Twitter, Expanded

In the ever-so-slight time gap in entries on the blog, I sometimes (rarely) would have the genesis of an interesting idea, but I was far too lazy to write 500 words. So, on Hemanshu’s advice, I started Tweeting (@ericswisdom) instead – maybe I couldn’t write 500 words, but surely I could muster the effort to write 12.

I didn’t understand Twitter at all when it debuted, choosing instead to mock people for their mindless self-absorption, and predicting that Twitter would die a rapid death.

That was perhaps the most glaring Andy-Rooney-hates-on-Kurt-Cobain “I don’t get you kids” moment of my life. (I think I just revealed myself to be 47 years old.) Eventually I conceded, and started working my own “prose” down to 140 characters. Most of what I tweeted about was pie, and my efforts to defeat the cupcake movement on a grassroots level, eventually leading to cupcake shops beings replaced nationwide with pie shops. That seems to be happening, so I’ve lost some of the energy that was driving my tweeting. Anyways, now that I’m theoretically writing this blog again, I thought it might be fun to expand on some tweets that didn’t get fully explored. Here’s the first three that caught my eye:

296 days ago: “If Obama had any sense, he would announce he was lowering his salary to one dollar. Americans would eat that nonsense like candy omnomnom”

I still think Obama should do this. His presidential salary is negligible when you think about his expected career earnings from books and speaking engagements. Why not do this, turnaround-CEO-style, and say, “Obviously this is a small and symbolic contribution, but sacrifice starts at the top. And if we all can sacrifice just a little bit…blah blah blah.” It would be political gold! I don’t understand why this hasn’t happened yet.

My dad thinks there should be a charity where you just give more money to the US government. Like voluntary increased taxation. He says that’s the neediest entity right now, so we should give money there. I told him traditional charities were always going to be more popular, to which he said, “Oh I see. Because that money is tax-deductible.” So then I started wondering whether voluntary taxes would themselves be tax-deductible. A couple seconds later my head literally exploded and there was a big mess on the floor.

276 days ago: “What did people do before the creation of the paper sleeve that goes outside the coffee cup? Nobody knows.” “My theory: only women, whose hands are less sensitive to heat, drank coffee on-the-go. Nobel Prize committee, I await your call.”

I surveyed my old coworkers, and everyone agreed that women can hold much hotter objects than men. Something can be scalding hot, and women just grab it like it’s nothing. I don’t even think they’re showing off, they just hardly notice heat. If you ask a woman about this, she’ll invariably say, “That’s because women have a higher pain tolerance than men.” If she’s extra fun, she will add, “It’s because we give birth.” I’m not 100% sure about that, but there’s no point arguing – once ladies bring up giving birth, you’ve reached the end of the conversation.

258 days ago: “Julia Roberts is such an entitled bitch at the end of Ocean’s 11 – angry bc a guy would leave her for $163 million. $163 million, come on!”

To refresh your memory on Ocean’s Eleven – Clooney and gang steal ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS from Andy Garcia. Numerically, that looks like this: $163,000,000.00. Clooney asks Garcia if he would dump Julia Roberts if Clooney gave him information that led to getting the money back. Garcia says yes, Julia Roberts sees this on closed-circuit TV, becomes super furious and immediately dumps Garcia.

First of all, what if Garcia just said that to Clooney to get information, but he really had no intention whatsoever of dumping Julia Roberts? The dude just lost $163 million, I think he’s entitled to use some “unconventional” means to try to get the money back. But Julia doesn’t even consider this, she just immediately goes apeshit in her cold, distant way. Secondly, even if Garcia actually meant that he would dump her, we’re talking about $163 million dollars. I understand it’s hard to put a price on love, but it seems awfully arrogant to assume that your price is greater than $163 million dollars. If someone hinted at breaking up with me for $163 million dollars, I’d like to think I’d at least be willing to have a conversation about it. Would Clooney choose her over $163 million dollars? She has absolutely no idea! The scene is supposed to expose Garcia’s character for being phony, greedy and evil, but to me, it just reveals that Julia Roberts is spoiled and entitled. I hate Julia Roberts. Wait, I mean her character. I hate her character.