Twitter is chapping my hide

Yeah, yeah, I thought Twitter was stupid, trite and unnecessary and I said as much. (I still think so more or less.)

But then some friends sucked me into Twitter world a few weeks ago, and I made reluctant friends with the thing. Made friends, right. I took the first hit and soon began cooking it up and injecting every chance I got.

Now Twitter is broken all the time. Last night for 3 hours, tonight for God knows how long, and I need my medicine. Instant messaging won't do it anymore. It has to be the real deal, the good stuff.

Can't anyone score some Tweets for me?

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Other random shit that is chapping me until I bleed:

Good galoshes, Batman, but I HATE Snap.com You know, they make those little tiny annoying as hell screenshots that leap up when you hover over a link too long. WHO on earth needs this crap? Really, peepul, it makes me want to delete your RSS feed when you pester me with "Snapshots"(gag).

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I am also not so big on your truncated feeds in the feed reader. "Truncated" for those of you who didn't have Mr. Drew for English, means shortened, cut off to just a title or the first few lines. (I'm not condescending to you - I just wanted to give a shout out to Mr. Drew in heaven).

I know you are afraid of having your preshus feeds scraped and re-posted by some Russian spamblog mafiosi, but can you do me a favor and get over it?

Honestly, people, these click-thrus cost me time and TIME IS MONEY! The reason I can't afford that black truffle pasta sauce is because I am too busy clicking through to read your latest post. I am deprived of black truffles and it is ALL YOUR FAULT for clipping your feeds!

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LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

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The woman at work who stopped up the toilet, left the evidence in the bowl, and slipped by me, smiling shyly - hey, woman, it is YOUR responsibility to call building maintenance, not mine. Or you could have used the plunger that was RIGHT there in the stall but no, not you. That would have been GROSS - but not quite as gross as having your co-worker do an innocent "Oh they forgot to flush" flush and then having to wade through the lake of backed up sewage you left for someone else to deal with. Beeyotch.

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On the other hand, I really like the CommentLuv wordpress plugin. When you leave a comment on a blog that has it, the blog automatically tries to find a feed of your last blog post and makes a link to it. Sweet! Elizabeth from Table for Five was the early adopter on this one and I give her a big thumbs up for taking the plunge.

Bloggers don't get no respect

Wow, does Queen of Spain have a tale to tell.

She had the temerity to think that a silly little organization like BlogHer that only represents something like 13,000 women bloggers could DARE to send a reporter to the latest Republican debates.

However, the Los Angeles Police Department denied credentials to both Katy and I on the grounds we are "online media" and BlogHer.com was not throughly investigated by the LAPD. This decision came suddenly after weeks of talks with LAPD personnel and assurances that Katy and I, as former Los Angeles news reporters, would be applying for a press pass "renewal" as we were simply changing our media affiliation.

I don't know about you, but I get my news from the New York Times, the LA Times and the BBC. Maybe a little Yahoo, a little Fark. All online. Not print. Not TV. Online. Every. Single. Day.
I think the LAPD has some catching up to do.

Sleep dysfunction

I am making preparations to go to baseball spring training in Phoenix in March. Anyone else going?

I always think fondly of Phoenix because I got a really good night's sleep there, the last full night of sleep I can remember. It was in 2003 at the Sheraton. Man, those Sheratons have some nice beds.

I am, to put it mildly, a terrible sleeper. Verging on violent. I regularly wake up with blankets tossed on the floor, pillows scattered, even pillowcases removed.

I thrash, I snore, I toss and wake up and walk around.

I feel sorry for anyone who has to sleep in the same room with me.

There are many, many reasons I am not dating.

How do you sleep?

So that's how they do it.

I was at an all-day work meeting and a box of See's Candy was being passed around.

The woman next to me carefully selected a piece and took a bite.

"Oh, my God, that's good!" she moaned.

She then put the other half of the piece on a napkin, where it stayed until the meeting was over 4 hours later.

She never ate the other half.

I could not have been more stunned if she had gotten up and done the Soulja Boy Dance.


I may be 40-something years old, but it had never once occurred to me to eat HALF of a piece of really good candy, a moan-worthy piece.

I told my friend Alicia this story and she said "Wow, if I found a piece of See's Candy I liked, I would be rooting around in the box for more of the same kind before someone else got them."

Exactly. You see why Alicia and I are friends. You can also see why we will never be mistaken for anorexics.

So that's how skinny people do it (yes, the woman who ate half the candy was what we used to call in high school "A pick"). They simply eat less. A lot less.

Crazy. Why didn't I ever think of that?

Happy Australia Day

To all the lovely Aussies (except New South Wales, who celebrated early) – Happy Australia Day.

If I didn’t live here, I might well want to live there, considering that we have so many of the same good things – fine wine, beautiful beaches, eucalyptus trees – and that you have national health care, less religious fanaticism and a big whopping coral reef.