Tweet Nothings, Part 1
I’m acutely aware how ephemeral my past few entries must seem, but Old Father Time isn’t kind to fathers, at least when it comes to having time for old blogging pursuits. The weighty essays and extended comic riffs will have to wait. In the meantime, most of my ephemera hasn’t even ended up here: it’s at Twitter, despite my boring misgivings about same. I can do something about at least one misgiving, though, by giving those tweets a home here as well as there. They may be ephemeral, but they’re my ephemera, and I don’t want to lose them to some future corporate whim. So here’s an archive of the year to date in 140-character instalments (tidied up a bit), minus the ones that are too ephemeral even for me. Feel free not to click through.
Awakening this Twitter profile from 22 months of slumber, Oliver Sacks style. §
That 2007 icon can go, for a start. §
Okay, if I’m gonna do this, I have to embed the RSS feed on my blog somewhere... which means redesigning again. Web 2.n0000000000000! §
Is this thing on? §
That thing can sing! §
I’m on the bus... Yeah... Yeah... No, the bus. Yeah. Oh, nothing much. Just wanted to give O2 10p. §
@MrJamesBachman: I’m looking at Richard Simmons with a whole new respect. In a whole new respect, anyway. §
@MrJamesBachman: Yep. (‘A member of the cucurbit family.’ Bags the name Courgette Cucurbit for my next alias.) §
New U2 single is the best in a decade. Achtung Baby no. 2 on its way? §
Catching my breath between an all-afternoon meeting and an all-morning class, wishing I could watch DVDs all night but knowing I can’t. §
@MrJamesBachman: Is that an emphatic quite or a so-so quite? Tossing up whether to plonk down the cold hard for it... ‘Ulysses’ was okay. §
Read 60,000 words in preparation for this morning’s class on Communication, and still don’t know why I’m telling you this. §
A guest at the Scottish Whisky Society—this is more like it! §
Edinburgh has turned into a giant slush puppy. §
Waits 20 mins for bus, ducks home to grab something he forgot, emerges to see 2 go past at once. §
Where are our blizzard conditions, Met Office? You promised! §
Today I peeled an avocado seed. Now I have a nude avocado seed. What do you do with a nude avocado seed? (To the tune of ‘Drunken Sailor’.) §
Dry and grate them into enchilada sauce, or grow a tree, if you live somewhere warm for a decade. §
Or make avocado pit dust! Or smoothies with a 3.5 horsepower blender! Somehow, I’m not convinced. §
@MrJamesBachman: I’m beginning to suspect that following Stephen Fry’s tweets would have that effect on anyone. Impossible to compete. §
Still no blizzard here. Tiny specks of snow are drifting about and not getting on with it. I want an excuse to hole up for the winter, you! §
All my tweets seem to push the boundaries of the 140-character limit. Must strive for more haiku-like brevity, mustn’t I. Oh yes. 10, 6, 3.. §
I’m sick of having work foisted on me by Past Self. I’m going to foist it on Future Self in revenge. §
Am I the only one wondering if the ‘God I’m boring’ in the middle of today’s Ben Goldacre column was put there by mischievous Guardian subs? §
There’s this, but also this, so I suppose not. Still reads too much like a non sequitur to seem intentional, though. §
Reading about the Vic bushfires from this distance is grim. All those pics of gumtrees signifying ‘Home’ with orange signifying ‘ON FIRE’. §
Nearly finished 250,000 words of marking (25% assignments, 75% course blogs). Lack of sleep over past two weeks = out-of-brain experience. §
Which is why there haven’t been many updates lately, here or on the blog. §
Last-minute write-emails clear-desk prepare-stuff panic before going away for 12 days. You’d think I was off on a 3-month cruise. §
It’s -24 degrees C outside, here in sunny Ed... monton. §
Which feels fine for about 60 seconds. Then you wonder how the hell they survived here before electricity. §
Feels like I only just got here and now there’s only one day left. §
Four robot answering-machine messages from my bank’s Fraud Dept. That’d be all the cash their card wouldn’t let me withdraw in Canada, then. §
Hooray, I’m in the window where my body doesn’t think it’s the middle of the night. Jetlag from North America to the UK is just the worst. §
When I look down my past tweets, most of them seem to be complaints. Mostly about the world at large. Damn you, World! [Shakes fist at sky.] §
@serafinowicz: The Remains of the Night. §
Hotel for Two-Dogs §
@serafinowicz: The Fantastic Five Go Adventuring §
@serafinowicz: Buffy the Vampire Undertaker §
Readjusted to UK time today, on my third morning back. To be undone immediately when I stay up working on a paper tonight. §
New Tom Hodgkinson, yay! And remains disturbingly relevant to yours truly. Purchased in an idle moment. §
Three at last, free at last! §
What do you do with a jet-lagged baby / Earl-ie in the morning? §
Why isn’t there Chocolate & Port flavoured toothpaste? §
They’re planning to demolish Edinburgh’s beautiful old Odeon. Say noooooooo! §
Started following a bunch of extra people here even as I have my doubts about what it all adds up to. §
Unfollowing celebrities turns my Twitter stream back into something that approximates human speech. Less of the rat-tat-tat of at-at-at. §
Frog leaps in the stream / Current washes him away / The sound of Twitter §
Friends over for brunch: home-made hot cross buns, pancakes, sausages and bacon, fresh fruit, juice and coffee. Now that’s a Good Friday. §
A fire engine put up its ladder two doors down and our two-year-old slept through it all. §
Amazing. If I had a penny for every time someone had watched my sloths video, I’d have £1,092.13. §
Hey! Twitter auto-substituted a TinyURL for my URL. How annoying. §
All these years of staring through Venetian blinds, and I’ve never seen Venice. §
What did two-year-old boys obsess over before the invention of the wheel? ‘Boulders go round!’ doesn’t have the same ring. §
You rotten swine flu! You have deaded me! (Waits for audience applause. Not a sausage.) §
Now it looks as if I ripped off @MitchBenn’s joke 36 hours before he made it. §
@MitchBenn: Thanks for the shout-out, o Viceroy! §
@charlottetandy: Will others hog all the Tamiflu? §
@MitchBenn: Nicolae Chow-sescu, Mouse E. Tung, Ayatollah Caimani, Fidel Catstro... #dictatorpets §
@MitchBenn: Spaniel Noriega, Ferdinand Barkos... #dictatorpets §
Clearly I should spend all my Twitter time posting bad puns. §
@drmabuse: Ed, you need to see this. §
@MrJamesBachman: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, it wasn’t. #overwrittenfilmtaglines §
@MrJamesBachman: A long time ago, relative to Earth history, in a galaxy far, far away from Earth... #overwrittenfilmtaglines §
All the grapes were brown / When I was in L.A. / California Raisins / On two-for-one today... #newsupermarketjingles §
I’m 17454km from where I was born. §
18 May 2009
