And I know it.

Twitter failures/Twitter ninjas

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A few months ago, I began spending a lot of  time on Twitter.

Part of the reason for this was that my mother joined Facebook, and I started being a little more careful about my posts there. (Sorry, Mom.) Part of it was that I’d attended a conference that made great use of the micro-blogging site, and I wanted to explore the many uses of Twitter. Part of it was that Facebook was beginning to annoy me. Why? The Oatmeal has a great cartoon, How to Suck at Facebook, about that.  I thought Twitter might be less abrasive. I was wrong. You can suck at Twitter, in 140 characters or less.

All kinds of folks are bad at Twitter. Random people who take part in giant, misspelled hashtag-driven conversations like #thatswhyyourmyex.  Celebrities who use the medium to feed their own bloated egos, and who use the RT feature to trash the fans who disapprove. People who blatantly use the medium to promote their businesses without giving their followers anything extra for following them. People who have decided to start repeating their tweets, just in case we missed them the first time.

I was tempted to prepare a list of actual people who are failing at Twitter, but that’s not fair, or helpful, to anyone. So I thought it might be better to point to five people (and organizations) who are really skilled at using the site. These tweeps are advancing their personal agendas, of course. But they are also giving an added value to their followers. I enjoy following these people because I feel like I’m getting something out of their tweets. Either I’m getting to know them, or I’m laughing, or I’m learning something. And because they clearly care enough to put some thought into their tweets, I care about reading them. Is this a complete list of all the talented Twitterers out there? No. This is a list of five users I admire.

NASA – NASA has many, many Twitter accounts. The Mars rovers are each on Twitter. The Cassini mission is on Twitter. The Hubble Space telescope is on Twitter and I get something from following each of them. I get updates on the space program. I get pictures from Saturn. Several months ago, when the current Mars rover was still operational, I got updates from the surface of Mars every day. That’s just awesome.

http://twitter.com/#!/MarsCuriosity/status/54936056201621506

Kevin Smokler – I don’t know exactly why I enjoy following the founder of BookTour on Twitter. I just do. It could be the fact that he seems to be on Twitter 24 hours a day. It could be that he’s always sharing some fascinating piece of information (Bob Marley has 106,000 followers on Ping; more than half the houses in Venice, Italy aren’t occupied; there is an iPhone app that reminds men to groom themselves. What doesn’t the man know?) Or it could be that every tweet is written with such a genuine voice that I can’t help but read his feed. Follow him (@Weegee). It’s worth it.

http://twitter.com/#!/Weegee/status/55406425660329984

Electric Literature – Electric Literature had me at “Rick Moody.” Last year in an experiment that I don’t think they have ever repeated, Electric Literature spent a week tweeting 140-character installments of a short story Moody had written for them. Every few minutes, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. , for five days, someone tweeted part of the story. I’ll be honest. It wasn’t a great story. And I can see how tweeting a whole short story can be wildly impractical and labor intensive. But the experiment made me so happy. I had something to look forward to every few minutes. I was able to read short installments  when I was stuck in traffic or at work. It was like being on a morphine drip, except instead of getting morphine, I was getting original fiction. So even though the editors may never do it again, and although the magazine’s feed has not been very exciting of late, I’m including Electric Literature on this list.

http://twitter.com/#!/ElectricLit/status/55284898742796288

George Takei – Who is better than George Takei? And what’s better than a 73-year-old man who wields Twitter as Mr. Sulu once wielded his fencing foil? Sure, George is using Twitter to advance multiple agendas: Gay marriage equality, an end to bullying, aid for Japan, and, of course, his own career. But he’s not an agenda-advancing machine. He also uses Twitter to get his fans to send thousands of Valentines to little old ladies, and he’s just funny. George, I will read whatever you tweet. Even the shameless self-promotion posted below. And not just because I had a crush on Mr. Sulu as a kid. (File that one under the hastag #brokengaydar.)

http://twitter.com/#!/GeorgeTakei/status/55647277993312256

Susan Orlean – I think, for an aspiring writer, author Susan Orlean is the most inspiring person I follow on Twitter. She’s also funny, personable and uses hashtags the way some writers use parentheses. In the last year, I’ve read her tweets as she worked on her book about Rin Tin Tin.  We’ve never communicated directly, yet I’ve felt united with her as we’ve tried to make our daily word counts. I’ve watched her procrastinate online, take pictures of her pets instead of writing, and finally finish her manuscript. And I’ve identified with her every tweet. Well, except for the tweets about chickens. Apparently she shares her home with chickens and the occasional waterfowl.

http://twitter.com/#!/susanorlean/status/55374657834065920

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Brazil

Last night, we watched the worst movie I’ve seen in a while: Brazil.

I had been excited about this film. I like Terry Gilliam,  and I’m a fan of Metropolis and 1984 and Dr. Strangelove. Netflix put all those things together and decided I would love Brazil. But the strongest recommendation came to me a decade ago from a friend, who told me that Brazil was his favorite movie, and that I would love it and absolutely had to see it.

So my husband and I, tired from a long and exciting weekend of training and adjusting to life with our new dog, decided to take some time for ourselves and watch this fabulous movie. I grabbed some ice cream, he grabbed some wine and we sat down with the cat and popped in the DVD.

I haven’t hated a movie this much in a long time.

The plot was predictable, the characters were two-dimensional, the dream sequences went on and on and the humor wasn’t funny. I was furious. But my fury wasn’t so much directed at the things I didn’t like about the film. I was angry that I’d made us sit through the whole thing. We started hating the Brazil halfway into the film, but I didn’t take it out of the DVD player. Instead, I kept waiting for it to get good. It got worse. Much worse. And by the end of the film, I realized I had wasted our evening on a movie we both hated. And that made me angry.

I’ve always had a sort of finish-everything-on-your-plate approach to consuming media. If I start a book, I feel the need to finish it, even if I hate it and I’m supposedly reading it for pleasure. Same thing with movies. But I think I’m done. If I start reading or watching something that I don’t like, I don’t think I should guilt myself into finishing it. This is what Cordelia of Cordelia Calls It Quits would call a “quit.” In fact, this decision not to force myself to watch or read something I’m not enjoying was inspired by one of her own quits.

I’m not saying, by the way, that I’m not going to read and watch things I don’t like. What I am saying is that I ought to be honest about why I’m reading those things. If I’m reading Kafka, am I reading it for pleasure, to expand my horizons, or so I can check off The Metamorphosis on that BBC list of books that my Facebook friends have been passing around? Or am I reading it so that someday, at a cocktail party, I can stand there in my black turtleneck and tweed jacket and drawl, “Oh, that is so Kafka!”

If so, that’s fine. Maybe I’ll even enjoy The Metamorphosis. But I should at least know why I’m reading or watching something.

And I should definitely not screw up our movie nights by forcing us to watch a movie we both hate when we could be watching something with snappy dialogue and well-rounded characters.

See below for a dramatic re-enactment of my viewing of Brazil.

What the movie looked like a few minutes in.

What I looked like a few minutes in.

What the movie looked like near the end.

What I looked like near the end.

I’m done.

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The sneak synesthete

I feel kind of like my brain gave me a present this week. On Tuesday, I learned that I’m a synesthete.

One of my friends shared this article, “Your name tastes like purple” on Facebook. “Uck,” I thought. “I really hope my name doesn’t taste like purple.” That should have been a sign.

Synesthesia, I learned, by reading the article, is a harmless perceptual condition in which one sense is directly related to another. Some people see colors when they hear sounds. Some people associate tastes with colors. The synesthete who penned the piece wrote about her ability to see letters in color and visualize the year. As I read, I thought “So? Who doesn’t do that? Everyone associates the letter A with red, right?” By the end of the article, I realized that everyone does not. Read more

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The blue chair saga

This is a rant about, of all things, the blue chair in my office. It’s a paradise of a reading chair. There’s a lamp above it. There’s an ottoman. There’s a basket filled with magazines. There’s another basket filled with knitting supplies. There’s a nearby table with a fan on it for the heat in summer. It’s the warmest place in the room in winter. It’s perfect. It ought to be my favorite chair. Except it’s not, because I never sit in it.

It’s not because it’s uncomfortable. It’s simply because another creature is always in it. This has been going on for almost four years now, and today, I am giving up. Read more

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Big damn pet peeve: “But you’re a writer!”

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If you’re friends with someone who works in IT, or anyone who is really good with computers you’ve probably seen the “No, I will not fix your computer” tee shirt. I submit that there should be a similar tee shirt for writers. I don’t know how exactly I’d word it, but the gist would be the same.

I know what some of you are thinking: “You don’t know which words you’re going to put on your snarky tee-shirts for writers? But you’re a writer. You’re comfortable putting words together!”

This is a blog post about that. And by “that,” I mean the phrase “but you’re a writer.” Read more

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Still scared.

If I were Alice, the sight of this guy would have sent me shrieking and clawing back up the rabbit hole.

I thought I was over it.  I appeared to have outgrown it. I was sure that it was gone and would never trouble me again. Unfortunately, like so many other things from the ’80s that should be gone forever, my fear of caterpillars has returned.

 

Read more

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Facebook is the devil. But I can’t give it up.

It’s happened again. Disappearing friend syndrome. One day my friend is there, on Facebook. The next day, I want to post a video of an animal yelling “Helen” on her wall, and she’s gone. Not just gone from my list of friends, but gone from the network entirely. Her profile has been erased. She’s departed the Matrix. She’s given up Facebook.*

I can’t do it, but I understand the reasons why I should give up Facebook. This past weekend, I was walking down a very crowded street in Soho when I saw two faces I normally see only on Facebook. They were in the throng of people, moving past me in the opposite direction. I was disoriented for a moment. In fact my moment of confusion was all it took for me to lose them in the crowd again. So instead of greeting this couple on the street and congratulating them on their recent marriage in person, I sheepishly posted a greeting to a Facebook wall. That’s just wrong. Read more

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You can’t end bullying by being a bully.

Tensions are running high about the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who committed suicide after being outed as gay via his roommate’s online webcam. This blog isn’t really about Clementi’s suicide or teen bullies or the legal ramifications of what happened in New Jersey two weeks ago. It’s about the reaction to all three.

Oddly, I haven’t heard any live, in-person discussions about this story at the college where I work, but I’ve witnessed a lot of heated arguments online in the last few days. People are upset. Celebrities are posting videos, drawing attention to multiple gay teen suicides, and asking that society do something to stop the kind of bullying to which Tyler Clementi was subjected.

The problem? People are becoming hysterical, and that’s never good.

Read more

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