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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Little glimpses of infinity

Little glimpses of infinity skip off the water spread out before me on the canvas of the gray Sound."
--Dizgraceland, Tweet from the train, May 19, 2010

Okay, so sometimes my tweets come across like a C+ paper in a 7th grade creative writing class. It is often the best I can come up with at 6:45 in the morning before more than two sips of coffee on the train. It is also hard to prolific typing with your thumbs in a form that only allows 140 characters or less.

I suppose my tweets are no worse than the average texting shorthand crap that passes for prose these days. At least I tweet in full sentences. Take this gem for instance:

"The roots of dissent grow deep in the soil of mindless rebellion fertilized by the compost of mental corruption! Priceless drivel!"

I haven't a clue as to what I meant when I wrote it, but I think it did get an anarchist to begin following me on Twitter (which is a step up from the porn spammers who are trying to sell me passwords to few their photos).

Just so you don't think I only tweet highbrow stuff I'll share another jewel from my tweet archive:

"Watched a woman stand waiting leash in hand while her dog took a dump. When he is done she'll pick it up in a bag. Who is the dumb animal?"

I am not sure why I try so hard to be a "twit wit," the term I've coined for the perpetually over clever tweeters who obviously spend way to much time picking out one liners with their thumbs on their smart phones trying to one up each other. I have no one to one up since as I've pointed out the only people who follow my tweets are spammers and anarchists. And nine times out of ten they stop following out of boredom or because I don't buy their passwords.

I have to say that celebrity tweeters for the most part don't seem to have much in the clever department to say. Perhaps it is because they aren't being scripted. Tom Hanks primarily posts photos of food he is eating on location. William Shatner rambles incoherently, but that seems in character. Conan O'Brien is the notable exception. But then again he was a copywriter before he was a late night star.

I shouldn't diss on the stars. Most of them have like two million followers who I imagine believe that by friending a star on Twitter, you are becoming one of their closest friends.

I suppose I tweet for the same reason I blog, to sharpen my craft. Because sometimes I come up with real pearls like:

"I can't march to the sound of a different drummer because it is raining on my parade. I'm going back in my box to think until it stops."

I said they were pearls, just not necessarily of high quality or clarity.

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