I love to look at my Twitter account to see how many ‘followers’ I have. Right now it’s at 56, which ranks me somewhere between @Lenny the Exciting Accountant1 and @Excrucia the Skunk Whisperer. I did have more, but they were of the spammy, porno type and so I blocked them.
It’s amazing how many sexual references one can make in 140 characters. My all time favorite thus far has to be someone who calls herself Rayna Heimer, which sounds like it should be a car part or an ex-Nazi war criminal. Her most creative tweet was, “I think my vagina is a bit different from a cereal box.” Well I should hope so! I’ve seen a lot of vaginas in my time, and though one or two of them bore an uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, I have never seen one in the shape of a cereal box! I mean, what kind of demented person would have sex with their Rice Krispies? And how are they doing that?
I have not blocked Rayna yet, because anyone who can be that creative in 140 characters deserves to be read some more. The kid’s got real talent, albeit with some genuine body image issues.
I do wish, however, that Twitter had come up for a better name than ‘followers’ for its participants. It makes them sound kind of creepy, you know? Like we all belong to some brainwashing cult and who will inevitably become like the Symbionese Liberation Army. Remember them? That’s the group that kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst back in 1974. After months of captivity, she had changed her name to Tonia, and her wardrobe to para- military, except for the cute beret she wore during bank robberies (a disguise no doubt!)
All of which begs the questions; will the “Lenny-istas” of the world begin a treasonous and seditious accounting revolution and suddenly start to unbalance people’s books? And will skunks no longer be content to stink up the car for days after we run them over on I-95, or will they band together and force us to our collective knees with one long, large, and protracted spray? So, in an effort to de-creepify the term ‘follower’, I am proposing that we change the term to something less intimidating, like ‘text sprites’. Isn’t that more pleasant?
Minor griping aside, the value of tweeting is in its ability to let the world know what you’re doing in the blink of an eye, and it is very, very cool... most of the time. There are those, for instance, who should NEVER EVER BE LET NEAR A KEYBOARD AGAIN. You know who I mean, @meet my intestines and @raw slug eater. We don’t need that kind of nonsense greeting us over breakfast. I almost choked on my fried chicken livers and eggs this morning, for God’s sake!
But if you have something legitimate to plug, there is no better way to get it ‘out there’ than this little bird symbol. Why, in order to reach the same amount of people that one reaches with just a single tweet, you would have to stand on a different street corner every three seconds for 6, 575, 352 years and shout your message at the top of your lungs! And I’m pretty sure that most of your followers would either be dead by then, or at the very least, have grown tired of hearing you yell the same thing over and over.
Think of how different history might have been had Twitter been around. Jesus, for instance, would have had no problem gathering disciples. One tweet from St. Peter that read, @Pete the Rock #dudes, He walked on water! Get down here now! Trust me, He would have had so many followers that no politician in his right mind would have messed with him. And instead of a Last Supper, that meal would have become known as the Annual Awards Banquet (“and the winner of Disciple of the Year is...Judas Iscariot!).
What if Paul Revere had the ability to tweet that the British were coming? @PaulyR #can’t sleep, light from damned church tower keeping me up! How about Amelia Earhart? @flygirl1 #wow am I glad this trip is almost ov...
It goes without saying that Tweeting has changed the course of today’s modern world. However, I will say it anyway; Tweeting has changed the course of today’s modern world. Historians will have to mention that the recent Arab Spring, which has seen the overthrow of despotic dictators and bears no relationship whatsoever to the Irish Spring, which is a soap that leaves your whole body smelling fresh as an Irish morning, could not have happened without Twitter. So for those of you planning a revolution, please be sure to shower frequently, and keep your cell phone and internet bills paid up to date. You don’t want to be in the middle of toppling a statue of the Great Brother in the middle of Aflaq Square and find yourself unable to call for backup. The Great Brother’s elite security forces tend to frown on that sort of thing, and the next thing you know, they have you tied up in some warehouse, trying to jump start your testicles with a Sears Die-Hard battery, or worse, forcing you to have sex with a box of Cap’n Crunch! So let’s be careful out there people.
Now that you know the value that Twitter, Tweets and Rayna Heimer (who I call Toots) bring to your life, let me get to the real reason for this essay. It’s a little something I like to call
The Shameless Use of a Public Forum to Plug a Personal Appearance!!!
This coming Wednesday (February 22, 8-10 pm), I am premiering Julia Scotti’s Comedy Test Kitchen, a weekly cabaret-type show at the Dark Horse Pub, 421 South 2nd Street, in Philadelphia, Pa, which as we all know is the coolest city on the East Coast. I expect you all to be there.
What excites me about the Comedy Test Kitchen is that the concept is very reminiscent of the early New York Philadelphia
*AUTHOR’S NOTE; I don’t really expect you do quit your job, or cash in the retirement account. That would be insane! So don’t do that. Really. I mean it, dammit! But if you happen to be in town that day, it’s a nice night out. Bring your boss or significant other. Hell, bring Reyna Heimer, as I have a lot of questions for her.
We’ve got a great, talented, ensemble cast of musicians, singers and comedians already lined up and I can promise you that if you like improvisational comedy and music, this is the place to come. If you are a newbie and want to step on a stage for the first time as a singer, musician, or comic, come check us out.
There you have it reader; a perfectly fine essay destroyed by a blog commercial (Blogmercial) for a nightclub act. Do you see how easily you can be led down the primrose path to sedition, my little text sprites? You’re mine I tell you...ALL MINE!!!! (Insert evil, villainess cackle here)
That’s it. I’m done bitching. Everybody hug, everybody eat! Abbondanza!
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