Tuesday 26 March 2013

no man is an island

. . . except the Isle of Man, of course.

When the night shows
the signals grow on radios
All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There's no point in direction we cannot
even choose a side.

I've been off ill for a couple of days and this morning spent a few minutes reading Tweets and checking emails. Nothing too strenuous as I feel quite grotty. However, I must admit that this Twitter stuff is a bit baffling.

I know I come across as a bit of a technophobe but I do struggle with some of the terminology and basics of the Digital World. Now, I assume that "following" suggests an action, you click on "following" to show that you are actively reading the tripe words of wisdom the person you are following has to say. When we need to see a rant from some misanthrope hiding behind a pseudonym and a picture of a Lego figure and actually read it we may want to read more of this twaddle interesting stuff.  We collect a few Tweeters we like to read and we click "follow" and avidly devour everything they have to enlighten us with. Or something like that.

So this morning I was delighted to find a rather attractive young singer-songwriter from Colorado had decided to "follow" me. Why? I haven't the faintest idea. There have been a few other fellow travellers who have decided to follow me too. When I checked on her Profile I discovered that she "follows" some 5,222 other Tweeters which might suggest why she hasn't got any gigs until later on in April. She will probably take that long to read them all and make sparkling and witty replies to. The truth is I'm guessing that there is probably some software that latches on to other people's profiles and automatically sends out a so-called "following" message as a form of self advertising. Thereby adding to the amount of junk and spam that seems to be a major feature of all this digital traffic. 

I could be wrong - I usually am when I try to get my head around all things digital - but there does seem to be more against using these ways of communicating than for. Still, it got me to write a song about it. Nothing special, certainly not an award winner. Well, unless there's a category for the least successful attempt to shoehorn the word "dichotomy" into a song, that is.

Talking of things digital doing my head in, this bloody laptop's keyboard is getting worse at doubling random letters and missing capitals out. All mistakes are obviously the laptop's doing and not my poor grammar - honestly. I actually can't bear writing on it any more.

10 comments:

Zouk Delors said...

Can't resist a challenge, Dave:

I'm a newbie to tweets,
But detect a dichotomy
'Twixt those who just bleat
And those who, frankly, could do with a full frontal lobotomy.

Needs a bit of work yet as I can't seem to fit it into bars.

Dave Leeke said...

It's probably better than mine:

Did you feel the disconnect
Or did you feel the flow?
Was there a dichotomy
When you clicked to follow me?

See? Mind you, I am ill. A work no longer in progress, I feel.

eeyorn said...

Arrgh, I have a feeling you've just unleashed my inner limerick-writer-daemon. Watch this space :)

Commiserations about the keyboard Dave. When my laptop's keyboard snuffed it, I bought a fairly cheap USB keyboard, which drove me nuts in its unwillingness to register the space bar.

Fortunately, my sanity was saved when the disk-drive gave up the ghost a coupla months back. So now I'm back to my desktop, with a chunky, clunky (but - touch wood, very reliable) keyboard.

Zouk Delors said...

Dave,

Belated commiserations on your illness. Nothing too serious I hope? Maybe you got excused Hokey-Cokey duties this weekend as a result?

Btw, the old Isle of Man joke got a re-working on the Ken Bruce Show recently, a text-in on the theme of the origin of sayings, as:

"1 of my ancestors was the 1st to refute the once widely-held belief that there is a secret land route to the Isle of Man, by circumnavigating it single-handed in a coracle, giving rise to the saying, 'No, Man is an island'!".

Coincidence? Or have you been taking advantage of your sick leave to sneak a listen? Don't bother this week or next, though, as Ken's off and "Claude" Winkleman (Winklewoman?) is sitting in and she's definitely Number Two!

Dave Leeke said...

Zouk, your comments ended up in the Twilight Zone, for some reason.

We're sitting opposite Mont Blanc at the moment so plenty of cold air and occasional sunshine is making me feel a whole lot better! Low cloud today so I'm having a Stella before I go back up to slide all the way to the bottom again - cue 'Helter Skelter'.

I've been told by several others that Ken Bruce is officially 'okay'! So I guess I'll have to give him a listen and retract my statement.

eeyorn said...

The Twitterscape has a dichotomy
Great for spreading the word, but it got to me
There are so many a$$holes grinding their axes
That it does my head in, and rarely relaxes
Its just as much fun as paying your taxes
Which really is not how it ought to be

Zouk Delors said...

Well, as long as it's "official"...

PS Don't forget, when ski-ing, what goes down must come up - hope the lift's working!

Kate Leeke said...

New blog please!

Dave Leeke said...

Your command is my wish . . .

Dave Leeke said...

eeyorn,

Sorry, should have got back to you before. Good one on the limerick. I'm finding the whole Twitter thing okay - some hilarious stuff about Thatcher this week. Good for music too.

I have a new laptop as from this weekend which seems to be good - Windows 8, though!

I'll be at Colchester Arts Theatre on Monday 29th April for Martin Simpson, he's unveiling songs from his new cd I believe. Should be good.