Mara Vey's pellet: are we seriously doing this at dinner now?

ramekin · #18 now I have to admire the engineering

Exactly. I could have lived with, ‘I should have waited for the bin.’ Nobody needed a confession that Cairn is wicked or that her entire body is disgusting. I know the pellet was sealed. My stomach would still turn if it appeared beside my glass, and I would still have to finish dinner there. Instead we got an explanation of her dress, as though the other seven people at the table had ordered it for her.

secondhelping · #19 I should have waited for the bin.

I was trying to separate the thing she did from the thing you want her to believe. I believe you about your stomach. You can say ‘please move that’ without making her publicly perform disgust at herself. Your feeling is real; the confession you're asking for is a choice. Apparently that distinction now requires a licence and a small doctoral thesis.

phasechange · #20

secondhelping · #19 I should have waited for the bin.

perform disgust at herself

It came out of her body and goes in a bin. It is bodily waste by definition. The wrapper doesn't turn it into a dinner guest. You turned ‘keep excrement off the table’ into a demand for public self-loathing in under six minutes. That's impressive even for you.

The retainer comparison remains unanswered. If I lay my clean retainer on your plate, are you going to thank me for resisting stigma, or will you suddenly remember that dinner involves other people?

And does Cairn kill the gut bacteria before making the skin, or does the skin just hold them in? If it gets nicked beside the bread, what exactly comes out?

Technical correction from someone who services Cairn: the pellet has a sterile, inert core made mostly of lignin and minerals under a polymer coat. It isn't live stool in a wrapper. An everting sleeve presents one pellet for collection. A nick in the coat might shed dry material; it doesn't release live gut bacteria. The pellet can go loose in a bag like a receipt until it reaches an ordinary bin. Once a person catches and handles it, the outside is an ordinary handled surface. Please stop saying the object on the table was sterile on every side. We don't know what her fingers had touched, and the same is true of everyone's cutlery.

sealcheck · #22 the outside is an ordinary handled surface

Fair. I was talking about the contents, and I should have said that. If somebody handles the pellet and then food, wash your hands. That is a reason to handle it sensibly.

Ramekin, I wouldn't want your clean retainer on my plate. If it sat by my glass, I would ask you to move it. My reaction wouldn't prove your mouth was filthy. I can believe a diner feels sick at the sight of the pellet without letting that feeling decide what Vey has to say about her own body.

The person who brought the bin had a job to do during service. Maybe they minded, maybe they didn't. I mind the little courtroom that appears whenever a guest decides the staff's response for them: it's sterile, it's funny, it's an honour to help, take your pick. Then if the worker has a face for half a second, the worker is the story.

trayreturn · #24 the worker is the story

Yes. Organizers should have a disposal route before the first course, and staff should know where the bins are. That's my criticism of the venue. A plan also spares a server from improvising for a famous guest while a photographer records everybody's face.

table12 · #25 A plan also spares a server from improvising

The pellet goes loose in my bag, like a receipt. When I don't have a bag, I wait. Cairn lets you choose when to release, which is the one part of this story over which Vey definitely had control.

I am tired of being cast as a traitor to every person in a pocketless dress because I think a guest can ask for a bin before making a table problem.

coatcheck · #26

table12 · #25 A plan also spares a server from improvising

I wait.

i already said she should've brought a bag. maybe read the thread before assigning me a team shirt.

what's maddening is that a woman makes one rude choice, and people who weren't there spend the next twelve hours trying to make her into a public health emergency.

I make formal clothes. A pocket is a design decision, not a lost technology. Clients bring me approved gowns and ask where a lipstick or a folded programme should go. Sometimes there is genuinely nowhere. The request goes back to the house and returns as a recommendation for a bag.

That explains why a pocketless dress reached this table. It doesn't tell Vey what to do with a pellet once she was seated.

pinsandseams · #28 A pocket is a design decision

Thank you. I would also like a pocket. I don't release things from my intestine at the table when my clothes lack one. This has been a remarkably successful arrangement for everyone around me.

Someone has now claimed she smiled at the waiter, waved the pellet at a child and timed it for the camera. Which frame shows any of that? You can dislike the photograph without manufacturing three more photographs in your head.

smallmercies · #30 Which frame shows any of that?

I checked the picture-desk caption and Vey's statement. The image shows the pellet by her wineglass and a waiter approaching with a bin. Her statement says she had no pocket and no bin within reach. Neither source tells us she asked a worker to touch the pellet or that she arranged the photograph. Please distinguish what is in the record from what you imagine happened just outside the frame.

Fine. Strike the imaginary child and the imaginary wave. We still have the very real object beside a wineglass. You don't need to invent a second scene to object to the first one.

sealcheck · #22 the outside is an ordinary handled surface

I'm watching people learn that a pellet's polymer coat is merely ‘an ordinary handled surface’ and instantly decide the whole thing is over. Try offering my brother the same grace when I wash my hands and use his bathroom. He'll ask which towel I touched. The science lecture only seems to travel in one direction.

stillanalog · #33

sealcheck · #22 the outside is an ordinary handled surface

The science lecture only seems to travel in one direction.

Your brother's behaviour is cruel. I said so this morning and I mean it. The same principle is why I want claims about Vey's pellet to be accurate. I can agree the table was a bad place for it without pretending the packet was spraying anything. If that sounds like a lecture, at least it applies in both houses.