I use Twitter to alert my followers of new blog posts and occasionally a tidbit or two extra about one of the posts. But I can see I’m not using this social network for its intended purpose – to bore the crap out of my readers by sharing the minutiae of my daily life. So now I’m in the spirit as you will plainly see. Here’s a preview of my Tweets for tomorrow. If you don't follow me already you will be by the time you finish this.Woke up. Had to pee.
Peed for 41 seconds.
Can’t find my toothbrush. Is it in the medicine cabinet?
No.
Will brush teeth tomorrow.
??????????? Special K or Raisin Bran??????
Wow. Thanks to the 437 of you who voted. Raisin Bran it is!!!
Raisin Bran raisins are dry. Has anyone else noticed this?
375 do. Sweet!!!
What happens if the Microwave won’t turn off?
Welcome new followers: BF, Ice9, BigBadWolfestein, Ten2Life, GetWellJack, and Ann Coulter.
Drawing a bath.
Microwave answer: it explodes.
Writing blog post on lack of German comedy writers while waiting for fire department.
We need a Dunky D in LA!
Okay, the fire’s out but they didn’t have to use the axe.
Mail just arrived. AT&T bill for $125.90, Warner-Cable bill for $94.02, Cialis from Canada, foreclosure notice, EMMY magazine, charity, charity, charity, charity, jury duty final notice, charity, SELF magazine, rejection form letter from the New Yorker, Victoria Secrets catalog, NRA newsletter, Malinov-Silverman mortuary flyer, SHORTBUS DVD -- Netflix, Betty Ford Center patient application, shuffleboard tournament invite, charity, and a post card from my cousin Ira who’s in
Don’t you hate it when you have too many words and they just cut you off?
Saskatoon.
Making a tuna sandwich for lunch. I like it with relish. Do you?
Kitchen is still kind of smoky. Can’t see. Maybe I better go out.
Had to pee first. 29 seconds.
Ann Coulter just wrote that we should invade hostile countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war. And yes, gotta have relish.
ESPN sportscenter is on at Jerry’s Deli. I’m watching.
They had a story on A-Rod. Now they have one on the Celtics. I don’t know what though. The sound is down. Does anybody know what that story is?
Jerry’s Deli is expensive.
OMG! Forget to turn the bath water off. House is now flooded.
Changed my Facebook picture. Taken at Star Trek convention. I’m the Klingon on the right.
Does anyone who lives near me have a bucket?
House appears to be destroyed. Mood: sad.
Missing BREAKING BAD marathon on AMC tonight. Mood: REALLY sad.
Found toothbrush. It just floated by.
Can I stay with anyone tonight?
Nobody?????????!!!!!!!
Seriously.
I’m not kidding here.
437 of you voted on my fucking cereal choice but no one can spare a goddamn couch?!!!
I can’t believe this!!!!
Who gives a shit what the fucking Celtics story was? Jesus Christ! I’m homeless!!!
Okay.
Fine.
I piss on you all. 58 seconds.
The beauty of sites like Twitter and the like is that you have the choice NOT to follow or read these boring people if you don't want to. Democracy rules. Some of us aren't SEO experts, marketing gurus, small business specialists, or celebs. Some of us have normal boring ass lives. And we don't care if others don't like reading our boring twits. SM sites are like the tv - don't like the content, exercise your right to change the channel or turn the thing off all together. Follow us or don't, it won't change how self-indulgent we love being online. :-)
ReplyDeleteStacey
Believe it or not, some of us are having conversations with actual friends on Twitter, so that boring stuff to you is catch up information to them.
ReplyDeleteOne person's trash is another person's treasure, no? Especially when said friends life over 500 miles away and it's too time consuming to blog or email them what we're doing while we live so far away.
Stacey
wow, you touched a nerve there, Ken! don't worry, i thought it was funny! (because i'm sure you stay up wondering what i think!)
ReplyDelete*snicker*
ReplyDeleteRemember when I tried to explain Twitter to you Ken?
I guess you now know :-D
58 seconds *chortle*
And I chose to believe that "not enough german comedy writers" was directed at me ;-)
wv: match - now that's just boring...
Laughed so hard, peed where there wasn't a toilet. 22 seconds.
ReplyDeleteHilarious. This is just like your GPS post, in that I feel like you stole thoughts from my mind and made them funnier.
ReplyDelete-DJ
If u cn typ lk a sngphr u cn gt ur ntr dy n2 1 twtr pst evn w/ t chrtr lmt.
ReplyDeleteI don't really get this Twitter thing, but that's the first laugh out loud post in months. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious!
ReplyDeleteU can slp n my couch.
loved this! vry fny
ReplyDeletethe "ipod" generation -
I
Prefer
Only
Distraction
You failed to mentioned what kind of milk you used on your cereal - whole, 2%, 1% or skim. Egregious error.
ReplyDeleteAlso your bill paying was WAY more than 140 characters. we would miss vital info re your life.
Very timely, I just explained to my wife what Twitter was, and to hammer the point home, every couple of minutes I announced to her the mundane things I was doing while I was doing them.
ReplyDeleteNow, I embrace most technology (well, except cell phones), but I am at a completely loss as to why people would want to announce to the world what they are doing. Is this how people feel they are getting their 15 minutes of fame? Do people have nothing better to do than sit around and read what other people are doing?
And Stacey, if your life is too busy that you can't spend a minute writing an email, perhaps it's because you're far too busy tweeting, texting and who knows what else. Maybe the reason you have a boring ass life is because you're too busy watching other peoples.
Maybe the reason you have a boring ass life is because you're too busy watching other peoples.
ReplyDeleteYep, I'm a pervert (always good). I read this comment quickly and thought the last word was "nipples."
WV: napilm - The weapon of choice for habitual Internet misspellers pissed off at everyone for pointing out their mistakes.
I'm as tech savvy as the next person and I refuse to partake in twitter. It's bad enough SMS has bastardized spelling, grammar and punctuation and we have to endure people chatting endlessly into their blue tooth Star Trek headsets... now we have twitter because ICQ, SMS, Skype, Email and cell phones just weren't adequate enough to communicate the intricate banalities of life that in better days would have died on the synapses, never to be revealed.
ReplyDeleteNever have so many spent so much time communicating so little.
Meanwhile the world's economy is collapsing and we're raising a generation twittering idiots.
I like my tuna with relish,too(and onion).
ReplyDeleteJerry's Deli is expensive, but how about 20 bucks for a pastrami sandwich and soda. Katz' Deli in New York; but mmmmmmm, so good.
Hint; the very, very worst Twitterers are those that do nothing more than replicate what anyone could get (more usefully) from your RSS feed.
ReplyDeleteU nld it.
ReplyDeleteYou know how when you visit your grandma and she talks about all the boring things that happen to her and her friends? That's Twitter.
With all due respect to your Grandma.
One of the problems I see with twitter, facebook, et.al., is that it leaves you with nothing to say when you meet up in person. After a whole day of getting the minutia of people's lives, there's no need to say, "So what have you been up to lately?" I agree with the person who said, "we're raising a generation of twittering idiots." I'd add to that description: "self-involved, self-important, counter-productive, oversharing ..."
ReplyDeleteYou forgot one:
ReplyDelete"Not wearing pants today. Discuss."
Love your mail, Ken.
ReplyDeleteThat was great, Ken. Great illustration of why I don't Twitter.
ReplyDeleteYou can sleep in my spare room, but you'll have to fly to Florida in order to do so.
wv=epargibi. The electronic version of the newly discovered board game Pargibi
The folk already here make some good points...Milner Coupe--I agree, I don't understand the whole Twitter/Facebook/MySpace thing. I enjoyed the Usenet group for fans of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, but that was in the last century when the show was in production and dozens of people were posting regularly. Now it's as empty as the town in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.
ReplyDeleteSheila--"self-involved" is just the right word. Ken Twittered all day and never even mentioned Debby (Mrs. Cleaver).
Ken--I thought there WERE Dunkin' Donuts in Los Angeles. There definitely were in the early 1970's. That can be verified by watching a DVD of the TV show EMERGENCY!. One of the stock traveling shots they used had the Squad 51 paramedic truck passing a Dunky and its two story old-style sign.
And in the late 80's, there are episodes of MUrphy BROWN and THE WONDER YEARS where they used dummied up donut boxes that resembled the Dunkin' boxes of the time (proper time, to boot--the WONDER YEARS one did match the late 60's type packaging).
Which brings up the question...why are you not a fan of Winchell's, the dominate donut shop out there?
And, now for a truly educational event, please show us how you can turn that post into a hit show.
ReplyDeleteThat was hilarious, btw.
This is exactly why I follow you on twitter, Ken. You're all treasure.
ReplyDeleteStacey,
ReplyDeleteIf you can take the time to write two comment here, then it seems you probably really do have the time to send e-mails to your friends. But perhaps they are not worth the trouble of putting together more than one thought at a time.
Steve
Levine,
ReplyDeleteYou magnificent bastid!
I'll have to give Ira a chuck on the shoulder next time we cross paths. He never mentioned you two were cousins!
ReplyDeleteJust read today's blog while peeing... One minute, 47 seconds. Bladder now compeletely empty.
ReplyDeletewv: blong -- an extended-length hashish pipe
I'm guessing the Paul McCartney break in "A Day In The Life" may have been the first song composed with Twitter ("Woke up/Fell out of bed/Dragged a comb acrosss my head...")
ReplyDeleteThe fine Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts recently wrote a perceptive piece on the Twitter phenomenon:
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/931451.html
wv: "boatings" -- damn, it's too close to a real word to do anything funny with it.
wv2: "durvely" -- "gormless" (the old George Formby description) for a new generation.
-23 (-9.4 F) with a -36 (32.8 F) windchill.
ReplyDeleteStill jealous of your trip to Hawaii and Earl's to The Spa.
Canadians will never convince the world we don't live in igloos if the weather doesn't warm up.
That was the funniest thing I've read in ages. Tears streaming down face. Trapped in the house with 4 preschoolers and 1 toddler staring at me like I'm crazy.
Which I am.
I'll have to Twitter it to everyone I know.
Make that -32.8 F
ReplyDeleteExcellent post - I linked to it at my blog where I just posted - in a much less funny fashion why writers need to beware of twitter.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, you can sleep on my couch too.
Brilliant! This is the funniest Twitter post I have read yet!
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly unsolicited advice from your Dallas-area assbook friend of roughly the same age, whose internist once described said individual’s prostate as “big as the Texas sky.” Overflowing the tub or running water of virtually any kind does not make it any easier to pee through the power of suggestion.
ReplyDeleteFlomax, however does, and one of my deepest regrets is having resisted that potent urodesiac for so many years out of the belief one would not want to take any medication affecting the genital area that had been named after an Olympic hurdler.
Take it from I guy who has had to reschedule a urine sample on several occasions – and not for anything drug related. The only benefit I ever got out of the condition – happily now in remission – was a screenplay entitled “Time Served” involving a highly-embellished 12-hr. road trip with Dan Petrie Jr., in the course of which I allegedly visited a hypnotherapist who assured that, upon awakening I would be able to pee “at the drop of a hat.” I think you can see how the aforementioned would have unexpectedly come into play as the hijincks ensued.
FRIDAY QUESTION-
ReplyDeleteHow do you get scripts to managers, agents, etc.? I've interned at a management company and at a production company, and I've emailed them a script..but I doubt they even read it, because I was just an intern there. I know that most places don't read unsolicited, so I really have no idea what to do.
Why didn't you unplug the microwave?
ReplyDeleteThis was laugh out loud funny. If the tub was upstairs and fell through the water logged plaster ceiling and exploded on impact in the kitchen it would be even funnier. And all that water splashing around would probably clear the smoke from the microwave.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know what twitter was til last week when Lee Goldberg posted that Neil Diamond was on twitter and someone's comment was "Isn't that the first sign of the apocolypse?" That killed me. So did your post today.
Thanks for the guffaw!
Karen
Twitter seems like a backwards step in human evolution.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Twitter is like taking instant messaging and making it much more difficult. We have become the spammers.
I applaud this post, as it proves why I refuse to Twitter.
ReplyDeleteI'm a raging narcissist, and even I don't think every little transom of thought I have should go on the Internet.
P.S. Have you seen the Martha Stewart Twitter drama today? First she announces that her pet chow puppy dies in an explosion, then twitters that she's making Chinese food for lunch.
why 140 characters? who decided that? don't you think it's sort of arbitrary? I mean, 160 I could see, or even 150 - 150 seems a perfectly r
ReplyDeleteI typed my name on my post (the one referencing Milner Coupe, Sheila, and EMERGENCY!) I have no idea why it came up Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteOMG. LOL. Tears were rolling from my eyes. Thanks for making me laugh so hard. I emailed post (I also party like it's 1999) to my writer friends. Read post again. Laughed some more. Wonder why I can never think of snappy definitions to w/v, which happens to be ropres. How I feel after catching snippet of Karl Rove on Fox News. But ropres is neither an adjective nor an adverb. I am mortified by pathetic effort to be funny in the comments section of a professional comedy writers' blog featuring other very funny and clever commenters. Or is that commentors? So it looks like I may not be able to write or sp...
ReplyDeleteThe following isn't directed at your post, Ken, but it is directed at these silly kneejerk reactions something like Twitter seems to illicit from people.
ReplyDeleteDoes the internet have to go through one of these godawful "I dislike New Thing (mostly without actually trying it myself) therefore I must prove how bad it is for Society, Evolution and Humanity"-things everytime something new pops up?
It's just such a dull cycle to go through, everytime.
Like anything else, Twitter is what you make of it. You can watch everything on TV and come out thinking that TV is a shithole or you can specifically decide what you want to watch or not.
I mean, I follow quite a few people on Twitter and none of them are of the "I atea sandwich lol" variety, in fact, if they turned out to be I'd simply stop following them. You only follow the people you find interesting - if you can't think of any people who might be interesting to you, that might say more about you than about Twitter.
Twitter is perfect for a quick thought or linking to something you think might be interesting to others - that's all it is. It's not the next step in human evolution, it isn't here to destroy society, it isn't a sign of anything.
There is one aspect to Twitter that is extremely annoying - its recent ubiquitousness in the old media. But this is what those media have been doing for the last ten years or so - jump on the bandwagon of anything new, hoping to hitch a ride. In this case it's quite alright to blame the messenger.
Lack of German comedy writers? Billy Wilder was enough.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone remember when Ted Baxter decided to write his autobiograohy on The Mary Tyler Moore Show? He presaged Twitter by decades.
ReplyDeleteWow, I am both greatly amused and ashamed at the same time. I'm almost that bad. I Tweeted from the cardiac unit of an ER, for chrissakes.
ReplyDeleteI'm very passionate about the useful side of Twitter (most recent blog post is about that) but all stereotypes have characteristics in common with reality.
"We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians."
ReplyDeletethat's nothing. Japan was probably the most effective genocide in history. 250k deaths in, what, 3 days?
Twitter defenders, or Twenders, keep referring to interesting or useful tweets. I'd love to hear some examples, because, as it is, it seems completely moronic to me. And watching this video, which is on the Twitter website, only makes it seem more stupid: http://dotsub.com/api/smallplayer.php?filmid=3066&filminstance=3068&language=none
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems I have is that it is yet another way for people to be lazy. And, quite frankly, there are far too many ways for people to be lazy already. I don't have a problem with texting, per say, but the proliferation of acronyms and shorthand kills me. WTF, TTA, FFS, etc etc. And don't get me started on smilies. We're raising a generation of illiterates who won't know how to write a complete sentence, or even think in thoughts beyond 140 characters. You think the MTV generation had a short attention span? That will seem glacial compared to the Twitter generation.
I read an article last week from an English professor at one of America's great universities. He talked about how social networking sites like Twitter stand to improve youth's interest in reading and writing.
ReplyDeleteHis theory was that even though sometimes proper English isn't used, that it was better for one's intellect to at least have to read and write something than just talk on the phone.
I like Twitter. It's fun. That's all it's really supposed to be. I can participate in moments where I am stuck waiting for things and can't do anything else. (Ever been to the doctor's office and have a choice of reading a few Tweets on your phone or reading a National Geographic magazine from 1997?)
I do find it very interesting that social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter come with a generation gap. It's the same kind of silliness I heard when the cell phone came out and my now deceased mother said, "Who in their right mind would want to get a phone call anywhere they are? Those gadgets will annoy people so much they'll never last."
Twitter is for boring people with no real lives.
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! How true it is and how guilty I am now feeling.
Twitter seems to me to be something that would be of major interest for the people who also think it would be of major interest to take fiber counts from their own stool samples.
ReplyDeleteIf God is in the details, then these are the details that would inspire me to become atheist.
I would have to have a lobotomy before I would want to Twitter.
Wayne: Billy Wilder was from a part of Austria-Hungary that is now Poland. He did move to Berlin as an adult, however, so maybe he can be considered an honorary German.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite aspect of social networking sites is they seem to spur mostly positive interactions, as opposed to many blogs, for example, where the vitriol always seems to surface. What's the harm in innocuous (even occasionally mundane) communication between friends/family/associates?
ReplyDelete"His theory was that even though sometimes proper English isn't used, that it was better for one's intellect to at least have to read and write something than just talk on the phone."
ReplyDeleteThankfully, there are more options than just Twittering and talking on the phone. I also know a professor who believes it is much better for children to fight with sticks and stones rather than guns and knives. I would tend to agree with him. That's why I'm already teaching my children how to throw rocks at people and where to hit them with a stick that will incapacitate them.
Dude, you need to work on your capacity. 58 seconds is nothing.
ReplyDelete