The Anonymous Blonde's Parlor Games for the Next Millennium

So it has come to my attention that there is this new American pastime called Instant Messenger, where you sit around on your computer all day and talk to your friends and lovers through typing things. I thought it sounded exciting, like a telegraph, so I tried it out, but I found it to be extremely distasteful. No one used proper grammar, or spelled anything right, or capitalized anything, but instead peppered their conversations with unattractive smiling faces and shortcuts like "brb" and "gr8." The worst part, however, was that no one seemed to have anything to say to one another. Conversation seemed to have degenerated into strings of acronyms, feeble puns, and assertions that one is going to "brb" or that one is, inexplicably, "laughing out loud." Why anyone would laugh out loud because someone else is being right back, I will never understand.

This grieved me. Gone, apparently, are the days of my youth, when gentlemen & ladies entertained each other in parlors by exchanging bon mots and engaging in amateur theatrics. What has happened, I thought, to the lost art of conversation?

And so I determined to restore it. By playing the AB's Parlor Games for the Next Milennium, lazy IM-ers can have long, fascinating conversations without bothering to type a single word. No acronyms necessary: I typed out all the hard-to-spell words for you. Each link on this page will bring you to one-half of a fascinating, pre-scripted conversation. Simply choose a part to "play" -- A or B -- and send a buddy the URL for the other part, and you're ready to go! All you need to do is copy and paste your half conversation line by line into the instant messenger box-thing. You copy and paste the first line on your page into the instant messenger chat window and hit return, and then your buddy responds by copy-and-pasting the first line on his or her page into the window, and you copy and paste the second line on your page, and so on. Everything he or she says will be a surprise, but you'll know JUST what to say in response! You can go on for hours, or at least minutes!

For best results, make sure not to read the other side of the conversation you'll be engaging in. If you need to IM your buddy the URL for his or her lines, you can just replace the "A" or "B" in the URL for your lines with "B" or "A," & send him/her that address. Happy pretending! Isn't it so fun to use complete sentences, and in character???

You have three conversations to choose from. Choose wisely!