Dancing in Bugtown

[greygirlbeast]

Choice comments to recent entries. First, regarding the accelerating acceleration of life at the dawn of the Twenty First Century lady_tigerfish writes:

You just can't Tweet Big Thoughts; they take more than 140 characters. I resent any format that demands my thoughts be small.

- and also -

Making the time--for anything--seems to be a thing of the past.

Comments

[readingthedark]

When someone asks me my favorite book ever, I freeze up. I want to hide because it's too hard to even try to articulate an answer to the question. There are a dozen answers for any given moment and a hundred viable candidates depending on context.

When someone asks me to repeat a single orignal tweet word for word, of any tweets ever, I've got nothing. Not just of favorites. I just don't remember any tweets at all.

[greygirlbeast]

When someone asks me to repeat a single orignal tweet word for word, of any tweets ever, I've got nothing. Not just of favorites. I just don't remember any tweets at all.

I don't think tweets are meant to be memorable. They are, by default, unmemorable.

[humglum]

The only person I follow who tweets memorable tweets is Kristin Hersh, but that's mostly because she's quoting her hilarious and smart kiddos. Also, as a songwriter, I think she has a way with single lines.

[greygirlbeast]

Sometimes, William Gibson says something that sticks with me. But yeah, Kristin, too. Caveats.

[numisma]

I like the quote about Twitter. I'm one of those people who often can't help but paragraph at others and tl;dr them - in email, in posts/comments, in instant message/private message. I don't use Twitter as I have deliberately avoided it since forever, but I frequently make long text messages that use up most of the 160 character limit when I do text others on my phone. I've gone over the max on more than one occasion and had to send multiple texts before. (Which creates a semi-amusing contrast when the responses I receive are very short.) So, I don't know, but it's nice to know there are others who "resent" such short character limits.

[greygirlbeast]

So, I don't know, but it's nice to know there are others who "resent" such short character limits.

In these contexts, they are anathema to any thought beyond the most cursory, casual of communications.

[chris_walsh]

Sorry about the migraine. Always hoping to soothe you, this time by this link via tjcrowley of David Bowie doing normal stuff.

[greygirlbeast]

Always hoping to soothe you,

Nothing short of opiates soothes this.

[corucia]

I've had a nasty headcold the last four days, complete with a headache that feels like an incredibly thin knife blade's been inserted into my temple, and then is being ever so slowly and methodically twisted a few millimeters, at an interval just irregular enough to be absolutely infuriating. Headaches suck.

Tweets are almost the modern equivalent of telegrams - inherently limited to short essentials, but alas unfortunately not limited by exorbitant cost.

Tweets play into the general desire to know enough about what's going on with someone to feel informed, but not enough to be bored. And most people's boredom thresholds are quite low when it comes to details of other people's lives or thoughts. Besides, many just take the info and use it as an excuse to put it into the context of their own lives (see the first bit of this comment for a good example - I may be aware of the tendency, but unfortunately awareness doesn't equal immunity!).

[greygirlbeast]

Tweets are almost the modern equivalent of telegrams - inherently limited to short essentials, but alas unfortunately not limited by exorbitant cost.

Not sure I can agree with that. Telegraphs performed a different and far less casual function. They tended to carry important news.

[corucia]

Telegraphs performed a different and far less casual function. They tended to carry important news.
Cost was, and is, the gatekeeper. Add that back to tweets, and the volume would drop and the information content would increase.

I wonder if this issue isn't an inherent aspect of communication forms. For all we know, the background radiation of the universe is actually a communications medium from higher-order civilizations, but we'll never interpret it because the vast majority of it is the alien equivalent of viagra and penis-enlargment spam.

[greygirlbeast]

I wonder if this issue isn't an inherent aspect of communication forms. For all we know, the background radiation of the universe is actually a communications medium from higher-order civilizations, but we'll never interpret it because the vast majority of it is the alien equivalent of viagra and penis-enlargment spam.

Brilliant!

[ashlyme]

Oh, it's Bowie's 65th today!

Thanks for the thoughts on SF. I'd put myself in the Dionysian/earth sciences camp, too - I'm not much of an SF reader now. Too much of it lacks awe or darkness or heart (and I cannot easily define these things that I look for.)

Wow, two parts to The Lost Language? Brilliant. I don't think I thanked you before - when you first mentioned this piece, you stuck in a link about Victorian flower language, and that's slowly sparking off something in my head. It may be a story. But cheers.

[greygirlbeast]

Oh, it's Bowie's 65th today!

How did I miss that!

Wow, two parts to The Lost Language?

It sort of got out of control and became necessary.

[humglum]

Wow, two parts to The Lost Language?

I'm toying with doing illustrations for it when its done... Little ink drawings, maybe. Definitely the niftiest Cephalopodmas present ever.
And also, that illustration by Vince Locke is probably my favorite and may be destined to become a tattoo...