RT @UserName Tweets are real content, you guys #srsly

January 26, 2010


The following post touches on three things: Twitter, overreaction and a tidy little moral.

On Twitter, and its Place as Serious Content

There are two schools of thought on the validity of Twitter’s content. One school sees Twitter comments as banal, throwaway lines, not worthy of archiving or protecting. They’re the bottom of the barrel, resting comfortably next to Facebook updates and MySpace pages.

The other understands that Twitter continues to serve as a micro-microblog. There may only be 140 characters, but that limit doesn’t downplay the merit of the thought. In other words: you say it in 140 characters or 140 paragraphs – there’s no difference in the hierarchy of importance.

Those that tweet about breakfast are in the first group. Those that spend time crafting brilliant non-sequiturs are in the second. Those that pooh-pooh Twitter as a waste of time are in the first. Those that see Twitter’s value as a depository for new information are in the second.

I’m in the second group.

Which is why I get so upset when a tweet is mishandled. My tweet. My words. My thoughts.

My Overreaction

See, it was cold outside. It was snowing. It was a blizzard; as in, the snow was blowing sideways. And I could have said this. I could have said, on Twitter, “THE SNOW IS BLOWING SIDEWAYS,” and gotten on with my life.

I didn’t. Because I’m in that second group of Twitter users. Instead, I wrote this.

Not high on the LULZ Meter, but still, better than just saying “THE SNOW IS BLOWING SIDEWAYS.”

I continued on with my day. And then, I was re-tweeted.

A subtle change – and a change made in good faith – but enough of a change to upset the timing, lose the sarcasm and render my former tweet spayed and neutered. Just like that, my mood went black. Tired of being nice, I respond with this passive aggressive gem.

I felt better. For a while.

And Here’s Why I’m a Cranky Twitter User

If I write a blog post and someone wants to link back to it, I expect to be quoted accurately. Not out of context. I expect that what I say will be represented just as well on someone else’s blog as it is on my own – in fact, maybe even more so, since my work is being passed along with additional helpful comments attached.

I expect this because it’s what should be done. It’s what you do in print. It’s what you do at newspapers and magazines. It’s what you do when you’re blogging. It’s good, clean attribution.

On Twitter, however, things are still rolling like the Wild West. Tweets are seen as a thought, not a carefully worded message. That I wrote my original in a certain tone, with specific punctuation, isn’t taken into consideration. After all – it’s just a tweet, and it’s free to be passed along, truncated to allow for a RT and a hashtag and attribution even though, if you think about it, the tweet no longer represents what I said in the first place.

It’s why I don’t care for re-tweeting “with comments,” and why I rarely do it.

I’ve since apologized for the passive aggressiveness. The person who RTed me didn’t mean harm. It’s just that the perception of Twitter as a playground for creative content is still in its infant stages. And, thanks to its ever-expanding use, it may never reach that point.

Which is too bad. One spin through the old Favrd (now Favstar, I guess) community is enough to see the promise that Twitter holds in the form of one-line, creatively penned tweets, as valuable as any long form blog post or magazine article, whether for information, humor or truth.

Until that day, I’ll be over here, fighting for Twitter standards and burning bridges I never knew existed.

Tags: Annoyances, Technology, Words, Writing |

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Pronounced

January 20, 2010


A couple of words I rarely pronounce correctly:

Colombia
I can’t manage to say this word without really emphasizing the “long o” sound. Coh-Lohm-be-ah.

I imagine that’s how people in Colombia say it, and I mimic it, like those people who over emphasize Spanish pronunciation in the midst of an otherwise English sentence (Them: “Oh, sure, I’ll have a margarita, gracias!” Me: “Dude, we’re at Chili’s, not a taqueria in Mexico City.” Them: “Well, pardon moi!” Me: “That’s French, you moron.”)

In all honesty, though, I pronounce it that way so I remember how to spell it. Been burned by the Columbia-When-I-Really-Mean-Colombia mistake a few too many times.

Template
Contrary to what I learned over 16 years of public schooling and seven years of professional work, it’s not “Tem-PLATE.” It’s “TEM-plit.”

Or, at least, that’s what it sounds like when I say it.

This discovery (made over a work meeting when a know-it-all former-journalist named Justin – who I can insult without guilt because he doesn’t read this blog – pointed out our flawed pronunciation and was further vindicated by a stupid, traitorous dictionary) was disappointing.

“TEM-plit” has no character. It’s flat. It’s gross. I like “Tem-PLATE.” It sounds like what it is. A plate of tem.

That is, if by “tem” I actually mean “stuff already done for you, you lazy fart.”

Tags: Words, Writing |

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Beegelbed

November 24, 2009


“Beegelbed”

This is not a word. It has never entered our minds, never left our mouth, never been created. In the history of words, it is nothing.

That is, until now.

Because, you see, it’s not enough for Sierra to learn words at a frightening pace. No. Now, she’s making up her own.

Except, here’s the rub: We’re not sure if she’s making it up, or if we’re simply NOT UNDERSTANDING HER.

Sierra is two. Which means she’s at the age of rapid comprehension, when thoughts are quickly made into words. This is the stage of addition, fast enough that pronunciation and context is an afterthought. Refining the language will come later on.

It’s thrilling. New words pour out of her, and understanding of grammar and diction increases. For a couple of wordhounds, it’s like magic. We’re seeing the connection between verbal and actual, the evolution of thought into communication.

And because we’re always there, we understand her quirks. We know what she means, even if others can’t decipher it. Because, again, she’s two. Which means she’s constantly walking the thin line between universal conversation and frustration.

And then, there’s “beegelbed.”

We’ve asked. “What’s a beegelbed?” (She smiles and says, “Nooooo.”)

Okay. “What’s a beegelbed say,” we ask, assuming it’s an animal. (She smiles again. This is all very funny.)

We sound out different things. “Beagle Bed?” “Beetle Bug?” “Beat Elwood?”

Nothing. For now.

And it will stay nothing. Because really, all we have to do is wait. Within a few weeks, the word will have disappeared, either sucked up into distant memory or honed to the point of understanding. Eventually, it won’t be the words she’s questioning, but concepts. Why is the sky blue and all of that. Give it a few years, and we’ll be wondering how she learned so much, how she ever ended up at our level, carrying on a real conversation about school and her friends and some random television program that we’ll never understand because we lost our ability to comprehend teenage humor a long time ago.

We’ll wonder where the time went. We’ll long for the days where her words were first starting to burst forth.

Until then, though, I’ll just sit confused, uneasily wondering what she could mean by “beegelbed.”

Tags: Sierra, Words |

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$40,000 is a lot of food

July 9, 2009


I happened to catch part of an episode of Oprah last week. She was talking to Heather Armstrong, star of super-popular mommy blog Dooce, about the difficulties of being a mother. About her surprisingly interesting life. And about how she does what she does, which, essentially, is blogging for a paycheck.

This is what I took away: Heather Armstrong enjoys what she does. The freedoms and the stresses of constantly documenting life.

Oh, and she makes $40,000 a month through her blog. A month.

My question: Why can’t I make money doing this?

The answer: Stubbornness.

In terms of influence, the two sites can’t be compared equally. After all, Dooce and Black Marks on Wood Pulp are two completely different animals. Dooce has been propped up by 8 years of loyalty, bumped first by a national story about being fired for blogging and continued through the years by Armstrong’s stories of post-partum depression. It’s become the most read blog on the Internet. It’s reach alone dwarfs anything I could possibly keep up with.

Black Marks on Wood Pulp is just me, blah blah blahing about deeply introspective and self-serving narratives.

But the real concern is that, through the life of this blog, I’ve never considered it prudent to ask for more than a passing attention. Attention for my words and my thoughts, to serve as a sounding board for whatever insecurities and random book thoughts I might have.

Which makes it feel disingenuous to put advertising on my site. Like I’m betraying the trust of my readers. Like I’m stooping to the lowest common denominator.

Even more, it feels as if I’m touting my importance, as if I’m saying, “I am important enough to be sponsored.”

Yet, here I am, contemplating extra income for something I already do. Something I truly enjoy. Monetizing my hobby, as I’ve been lucky enough to do with photography (here and there, at least.)

I don’t have the answer.

I’ll never be at Dooce’s level. I don’t have enough drama in my life, frankly. But until that point, you probably still won’t see ads on Black Marks on Wood Pulp, despite an assurance from several friends and family members that it won’t harm anything. That, while I’ll never be making $40,000 a month, it wouldn’t hurt to bring in an extra $100 bucks every few months. That I’m giving away a talent, refusing to cash in, not giving myself enough credit.

I’d like to say I’m staying ad free because I’m fighting the norm, refusing to put a price on art, saving my readers from the humiliation of seeing tummy tuck and credit report banner ads.

I’d be lying. The real reason I haven’t put a price on Black Marks on Wood Pulp isn’t solely due to integrity or values. It’s because I’m too scared of offending my readers, tied to the vocal minority that will call it “selling out.”

It’s because I’m too afraid to leap, not knowing who would still be around to catch me if I fell too far.

Tags: Blogging, Vilhauer, Words, Writing |

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Window treatments

July 6, 2009


It wasn’t that long ago that Sierra surprised us all, uttering “teamwork,” a word several levels higher than her current vocabulary could withstand. It was cute. It also showed the power of the Wonder Pets – three classroom animals and a catchy song was all it took to teach her a multi-syllabic concept.

(We know – all kids learn a higher-level word or two in the midst of the basics. That doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s cute as hell.)

But now we’ve entered a dangerous territory: Sierra has reached a state of all-out mimicry, soaking in words and repeating them regardless of context.

Ask my mom, who recently (unknowingly) taught Sierra how to say “Oh my God.”

At this point, anything is possible. Any word has the potential to stick. Swear words, jokes, expressions, idioms, brand names and pet names. This week, it’s “ice cream cone” and “baby llama.” Next week, who knows. “Target?” “Oprah?” “Don’t Tase Me Bro?”

It was brought to point just last weekend. After a few days of selecting and sewing and hanging from Kerrie’s mother Cindy – “Ci-ci,” according to Sierra – we had some window treatments installed over our front window.

On Friday, trailing a stream of babbling and nonsense, Sierra pointed to the new installation.

“Win-now treet-men, Ci-ci go”

Seriously? What kid says that? What kid feels the need to attach words to curtains? Kerrie and I looked at each other and understood the weight of her words.

Yes, Sierra. Those are window treatments. Yes, Cindy installed them. And yes, Grandma Ci-Ci has gone home.

Oh, and in the meantime, we’d better begin using an ounce of caution with everything we say from now on. Because a toddler’s listening. And she’s eager to surprise us again.

Tags: Sierra, Words |

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Teamwork!

February 25, 2009


Here are some of the words Sierra knows.

Bye bye.
Mommy.
Daddy.
Ball.
Moon.
Sky.

Teamwork.

Wait. What?

Yup. You read that right. Sierra knows the word “teamwork.” I should be afraid – after all, she could be morphing straight from 18-month-old to middle management office wonk. But I’m not.

She’s an avid fan of Nickelodeon’s Wonder Pets, a cute little show that features a duck, a turtle and a guinea pig. The theme of the show is working together as a group to solve problems. “What’s going to work?” they sing. “Teamwork!”

And this is how Sierra knows the word.

In other words, watch what you say. She’s eighteen months. And just like every kid at eighteen months, she’s a sponge.

She’s an adorable, babbling, mostly incoherent sponge.

Tags: Sierra, Television, Words |

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What I’ve Been Reading – January 2009

February 10, 2009


Books Acquired:
Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
Home – Marilynne Robinson
ABC3D – Marion Bataille
Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
Liar’s Poker – Michael Lewis

Books Read:
Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
Alphabet Juice – Roy Blount Jr.

Etymology
From the Greek for “the true sense of the word.” That goes back to what roots showed through a lot more than they do today. But just as you appreciate a vegetable more if you know how it grows, you have a better hold on a word if you use it in acknowledgment of its roots, its background, some of the soil still attached.

I flagged this definition from Roy Blount Jr.’s Alphabet Juice because it summed up my thoughts about words themselves this month, both how they work in a literal sense and how they relate to the actions of our nation, to life, to all aspects of art – not simply literature, but graphic mediums as well.

Of course, I’m late in writing about these words. Again. To be honest, I haven’t finished Alphabet Juice – a book I began before 2008 was distant memory. There are excuses, which I’ll get into. Because that’s what I do. I get into my excuses.

My first excuse was a magazine. I received a subscription to The Atlantic for Christmas from my mother. A subscription that I asked for out of the blue, actually. It just kind of popped into my head, like Ralphie’s football in A Christmas Story. Yet, in my case, the instant thought was valuable.

I had always wanted a magazine like this – not simply Sports Illustrated or Time, but something with a little traction. Something I could look forward to reading every month, cover to cover, in an effort to become more knowledgeable about life.

I thought I had that magazine with The Believer. (I didn’t. In that case, I wanted a fiction magazine, but realized I couldn’t handle the weekly onslaught of New Yorkers.) Now, I see that I finally do with The Atlantic. It gives me a wider view of the world – one that isn’t digested into bite sized chunks.

I don’t trust magazines. I’ve written about that before. But here I am, reading The Atlantic, literally from cover to cover. “Is this it?” I thought. “Is this the death knell to my reading habits?” Given the opportunity to read a heavy, solid book or the flimsy magazine on my bedstand, I chose the magazine every night until it I had completed it.

I’m an adult. I enjoyed it. Every word. I learned. Like taking short catnaps all day long, my eyes were opened without the grogginess of eight hours of straight sleep.

What I found was, in this time of political rebirth, I’m more receptive to news – to the news cycle, to my place in its coverage and, even more, its effects. I’ve taken the words that crop up from each article – each in depth hearing and each critical analysis – and discovered that their strength comes from deep in the roots of democracy, that these words are important not just because they are information, sweet information, but also because they are the very foundation of what makes this country great. Communication. A free transfer of ideas about any aspect of life.

A lot to learn from some liberal pinko news rag.

So there’s one distraction. A week of magazine reading. The other, I’m afraid, was a comic book.

Watchmen, which many may recognize as a big-budget blockbuster on its way to theaters sometimes in the near future, is more than a comic book, to be honest, much in the way Chris Ware’s sprawling masterpieces are more than just circles and squares.

Drawn in what I consider to be typical superhero style (but, let’s be honest, what do I know – I snobbishly read these for the art), Watchmen didn’t impress me with its visual aspects. This is, no doubt, because I am unaware of the skill needed to render a comic book – especially one of this size.

Instead, it was the writing that moved me. It was superhero done with a realistic slant – realizing full well that superheroes don’t really exist, and that if they did it would occur with real life consequences. Think Fortress of Solitude without the magic ring – instead, these superheroes go all out with gadgets, a keen mind or genetic manipulation. They exist as society allows them to.

Society isn’t really crazy about them, though. “Who Watches the Watchmen?” they ask. Superheroes have been banned for years, and only a rash of violence on those who used to be masked brings them back together. For one goal.

Save themselves.

It’s a feat of writing to take a jaded anti-superhero mind like my own and convince it that superheroes can be a fascinating subject. I love that Watchmen reads like a philosophical and psychological assessment of what superheroes would be if, in fact, real. And, I love the suspense, the twists, the characters. I love the allusion of more famous superheroes. (Night Owl is most certainly Batman, by my estimation.)

Most of all, though: I may have simply enjoyed reading a comic book.

Of course, there was the book I actually read (am still reading): Alphabet Juice, Roy Blount Jr.’s amusing romp through the English language. It’s a look at why words matter; at why I love them so much, despite my utter hackery at times. It covers syntax in a way that seems so blatantly obvious, causing me to rethink everything I knew about how I write. It covers rare words that I’ve never heard, and will promptly forget, but feel all the more blessed to have knowledge of no matter how fleeting.

Above all, it covers the peculiarities of our language, and how those peculiarities are part of what makes it so wonderful. Words are sonicky; they are verbal interpretations of what we’re experiencing. And some songs just seem to have a sonic connection. Other times, the roots are weird, the roads they’ve traveled long and winding, until the word isn’t even aware of it’s original home, like a seventh generation immigrant who can no longer remember where his ancestors came from.

It’s a love letter to English, really. Blount Jr. takes his dry delivery and crafts it lovingly into a tribute, checking each pretension and putting forth an amazing display of honor at being associated with the language.

And all parts of language, too; what I love about this book is that the wit stretches across the landscape of language. ROFL, teh and other newfangled slang mixes with discussions about syntax and grammar and proper writing. It’s the entire span of English, good or not. Origins to usage to trends. Txt to Texan to Tennyson.

Which gives me hope for the future. I can butcher the language all I want, and I can put off the What I’ve Been Reading recaps to my heart’s desire, but English will always be there. Language and words – the roots of our verbal communication – will forge along, subtly changing, but always moving forward.

It gives visual masterpieces a unique voice. It gives us the basis of communication that helps build a free society. And, at times, it just stands on its own – a testament to its own strength and a tribute to every word that’s come before, either lost or passed from use.

Each word, I’ve learned, is sacred. And I should never consider letting one go unwritten.

Tags: Books, Journalism, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Words, Writers, Writing |

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