Oh that’s what Twitter is

Note:  We had a family emergency this evening.  My son Jack is 9 years old.  The dog ate Jack’s homework that he’d been working on for 3 weeks.  You may say “What dog?” and that would be a good question.  To that I say “What homework?”  This pushed back the start of my blog composing by over 3 hours.  We really need to get another computer.  So if you are reading this and say, “Where the hell’s the post that is due?”

There is a perfectly good explanation.  The dog ate it.

Since I’m short on time, I’m going to just talk about something I know well.  Old people.  I might just have to change the name of this blog to oldcube or something. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my daughter, age 22.  Girls are better than boys.  No dogs ever ate Jolene’s homework.  She was saying I should get on Twitter.  Honestly, I just don’t get it with twitter.  I have tried to understand the allure.  To me, it has seemed strange that I would be interested in anyone’s spontaneous thoughts.  Jolene said that because I’m funny, a lot of her friends would follow me if I got on twitter.  I told her I’ve had an account for years (this is true).  She said she couldn’t find me (she had looked).  Then I remembered that it wasn’t actually me who had the Twitter account, but one of my alter egos.  Nate Keeler.  That stupid sonofabitch never ever tweets anything on it either.  Holy Crap.  I just logged into Nathan Keeler’s gmail account.  He’s got 1200 unopened emails.  Mostly from facebook, asking if he knows various friends of Brady or people that went to the school that I said he went to that I didn’t know was a real school when I put it in there.  And breathe.  So now what I’ll do is see if I can resurrect his Twitter account.  Ok that’s done.  I don’t really know how to tweet, but I just put one in there to try out this crazy new hashtag idea.  I used the most common hashtag ever.  #rachelandfinnarewaymoregaythankurt  and guess what.  Mine is THE TOP tweet for that tag!  Sweet.  It reminds me of the time I did a web search for “gin soaked vagina” and my reference on my blog called "gin soaked vagina" was the only thing that came up, proving I invented the now commonly used term “Gin soaked vagina.”  These days it’s difficult to utter a sentence without saying GSV at least 3 times. 

Ok I just logged old NotFredCube into his Facebook account.  Guess what?  He’s still using the old format.  Lucky bitch.  

The title of this post (above) might be overstating it.  It’s not that I suddenly understand what Twitter is.  It’s just that I had a little bit of a revelation the other day on why it actually might be kind of fun if used a certain way.  Certainly this is not news to anyone except old people. 

Sit down and let me explain how it all began …

Sometime about a year or so ago, Jill and I were minding our own business, watching an all new episode of the hit TV Series “glee!”, when we saw something that made us do this (Old people, click the photo):

It wasn’t the thrilling story line or the cutting edge drama or even the beautiful glee! singing that had us so deeply flummoxed.  Nor was it the word “flummox”.  It was the occasional hashtag thingy during the episode of glee!  It would say something like #kurtsevenmoregaythisseason or #rachelandfinnareevenmoregaythisseason.   Jill asked me, “What the hell is that dang deal?” and I would say “Oh, I know what that is,” thinking I’d be able to work it out by the time Kurt’s boyfriend got done crying. But no.

We gave up on it.  Sure we were missing out on some television something or other, but then again not really caring.  I figured if I wanted to know what it was, I’d have to get off the couch, power up the home personal computing device, instruct the modem to dial up my internet service provider, etc.  It just didn’t seem worth the trouble.  

Old people don’t know how to watch modern television.  Even if they knew how (they don’t) they would be too tired to do it right.  Hey old people, it might help if you didn’t get up before bed time.  When old people watch tv, they just stare, mouth agape (not god’s love, but the other agape) not even texting anyone at all through the whole show.

Young people watch tv the way it was meant to be watched.  Young people stare at the tv, mouth agape, furiously working the texting device at the end of their lifeless arm.  Old people have the texting devices, but they just talk to them.  Yeah, like that works.

The first thing old people have to do to watch TV is to find the remote.  If the remote is not found, there will be no television watching.  Old people are always mad about not being able to find the remote for 2 reasons.  1) Old people always leave the remote in the same place “where it goes”, and 2) the remote is never in that place because some young person has left it in the cushions or under the couch or in the refrigerator.  Young people don’t have this problem.  They can always find the remote because it’s always where the old people left it.  Oh old people!  You’re so predictable. 

Once the remote is found, all inspiration to invent some sort of “remote locating device” fades as the old person can now settle in for an evening of confusion, known as “Television programming”

Old People used to watch a television show called M*A*S*H.  They loved this show.   It rarely confused them at all.  The theme song for M*A*S*H was a morose little ditty called “Suicide is Painless” One of (if not) the first episode(s) of M*A*S*H had a guy singing the song’s words (AKA lyrics).  The words freaked the old people out so much, that without taking their eyes from the screen, the old people sat at their typewriters and wrote several letters to their friends about how fucking crazy the words to the M*A*S*H theme song were.  Still looking at the screen, they expertly pulled the hand typed letters from the machine, folded them into envelopes and started licking stamps.  By the time M*A*S*H was over 30 minutes later, the old people had a stack of envelopes about 8 inches high to go out in the morning mail. 

That’s right.  If old people wanted to send you a message, they would write it down on a piece of paper and pay a company to deliver it for you.  Now all you have to do if you want to say hello to someone is navigate your cell phone to the correct screen, select the contact and press 4433555->555666 and pay a company to electronically deliver it.  If old people try to say hello to you this way, they have to press 4(back because they didn’t press the second 4 fast enough)44335555555(because they were trying to do 2 “L”s and went past the first “L” to the “5” then had to go around the first “L” again) then they have to wait for the cursor to move to the spot for the second “L” so they can continue. 555666.  

Don’t even get old people started on apostrophes.

So anyway - I thought the glee hashtag thing was some sort of signal for young people to do something and get some sort of enhanced viewing experience.  I didn't have a clue and most importantly, didn't care.

I was watching SNL the other day (Old people watch it on Sunday afternoon after they find someone to help them program their VCR) and saw the short film "Mokiki Does the sloppy swish"  I thought it was so funny, I googled it to see if I could watch it some more on my personal home computing device.  That's when I understood the hashtag thing (I think).  There were all kinds of comments about the short film grouped by various hashtag names.  Oh.