Thursday, August 20, 2009

This Just In: .... Doi!

Readers, you know I always look for hard hitting news. News that affects all of us. Deeply.
Today, I was reading news stories on Yahoo and I found out exactly what I wanted to bring to my readers...

40 percent of Twitter messages 'pointless babble': study

Pear Analytics, based in San Antonio, Texas, said that it randomly sampled 2,000 messages from the public stream of Twitter and separated them into six categories. Forty percent of the messages on Twitter are "pointless babble" along the lines of "I am eating a sandwich now," according to Pear Analytics.

Were there a lot of people out there wondering if Twitter was pointless babble or not? Personally, I think 40% was a bit low. It's Twitter. 140 characters of whatever you're thinking in the moment. As most people aren't very creative... pointless babble is inevitable. I don't often hear, "I just tweeted the cure for cancer." OR "Did you see that tweet about peace in the middle east?"
Most of us use it as a fluffy bit of entertainment. And when people try to use it to drive home any agenda other than to entertain me...I typically judge them for it.

It's Twitter. Of course it's pointless babble.
This Just In: 100% of studies trying to determine what people use twitter for are completely pointless!

Monday, August 3, 2009

King Tootfartanomma

Some of my fondest childhood memories involve visiting my Grandma Beck. You see, she had a pool. And, as any child can tell you, a pool trumps everything. It was always the first thing we wanted to do when we got there. In an effort to keep the kids from being in the pool 24 hours a day, there was a rule that we couldn't go into the pool until the sun was shining on the pool. It was either to keep us from turning into prunes or just to torture us. I suspect the latter. Adults can be cruel. They need their fun too, so I can't blame them for the mind games.

But we would wait, religiously, by the door....waiting till the sun hit the pool. We'd sit there, staring, willing the sun to move faster. Asking every 25 seconds..."can we go in? Can we? Can we?"
We'd lather up with sunscreen, the highest SPF known to man and probably also expired.... and we'd wait. And wait....and the minute that sun would hit the pool, we were in! Success! We never noticed the passing of time. We didn't notice that our eyes were red from the chlorine, our shoulders burned from the sun, our attitudes less than pleasant from exhaustion. All of these things are not noticed as a child. Because the pool could fix anything. Amongst me, my siblings and our cousins...treaties were created in the pool, cease-fires were mandated, alliances we could have never seen coming were formed. For, the pool...it fixed everything.

As we swam the length of the pool and frolicked and played....we'd pass an outcropping of palm fronds...beneath them, ever so stoically, sat a statue. A statue, our pool master, named King Tootfartanomma. (aptly named by who else? The eldest of the boy cousins.... of course.)

And, as we would swim by....we would always pay homage to our great pool master....
"Long live King Tootfartanomma! King Toot....fart....anooomma...."

Some of my fondest memories of childhood involve that pool and King Tootfartanomma. Grandma's pool. Nothing could beat it.
Well, guess what? The monster, also known as Grandma, filled it with dirt and rocks because she didn't want to maintain the pool anymore. No notice, nothing!

King Tootfartanomma will reign no more. Long live King Tooooot....fart....anooooooommmma..... You will live on in our hearts, Tootfart...forever.