BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

So, I’m pretty sure it’s no secret that I was in Nebraska last month for WillyCon XI, so I won’t bore you with those particular details…

I will, however, bore you with some other stuff. Hey, it’s my job, correct?

You see, WillyCon was one of those 3-5 day jaunts. I left on a Thursday morning, and returned Monday afternoon. Normally, I would have returned sometime Sunday, but as I noted in the previous WillyCon specific blogs, you couldn’t get there from here. My choices were pretty much St. Louis to Minneapolis to Sioux City or St. Louis to Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago to Sioux City. Thursday – Monday. Take it or leave it. So, obviously I took it. But, I digress.

The thing here is that these days my daughter really is all about the 3-5 day jaunts I take to do book signings. You see, they seem to be just about the right amount of time. Anything past 5 days and she starts missing me too much. The 3 dayers are pretty much her favorite, 4 is pretty good, 5 is pushing it, but not quite over the line just yet.

I think what she really likes most about me being gone for these events is that when I am only disappearing for a few days I don’t do the whole cooking and freezing dinner thing. I make sure there are nukeable foods in the fridge and freezer, plus plenty of canned goodies, but they are almost always right where I left them when I return. Why? because since E K doesn’t cook, and I haven’t done the prep for her, they tend to eat fast to semi-fast food the entire time. Quizno’s, Pizza, etc…

So, what’s not to like about this for a kid? The parental unit isn’t gone too long, and they get fast food. It’s kind of like a Pinnochio Nirvana sans strings and donkey ears.

But, let’s get back around to the whole gist of this blog entry. The kid actually does start to miss me, especially around day 4 or 5. This happened, like clockwork, on my trip to Nebraska.

Long about the evening of day 4 my cell phone rang. When I answered it, instead of being E K or my publicist as I would have suspected, it turned out to be the offspring. She wanted to hear my voice and tell me about her day. It was obvious that she was starting down that “I miss you, daddy” road when she just kept talking and talking. You see, for the first three days I usually get, “I’m busy playing googly-monster-barbie-fun-petz on the computer. Can I go now?”

That whole bit used to hurt my feelings, but just like kids grow and evolve, so should parents. I think maybe I’ve managed that, because I understand that it takes some time for my absence to have a direct affect upon her 9 year old world.

But, back to the story…

We were at that stage of me being missed enough to warrant a long conversation, which of course, made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because I have like the coolest kid in the world and stuff. (But, I won’t digress into bragging… for the moment, anyway.)

After several minutes of chatting, the offspring tells me that she and E K had gone for a hike in one of the local parks. In the process they came across a Calico cat. Well, E K being a cat-fanatic, (probably because in some kind of freak accident her DNA was fused with that of an actual feline – that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it), plus the kid being a kid, they oohed, ahhed, and spoke to said cat. The offspring told me that even though they had informed the Kitteh that they meant it no harm and weren’t going to bother it, that the animal still watched them suspiciously.

Well, what do you say to something like that? Especially if you are me and you are generally warped and working hard at warping your child… Glad you asked…

When the offspring told me this, I replied, “Well honey, maybe the cat doesn’t understand English. Maybe it’s a foreign cat and it only speaks French or Spanish, or some other language like that.”

Without missing a beat the kid said, “Pssshaw! Daddddeeeee! Cats don’t speak French or Spanish.”

“Okay, so what do they speak?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she replied with a healthy shrug audible in her voice. “Probably Catnamese or something like that.”

Yes… I almost dropped my cell phone I was laughing so hard.

It’s true. My kid is definitely just as warped as I am. I’m so proud I think there might even be tears involved…

More to come…

Murv

Hi.

My name is Murv, and I’m a “Twitterer”… Or a Tweep… Or Tweeple… Or Twipple… Or, maybe just a Twit. Who the hell really knows? I’ve seen so many monikers applied to folks who spend time on Twitter, that I’m pretty much lost. All I can really say is that you’ll notice that I didn’t say I was a Twitterholic. Because I’m not. Recovering or otherwise.

Yes, I do have an account on Twitter, and I do have a tendency to use it. Primarily I do this for purpose of alerting folks to new blog entries… In fact, there’s probably a Tweet floating around out in the ether about this very blog post. How weird is that? But, my point is, I really just use it to update folks about really important crap. Like the aforementioned blog post thing… Fiery balls of molten rock falling from the sky… Whether or not I am out of Braunschweiger… Whether or not to call 9-1-1 when E K is beating me… Like I said… Important crap.

But, yeah. I spend a little time there. And, since I do that, I also follow some folks too. I mean, hey, why play follow the leader if you’re always the leader. It gets a little boring. Sometimes it’s nice to follow someone else for a change.

However, this is where I started noticing things about “Twitter People”…

First off… There are definitely some -aholic’s out there. How do I know this? When I check my page in the evening and there are 487 tweets from @MisterSpankMe or some such… This is on the heels of 1792 tweets from him throughout the day. Okay, so he’s a little busy… But then, when I check it in the morning while having coffee, I log in to find another 3653 tweets from, yeah, you guessed it – @MisterSpankMe… Apparently his “Mistress” is into torture by sleep deprivation, because the dude hasn’t yet been to sleep. What’s more, he’s still tweeting his little heart out. In fact, 15 more tweets show up within the span of time I type “Good Morning All” and hit send.

Well…Actually I never type “Good Morning All”… That’s a little too generic for me. I like to greet the day with something amusing. Usually about coffee. You know, things like:

And when my hand opened the third seal, I heard the bean say come and see. I beheld and lo a black liquid; the name of which was Coffee…

Or…

Coffee is great, coffee is good, let us thank it for our mood…

But then, you all know I can only be serious when A) Writing a book or B) Ummm… Well… I can’t really get into that here…

Still, ya’know, if being a Twitterholic is your thing, more power to you… BTW, I should take this opportunity to point out that I made up  the ID @MisterSpankMe for the purposes of this blog post. If there is someone out there who actually goes by this handle, well, I neither follow him, nor is he following me, so no harm no foul. It’s all kind of one of those “names were changed to protect the addicted” sort of things…

But, this tiny, pale blue bird thing is not all that I’ve noticed. You see, a lot of these folks “follow chickens” even more than me. Yeah… I think maybe they have Twitter Attention Deficit Disorder – or as we like to call it here in the lab, TADD… You know, as in, “@MisterSpankMe is a TADD bit off his game today…” or “That was just a TADD silly, don’t you think, @SillyBastard?” (Yeah, I made up @SillyBastard too. Same disclaimer applies.)

So, anyway, this TADD thing… Those of you who have had any sort of brush with Twitterpation are probably aware of the “@ reply” tag. For those of you who aren’t, it is a process by which you direct your tweet at someone. Yes, you can do a private message, but if you just want to make a comment to someone publicly, as you would at say, a crowded party, you just put an @ symbol followed by the persons handle, then type the message.

I bring this up because I think the @ symbol may well be the source of the infection. You see, folks end up with so many @ replies flying across their screens, all interspersed with the plethora of tweets from @MisterSpankMe, that they end up following a whole coop full of chickens at once.

I’ve only a small amount of experience with it myself, but it seems almost like trying to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time, all while Caleigh dancing, chewing gum, and threading a needle.

Kind of like the epitome of TMI… You just can’t keep up.

Oh well… Maybe it’s just because I’m too old. It could be that this whole Twitter thing is really meant for the youngsters. I guess I’ll stick to my coffee commentaries and blog posts…

Now, if you’ll be so kind to excuse me, @GibsonGirl is @tweeting me about @Framistat posting to #wingnuts #monkeybrains via tweetberry, and she wants me to look at tinyurl/XiPL&/WoyQ because twitterpic is down. And, of all things this is going on while @SkippyHead and @CaptainObvious are adding her to #followfriday and sending me a direct message about it… Can you imangine?

All I know is that I really don’t want to miss my chance to @LOL before the screen is full.

More to come…

Murv

Note: All @names in this post are intended as fictional handles, and are the product of my incredibly warped brain. If someone out there actually uses one of these, well, sorry about that. Fellow “Twits” can follow me at twitter.com/mrsellars. Just try not to follow too closely. I make frequent stops and wide right turns.