Say it with less than 140 characters


I'll admit that I'm intrigued with twitter. It might be a childlike fantasy that we can have super powers and read other peoples thoughts. Apparently people are only too willing to post their thoughts online as long as the thoughts are less than 140 characters. As a result I no longer have that fantasy. Most messages demonstrate that the majority of us live very mundane lives. I find this vaguely reassuring, being ordinary.
One bright spot in this world of under 140 characters is the opportunity to write Haiku and Poems (at least short poems). It's quite satisfying to conceive an idea and as you type it, watch a character counter tick to zero. It changes color just as it passes 10. Hit return and your pithy observation is born to the world (or as it is known the twitterverse). One person observed that many of the Haiku are written about cats. If you have a cat I don't need to explain this.
I don't see many poems or novels coming through, but it is just a matter of time. Haiku is big on twitter , really big. I have provided a link to a running feed of twitter haiku traffic (look in right column beneath the chickadee photo, scroll down).
In school we were always asked to write a 3 page essay or a 1000 word book report. Isn't it great to be constrained to less than 140 characters?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sandy Hook Mother's Day Card

Image
I cannot fathom the anguish these grieving families are experiencing since the Sandy Hook massacre.  On this Mother's Day the Sandy Hook Promise foundation has posted an online Mother's Day Card for the mothers of the slain children.
Read more

Scott Brown Victory in Massachusetts

Email is not the proper forum for discussion so I created a place-holder topic on this PUBLIC site to discuss the recent historic election of Scott Brown, a republican in the very blue state of Massachusetts. Keep it civil folks! I am the moderator of this blog and I can block comments that are off topic or nasty. The Democrats are already in a circular firing squad looking for someone to blame but this victory did not surprise me, even though I'm a bleeding heart liberal. I was upset with the special treatment that some of the senators got for supporting health care, or maybe jealous because our senator Jeanne Shaheen wasn't clever enough to hold out for more. I still have hope for Obama's presidency, but I did detect a bit of back room Chicago style politicking. I didn't care for the secret meetings when I was "hoping" for the transparency and the online postings of legislation. So weigh in with your opinions here instead of sending "reply to all&qu
Read more

I'm Joe the Plumber

On a recent morning walk, my friend John Poltrack suggested that maybe I would have been a better icon to represent the proverbial small business man than the now world famous Joe the Plumber . John the Software Engineer owns his own business, employs people, and pays a good chunk of his business income in taxes. I think I pay too much in taxes, but of course everybody thinks that. I made the mistake one time of sitting down and calculating how much of Big Time Software’s income actually goes out in taxes of way form or another and the answer is a very discouraging 50%. That qualifies as too much in my opinion…and I still consider myself a patriot despite what Joe Biden might think. My business makes more money than Senator Obama seems to think I deserve to keep, so I can look forward to being in his crosshairs to pay even more should he be elected President. I certainly don’t want to attract the scrutiny of the crack investigative media teams that have unearthed every skeleton in p
Read more