urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tem2 I Make Stuff Up! tem2 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tem2:139927 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z My word of the day is <strong>a-Twitter</strong>, a state of euphoria that you want to broadcast in 140 characters or less. Usage:&nbsp;<em>When the Red Sox pulled out that 11th inning win against the Yankees last night, the fans were all a-Twitter.</em><br /><br />I&nbsp;don't really get Twitter. It seems like a pointless waste of time, and not the fun kind like spider solitaire that occasionally turns your screen into a fireworks display. But the hype has been crazy over the past couple months as news outlets have scrambled to sign on, then Stephen Colbert came up with an off-colored past-tense for the verb &quot;to twit&quot; that nearly knocked Meridith Viera out of her seat, and then over a million people decided they just had to cyberstalk that guy from &quot;Dude, Where's My Car?&quot; <br /><br />I'm at the New England SCBWI&nbsp;conference in Nashua this weekend, where folks expect me to know about all things techy that could potentially be used to reach an audience of book lovers, so the topic has come up in casual conversation. Twitterers have been trying to win me over to their ranks while non-Twitterers have been generally disappointed that I&nbsp;couldn't give them my first-hand experiences with the site. By the end of the night I&nbsp;just gave in.&nbsp; You can follow me <a href="http://twitter.com/tem2">@tem2</a><br /><br />The conference is going great, by the way. This year I&nbsp;can relax and enjoy the workshops and festivities. Next year (May 14-16, 2010)&nbsp;I'll be co-directing so I expect very little in the way of relaxation. By then Twitter will probably be plugged directly into my brainstem, insideous as it is.<br />