Severed Heads Will Roll
If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in history — October 16, 1793 — that infamous cakestress Marie Antoinette was beheaded before God and country, which just goes to show you can’t trust the bloody French. After all, this was their Queen, herself the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. According to the history books — which is to say, a random lot of wholly unsubstantiated Twitternet™ sites — her marriage to the Dauphin of France was initially championed; the citizenry were charmed by Marie’s beauty and goodly nature, however the French being French — ill-mannered, provincial and dastardly in the extreme — soon turned on her like a Ronco® rotisserie, accusing her of all manner of unseemly ways, including kissing her husband with open mouth and decanting cheap Australian wine in the good crystal. Alas, 'twas an innocent aside in the buffet line at a fútbol tailgate party that was her ultimate, tragic undoing. After helping herself to the Swedish meatballs, jalapeño cheese poppers and boneless Buffalo wings, she snagged a state fair crème puff at the dessert table, while leaving the celebratory sheet cake untouched. “A shame to cut into a cake this lovely," she said, "I’ll leave it for the others.” But that wasn't what the wait staff heard! As their story spun out of control, Marie was said to have dismissed the hunger pangs of the peasants with her mean-spirited rebuke, “Let them eat cake,” to which the cake eaters responded, “Off with her head.” And so 'twas that only months after the execution of her husband King Louis XYZ — he for his own misinterpreted comment about the quality of cigars at a poker game — that she too was taken to the guillotine. But unlike those phony baloney guillotines seen at haunted houses ‘round Halloween, this actually did the trick — sans treat — and her head tumbled off like Bruce Dern’s down the stairs in “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Or You'll Waken Baby Jane).” There’s a lesson to be learned here, citizens, and that is: Keep your bloody traps shut, in private company and especially the digital chit-chat rooms. You never know who’s within earshot or how they'll respond to even a harmless aside. You might say, "Canadian nu-metal band Nickelback is over-rated,” and an irate fan might say, “Blow up his house.” You might say, “That's the cleaning lady's job,” and the cleaning lady might say, “Steal her identity.” You might say, “Let the kiddies eat cake” and your psychotic sister-in-law might say, “Why don’t you just inject them with Type 2 Diabetes while you're at it?” One never knows, least of all Yours Truly Dooley®, Internet Patrolman™.
