What a weird etiquette guide.

If you keep chatting for upwards of an hour, it’s well within his rights to forget about your boyfriend/girlfriend—because it appears that you have, too.

I didn't know being in a relationship gave you a time limit. The section heading says flirtatious conversation, which confuses me. That's a LOT of flirting.

I was digging in my purse for lunch money and I just found a strawberry. Now my lunch money is sticky.

So what other slogans could a crematin service use? Maybe, "Make sure your loved ones really Rest In Peace," with a picture of a zombie on which a red circle with a line through it is superimposed... and/or a vampire.

Or maybe, "Go green. Go ash," or something environmental-ish....

"Rest lightly on the land"

There's a lot of weirdness in that guide. Like this:

How do you respond if you’re straight and a gay person asks you out?
Laugh and say, “I don’t think my girlfriend/boyfriend would approve.” It won’t become awkward unless you become patronizing.

How is their suggestion less awkward and patronizing than simply saying "No thank you, I'm straight"?

Argh:

Who pays the bill on a date?

The asker pays, unless the woman does the asking—then the man should pay. If the check’s on the table and her suitor hasn’t moved for it, a woman should allow him a one-bathroom-trip grace period. If it’s still there when she comes back, she should split the bill but is entirely free to silently ruminate about what a cheap jerk he is. (For same-sex couples, the asker really does pay.)

Oddly enough, when I offer to pay and a guy lets me, what I think is that the guy assumes I have a bank account and want to pay, not that he's a cheapskate. Sigh. (I mean, I don't mind being paid for, either, though I wouldn't want to always be the treated one. But this kind of crap just makes men more stressy, I think.)

Yep. What do you do with your syringes? It's been suggested that maybe I shouldn't put them into the general trash bin.

I think a nearby vet has a biohazard drop box (I'm not really sure, it's outside and it seems really ODD ) that were I a responsible person, I would investigate.

In reality, I bend/snap the needle, recap them, and toss them into a juice carton. When the carton is full, it goes into the dumpster.

I throw my hands up in the air when it comes to paying and dates and the like. If a guy asked me and expected, without discussion, for me to pay--then I'd be pissed.

If I ask, I'm always intending to pay. Being paid for consistently is not something that comes easily to me.

The asker pays, unless the woman does the asking—then the man should pay.

Oh hell no. The asker pays, period. (The askee, if s/he can afford it, should be polite and offer to split the bill, or at least cover the tip, but women asking guys out and expecting to be treated to dinner? WTF is that?)

I do like this column by David Cross on dealing with celebrities, from the same issue:

Thus my first and foremost guideline to dealing with celebrities: If you don’t know who he is, ask your friend. Or a stranger. Don’t ask him. And certainly don’t ask him to keep listing his résumé until you realize he’s the guy from Blade of Innocence 2 who lost his shoe and got killed by the vampire with outer-space AIDS.

Being paid for consistently is not something that comes easily to me.

Nor should it. I think there's a power issue embedded in who pays for things, and people don't often confront that issue head-on. I'm happy to let some people pay, but will vociferously insist on dutch with others, because of the person's attitude towards me. If I feel like I'm being shrunk down by the size of that person's wallet (or ego, or both), then allowing myself to be paid for is permission for crap behavior. Rarely, I'll be merciful to somebody who is stuck in an epoch from long ago, but I'm a lot more merciful to people actually born in that long-ago epoch than people aping the behaviors of same.

For me, who does the asking has nothing to do with who pays; both parties arrive at the event with equal footing, and it's the course of the evening that determines whether we argue over the bill.