Short and Tweet?

The slow trickle continues.  A few days ago, I sent my Agent the link to this blog.  And held my breath and let those trademark tidal waves of worry buffet me: Is the site too edgy?  Are the topics alienating?  Does anyone care what I have to say? Thankfully, a response came in short order.  She likes the blog!  Now this is incredible news as she is at the helm of my very rookie literary career.  BUT.  She had a comment.  And said comment was something along these lines: Your posts should be shorter.  People are on Twitter these days and they don't have tolerance for longer essays.

And though a fan of the longer, more meandering, philosophical essay, I knew one thing and knew it immediately: she was right.  And another thing hit me: maybe I should check this Twitter thing out? Perhaps there is no better way to practice spewing exceedingly short and meaningless bits of personal information into the atmosphere?

Maureen Dowd's Op-Ed To Tweet or Not to Tweet got me thinking that it might behoove me to start tweeting if not just to experience first-hand another seismic shift in technological tectonics.  Is Twitter just the latest and greatest avenue for celebrity chatter and self-aggrandizement?  Is its popularity problematic evidence of society's shrinking attention span? Dowd asked Twitter's founders (whom she deemed quite charming unlike their invention): "Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?"  And they laughed it off.  But is this tweeting thing a laughing matter?  Not sure yet.  But if Oprah and Agent deem life tweetworthy, then maybe, just maybe, I can be convinced.

How's that for short and tweet?  No, it's not under 140 characters.  But it's a start.

[Okay: indulge this philosophic-meanderer in a few more characters, will you?  An Earth Week Inquiry: Why is it that so many  modern technological toys (think Apple, Mac, BlackBerry, Twitter) are named to conjure natural goodies -- like lush fruits and sweet birds?  Is this meant to distract us from the fact that these are decidedly unnatural gadgets?]