One of the coolest things about Twitter is writing replies to people A LOT more famous than I am (and once every hundred times getting a reply back). I’m talking people like Wil Wheaton who have 16,000 other followers. Especially when they respond strongly positively to something I have since forgotten saying. Woot!

Warren Ellis tweeted:

Knee just blew out. Seriously thinking about just sawing my left leg off. Bonus: I could get a false leg that does cool stuff. BUZZSAW DEATH KNEE ACTIVATE

followed soon after by:

Oh, I see, you people WANT me to mutilate myself for your amusement. You evil pricks. I get no love at all.

so I replied:

Mutilating yourself would NOT amuse me. It’s just nervous giggling.

What would amuse me is you replacing your real leg with a Swiss Army Leg. With laser, GPS, pepper mill, tire gauge, tweezers, fog machine, blender and of course a 1TB hard drive.

Or an AstroBoy leg with a jet engine. But if it were only one leg, you’d be constantly flying in circles.

But another of Ellis’ tweets brought this incredulous reply from me:

“Naked Ninja Nuns?!?” When alliteration goes terribly terribly wrong!!!

Some celebs are just more fun than others, Penn Jillette (or someone claiming to be him) just joined the Twitterazzi, and between immortalizing places he’s eating out, wrote:

Must not engage Democrats. Must not engage Democrats. Must not engage Democrats. Must not engage Democrats. Must not engage Democrats.

I wrote:

Hey everybody! @pennjillette says he “Must not engage Democrats.” I guess that’s Teller’s job.

and

OF course, if @pennjillette engaged EVERYBODY he THINKS is guilty of Bullshit, he’d have zero audience. Including Teller.

It’s good to be a nobody.

Life’s too short to follow twitterers who just annoy you. But if I’m the twitterer annoying YOU, we’re all better off when you waste your time. Thanks.

Most tweeted political soundbite: “Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.” First one to make that a bumper sticker’s a millionaire.
But I firmly believe that ANYONE who uses “do-gooder” as an insult is just identifying themself as Evil. Period.
And when Michael Jackson called himself “Bad”… I BELIEVED HIM.

Seeing twittering about French Fries Sandwiches just reminds me of my tragic addiction to Chili Cheese Fries.
Del Taco Deluxe Chili Cheddar Fries: crinkle-cut fries, no-beans chili, shredded cheddar, sour cream, diced tomatoes, diced onions. Nirvana.
Nirvana including total blockage of regular blood flow, that is.

Why do I mix up WPMU with WFMU? Probably the same reason I mix up Biz Stone and Biz Markie. (yes, you need to be very pop-culturally literate and web-culturally literate to understand that)

I love it when a Conservative arguing how the U.S. isn’t so bad slips and indirectly calls Guantanamo a “Gulag”.
“…foreign nationals caught trying to kill us in Afghanistan” should be put in Gulags? You mean soldiers fighting in their homeland?

When I saw the movie “Romancing the Stone” (alone), I picked up on the term “hopeFUL romantic”. Big Mistake.

Does “Book of Biff” have a beefed-up buffer or boffo baffles or barfed-up buffets?
Wendell has waffles, whuffles, wiffle-balls, wharfs and woofs.

(re: media reports of Hurricane Gustav) The wind speed always goes up when it passes through the Associated Press. It’s a ‘hot air’ effect.

Follow me here. But not too closely, I may back up.

I try to avoid HEAVY ISSUES, but not this one. I had previously played around with doing “Photoslop” cartoons based on actual photographs, but backed down after realizing I had done three of them about Keven Federline. You might say I aborted the project. Or not.

I am currently using Google’s Chrome browser not only to wander the Web but also to access my blog and write stuff like this. I’m pleasantly surprised how well it is functioning for an “out-of-nowhere Beta release”. In several hours now, I have had one ‘technical difficulty’, but it was a scary one. Clicking a link on an unfamiliar site caused my computer to do a full reboot. Yep, one second of BSOD, followed by restarting Windows XP from scratch. A scary reminder to Back Up Often! But in 3+ hours of use since the rebootery, it has functioned without a hitch; noticeably faster than Firefox 3 and lighter on the memory usage. I am not one to “drink the Google kool-ade”, but unless this does something more to seriously disappoint me, I think Chrome may be my new first-choice browser. Wowsers.

But I do know the first reason they call it “Chrome”. Because a significant portion of the population of the Web-Ennabled World is frighteningly easily distracted by shiny things. I’m sure there were people riding out Hurricane Gustav, who, the moment they got Internet access restored said: “Oooh! Chrome!”

Here is why Allen Funt’s Candid Camera from the 1950s-60s was head-and-shoulders classier than any other hidden camera stunt show in the history of TV (well, this and the hiring of Durwood Kirby as a co-host). Ladies and gentlemen, the definitive Conformity Test…

Add to the long long list of thing I disagree with Instapundit on: “WHAT WE NEED IS MORE PUN CONTROL.”

“Anything else will PALIN Comparison”
“I’m just BIDEN my time until the election is over.”

Remember, you can’t spell INSTAPUNDIT without PUN. Or should I call you Instadit?

Years ago, I considered doing a parody of Instapundit called “Instapunster”. Even registered instapunster.com to do it. But I got nothing done in the next year, and there were ‘hotter’ political blogs than his by then, so I let the domain lapse. Nobody else has picked it up since, so I just registered it again. Another $9.29 mistake at NameCheap? (Since discovering that registry I’ve wasted at least a couple hundred dollars a year there, but I have kept a few dangerous domain names out of the hands of websters even more evil than I) But I digress.

I agree with this response to Mr. Dit: “When puns are outlawed, only outlaws will have puns.”
Puns don’t kill people.
People can’t use puns to people.
Puns cause pain to some people but delight and laughter to some other people. Show me a gun-related product that can say THAT. Besides a pro-gun bumper sticker… and that might likely be a gun-related pun. What about pun-related guns? Only if you shoot Chester in the chest with a Winchester. Or fill a Smith & Wesson water pistol with Wesson Oil. (That’s why there are no Magnum water guns. Too heavy.) Or if you catch somebody rifling through your paper files - with a real rifle. Or why you don’t have to worry whether the security guards at office supply stores are armed: they’re only Staples guns. I’m not even going to start to get into the ‘pistol’ puns; nope, not going there.

swapping the g and n in “sign”…

“That’s a bad sing.”
“Stop sing ahead.”
“Sings point to ‘Yes’”
“Would you sing your autograph?”
“With singing for the hearing-impaired.”
“Please submit singed document.” (extra points for the inconsistency of the English language changing ’sing’ to ’singe’)

And the reverse…

“Daltrey signs ‘Baba O’Reilly’”
“Doctor Horrible’s Sign-Along Blog”
“Making the stool pigeon sign…”
“I feel like signing!”

I’m sure there are even better examples. Stay tuned…

My brain may have jumped the shark. I bought a 3-pack of small plastic storage boxes, but they turned out to be too small for anything I wanted to store. So I bought a larger plastic storage box, and the first thing I put in it was… the 3-pack of small plastic storage boxes.

In other news, I have developed a unique skill for making important things that I place on my bedside table fall off the table and directly into my bedside wastebasket, no matter where in relation to the table the wastebasket is. (up to a foot away from the table… farther than that and I end up putting MY foot in the wastebasket when I get out of bed… and no, I can’t put the wastebasket on the other side of the bed; the other side of the bed is against the wall of the Secret WendelLair… I use that arrangement to make sure I don’t get up on the wrong side of the bed - unless I put my foot in the wastebasket when I get up)

I’m glad I updated The Incredible Truth About Minneapolis before the RNC Convention which claims to be happening there. It’s actually going to be in a North Hollywood soundstage on the same studio lot as the Big Brother house. Unfortunately, Hurricane Gustav doesn’t know that - Gus is building up strength so it can go all the way up the Mississippi River and rain on the Republicans. Payback for the “pray for rain during Obama’s speech”. But the GOP has lied its way out of the path of another disaster. Now a massive earthquake that swallows up the Faux Convention AND the Big Brother house would be nice (especially now that I live 200 miles away). But I shouldn’t wish ill on anybody. Except ex-landlords.

In the commercials where John Hodgman portrays a lovable but bumbling and hopelessly uncool PC, he is obviously a PC using Windows XP. Because Vista would’ve been much more accurately played by David Spade. (I honestly don’t know if Hodman/PC has referenced Vista in the ads; I’ve only willingly watched a couple of the spots - remember, bloggers should not be expected to do adequate up-front research; that’s why blogs have comments)

The reason I thought of that popular expert-in-some-areas, computer avatar and nerd archetype is that he is one of the people making entertaining contributions to Twitter. Currently, in response to the umpteen-hundredth invitation to speak to a “Con” he decided at a moment’s notice to do his own:

That graphic is MY creation; if Hodgman wants to use it or a variation thereof for this or future Hodg*Cons, I’m sure we can make a deal. He really should protect the copyright on the things off the top of his head better.

BTW, I was happy to learn while making that graphic that he uses the same shade of orange on his site as I do… simple HEXff9900. Because Orange IS the New Orange.

Anway, here is a selection of Twitterisms from the Con:

All this Con talk makes me want to have my own Con. Today. In my house. Let the cosplay competition begin. 02:00 PM August 26, 2008
I am live twittering from HodgCon 08. I just saw John Hodgman drop off a FedEx package! Nothing else to report. 02:03 PM August 26, 2008
Today is Day 3 of Hodg*Con 08. Today I will be hosting a panel on answering my e-mail. Panel consists of me, e-mail. That is all. about 6 hours ago
At Hodg*Con 08, I am currently signing a book to send to someone I met in Vancouver. about 4 hours ago
Apparently, Hodg*Con 08 needs more FedEx envelopes and black toner. That means another trip to the dealer’s room. about 4 hours ago
Reports of a surprise appearance by novelist Darin Strauss at Hodg*Con 08=exaggerated. He has to stay home with his kids. about 3 hours ago
Coulton and I did have lunch yesterday in what can be described as a “Panel On That New Sushi Place on 14th Street.” about 3 hours ago
To be clear: there is no blogger area at the Hodg*Con 08. That is just my kitchen. about 1 hour ago

When Twitter is used well like this, it makes you feel like you are right there.

Now the only question is: will I steal the idea and host Wen*Con 08.5: The Non-Gathering? Or are there any jokes remaining to be milked from the premise (even from an experienced turnip-vampire like me)? Stay tuned.