The Other Friend (Social Media Site)

Good afternoon twitterverse! Oh crap... this is Blogger isn't it? This is a bit awkward. I thought I was on Twitter... A bit like calling a close friend with some exciting news to tell but dialing the wrong number and reaching a friend you don't talk to nearly as much. You can't really hang up and go, "sorry cuz, wrong number!" and you can't really be as excited about your news because you haven't talked to that person in so long. Anyway, how's uh, how's it going Blogger? Oh, you got a new job? That was two months ago? Yeah man, I've been real busy these past couple months with other social media-- I mean, work and soccer. You heard I got a new job? You say you had to see it on Facebook? Well I mean I meant to call you, but-- Wait, let me finish. No, I'm not purposefully ignoring you, I just-- Alright fine, I'll call you tomorrow and we'll hang out. Alright?? Peace

It's Not Whether You Win or Lose... It's How You Play The Game

HA!

As a sore loser, I normally take extreme offense to that statement. Tonight I had the utter misfortune to be on the wrong side of an 8-7 indoor soccer semi-final loss in overtime. Anyone who knows me relatively well knows that I don't deal favorably with losing. To put it bluntly, I have the temper of a 6-year-old whose TV privileges have been revoked for a week. I've been trying to work on it, but by nature I am a terrible loser. However, tonight I reached a turning point of sorts. We lost. I was angry. But I appreciate the journey for what it was. The essence of the quotation that headlines this post means that while it is summarily important to win in a competition, it is not necessarily the end-all be-all.

As deep (or shallow) as that obvious realization may be, the truth is that losing SUCKS. While it's some consolation that I played rather well and scored one of my best goals this year, the fact remains that I was on the losing side. But as the Russians say: c'est la vie. Wait... I meant: такова жизнь

On a completely unrelated note, I have been absolutely dominating life in FIFA 09. For something that has no value in the real world, I am doing incredibly well. If only FIFA wins translated into real-life dollars... Ah well, for the love of the game.

In other news, follow me on Twitter (AWestJuve) or rabid chinchilla/chihuahua hybrids will carry away your unborn children to raise them for their own. While you pause and wrap your brains around the utter absurdity of that statement, I'll be quietly stealing all the loose change from your sofas and car seats. That is all.

What's Good Twitches?

I really like Twitter. I can honestly say I never really thought I'd enjoy it as much as I do, but... I do. The quick, rapid-fire micro-blogging it offers is perfectly suited to my quick, rapid-fire thought pattern. More often than not I find myself spitting out 20 Tweets in a row, moving from topics such as sneakers to Obama's lack of gloves to a random lyric in one of Anthony Hamilton's songs.

And that's the draw. I'm really really random. For some reason, in my mind, traditional blogging doesn't let me be as random as I normally am. I've set up a rigid formula for blogging that requires good grammar, punctuation and structure. Twitter is like my party-blog where I don't have to obey normal conventions and can feel free to be myself.

But that's all going to change (I hope). I'm going to continue to blog, even though blogging is "dead". However, my blogging will be more and more random, just like my Tweeting is. So get ready twitches, it's about to be on and twitter-popping.

Information Age

One of my best friends (shout-out to the Japanese magician Sho Yamagishi) sent me a YouTube video the other day that referenced how far we've come in the technology age. The video, called "Did you know?" brought up a few key points:

*China will soon become the number one English-speaking country in the world

*India has more honors kids than the U.S. has kids

*The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004

*It's estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century

*It's estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0 x 10^19) of unique information will be generated this year... more than the previous 5,000 years

*Half of what students beginning a 4-year technical degree learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study

A commenter (shout-out to Dallas) noted that one of the main reasons blogging is dead (or dying) is that we live a post-literate society. We're able to get so much of our information from sources such as YouTube and television that there's no need to read anymore. As much as it pains me and makes me feel old, it's true. While I do love to read, I'm far more likely to click on a link to watch an interview. However, because I do love reading, 'riting and a little bit of 'rithmetic I'll continue blogging and hope that someone else has an appreciation for the new "old school" that is the 21st century blog.

Short 'n 'Sweet

Over the next few days I'm going to try writing shorter blog posts so I can actually get things down on "paper" and keep my thoughts moving. I've been tweeting fairly often, so I'm going to try and split up my time between Twitter and Blogger so both kids feel like they're getting their fair share.

Anyway, Juve won this weekend and that makes me very, very happy. I got my aspirin kicked multiple times today in FIFA and that makes me very, very upset. I haven't been on my game in the last couple days, but I pledge to regain form and resume normal mollywhopping tendencies as soon as the Lord of the Rings is over.

Quick side note: the Lord of the Rings was showing all day on TNT and I was kinda ecstatic about it. Nerd status!

Tweet

A few weeks ago I noted that the demise of blogging had been forecasted by some prominent magazine (I forget what it is, but it's inconsequential at the moment). The publication stated that blogging would soon be completely replaced by Twitter and other such "microblogging" applications. When I read this, I immediately wrote (on my blog) that I wouldn't fall prey to such a thing, and I would maintain my blog as best I could.

Well...

I officially shortened what normally would be a half to full-page blog post to around 120 characters earlier today. I thought about writing a whole spiel about how the point of being a sneakerhead was to actually wear the sneakers you've worked so hard to collect, but I ended up condensing it to this short Twitter "tweet" (yes, you can laugh. I have, MANY times): "Isn't the point of being a sneakerhead to WEAR the sneakers, not just put them in boxes and never touch them again?" After I wrote the tweet, it took me a few seconds for it to set in and then I realized that I had fallen victim to convenience.

While I pledge to at least attempt (read: think about it for a half second) to continue to write real blog posts, from now on, if I do have a quick idea, it will go into a Twitter tweet (I just really like saying it) for a few reasons. Sometimes I really just don't have the time to write a full post. Sometimes I just don't feel like it. Sometimes it may work out better in a short idea than extrapolated to a full page. As such, whoever gets the urge can follow me on Twitter (username aawest), and if not, just look for my random blogging as you have (or probably haven't) up till now.

I used a lot of parentheses in this post.