Sunday, July 12, 2009

Early Sunday Morning Swimming & Twittering

As you can see it was well before the dawn of a new Sunday that I was out and about and wet. I got up way too early this morning. As in before 4.

Twitter continues to perplex me. This morning I read an article about how Twitter has zoomed to being a powerful tool that has altered how information is shared.

This morning I installed a Twitter add-on called Twitter Local. This lets me see, in real-time, what people are Twittering within a certain distance of a location. As in I have Twitter Local set to within 15 miles of 76124, that being my zip code.

What I'm seeing is a surprising number of disturbing people within 15 miles of me, busily typing nonsense, to whom or for whom, I don't know. This being the Buckle of the Bible Belt, and Sunday, there is a lot of religious Twittering.

As in....

Read a few bible stories to my son at bedtime. He asked if he could sleep with it...1st thing this morning he wanted to read more. :)

And...

Come spend some time with Me, let us fellowship together. I love you.

And...

off to worship w Venture Community in Denton - first service! Exciting when God is doing a new thing . . . be encouraged.

And...

Send a prayer out for me, work on Sundays so can't make. I listen to church on the radio every Sunday. Know it's not the same.

But then there are some non-religious Twitterings, as in...

Just when you think you grilled a phenomenal meal last night, you're awakened by the screaming jalapenos knock-knocking on your chamber door.

And this one...

don't think that Men in Relationship or Married Men should be at Strip Clubs. Just my personal opinion. LOL

Well, that is more than enough of that. Interesting that the Buckle of the Bible Belt has the world's highest per capita number of strip clubs, while my old home state of Washington, with the nation's lowest % of churchgoers, has very very very few strip clubs. And none of the sleazy Texas sort.

After typing the above I thought it'd be interesting to see what's being Twittered within 15 miles of my 98233 location in Washington.

Well. There is not a single word of religious Twittering going on within 15 miles of my old zone. I'm seeing way more polysyllabic words and complete sentences than I am in my current zone of occupation. The closest thing to a spelling error is Angie used "u" for "you." One Twitterer got back at 3 am from watching 2 movies at a drive-in. Where is there still a drive-in up there? The 2 I remember have been gone for years.

Okay, time to do something constructive now.

4 comments:

twister said...

It's been awhile since I've been to a drive in movie. The closest we have now is The Brazos in Granbury. Surprisingly not too many years ago there was one in south Dallas down around Loop 12 and Keist. I saw Men In Black there but the orange glare from the sodium lights of a JB Hunt trucking facility ruined the visibility and drove a stake through the heart of the drive in. Suspiciously, I think, the main facility burned down in a fire.
Twitter reminds me of chat rooms. Remember back in 1995 or so the fastest we could surf the internet was maybe 28.8 or a really fast 33.3? I remember it being called the great wait. Anyway, chatting was something to do where when enter or send was clicked the words were transmitted almost immediately. Text files being very small and transmitting quickly, apparently. The point I'm rather unsuccessfully trying to make is that there is lot of “chatting” going on but very little in the way of conversation. Many of the people on twitter, being young, think this is a new-new thing. I think it's the old chat rooms, dressed up in new clothes. Perhaps, this too will pass.

http://www.thebrazos.com/home.htm

Anonymous said...

There is still a drive-in theater on Whidbey Island, silly.

Durango said...

Twister---I'm thinking you're right, in the days of chat rooms there were way fewer people using the Internet and those who did were techno savvy, for the most part. Now everyone, practically, is using the Internet, so it's gradually dumbing down, make that rapidly dumbing down. And then these things like MySpace, Facebook and now Twitter have people all empowered due to it making it so easy for them to have what they think are websites.

I knew of the Brazos in Granbury. It got hit by a bad wind or tornado awhile back. I assume it's been fixed.

Durango said...

Anonymous? Where is the drive-in on Whidbey? I can't picture it. I remember the Circus Drive-in on the way to Anacortes, but I think that is long gone. I remember one up in Bellingham. I tried to sneak in this little girl in the trunk of my Mustang, her name was not Anonymous, and then she crawled in from the trunk. Soon a guy tapped on the window and said that'll be 3 bucks for the chick in the trunk. I probably should have been embarrassed, but I was more amused.