Mom, I'm OK

My mom doesn’t know how the hell I am, but the state climatologist knows I’m bent about global warming inaction in Texas.

Why dear old mother must suffer my two weeks of silence, while John Nielsen-Gammon politely endures my camping out on his atmo.sphere blog?

Of course, my behavior reflects my increasingly core belief that we’re in for a flurry of shit when it comes to our climate-conditioning enterprises wrought by petro goods.

But there’s a second reason for strangers being subjected to my wily digit-al (as in, emerging from my digits) dances — that is my increasing diffusion into online community life.

I’m not the only one. There are various folks about town that serve as sources for the work I do here at the Current who prefer to meet me there (smell-less multiverse factor?). That works. Connected as they are to their computers in various cubicles about town, the best way I can reach them is a direct message via Twitter.

I know they are like me. They don’t want to pick up the phone with all the encumbered risks involved. I mean, I lift the receiver and who knows? It could be the cat lady. I really don’t want to listen to her cry again. (What am I going to say, ‘Yes poisoning cats is against the law and you and the neighborhood strays are being mistreated but I can’t help you this week and by the way it likely won’t change because you are fighting a broken system’?)

So I don’t lift. I wait for the blinking light and then dial in for my message. Not every time, but enough.

For the more in demand, actual voice interactions are approaching the passé. One woman I know in real estate gives express treatment to her email and IM clients — after her personal assistant combs through the hundreds of messages and transcribes the important for her consideration. No time wasted there. Though she is not on Twitter yet, she sees the value. I mean you have exactly 140 characters to say what you need to say. “Hey, if you can’t sum it up, you don’t know what you want,” she says.

I Tweet out when I’ve updated the world about my opinion or my current condition.

Of course, moms has a hard enough time making sense of my blog. And now that I’ve integrated my Twits there, who knows what cranial pains I could be inflicting upon her? So I relent in the pushing.

She doesn’t have to know every time I respond to a lame column in the Houston Chronicle, or batter on the poorly veneered entryway of Guv Bush appointee Nielsen-Gammon, or even when I ejaculate about “global warming turning us rednecks into stupider rednecks.”

Here in the office, we liked the platform so much we launched an SACurrent twit space so you can follow SA alt-weekly events, news,  and general craftiness (and occasional fumbles) via handheld, laptop, or desktop.

Think you can spare us a couple seconds per day? We’ll Twit you right.

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