Pucker up!

*le gasp!*

Shock! Horror!

The social kiss!!!

The world will positively END RIGHT NOW.

*yawn*

I was reading earlier today about the "social kiss" - you know, the way some people greet each other with a peck on the cheek and how it's more often than not that women are on the receiving end of this. "The gender-specific, illogical nature of social kissing creates real confusion about what such a kiss means. It is in the context of this confusion that well-meant pecks are seen as sinister or 'inappropriate,'" says Emily Maguire, a freelance writer and author.

Strange... but there are people who don't like the social kiss. And there are some people you definitely don't want a social kiss from. But usually it's not that hard to avoid. Although I have had one caught-off-guard-social-kiss that saw my hand grabbed and energetically pulled towards the person so that I lurched towards their outstretched lips *shudder*

But it's more amusing that offensive or sinister. And if you choose to be offended by people who are showing some politeness, well, so be it. Still, I loved the suggestion Ms Maguire made in the article that if we really are so keen on the social kiss, we should go the way of the French (and those from Latin countries) and do the kiss-on-both-cheeks thing. Now that would be a greeting!

But you know what I do find offensive? The social forwarded attempted guilt-trip e-mail! Silly, funny, obscure, random and crazy forwarded e-mails are great. But I take exceptional pleasure in deleting the e-mails that say things like, "If you really love Jesus, you'll forward this to your entire address book or we'll know that not forwarding this will make Baby Jesus cry," or "If you don't send this on, the cure for cancer won't be found and the Scissor Monster will lop off little Jimmy's arms," or other such stuff.

Annoying! I think Jesus is fantastic anyways, if I want to do something about cancer, I donate money to The Cancer Council and the Scissor Monster doesn't exist. And the forwarded e-mail I got today that said that Jesus was thinking of the "7 per cent of people who would forward this e-mail" while he was dying on the cross is now residing in the trash folder.