Happy perfect birthday to FOBG Dale Hrabi’s hiiiii-larious The Perfect Baby Handbook: A Guide for Excessively Motivated Parents, out today.

Here, just for a wee taste, are some perfect baby names to start considering prematurely on your next perfect date!

From the book description:

Auction catalogs can tell you a lot about a person—their passions and vanities, peccadilloes and aesthetics; their flush years and lean. Think of the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

In Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, Leanne Shapton’s marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren’t real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple’s personal effects—the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)—the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple’s accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate.

Sold!

Sold! Check out Super in the City by FOBG Daphne Uviller:

In a city brimming with opportunities for heroism, twenty-seven-year-old Zephyr Zuckerman has often fantasized about committing acts of bravery that would make front-page news. Now she may get her big break — though it may require plunging a few toilets. When the superintendent of her parents’ Greenwich Village brownstone is led away in handcuffs, unemployed Zephyr takes over his post and unleashes her inner sleuth. As she discovers titillating secrets about her tenants, she finds herself with a new reality far more intriguing than her imagination.

Soon, Zephyr has sussed out wrongs that stretch from losers on the Internet to art fraud and an international crime ring. The mob thinks she’s in the FBI, and the FBI thinks she’s in the mob — a predicament she needs to clear up fast. But perhaps not before a cute, surly exterminator helps her solve the mystery of what to do with the rest of her life.

Young ladies, not quite sure of the proper behavior post-deflowerment? Have we got the hilariously droll parody of an etiquette book for you! This 1965 jem by Mel Juffe and Edward Gorey (!) was recently rediscovered through the magic of the internets. Click the picture for its complete posting by Accordion Guy.

Looking for some smart writing about sex? Check out Best Sex Writing 2009, edited by Friend Of BG and cupcake aficionado Rachel Kramer Bussel. This is not a collection of erotica (drat!) but a smart — and, okay, sometimes steamy — series of essays on everyone’s favorite subject. From Rachel’s introduction:

Sex is everywhere–in our bedrooms, classrooms, courtrooms, and offices, as well as on our TV and movie screens, streets, and newspapers. This was a big year for sex, from prostitution (Eliot Spitzer, Ashley Dupré, Deborah Jeane Palfrey) to teen pregnancy (Jamie Lynn Spears, Bristol Palin) and beyond.

If you’ve gotten past the cupcake thing (Mmmmm. Cupcakes.) you are asking yourself, exactly how smart is this collection? Well, it’s so smart that they’ve included a piece by LYNN HARRIS, “Searching for Normal: Do Dating Websites for People with STIs Liberate or Quarantine?” Not tittilating enough? Try FoBG James Hannaham’s “Why Bathroom Sex Is Hot.”

Read more about it at Rachel’s Amazon blog!

9-year-old Alec Greven has written a new dating guide titled “How To Talk To Girls.” Take it from me, though, it is much easier to charm the ladies when you are an adorable 9-year-old. (I’m just bitter because a fourth-grader has more game than me!)

In a rugrats-to-riches story sure to cool the heart of every writer on this blog, Greven’s guide started as a $3 pamphlet, which was a hit at his school’s book fair, and ended up at HarperCollins, which released it to an innocence-starved nation last week.

But how’s the advice? Pretty solid. The New York Post relates:

“Pretty girls are like cars that need a lot of oil.”

He advises, “The best choice for most boys is a regular girl. Remember, some pretty girls are coldhearted when it comes to boys. Don’t let them get to you.”

True. And this Breakup Girl-esque pearl:

the best way to approach a girl is to keep it to a simple “hi.”

A 9-year-old writing about relationships just underscores what Lynn has always told me: Most dating advice is common sense; It’s just that the advice-seekers can’t access that part of their brain in their hormone-addled / douchebag-laden / games-weary / heart-flattened / rejection-paralyzed state and need to hear it from someone else. Here’s something Greven wrote that I think Lynn told me once, word-for-word: “comb your hair and don’t wear sweats.”

So where does this precocious kid go from here? He’s now writing a children’s book about Watergate! Hmmm. Take it from me, Alec, that won’t impress the ladies.

For more, check out BuzzFeed.

Via Wired Science:

How do a science writer and a UC Berkeley obstetrician explain how the ability of humans to turn off their empathy and organize for war?

By looking at chimpanzees and bonobo monkeys of course! Chimps are the only species besides humans who form social groups and attack rival groups, while bonobos, whose DNA also closely resembles humans, are peaceful, have a matriarchal society, and use sex as a form of greeting, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation.

Alexis Madrigal interviewed Malcolm Potts, Thomas Hayden, the authors of Sex and War, who share their thoughtful reflections on the whys and hows of modern warfare, terrorism, the disabling of empathy, and a uniquely human trait: free will. This book sounds like a fascinating read, and more than just a barrel of monkeys.

Ever since the Duchovny news broke, we here at breakupgirl.net have been addicted to sex addiction stories! Now, Lynn has written a review of two memoirs dealing with the subject — Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction by Susan Cheever and Love Junkie: A Memoir by Rachel Resnick — posted this morning at Barnes & Noble.

Last August, in a remarkable example of art imitating sex life, it was revealed that David Duchovny — who stars as a randy writer on Showtime’s Californication — had checked into rehab for sex addiction. The former Fox Mulder’s disclosure opened up a psychological X-file: is “sex addiction” modern pop-psych folklore, complete with a handy excuse for caddishness? Or is it for real?

Continue reading at the bn.com review page!

Via The Daily Bedpost: Go-gal advice for single women from an editor at Vogue, in 1936. About Miss S., a teacher in the New York public schools, she writes: “In spite of living by one of the most underpaid professions in the world, Miss S. has been to Europe three times and to Mexico once, and three years ago she paid for the care of a tubercular pupil. She feels very sorry for her friends in Maine whose lives are limited to husbands and a trip to Portland.” Swell! Read more here.

Anyone above the age of 16 may not have noticed, but prom season is in full swing right now. Perhaps no place in the Land of Breakup is more fertile than prom, where so many relationships reach their denouement. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Rob Spillane has compiled a book of prom memoirs by various and assorted writers entitled The Time of My Life: Writers on the Heartbreak, Hormones, and Debauchery of the Prom. I haven’t read the book (yet!) but I must say that the cover — a random collage of prom-goers from the powder-blue-suited 70s up through the more modern vamp-goth ensembles of the zeros — totally made me do one of those huge did-she-just-walk-into-prom-wearing-THAT? double-takes.

Fortunately, those of you in New York City can hear these stories right from the folks who wrote them tonight at McNally Robinson (50 Prince Street, near Lafayette), at 7 PM. The free reading features writers Cintra Wilson, Walter Kirn and Mike Albo. If it weren’t for the fact that I have to work (darn bills keep demanding to be paid), I’d be there with shoes-dyed-to-match-my-dress on. Instead, I’ll task you all with going, then coming back here and reporting on it. Now go forth and boogie…under the tinfoil stars and giant heart made of balloons, of course.