STRAIGHT FROM THE NEW YORK SCENE: AN IMAGINARY EAVESDROPPER'S REPORT

"My 8-year-old daughter wants to know what the U.S. gave France in exchange for the Statue of Liberty, and I didn't know the answer. Isn't it odd how your own children can make you feel like a complete idiot?"

"I don't know why it is such a big deal to her that the movie she's attending is a world-premiere showing. I think Sandra wants to be the very first in the entire world to tweet about that movie--and knowing how competitive she is, she might even do her tweet seconds after she began watching the movie inside the theater."

"Personally, I could care less whether I'm the first to tweet my reaction to a world-premiere showing of a movie I'm attending. As long as my tweet is more quotable than anybody else's, I don't mind being the last one to write mine."

"It's odd how tweets have transformed American courtships. I think women today are looking for a man who will delight them with clever tweets every week. But is that really what marriage is all about---a private fan club for a clever in-house quipster?"

"My husband is so heavily into Facebook that half the time I'm worried he will write yet another tell-all on Facebook about his most recent orgasmic moment with me. We might as well be porno movie stars faking a married life together. That's how vulgar it all seems, when I read his X-rated accounts about our married life on Facebook."

"To me, a woman who is looking for a clever Tweeter for a husband ends up looking like a Tweety-bird. In plain English, she's a bird-brained idiot to make that her top priority in her search for a husband here in Manhattan. There are plenty of eligible bachelors here who are not super-quotable, but would make very solid partners in the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and elsewhere."

"I find it sickening how this Tweet-fetish of so many New Yorkers is branding everyone as an idiot if they can't come up with a quotable quip every day. That's like saying that all the men of New York want to marry a Barbra Streisand, since she has a flair for clever rejoinders. They forget that Barbra Streisand is famous for never spending a minute of her time cooking an actual meal inside an actual kitchen. Cooking, to her, is like stepping down from the throne after being pelted with orange peels."

"She follows Tweets so fervently that I compare her to a Tweety-bird watcher holding binoculars in her hands at all times. I often ask her if she can find a more creative way to spend her time, but she gets very angry and accuses me of verbally abusing her whenever I offer her my candid opinion."