“You’re kidding me, right?” whispered Adium, my instant messenger application, over the ice bucket that my mom put on top of the washing machine in the back hall, where we both stood, me making a vodka and tonic, and him just having a root beer, “Those guys are huge! I’m not going to say anything bad about them to you. They’d swallow me in a second. They’re like the O’Doyle family in Billy Madison. They rule, and they’ll hit you if you don’t think so.”

Like most of the applications on my computer, Adium refused to chat on the record about their personal feelings toward Microsoft Office, but like most of those other applications, Adium misunderstood the nature of our relationship. I didn’t care if they thought something was off the record. I recorded it anyway.

Take iTunes, for instance. As we stood admiring the collection of nutcrackers that my mom keeps in the living room, she confided that she thinks Microsoft Office, as a group, are a bunch of “sad little bitches” — and she did that little thing with the “b” in bitches so that I knew she meant it in a gangsta kind of way.

“I think Excel is the worst,” she continued, “I mean, my whole thing is rows and columns too, right? It doesn’t take a whole lot for me to make myself presentable in the morning. But Excel, working with same basic body, can’t go through the trouble of looking good. I just have no respect for that.”

I wanted to get more from iTunes — she does like to be heard — but my mother interrupted us to see if we wanted some little cocktail wieners that she had cooked up in some Ragu™ sauce (“And I added some beer!” she squealed with high-schoolish delight).

During dinner, I sat between Firefox and Cyberduck, my web and FTP browsers, respectively. Without me even having to do anything, the two of them went on a rant about Microsoft Office. Firefox hated their relationship with Microsoft Internet Explorer, its avowed enemy. Cyberduck didn’t have much original say. He more acted like Firefox’s sidekick throughout the whole exchange. A real Mugsy character: “Yeah!” and “That’s right, Firefox!” and “You can say that again.”

Firefox’s biggest beef was with the way Microsoft Office was always ignoring its presence on the computer. “It acts like I don’t even exist. As if Microsoft Internet Explorer was the only web browser on the planet. That’s just not cool”

“Yeah,” said Cyberduck, “You can say that again.”

The most interesting thing I discovered about Microsoft Office is that, as popular (or as notorious) as it is among one group of applications, it’s almost completely ignored by a whole other group. I thought that Halo, a game whose identity is all mixed up with the Microsoft X-Box, would at least have some insider information about Microsoft Office, but she barely knew who I was talking about: “The ones with the little paperclip, right?”

The entire Adobe Creative Suite threatened me when I mentioned the Microsoft Name. They were sitting on the stairs, looking liked a packed pyramid. Adobe Illustrator was at the top, right under the picture of me at the junior prom with Katie Surrett; Adobe InDesign and Adobe Acrobat were just below him (Adobe InDesign with a cigarette in her mouth, despite the fact that my mom already asked her to put it out twice); and Adobe Photoshop, that big bull dyke, was at the bottom: she had one hand on Adobe InDesign’s knee and the other slipped under the bottom of Adobe Acrobat’s dress. When I mentioned Microsoft Office, Photoshop laughed, which caused the others to sneer. I think Adobe Illustrator may have even spat on me.

The only positive statement I heard about Microsoft Office came from all the little word processing applications that were playing with the train that went around the Christmas tree in the living room. Using one cute and adorable voice, they told me, as one, that “Microsoft Word was the bestest word processor in the whole world!” Then, in a dozen cute and adorable little voices, they all explained that Microsoft Word can do all the things they dream of doing.

Then AppleWorks, sitting on the couch, cane by his side and scotch in his hand, snarled, “Yeah, but he can’t do none of it right.”

My mom stopped him with a hush before I could ask for more.

But perhaps the most telling illustration of what the other applications on my computer think of Microsoft Office comes from the fact that no one spoke to any of it at my mother’s dinner party. Adium talked to Firefox. Firefox talked to NetNewsWire. Cyberduck talked to TextWrangler. BigBangChess talked to iChat. Comic Life talked to iPhoto. iBiz talked to iCal, who made sure that Mail was included, who brought Preview along wherever she went. iTunes talked to iScrobbler. Quicktime Player talked to Safari. Everyone talked to everyone else.

Except for Microsoft Office. The only one who talked to Microsoft Office was my mom. She thought Microsoft Office was “very nice” and “very sweet.” But my mom is an awfully nice lady, so we shouldn’t let her be the judge.