You're invited to the virtual party dot
com
It's eleven o 'clock in the evening
I'm barefoot and I'm logged
on to the internet
You're invited to a virtual party
I usually pick up an email
in the af ternoon
But on weekends some
times I forget
I yell out in the hall to the bedroom,
Honey, I'll be right there.
She says, that's okay,
I got a brand new book,
And I'm not going anywhere.
Funny thing about a couple,
couple of years gone by,
You don't talk,
you think you know each other so well,
You don't have to try.
You take for granted what you used
to call enchanted just a while ago
When does a mystery turn into
history? I don't know
Anyway, I got a megabyte of data
coming down the line
I got a
Wall
Street profile,
got a spreadsheet from a friend of mine
But up on the screen,
pops a little green box that says click on me
Somewhere, I swear,
Alice in
Wonderland is calling
I look up at the clock, it's not as delayed as I thought,
it's only quarter to one
Hey, the download's finished,
I can take five minutes of having me some fun
The invitation's from
a web location in
Hong
Kong
It's already started,
this virtual party runs all night long
I said all night
Whoa, whoa, whoa
Don't invite us to a
virtual party tonight
Yeah, that's what it says
You're invited to a virtual party
tonight
There's computers in the microwave
Computers in the automobile
Computers in the phone
Yeah, even my wife used to tell me
To get a life
He's got a computer of his own
I spend so much time saving time
I can't find any time to spend
I'd take 13 episodes of
Star
Trek
But when am I gonna show them?
It's unbelievable
Must be 60, 70 people here at the party site
I do virtual parties
Icon s and avatars an
d images of movie stars
Surfing tonight
When I'm looking for a chat when I get a note
that says you want to go to a place more private
and kind of think you like it, I say,
I don't know.
She says her name is
Mata
Hari and that she's particularly
fond of older men.
Well, maybe so, maybe not.
Maybe she's a guy that's
got this urge to pretend.
And then it occurs to me,
I don't need this fantasy
But after all,
everything I've been looking for
I got and even more,
sleeping at the end of the hall
I shut down the box till
it's three o 'clock
By the time I get to bed
I lift up the cover,
snuggle next to my lover
Find a note there instead
Since the book was done,
I logged on, I found a message from
Hong
Kong
For this virtual party,
I think I might go as
Mata
Hari, and maybe all night long
I said, all night long
Oh, oh, oh, oh
You're invited to a
virtual party tonight
Ready or not,
I'm livin' in the 21st century
Gonna find two birds, one pot tonight
And now I gotta figure out ex
actly how to handle this thing
Do I get back on line?
An d get to the chapter?
And pretend maybe that I
knew that she was roachy
It doesn't beat all along, except how could I know unless I read the notes,
or I could pretend that I saw the notes back on the screen.
I wonder if she'll buy that.
She might buy that.
Yeah, of course.
Especially if she's still online.
Besides, if she's online,
why is she still online?
Who's she talking to?
Noel Paul Stookey 
