:: rubs hands together gleefully and waits ::

Bingo. Last paragraph – perfection.

I find Twitter to be oddly entertaining but I only read tweets from my friends. I’m shocked and horrified when other people — people I don’t even know — want to read my tweets but whatever floats their boats.

It’s not the twittershere, it’s the the Tweet-o-verse. (heavy accent on the O preferably with an Irish brogue)

It’s not lurking to follow w/o comment, it’s birdwatching.

I’m so ANGRY you haven’t adopted my vocabulary.

There is only one right way to use Twitter, just like there’s only one right way to teach or think.

I’ll be sending you the manual and vocabulary one @ddmeyer tweet* at a time so you can get things right.

*I personally find the word “tweet” really disgusting at a base emotional level (along the same lines as molding cat food). I’m not sure why.

Speak not such blasphemy Scott.

Reference tweets #3457b through #456667 entitled
“The Laws of Titter: canon, lexicon, ethnography”

Repent sinner or have your tweeting license revoked.

“The Laws of Titter”, Tom?

I think I hear the faraway bell-like tinkle of Freud laughing…

I call it titter because it give me joy while making me nervous- thus I often all a titter about twitter.

Why what were you thinking about?

Besides Freud laughed like a man. Bellicose and deep like tolling bells (except when he was high). Now Jung, he laughed like twinkling bells. I don’t know if he did coke though.

But…but…

Oh never mind.

P.P.S. Of course, since your Twitter page clearly lays out the “I’m only down with Zach…” premise, the aforementioned might seem a bit ‘off’.

But I did receive the “following” message this week.

Perhaps a bug in the 140c system.

Or perhaps there was a quick re-think on the “following” game after the first shout-out’s went live.

Dan, we all do different things with Twitter. I abuse it by trying to do drive by conversations (I know, I know, it’s not IM). I quit following you because I want a conversation, and you don’t (which you’re entitled to). I thought you were following me (I got an email saying you were. I guess you changed your mind. I’m touched that when you were considering following others, you choose me.

But Christian, I do wonder is this some sort of “commitment” issue Dan has? I mean before I quit following Dan, there were lots of questions about commitment around marriage. Perhaps I over-analyze?

Dan, I kind of wonder if Twitter is the wrong microblog for you for other reasons. You seem to be fond of visuals, and twitter sucks for that. I use tumblr for microblogging because it will take email/sms posting, but also images (example here: http://mizmercer.tumblr.com/post/24600049). And it doesn’t have comments, so you can throw down lightening bolts without worry about people leaving snarky comments like the one I put about commitment above. Also, davidville, which does it, is a mac shop (so the graphics are tip-top).

Look what you’ve gone and done, Dan. You’ve gone and forced me back into the dark side of the Twitterverse. Nice goin’, fella:
http://thinklab.typepad.com/think_lab/2008/02/dan-made-me-do.html The grenades you throw into the mix better be worth my falling off the wagon.

A. Mercer: I’m gonna let Dan volley back the “commitment” inquiry of yours. We fella-types tend to live in strange space when that word pops up (especially when women bring it up), and my gut feeling — plus conversations with Dan that back that instinct up — is that Dan is pretty smitten with his gal. Any summer camp love that makes it in the real world is the real thing. I wouldn’t make any connections between his impending wedding and the Tweet-Follow-Or-Not-To-Tweet-Follow concept. Word.

Dean: Beckett sends his best your way, albeit with a bit of a rocky belly that seems akin to Old Faithful these days. Hope all is well up there on the other side of the border.

why is everyone using the word ‘snark’?

me, I’m a Snork kind of guy.

Is that ‘snarky’ enough?

You snork, I snark, but I’m still not asking you permission to decide who I follow, no matter what Dan says.

I’ve been trying to like Twitter and find some real value … I really have. I use Flock as my browser, and Twitter is built right in. Very handy. So I try.

I think if you can find people to follow who consistently “tweet” about helpful resources, etc., then it might be worthwhile. I never really know what to tweet. Every now and then, a blog post or notes on a presentation. But isn’t that what RSS is for?

I’ll probably keep at it a bit longer, but the future is uncertain …

I’m hoping that someone out there with a smidgen of graphic design skill (Ethan Bodnar???) might contemplate a little ‘side project’ to support all of us in the dy/dan gang.

May I suggest uploading the following phrase over at CafePress to an old-skool, long-sleeved baseball t-shirt or even a hoodie that we could all order on-line:

“@ddmeyer used to follow me…but he moved on.”

Might also make a great bumper sticker to afix to one’s Mac, too.

This thread needs some culture. Suggested to my mind by Scott’s post. Billy Collins (former US Poet Laureate twice running) specializes in this kind of quirky fantastically funny/odd stuff.

The Revenant by Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you–not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair and eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and–greatest of insults–shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner–
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.

I think twitter is starting to be appropriated by the mainstream now – the way of most new things

I find the BBC twitters very useful

try BBC education
http://twitter.com/bbceducation