This isn’t really an article
I just am in the mood to write and throw some words together in a form that slightly resembles sentences.
I let myself “sleep in” for this first time in forever this morning. Sort of. I still had to get up and let the dog out and feed him, pay some attention to the cats, refresh the water bowls. Those things have to happen on schedule or there are messes made in direct retaliation. Animals are ruthless that way. Still, I let myself stretch out on the couch and snooze for another 45 minutes. That leaves me now, though, with this need to write without actually having anything that I’m supposed to write.
Stream of consciousness. Or, perhaps more accurately, stream of unconsciousness. I’m awake but there’s a large part of me that doesn’t feel awake. The children, of course, prevent anyone in the house from getting any sleep once they’re up, and they’re always up too fucking early. Always. All of them. Not just ours but every child across the planet. Too damn early. It’s a conspiracy. I blame school. They have to get up so fucking early for school that their little bodies are unable to make adjustments for the weekend. School shouldn’t start before 9. Ever.
Wait, I’m going to need pictures for this, aren’t I? Damn. I already know I don’t have anything that fits. Oh well, that doesn’t seem to bother anyone too much. At least, if it does, they never say anything. Not to me. I’m told there are people talking behind my back. Spineless chickens. There are so many easy ways to contact me, especially through our Facebook page, and rarely does anyone bother to do so. Not to complain.
Old and slow with a sense of humor
I’m old and don’t get around like I once did. A friend from California is in town this weekend and it would have been nice to go out and catch up with her last night, but no, between the threat of ice and the deep desire to commune with my pillow nothing happened. I’d still like to see Sam, hear what adventures she’s had in SoCal, so maybe we’ll be able to work something out. Still, I’m old and one of the hallmarks of age is not just a lessened ability to be mobile, but less desire. Sad, really.
Which is why I just saw Deadpool for the first time yesterday. I sat here and watched it with my 18-year-old son, who, like his brothers, is a comic book nerd. No, I’m not sure how it happened that all three of them are that way. Anyway, we sat here and laughed all the way through the movie. Then, because timing is everything, this morning I come across this interview about the sequel. I am now uncharacteristically excited about a sequel that I probably won’t see until 2019 or so. You would think with all the technology they’d find a way to put these things together a wee bit faster. But then, writing. That still takes as long as it always has.
Even though I’m old and slow, though, hearing the six-year-old Tipster call me a “jack a-s-s” through the door still makes me laugh. Hard. She just did it again. She knows she’s not supposed to say the word ass because we don’t have a donkey so it’s an adult word. She can spell it, though. And she does. This morning, I’m a jack a-s-s because I won’t let her stand in the hallway right in front of her step-brother’s door making noise. “Go back to your room and close your door,” I told her. That makes me a jack a-s-s, in her opinion, and it also makes me laugh. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps I should be upset. But you know what? I’m not. She’s not actually saying the word. She created a workaround to express herself. I’m good.
Hashtags that are too damn long
#WhatIWouldTellA15YearOldMe is trending. I’m guessing the hashtag was started by a 16-year-old. Twitter only gives you 164 characters to begin with. By the time you add that hashtag you only have 112 characters left with which to give yourself a world of useful advice. That’s not going to be nearly enough room, dude. 15-year-olds need a lot of advice. They won’t listen to it, of course, because they’re 15. They think they know everything already. We all did. We forgot it all by the time we were old enough to actually use that alleged wisdom, though.
#WhatIWouldTellA15YearOldMe is still too long for a hashtag, though. What’s even more disappointing is all the really lousy advice people were giving themselves. Like, “he’s not really that into you.” REALLY? You have 112 characters to give yourself advice that will make your life better and that is how you’re going to use it? You might want to take another swipe at that, Skippy. Or wait another 15 years.
When I think back to when I was 15 years old, I’m embarrassed. I mean, it’s one thing to not fit in, which I didn’t. Or, at least I didn’t think I did. It’s another problem altogether to feel as though you need to exploit just how different you are, which I did. So, what advice would I really like to give my 15-year-old self if I thought there was a bat’s chance in hell of my listening (I wouldn’t)? Something like this:
- Stop trying to please your parents so goddam much and find out who you really are.
- A fair portion of your classmates are gay and too scared to admit it. Support them without outing them.
- Wear jeans.
- Stop skipping biology.
- Don’t let your parents determine who you date. Open your damn mouth and ask the girl out.
- Go ahead and fucking rebel. Yes, there will be consequences, but you’ll be better in the long run for having done so.
“There is a law about staying up all night”
Those are the most recent words from the angry six-year-old. I have no idea what she’s talking about. To my knowledge, no one stayed up all night. No one wants to stay up all night. Although, there are times it certainly feels like we did. Six-year-olds, much like 15-year-olds, say a lot of things that don’t make sense. I wonder where they get it from? Oh, wait, I may have an answer for that.
Peta has bought shares in Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH). Something about crocodiles and handbags.
The Uneasy Truth Behind Amazon’s Hiring Blitz And What Startups Are Doing To Fix It. So, you’re telling me all this job growth may not be a good thing long term?
Senate intelligence panel to probe Russia hacking. That article isn’t nearly as interesting as the headline makes it sound. There’s no intelligence and they’re not actually inserting things into Russians. Dammit.
Plan for pink ‘pussyhats’ in Washington after Trump’s inauguration. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want to read that article. Politics aside, the thought of 200,000 women wearing pink pussyhats on their head makes me wish I was there to take pictures. These women are marching for a cause but don’t think for a moment they won’t take their pussyhats and party like hell afterward. Feminists really know how to pound some liquor.
C’mon, work with me here. That pun is funny.
I’m glad I’m not an Oscar Meyer wiener
That is what I do not want to be.
For if I were an Oscar Meyer wiener,
There would soon be nothing left of me.
Don’t pretend you didn’t just sing that in your head. Unless you’re like, 15 years old, in which case you’ve no clue what the reference is in the first place. We don’t always end up being what we wanted to be when we were 15. Hell, when I was 15 I didn’t even have a good grasp of what the possibilities actually were. What’s worse, there are more opportunities now than ever and I still don’t think we’re doing enough to help 15-year-olds achieve the broader vision of what they have the potential to do. We’re failing.
But, within the realm of things I’m glad I’m not, an Oscar Meyer wiener isn’t the worst possibility. I wouldn’t want to be any of these things, either:
- Owner of a fake news site or a fake online magazine. Both are matters of vanity on the part of the people who own them. Both are meant to deceive. Both are trash.
- Member of the president-elect’s transition team. There’s nothing good about being that close to the Great Orange.
- Part of the maintenance crew at Trump Tower. Can you imagine the amount of puke they must have to clean up after people meet with the president-elect or his staff?
- A Washington, D.C. police officer having to work the inauguration crowd next Friday. Feel sorry for those people. They’re not going to have a good day.
- Stuck on an icy road in Missouri. The second death was just reported. Nothing about the weather down there is good at the moment.
So, we’ve established that life could be worse. That doesn’t mean that it can necessarily be better. Not right now. Not under these circumstances. Not with the $11 I have in my wallet. I already have coffee and chocolate and scotch. I already have a hot fiancé. I already have incredible kids. There may be a lot of things that I want, but that doesn’t mean any of them would make my life any better. Quantity does not determine quality.
Okay, I wouldn’t mind being a Nobel prize winner. That would be cool. Nothing I do really qualifies me for any of their categories, though.
Annnnnnnnd, I’m done writing now. My fingers just said, “stop.” Not audibly, of course. They’re just starting to really, really hurt. Fucking pain. I’d complain but you wouldn’t understand, and if you did it would only be because you’re suffering the same thing and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Well, maybe the president-elect’s thumbs, if that would keep him off Twitter.
I need more coffee, too. And I suppose I should find some pictures to slap on here. I think I know where to look. Totally not related to anything I’ve written, but they’re pictures that are part of a story. You like a story, don’t you? Of course you do. Especially when you get to make up the details for yourself.
Have fun with life.
The News In 140 Characters
It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. —Jerry Seinfeld
Does anyone read the news anymore or do they just look at the tweets and the headlines?
I saw an interesting editorial cartoon yesterday, which, of course, I didn’t have the foresight to actually save so that I could accurately reference this morning. The cartoon lamented the fact that when historians look back at the exchanges of this presidential election, it will be candidates 140-character tweets they’ll examine rather than anything like the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
The comparison is stark. How news and information is delivered has changed not only in terms of media, but the brevity with which news is delivered. Sure, there will be debates during this campaign cycle, Â but even those will ultimately be reduced to sound bites of 140 characters or less.The Twitter limit applies not only to the application, but to the reduced size of our attention spans.
Once upon a time, the details of the news and the excellence of reporting and writing were honored. Winning a Pulitzer prize was an exception because of talent and skill. Now, winning a Pulitzer is an exception because someone actually put in more than 300 words worth of effort. Long-form reporting still happens at places such as the New York Times and Washington Post, but then the media departments of both newspapers instantly find ways to reduce thousands of words to a 140-character tease.
Even here, I create a 140-character excerpt that appears in social media links to the article. Hundreds of people view that excerpt, but only a fraction of those read the article. We frequently use nude imagery not because it has anything to do with the article, but because it is a quick way to get attention.
Tweeting The News
Almost every newspaper of any size now has a media department. That staff is responsible for not only creating 140 character descriptions of articles, but managing and measuring the responses they get to those descriptions. Read through the comments on almost any provocatively written tweet or  Facebook post and it becomes evident that many of the most volatile remarks are made by people who never actually read the article; they’re just responding to their interpretation of what the article might say based on the structure of that tweet.
Great tweet writing is a skill and in today’s media it is just as important as headline writing and copy editing. A well-constructed tweet can bring thousands of eyes to a topic, or can leave one totally ignored. Knowing which hashtag to include, the precise verbiage that is easily understood, is not something that was traditionally taught in journalism schools. Rarely does anyone notice when a tweet is done well. Let a newspaper or politician miscommunicate online, though, usually through a poor choice of words, and watch the shit hit the fan.
To illustrate my point, let me share some of the most recent news tweets across a variety of topics. There’s more information behind each tweet, but how many people will actually bother to click through and read the articles? I’m betting not many. Fewer than 10 percent of readers ever click a link, here or anyplace else on the Internet. Let’s see how you do.
Politics
Information
Society
Putting Things In Perspective
How many of those articles did you click through to investigate? Any? Consider that a few short years ago those nine stories would have been enough to fill a 30-minute television newscast (sports and weather aside). In print, they would have dominated the A section of any newspaper. Yet, here you have it all in 140 characters and some well edited GIFs.
I’m old, so it is difficult for me to see this shift as anything other than a loss of information and understanding. Reading through a flurry of tweets, we might come away feeling more intelligent and informed, but we don’t actually know enough about any of those stories to speak knowledgeably and authoritatively. Not that such a lack of information ever stops us. We’re quite willing to go ahead and open our mouths anyway, facts be damned.
What probably bothers me most about this change in how we receive information is that without all the details we are more likely to react harshly, sarcastically, and with suspicion. We don’t trust the tweet because we don’t allow ourselves to gain enough information to understand the full story. We lack compassion. We lose the opportunity to learn. We fail to consider different perspectives. We wander around so ignorant that we don’t recognize ignorance.
If you’ve made it this far into today’s article, you likely already understand. Of the few people who started the article, less than five percent finish. Again,that’s not just true here, but for most any online reading.
Perhaps one day the pendulum will swing back the other direction and we’ll appreciate well-written and ardently-reported stories again. This 140-character world doesn’t work for me. We need more information, not less. I suppose that’s every individual’s choice, though, isn’t it?
Sigh. At least there’s a nude picture at the top.
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