SOUNDING THE RETWEET

As I mentioned last week, I have dipped my reluctant toe into the murky “World of Twit” as I’m going to annoyingly continue to refer to it. This move was much to the chagrin of those that know me, as well as myself to be honest. What on Earth, pray, was I thinking? I am not, after all, the most sociable of creatures and most of my friendships and acquaintanceships across my life have stuck to me like I was coated in Teflon, so the whole point of signing up for this bizarre world does seem to be rather a pointless move, especially as it smacks of the kind of hypocrisy you only get in politics these days after all my rantings and railings against the phenomenon over the past couple of years.

"Publicity is everything"
A classic "Peanuts" image
from the pen of the late, great
Charles M. Schulz

Well, it all began when things here in Lesser Blogfordshire no longer seemed to be engaging the admittedly few visitors to our dark little world any more. It started to bother me, especially after a sequence of not exactly “dangerous” postings, but ones that were very introspective and gloomy. This, I believed, was not the fluffy stuff that was to be more usually found in the crazy, fun-filled world of FizzBok, and I thought that I needed to find another place to park the notifications of my humble offerings, so that the world might just spot it as they passed along by. Not unlike Lucy’s Psychiatry stall in “Peanuts”, I believed. Just a little sign to let you know I was here, and then leave the rest up to you. I am not, after all, one of the great self publicists of life. Someone once said that I should call any business I ever set up “Light Under A Bushel Enterprises” and I think they knew me better then than I even know myself now.

So, the problem remained. What to do? When, as the “author” (if that doesn't sound too pompous), you choose to view your outpourings, there are little buttons underneath the piece tempting you to “share” with the big wide world by 5 various means: Email This (too presumptive on your good natures), Blog This (thought that I already was), Share to Twit, FizzBok or GoggleBuzz (Hmmm… Not sure, but it sounds as if I use that, people might think I think this is worthwhile or something…). Well, FizzBok obviously wasn’t working (due to the Teflon coating) so I thought I’d give the Twits a go.

Of course, I know that some of you are “following” these ravings, but “following” is such a strange word to put an absolute definition to. I mean I know what it means, but certainly here in “Blogger” “followers” (and I really do dislike the messianistic connotations of the term) don’t seem to be told when one of us has added to our pile of bile, so short of relying on you to make regular visits (and why should you…? You’re all busy people with lives to lead and stuff that needs attending to…) there are few ways to let you know I’m still here to be actually “followed” as I spout off about my latest thoughts and deeds. If I don’t let you know via FizzBok, how on Earth are you to know that I’ve not just faded away and given up on my mad ravings and just finally fallen into the foaming mass of lunacy that so obviously awaits me?

So I joined the Twits and spent a bewildering couple of days trying to get my head around the subtleties of how it works, looked at a few things and people of interest, got a tiny bit of insight into the lives of the great and the good of this world of ours, decided that, whilst it is obviously a genuinely much enjoyed place by a large number of people, it probably really wasn’t for me. So I deleted a number of my pointless tentative 140 character (or less) mutterings in the whirlwind of words and got the hell out of there, vowing only to post the blog links there in future and not hang around any longer than I had to, for that way, for me at least, madness might truly lie.

So what did I learn in my few days in Twitworld? Not a lot really, with the exception that I wasn’t a snug fit within it. Other than finding out that Robert Llewellyn was stuck in a massive traffic jam last Friday, and that Stephen Fry had flown to San Francisco (lucky devil!), I also discovered that Mark Gatiss was writing about Dartmoor for “Sherlock” (which can only mean one thing, surely… “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!” – Excited now…) and Steven Moffat’s 9 year old son had a new nose hair (I rather embarrassingly replied to that before I realised quite who it was who’d written it…). Oh yes, and Simon Pegg was busy playing an interesting game of “three word movies”, but I was too shy to contribute my own humble effort (“Unsinkable ship sinks”) before I ran away and hid.

It did, however, serve one useful purpose for me as it turned into a kind of repository to track my thoughts from the previous day as I came to compose these postings of a morning, but I suppose I only really needed a good notebook (and better handwriting) to achieve much the same thing.

I suppose for the sake of compounding my own embarrassment, and with a view to putting some of my thoughts down for posterity, I should share one or two of my Twittish observations with you here, just to prove, if anything, that it was wise of me to leave. I was after all, playing in the big leagues when it came to pithiness, and felt that I would be found wanting. Still, it wouldn’t be fair of me if I didn’t confess to at least a few of my shortcomings back here in the genial and comfortable surroundings of Lesser Blogfordshire. Perhaps you should think of them as “trailers” for some of my future witterings…

How can Photoshop keep telling me it's "unexpectedly quit" when it does it so often that I'm fully "expecting" it to...?

Stupidly, stupidly happy that the TV series version of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" is getting a DVD release this year...

Every time I try to listen to the radio serial "The Slide" on CD, the phone rings. Maybe I should give up and just make it my ring tone...

and this “classic” where I ended up replying to myself:

I do wish politicians would stop trying the "snappy" one-liners or the "witty" sound-bites. They're really SO bad at delivering them...

@MAW_H Hang on... Why should I expect politicians to deliver anything? The clue's in the job title...

You can see now why the world really wouldn’t be moved and why I have decided that I may well be a twit, but I’m one that doesn’t Twit…