expensive, I've only been buying them one utensil at a time -- first, all the knives, then all the spoons. We are hosting a dinner party in the upcoming weeks, and I really want to show off the new silverware, even though I don't have the full set. Do you think it would be okay to mix in forks from another, similar set?

--Curious in Cleveland

Dear Curious in Cleveland:

(Pause) Is this a fucking joke? Did you really send me this letter? Did you seriously sit down and spend thirty-two cents and twenty minutes of your life to write this fucking thing, fold it, put it in the fucking envelope and mail it to me? Is this your miserable excuse for having problems in your life? When your therapist charged you 150 bucks for the pleasure of telling you things like, "vent your anxieties more," do you really think this is what he had in mind?

Let me give you a problem you should really worry about. Like, how 'bout a guy who's got a college degree but is almost about to get kicked out of his apartment because he can't find anything but a lousy fucking $10 an hour job? Or a guy that hasn't had sex in nine months 'cause every time he gets close to a woman he finds some arbitrary reason to reject her because the cumulative stress of ex-girlfriends is slowly moving him to a phobia of intimacy? Well? How you like them apples?

As for your culinary problems... I have no idea. Why don't you try plastic forks like the rest of us, you fuckin' loon?

Dear Miss Manners:

My son has come home from college for the summer, and it seems we have a problem. So far, he has spent almost every night out with his friends and often will not come home until two in the morning. He says that this is the schedule he keeps at school and he is old enough to be making his own curfew. I say as long as he's living under my roof, he lives by my rules. Help, Miss Manners!

--Father in Florida

*	Dear Father in Florida: (Long pause) Ah, just go fuck yourself.

Dear Miss Manners:

Well, it's that time of year where the spring wardrobes start coming out. With your many years of etiquette advice, I thought you could give me some historical background on what is proper attire for what times of year, along with what current fashion dictates for this year.

--Style Aware in San Antonio

Dear Style Aware in San Antonio:

Jesus, has this entire country become like my parents, terminally addicted to Prozac? Wake up, people! Look, you all obviously don't have a fuckin' clue, and I'm currently pretty high on this speed I took earlier this afternoon, so let me now lay out the truth to all of my miserable 644 syndicated outlets of losers nationwide:

Miss Manners smoked four packs of Virginia Slims a day and died about two years ago of black lung disease. Then the syndication boss got smart and finally realized that Miss Manners doesn't say a whole hell of a lot, and that they could probably hire a kid straight out of college for about half the salary. Enter me, a 27 year old journalism student whose only reason he's not waiting tables is he can type eighty words a minute. They're paying me $32,000 a year, which is more money than I've ever seen in my life, and all I have to do is, as my boss put it, "write some shit like 'put baking soda on that stain' and 'politeness requires abstaining from off-color jokes at the work place.'" Easy money, I thought.

* But it's six months later, and you know what? Somebody at the syndication installed stirrups at my desk one day when I wasn't looking, and now every morning when I get into work I have to spread my legs and put my ankles in the stirrups all day. And every time my boss bitches at me that I'm not a "team player," then explains how he has the moral right to break all rules he expects me to follow; and every time my co-worker comes in on Monday and tells me all about how he and his old frat buddies from "U of I" went to some fuckin' sports bar on Division Friday night and (shouts) "Got WASTED!"; and every time one of you people send me one of your stupid fuckin' letters talking about your stupid fuckin' problems and I have to write some stupid fuckin' bullshit answer and we all have to pretend it's some brilliant masterpiece -- well, frankly, every time it happens, it's one more giant unlubricated dick being shoved up my ass.

* And every time I dare speak up, that I have the audacity to mention, "You know, what we do here is basically bullshit"; every time I mention that there's a better way of doing business than pandering to the lowest common denominator; every time my boss responds with, "Your job is not to think -- your job is to execute"; and every time my co-workers say, "Look, you're not in art school anymore -- this is the real world"; and every time I'm made to believe that only in a fantasy world can you pay your bills without completely whoring yourself -- well, that's another day that I go home with blood running between my legs and I have to fashion a band-aid out of the wads of cash I originally accepted in the first place because they were supposed to free up my creative career.

* So -- no more. Today's the day I slip my column past my boss and out directly onto the wire and tell the world that I will no longer take this ass fucking. So... forgive me if I no longer feign an interest in your pathetic little life that I never cared about in the first place. Forgive me if I refuse to lie anymore at job interviews and pretend like I want to work a corporate job the rest of my life because I won't get hired any other way because you sold your soul to the devil twenty years ago and now won't hire anyone unless they make the same sacrifice. Forgive me if I slap you across the face as hard as I can every time you say, "Well, it sounds like you've pretty much got a creative job, so what's the problem?" I no longer have the strength to be Miss Manners. I can't do it, and I won't do it.

* As far as your question goes, always remember the two golden rules: never wear white before Memorial Day; and only Eurotrash wear Speedos. Now get out of my face, you fuckin' momma's boy, before I kick your ass.

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