Spam and the Social Network

I have to admit this straight up: I'm a twitter-holic. Not as bad as some people I follow, mind you -- Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), for example, has practically reinvented himself as the most prolific tweeter in Britain, and on this side of the pond, people like Wil Wheaton (@wilw) regularly keep in touch with the masses, no matter the level of banality -- but for some reason, I find the 140-character update simultaneously convenient and challenging; convenient because I don't have to commit to a full conversation, challenging because my natural flow of speech is not conducive to such small chunks (as anyone who's read even one entry of this blog can confirm). That last sentence, for example -- double-dashes, semi-colons and all -- wouldn't have fit into two twitter entries, let alone one pithy statement exemplifying what exactly is on my mind at that exact moment.

I love Twitter. I love the celebs who feel that this is the "hip" thing to do, regardless of whether the rest of the world gives a crap who they are (I'm looking at you, @stephenathome!). I love the "real people" who happened to make a random MST3K search while I was watching "Prince of Space," and now I know exactly what they're doing at any given time (Hi, @devtony!). I love the people who started following me because I was super-excited about seeing "Beer Wars" one night, and I followed them because they were fairly interesting (@rumandcokefloat and a number of beer mags). I love the new art of Twitter satire, with fake public figures commenting on the deep shit they've found themselves buried in (@pac16conference, not to mention all that BP stuff). I love following friends, knowing that if I have something semi-urgent to say to them, I can just tweet and they'll get the message (when I lived with @darkcupid and @palintir, we communicated via Twitter more times than I would care to admit). I love experiencing world events in real time with people all around the world; where else can you talk to sports columnists about a USC game, Germans about the World Cup, and random Brits about their elections?

It's so awesome, my brain does this.

But I think what I love more than anything is that it's not Facebook. Good lord, I hate Facebook.

Excitement!! Loud Noises!! And an update!!

Far too many exclamations in the header, but what can you do?

First of all -- eight months from today, I'll be on a plane to London. I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know (as they say) when I'll be back again. I'm going to Britain, and I'm staying until I get bored (un-bloody-likely) or I get deported (much more bloody likely). It's really exciting -- or, at least, I'm excited -- and I want you, the viewing several, to share in the excitement.

No worries, I'll be maintaining this blog -- hopefully more than it's been maintained in recent months, my bad -- but I'll be phasing in a new blog, "Stranger in a Strange(r) Land," dedicated to the preparation, trials, and perils of my voyage. It's a wordpress blog, so everyone can comment (a problem with these blogspot ones), and I'll try and update that one at LEAST once a week. I'll probably even put a bit of my research on there, if you're interested in British History between the two World Wars. 

The New Blog (not completely live yet): http://thecore28.wordpress.com

You can also follow the adventure on Twitter or Facebook. Username? thecore28. I know, I'm super-original. But if you follow me on Twitter, I'm amusing AND I'll post updates to both blogs. 

...oh, and LOUD NOISES!!

Better than a pants party, I guess.