Loser : Miss Conduct :: Winner : Fillyjonk

By the way, I really have no idea what happened to the blog last week, people. Sorry about that. I just wasn't feeling it. Maybe it was the relatively warmer, sunnier weather that gave me a burst of spring fever. Anyway, not only didn't I post much, but I didn't even select the best answer to the Emancipation v. Evolution Love Smackdown! Quelle loseur, moi.

My choice, by the way, would be Abey Baby. Lizb nailed it about the beard being a major issue, for one thing. Considering he's the guy who figured out we're related to apes, Darwin didn't seem to be that big on grooming. Lincoln's no male model, but at least he looked natty, as befits a tall thin president from Illinois. More to the point, though, I think Lincoln would be a much better conversationalist--witty and thoughtful and eloquent, with a broad range of interests and experiences. At least a better conversationalist from my point of view, anyway. Mary says that she "could listen to Darwin talk passionately about the beak length of finches for hours on end." Good for Mary! Abe and I will be at the bar talking theater. I seem to recall he was a fan.

Also, Lincoln apparently didn't have a problem with, shall we say, complicated women.

I'm awfully sympathetic to Colleen's concern:

But the clincher is that Lincoln was a full foot taller than I am and, as I know from experience, having to gaze deeply into your date's nipples instead of his eyes seriously diminishes the evening's romantic potential.

... but you can't have everything.

For the best answer to the contest, though, I choose Fillyjonk, because her "looking at his tongue in a hand mirror" line made me spit up tea. Here's her full response:

I'm a fan of Darwin, run-on sentences and all, but I think the people opting for Chuck don't know much about Darwin the man. Abe was clever, calm, and expansive; Charles was anxious, neurotic, and preoccupied with his ill health. Abe would take you to a John Hodgman reading and then out for ice cream, Charles would take you to Chili's and spend the whole time looking at his tongue in a hand mirror. Sure, if you ever went back to his house he'd turn out to have lots of great creepy taxidermy and volumes of brilliance in Big Chief tablets under his bed -- and to be fair to the man he was a devoted-to-the-point-of-neurosis father. But you WOULDN'T go back to his house, let alone have children with him, because you already would have crawled out the bathroom window after the seventeenth time he asked you if you thought he looked a little jaundiced. And then you would have called Abe and gone to ride the bumper cars.

Now that is writing. Fillyjonk, you just won an advance copy of Mind Over Manners!