Observations at a Dinner Party

or You Can’t Believe Anything You Read On The Internet
Mrs S had a dinner party. Mrs S is very nice, but her friends are the most awful snobs; their snobbishness is so profound, they truly make me seem like Mahatma Ghandi by comparison.

Mrs J (3 husbands), while fairly harmless, is very animated when she talks, all flailing hands and wild, full-body gyrations. Far from being vivacious, as I imagine she thinks she is, the effect is very disturbing. She looks like an amateur tightrope walker. A drunk amateur tightrope walker. Mrs L, however, is the worst. When Wallis Simpson said “you can never be too thin or too rich,” she was right about being rich, but would have changed her mind about the thin part, if she had ever met Mrs L.

Mrs L (currently between husbands) has a pet magazine editor she keeps on a very short, very tight leash. She will trade him in once she finds someone marriageable, and he knows this. He, like the other husbands, remained almost entirely silent throughout the dinner. He did at one point venture something pleasant about the couscous. “It’s not couscous,” she hissed venomously, “it’s orzo.”

The pet put his tail between his legs and retreated back into silence.

Someone mentioned something they read on the internet. “Oh, the internet,” Mrs L scoffed, with the type of scorn usually reserved for paedophiles, “you can’t believe anything you read on the internet. If I want to know something, I go to the library.” Mr S rather bravely asked if she believed everything she read in the newspaper.

“That’s different,” she said. “Journalists have to be answerable for facts, not just opinion. On the internet, anyone can post whatever they like, without any research at all.”

I hazarded a comment that possibly, blogs were answerable for their facts, by having a comment facility where points may be debated and questioned by readers. I was rewarded with an ear-piercing screech. “Blogs? Blogs! What kinds of people write those!”

Indeed.