Overheard In The Chat Room (Reader Beware)

I spend way too much time in a chat room with a literary flavor, which boasts several working writers, a few has-beens and many wannabes. To be honest, it's mostly "just another chat room" whose inhabitants happen to spell better than in other rooms.

Each chat room has its own dynamic. Visiting this one is like dropping in on a 24-hour cocktail party with a weird mix of smart and/or goofy people. The party "conversation" includes flirting, discussion, rants, jibes, snipes and snappy comebacks scrawled across the screen. At any given time, day or night, you might see cat chat, food chat, OB/GYN chat (guaranteed to empty the room of its male component), gun chat, political chat (heavily weighted to the left), music, art, film and film star chat, current event chat ad nauseum, sex chat ad orgasm, occasional book and writing chat, and always, always gossip-about-absent-chatters chat.

It can be entertaining, informative, contentious, rude, brutal, sexy or fun, depending on the mix of party-goers. Oh, and about those party-goers....in a roomful of 36 chatters:

• 33% are stoned,
• 25% are drunk,
• 87.5% are deeply neurotic,
  
• 25% are raving psychotics off their meds,
• Another 25% are fascist control freaks,
• 1% swear they've had close encounters of one kind or another with aliens,
• And another 1% who we swear really ARE aliens, although they vigorously deny this,
• 20% are certified genius primadonnas who condescend to the group in incessant bombastic exhortation,
• One artistic Frenchman who sets a new standard for hating GWBush and all Republicans,
  
• 99% of the men troll for sex of some sort,
• 92% of the women say yes to the trolls, or troll themselves,
• 99% argue at the click of a mouse
• Because 100% claim to be experts on most subjects and defend their opinion to the death,
  
• Still, many are very bright, quick, clever and witty, although obviously with too much time on their hands.
  

Some chatters collect snippets of chat room conversation -- sort of like copying down what's written on rest room walls. These were passed along to me and have been edited only to enhance the anonymity of their already anonymous screen names.

• I propose that in the future, all disputes be resolved by affixing chatters' photos to rock'em sock'em robots and randomly choosing two sugar-buzzed ten year olds to man the controls.

• Suggestion: Vitamin D. Go outside. Don't die sitting in your chair arguing.

• When chocoholics go bad: "This cocoa has been cut with flour! We were burned, man!"
  

• My massage therapist ignores the groin area so I have to do my own stretching and massaging.
  

• I have a "Live Free or Diebold" bumpersticker.
  

• In the land of blind cobras, the one-eyed trouser snake is king.
  

• I use clitorises as bait when I fish -- I have a mayonnaise jar full.
  

• I'm sorry if this is not PC, but I find sex involving latex body suits, tutus and giant electric dildoes to be morally threatening.

• I didn't prepare for Halloween early enough last year. The pit was too shallow and the kids were all able to climb out.

• O girl of my dreams / mysterious question forms / how much do you weigh?
  

• "What time did you make this cheese sandwich?" grilled the detective.
  

• My inner child is autistically banging its head on my stomach.
  

• I can only be buried in a Jewish cemetery face down
• You can be a napkin holder if you're not buried too deep.
  

• My doctor said I had the prettiest pink colon he had ever seen. He said it was beautiful.
  

• Aliens enter corn fields to find the finest ear of corn, but they're picky and walk in circles while they eat.
  

• cows are civilized. they may not eat with utensils, but they don't start wars, either
  

• Sort of like Maria Rubio finding the face of Jesus in a tortilla she was frying...
• god enjoys fried foods
• god never appears on tofu
• He appears on grilled cheese so he does seem to favor the heart clogging food of the masses
  

• child molesters will be slowly done in with the rusty butter knife of love, while the tire iron of compassion will be used on serial killers.
  

• cubicle offices arose when some former hamster owner made it to management.
  

• I believe that there are only about two degrees of separation between publishing poetry and masturbating.
  

• I've read Kafka in German.
• I've read Kafka in Klingon and Esperanto
  

• I've dated women much more twisted than anais nin, and better writers
• send me their screennames
  

• I picture him somewhere sewing an orange peel on an apple, preparing to compare Iraq with WWII again.
  

• The $9.99 provides you with an enthusiastic greeting each time you enter the room, three IMs a month, and at least one reference to your apparent hotness.
• Do you inquire regularly about my health? I need that.
• That is in the $14.95 package, Medical Ailments
• The deluxe package entitles the user to unlimited "me time" in chat
• "Boost your chat room ratings with a package."
• "I was in dire need of chatroom action, then I got the package."
  

• The electricity in the Southern Hemisphere goes down the toilet in the opposite direction.
• I go down on women counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere.
  

• For the chatlog record, my comment about anna nicole smith seeming frigid was made before she died.
• I think we'll find out Anna Nicole had a virgin birth like that Komodo dragon last month. Because reptiles can do that, ya know.
• Notice how the son died the day the baby was born, and Nicole died the day before giving a DNA test for her and baby...??? her own son is the baby's father
• So....the baby is killing them off to keep them from revealing her true identity?
  

• We had a huge flock of birds on my lawn last week, arranged to spell out 'SEND OUT TIPPI HEDREN AND NOBODY GETS HURT!"
  

• I love christina aguilera...she's by far my favorite. i think she swallowed a big black girl, tho
  

• I keep a salad shooter ready in case I need to defend my home
• The Salad Shooter puts vegetables right where you want them...according to the commercial. I have never lost control of my vegetables.
  

• I could eat a whole can of Friskies right now. I am on the Atkins Diet. Kibbles and Bits makes my mouth drool. NOBODY IS LISTENING TO ME!

• I work in a bakery. People say Atkins to us and we stuff eclairs in their pants.
  

• Sugar gliders? Only a shovel and George Foreman grill away from a hot meal
  

• I'm foxlike in my nearsighted cunning.
  
• I used to post a pic but most women find the meat hook disconcerting.
  

• I always used to get turned on by those Cadbury Cream Eggs commercials with the cute little bunny. Is that wrong?
• Not if you love the chocolate egg.
• No. It'd be considered a fetish, but if you ACTED on it...that's a different dept.
• You mean, like, if I took a bunny to see "You, Me and Depree" on a date?
• Like if you took the bunny to see that crap film and dragged it into the bathroom ---
• You're dating a bunny?
• I have no hangups, i just have sex with husband
  

• Men are always whining that we smother them. I figure if they can whine, we're not pressing hard enough on the pillow.
  

• I still get invites to Aryan Nation "private chats." I'm so afraid they will find out where i live and kill me.
  

• I'm surprised there is so much misspelling in an author's room.
• That isn't misspelling. It's typogenesis.
  

• My husband SAYS he understands; he THINKS he understands; he asks why I'm not doing anything...but god help me if I get any paint out and he suddenly thinks he's hungry
• Is there the possibility of decapitation or stoning if he catches you saying something off color in here?
• Not really. he's a stereotypically blowhard Pakistani.
• No, he's a moderate, so there is the threat of semidecapitation and pebbling.
  

• Faulkner's stuff is good, if you weed through all the unnecessarily difficult style...
  

• My latest book,"three glass eyes in your chicken noodle soup" has just been optioned by NBC.
• Was that originally a submission for Chicken Suppe for the Sole?
  

• Can we stop acting like 7th graders and act like 5th graders for a change? When chatmates eat their young. Film at 11.
  

• I've carved out a career writing disclaimers. Believe it or not, this sentence will be good for 15 minutes.
  

• Michael Moore's hooker movie: Bowling For Concubines.

• I read the funniest thing in the"Overheard In NY" blog today.
  
• "Blood center rep: Ma'am, would you like to donate blood today and save a life?"
  "Woman: No, I'm donating into my maxi-pad as we speak."
  "Blood center rep: Ewww."
• I would have just said, "I gave at the orifice."