Tag Archives: Twitter

March 17, 2011 · 8:21 am

Three little words

A new trend has just popped up on Twitter and it’s popping so fast I’m having trouble tracing its path. I believe it originated with Maria Shriver. At first I thought it was corny but, once I dug down, I struck treasure.

Tweeters all over are each sharing three words by which they live. It’s called “threewordstoliveby” and is intended to get people thinking about how they would capture their personal philosophies in just three words.

I took a scroll through about a hundred of them and tried to decide what mine would be.

To be sure, there were plenty of clichés: Live, laugh, love. Eat, pray love. Family, friends, faith. Those are nice, but they’ve been done. After all, the point is for them to be uniquely individual.

Some were raunchy. Some were extremely raunchy. Some were hedonistic: Scotch rocks now.  Bacon or die. Some were narcissistic.

Some folks couldn’t do it in three words: Lock the back door. Be concise.

First I thought mine would be Laugh yourself silly. Not very original, but it suits me.

Unable to come up with a meaningful and unique string, I found several that I wish I had:

  1. Peace, love, panic
  2. Failure isn’t permanent
  3. I ignore ignorance
  4. Know your role
  5. Think then talk
  6. Duck fat hashbrowns

Yes, the triquetrous credos are supposed to reflect our individuality. If that’s the case, I just found myself half a dozen new Doppelgängers.

By what three words do you live?

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February 1, 2011 · 10:48 am

Cocoa conscious

It’s February, the shortest month of the year, a month since the onset of our New Year’s resolutions. It’s also host to Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day. As always, there’s something looming over it all, and it’s not snow. All you need to do is walk into any store and you’ll feel it. Even a stroll through the Internet will bring it to light.

I recently started following Maria Shriver on Twitter. The first tweet I received was a link to her Facebook page, where she asked her fans: “We all have one, and we want to know – what’s your guilty pleasure?”

As of nine o’clock this morning, she had received 100 responses, almost a third of which mentioned chocolate. Dark chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, red velvet cupcakes, chocolate-chocolate chip ice cream, Reese’s cups and several combinations involving milk or red wine or television. Two of my personal favorites—macaroni and cheese and Cheetos—also made the list.

Not surprisingly, most of Maria’s Facebook fans are women. I’d love to hear more men’s responses to the question of guilty pleasures—or maybe I wouldn’t. Something tells me chocolate might not be so prominent.

I have a theory about chocolate as a guilty pleasure and it might be totally off base: I doubt women get any more pleasure from chocolate than men; but I do suspect they feel more guilt.

I too would be among the first to cite chocolate as a guilty pleasure, but that’s because it’s one of a long list of foods I love that make me ill. My New Year’s resolution is to stay well in 2011. This is not to say the red and green M&Ms didn’t gradually disappear from the candy dish over the course of January. Hey, something’s gotta give. Still, the lighter the candy dish, the heavier my conscience.

Now those heart-shaped boxes of temptation are everywhere (as are the chocolate Easter eggs). I’d say to the women and men out there, unless you have a medical condition that is triggered by chocolate, go ahead and indulge sans guilt. Have my share!

And while we’re on the subject, I’ll join Maria in asking, what’s your guilty pleasure? C’mon, guys, chime in.

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January 22, 2011 · 8:57 am

Overnight sensation

Just recently, I sulked when a snobby saleswoman snubbed my style as shabby chic.

I’ve decided I could go two ways with that. I could bristle and point to evidence that my sought-after slipcovers are plenty trendy. Or, I could roll with it and play the part I was assigned.

Maybe shabby suits my economic reality, and just maybe there’s a way to be shabby chicly. But how?

Just as I was trying on this new persona in my mind, I got a tweet from one of my sources for what’s hot. At my age and without a young person at home any longer, I need help in boosting my trend awareness. Twitter to the rescue, once again.

Voilà the latest in footwear for the economically aware, environmentally sensitive, deadline-conscious shoe fanatic.  Goodbye Vanelli pumps; hello Shipping Package Kicks, new from Civic Duty Shoes.

Why so crinkly, you ask? These babies are made of dependably durable FedEx envelopes, and styled like old-school Chuck Taylors.

If shabby and chic don’t ring your bell, consider this. They’ll get you where you need to be by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.

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November 8, 2010 · 9:22 am

Royal flair

Some headlines are just too good not to re-post:

Queen joins Facebook, but you can’t be her friend or poke her (UK Metro)

The Socialite Network: UK’s Queen joins Facebook (Associated Press, London)

Queen Elizabeth on Facebook, not looking for friends (Montreal Gazette)

What do you know? Today Buckingham Palace is to launch a Facebook account for The British Monarchy, which will feature news, photos, videos and daily updates about the activities of Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the Royal Family.

We don’t know what kind of settings are available uniquely to Her Majesty but it has been made clear she’ll be protected from common pokes, Friend requests and any direct contact other than a distant “like.”

I’m not one of the Royal Family’s 70,000 followers on Twitter, so I don’t know what kind of updates are already tweeting out of the palace on a regular basis.

Will we now know what kind of tea she’s sipping or what’s in her porridge? For whom she’s voting on Britain’s Got Talent? How many animals she’s feeding in FarmVille? What she really thinks of Kate Middleton?

Have you liked the Queen today?

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September 11, 2010 · 8:42 am

Weird news day

I don’t tweet much. Once a day or so, just to blast out blog updates.

On Twitter, I follow more than am followed. I follow 26 people and only 15 follow me. I really must do something about this.

The reason I follow most of the tweeters I do is to get information. While it might be mildly relevant to know where someone is lunching, I am more interested in newsier Tweets. These often include items that don’t make the major newspapers, are written with esoteric angles or are relevant to narrow industry sectors. Or they’re just plain funny. Those I follow are publications mostly—The New Yorker, Fast Company, Vanity Fair, Advertising Age, Politico. Freaknomics puts out good stuff. I’ll make another pitch here for Fake AP Stylebook.

One night recently, as I was scrolling the latest Tweets before bed,  the most bizarre collection of headlines jumped off the screen.

I wondered how these would look to someone having just awakened from a decade or two of hyperbaric sleep and wanted to catch up on the latest developments in fashion, politics, the environment, cable news or travel. Then again, Twitter in and of itself might buckle the brain of anyone who’s been out of touch for, say, 10 years.

Here is just a sample of the headlines I read within in just five minutes’ time:

New York Fashion Week to Include Designer Sex Toys

Barbara Boxer aide charged with possession of pot

China Beats U.S. to First Offshore Wind Farm

Scandal Glossary: The Complicated Past of Piers Morgan, Larry King’s Replacement

Airport “Naked” Body Scanners Get Privacy Upgrade to Anonymize Your Naughty Bits

Pinch me; I must still be dreaming.

Please remember, there are no blog updates on Sundays. I’ll be opening the Sunday paper with caution.

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August 6, 2010 · 8:13 am

Sounds easy enough

You’ve seen me refer to the Fake AP Stylebook before. The group puts out funny little comments about language every day on Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t use these, you can go elsewhere to see some great examples. Some really get me thinking.

Case in point:  A recent post observed, “there/their/they’re – What, seriously? This confuses you?”

I have never had trouble distinguishing among the three. I don’t find it confusing at all. But it’s not because I’m good at remembering rules necessarily; otherwise, I’d have gotten this bring-versus-take thing down long ago.

What I realized is that it says something about the way my brain works.

When I hear and when I speak, I see the words written out. I suppose this means I am a visual learner or perhaps a visual thinker. I envision words as they are spelled. Maybe that’s why I have such a sensitive ear when it comes to pronunciation. If people saw “sherbet,” maybe they wouldn’t say “sherbert.”

Like the Fake AP Stylebook, when I see there/their/they’re confused, I am tempted to wonder how anyone can get it wrong. I also wonder how anyone graduated from second grade without mastering it, but perhaps I’m too quick to judge.

“There,” “their” and “they’re” are homonyms. They sound exactly the same. It’s no wonder people who are not visual learners might be homonymphobic.

If we had to spell according to how words sound (“sound it out,” we were always told), especially in this confusing language we call English, how can we be expected to commit the difference to paper?

Maybe I can offer some tips.

Let’s start with “there.” “There” is often the answer to “where?” “Where are my glasses? There they are.” On top of my head, usually. So that one’s easy:  Where?  There! Spelled the same (after their respective consonant digraphs).

“They’re” is a contraction of “they” and “are.” Until I had a baby, I thought contractions were easy. You begin with what you are (you’re) trying to say and shorten it; for example, “They are” doing something. With a contraction, typically a letter and a space come out, an apostrophe goes in and, voilà, two words become one. In a sense, they’re getting married. To use song lyrics as a prompt, “They’re Playing Our Song” or, for readers of my generation, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa.” By now they probably are.

I haven’t come up with a tip for “their.” Maybe you have one. For now, let’s just say it’s the other one, and remember, “i” before “e” except after “c.”  Oops, and except in “their.”

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