Slouching Towards TwitterLand

I’ve spent my overabundance of free time the past couple of days trying to figure out Twitter. I’ve written about this before, and maybe I’m just too old or uncool or whatever, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I know it’s useful for quick status updates about what you’re doing in the moment, and I used it myself for just that purpose when the family headed down Disney World way. I also had it linked to my Facebook status, so that I wouldn’t have to spend more time on FB than I absolutely had to. However, since delving a bit deeper into the arcane mysteries of tweeting, I’ve come to realize that there’s a whole world hiding beneath that obnoxiously cute blue bird – a scary and off-putting world in which I am an unwelcome and hopelessly clueless stranger.

It’s not that anyone has been hostile on Twitter or anything. In truth, people haven’t been much of anything to me on the service. Take a look at my Twitter feed and you’ll see that, apart from a few friends and associates, I don’t follow many people and not many follow me. I’m not looking to attract a horde of people to track my every boring thought, nor am I very interested in reading about theirs. No, the unwelcome bit comes from Twitter being a fairly closed community, where you must actively seek to build an audience through means entirely artificial and whorish. I’m not into that, as the things I tend to say have never been overly popular, even if a lot of people seem to be reading them. I’m not exactly the kind of writer who encourages a sense of reader ownership over what I write, unlike a lot of others in my profession. I’m more the opposite sort, the kind who talks to you rather than with you; the condescending, narcissistic prick who you either hate or love, or love to hate. I’m an elitist jerk most of the time, and I have no problems with yelling my opinions at anyone who doesn’t want to listen. Yeah, I’m that guy – but at least I don’t beat up kids on the playground or steal candy from old people. I have do have some scruples, you know. Still, with my propensity for shouting my thoughts at the heart of the world, you’d think I’d be a perfect fit for Twitter. You would be wrong.

The clueless part of me being a stranger in TwitterLand comes from me just not Getting It. I understand the basics of the technology, of how it works and why – but I just can’t seem to grasp what’s so damned great about tweeting. Maybe I’m just old and out of touch, or my life just isn’t filled with enough boring things to tweet about. I’m not sure what the reason is, but I do know that I feel conspicuous and out of sorts when roaming about in the fields of the Twitterverse. It’s strange too, because things weren’t always this way. I used to be hip to the latest and greatest in all things technological, especially when it came to communications. I was dialing into Bulletin Board Systems on my Apple ][ via a 300 baud modem decades before most of the world had ever head of the Internet. I embraced the anarchy promised by the dawning of the digital age, and I supported things like leetspeak (or l33tsp34k, if you’re so inclined). I was on local BBSs, long-distance systems and FidoNet. I used services like The Sierra Network (later The Imagination Network) to play games, chat, and fend off encroaching pedophiles in games of Boogers long before Nightline had ever even considered such a thing as a digital predator. I entered the world of the Internet via a 9600 baud modem and esoteric programs meant to translate TCP/IP stacks that are much more complex than the always-on connections we enjoy today. I used programs like Kali to convert TCP/IP to IPX/SPX so that I could play games like Doom and Descent with my friends. I used to know my way around the tech, the lingo and the quirks of the online world, but somewhere along the way, I must have lost my bearings.

I understand social media, I truly do. I use Facebook regularly (but minimally lately, although Boredom + New Phone = Facebook Frenzy), I have a MySpace page that I’ve neglected for well over a year now (like everyone else), and I write this blog. I have a grip on things like this, on using social media to connect with friends, family and my readers. What I don’t have a grip on, however, is something like Twitter. Since Brittany has been monopolizing our giant television whilst questing madly about the fantasy world of Ferelden in Dragon Age on the Xbox 360, I’ve been exploring this weird new world via my new iPhone. And, while I’ve used Twitter for some time now, I’ve only recently realized that I’ve been doing it wrong.

Logging into my Twitter account via a fancy applet on my phone, I found a much more complex and interesting society than I suspected would be there. Granted, I don’t understand any of it, but I can at least acknowledge its existence. I never knew, for example, about Twitter trends and hashtags, or how to track @triggered conversations. I’ve got a better understanding of these things now, of course, but I still don’t quite get them. Finding people on Twitter isn’t as easy as it is on a site like Facebook, so I didn’t spend much time searching out my acquaintances beyond those I already knew. What I did find, however, was a vast collection of people all around me who were frantically tweeting continuously throughout the day. They’re entering things like, “goin 2 git mah brows did” and “jist seed my ex an hims babymama”, or “they best b ova hea n get they brat b4 i call 911 police on they skank ass!!!!!!!” Clearly, I was out of my element.

In fact, I had the realization very early on that living in southeast Texas means never checking for Nearby Tweets unless you enjoy weeping for the future. I know Twitter feeds are supposed to be quick and informal ramblings about whatever is happening to you in the moment, but combining the mundanity of normal life with the bizarre protolanguage of textspeak and terrible grammar just rubs me the wrong way. It’s hard to get over just how obnoxious and terrible the crushing boredom of an average life must be when you sign on to Twitter and see it laid bare before you in 140 characters or less. It’s not something that I truly want to be a part of, but I’m afraid it’s a necessary evil in this brave new techno world of tomorrow, and I’ll have to force myself to penetrate the veil of stupidity and learn to walk amongst the plebeian horde of tweeting asshats if I want to succeed in life. It’s a little depressing.

Between working to master my Twitter skills and dipping my toes into the melodramatic antics of Final Fantasy XIII, I’ve been spending my time sitting around the house, doing as little as possible and being bored to tears. Mostly, when I’ve not been monopolizing the television myself, I’ve whiled away the time watching Brittany play through Dragon Age for the umpteenth time. She’s become obsessed with getting every achievement in the game, which often means playing through the entire thing a second, third, fourth, or ten millionth time. And, while it’s completely awesome to have a wife who enjoys a good game as much as I do, it can be frustrating when I’m itching to see what bizarre and freakish thing is said next in Final Fantasy. There’s just something terribly charming about a quirky Japanese game with dialogue translated into English and poorly acted that piques my curiosity, even though most of the “game” is spent watching overly long cinematics where the characters do as much time talking as they do making inappropriately provocative sighs and gasps between dialogue. It’s a fun time.

All week long, I’ve been comforting myself with the understanding that there are still plenty of days left to accomplish all of the chores I intended to get done over the break, but as the week presses on and I find the plethora of items on Brittany’s To-Do List looming out on the horizon like a thousand Japanese Zeros angrily zooming towards Pearl Harbor, I’m starting to get a little panicked. I’ve got oodles of things to do, but no desire or energy with which to accomplish them. Complete apathy is the tragic pitfall of absolute boredom, where the lack of physical exertion is so great that it comes around the other side and makes you tired, exhausted, and lazy. Hooray for the debilitating effects of cyclical lethargy!

I did manage to be a little productive and make it to the grocery store yesterday, though. I wanted to cook up a nice, huge iron skillet filled with Mexican Cornbread, since Brittany has explained to me that she hates Mexican Cornbread. No, I didn’t do it because I enjoy torturing her with abhorrent foodstuffs. I did it because my Mexican Cornbread is actually good, and I knew she’d like it. Besides, I’ve watched so many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares that I sometimes feel like pretending to be Gordon Ramsay, which is fine when I’m at home and preparing a delicious meal for my family, but it’s not so great when Brittany and I go out and I start ranting like a madman about how my potato is rubbery and the ingredients haven’t been cooked from fresh. Brittany says it’s embarrassing when I get on my soapbox and start yelling at people, but I ask you – how else will they learn?! So anyway, I went to the store, trudged through the aisles of confused shoppers and bewildered stock boys, gathered my provisions and made my way to the self checkout, where I waited. And waited. And waited. I hate the damned self checkout.

Eventually, the clueless waterhead in front of me managed to finally scan the last of his frozen peas and persuade the machine to accept his twenty-three bucks worth of crinkled one dollar bills, and it was finally my turn. I quickly scanned my items, entered the codes conveniently labeled on my produce, and hit the big green Pay Now button. Of course, it was then that I learned I’d left my wallet at home, which put my disdain over those ahead of me in a new light. Being an elitist bastard most of the time has its perks, but one of the giant drawbacks is the great and painful fall that comes from crashing back to the reality that sometimes, even I can be deeply stupid. It’s hard to admit, but it happens. I begged forgiveness for my foolishness, put all of my items back in the little plastic basket from whence they came, and asked the attendant to hold them for me while I drove home to get my wallet. I could feel his scorn.

Anyway, that’s been my life for the past few days. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it more than I’ve had in living it, and I promise you that things will be more interesting next week. I start my new job this coming Monday morning, so I should have plenty to babble about in Tuesday’s entry. I’m hoping the wild world of publishing is more interesting than the soul sucking misery that was my life in a local school district, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that things get weird and wonderful very soon. If not, I may be forced to do something drastic and become an artist, where I’d at least be amongst the freakish and the bizarre. There aren’t many types of people in this world more delightfully strange and unknowable than artists, and starving ones are the best. I have high hopes that I would make an excellent starving artist, seeing as how I can’t draw a straight line to save my life. I could live out my days in obscurity and angst-ridden frustration before dying alone and naked, with a paintbrush in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. Then again, maybe my hideous creations would find huge success in the modern art scene and I could retire to live a life of eccentric bliss in some dirty corner of a New York borough. Either way, I will either fill my life with the weird and wicked things of this Earth, or die trying – but right now, I have a room to clean and a yard to mow. Eccentricity will have to wait.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

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Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

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This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

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Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.