When a tower of ungraded blue books sits on my coffee table mocking and shaming me, I have found it ever so beneficial to completely ignore the ungraded papers and instead use that time for catching up on all the technology that I’ve missed out on over the semester. Yes, it’s high time that I learned about Twitter and text messaging. Priorities are a key to success.

Well, I’m about three years behind on the text messaging thing, but I haven’t had any need for it. If I want to talk to my friends or hubby, I call them. I’m not meeting up with the kids at the Peach Pit on the spur of the moment. No one really needs to know where I am at every given moment. However, my 20 year old babysitter only communicates via texting. She doesn’t answer phone calls or e-mails, so I had to learn. It was super easy and then I spent the rest of the week pestering everyone I know with messages. "what r u doing?"

I signed up for Facebook last summer during a Catch Up With Technology Procrastination Fest. I noticed that some of my friends were using twitter to up date their status, so I HAD to sign up for twitter and link it to Facebook. Maybe I will try to send a twitter via my cell phone today and link it to Facebook. I could blow hours of time with that one.

Twitter is social networking software. You key in a sentence or two about what you are doing. It is the equivalent of the status update on Facebook. I suppose that teenagers use Twitter and Facebook status lines in the same way that they use texting – to alert friends of meet up points and to nervously make sure that your friends don’t forget you.

I’m amused by the 30 and 40 something use of twitter and facebook status. The best status announcements don’t just say "I’m eating food at a restaurant." The best ones must convey irony, ennui, and oblique references to 80s music. "I’m eating day old sushi in Chinatown while considering setting up a Depeche Mode fansite." They aren’t supposed to announce the really big things in your life, but the weird minor stuff. You aren’t just "I’m eating a sandwich". You are "Assembling the best grilled cheese sandwich and declaring it king of all sandwiches."

I’m amused by the elegant use of a sentence. It’s modern Haiku.

I actually don’t update my status all that often, because it takes a lot of work to be clever and ironic, but I’m enjoying the status of others.