Mighty Forces

I've noticed more and more people using Twitter. Can anyone tell me why they use it? Seems kind of like calling up your friend and saying, "I'm eating a sandwich. Look at it! LOOK AT IT!" But then again, maybe I'm just an old codger who came of age with the TRS-80 and doesn't understand all this new high-falutin' technology.

To me, though, it seems like one of those classic solutions in search of a problem, like anti-static spray.

Let me know where I'm going wrong here.

After many months of procrastination, I finally put up a new design for my business site, lucky8ball. Let me know what you think.

Lately I've become enamored of a mini-blog service called Tumblr. While Movable Type's interface has "evolved" to become prettier but almost impenetrable, Tumblr makes things simple - so simple that it makes you smile. You can easily post a quote, image, video, link, or whatever. It's really more of an online scrapbook than a blog, but for our short-attention-span times, it's great.

I'm trying it out, and I love the simplicity and the cleanliness of the template designs. Plus, it's dead simple to use. Try it out and let me know what you think.

Last night Bill O'Reilly called DailyKos.com a "hate site," run by "far left hatemongers." He rattled off some random comments from the site, like how someone said "Better luck next time" when Dick Cheney was almost blown up in Iraq. And then O'Reilly said this about the site:

"It's like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party. There's no difference."

I swear, irony is lost on these people.

It reminds me of this story from the late Molly Ivins:

I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about 10 every morning at the Chat'n'Chew Cafe to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their members is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener. He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, "I think Rush is right. Racism in this country is dead. I don't know what the niggers will find to gripe about now."

Readers of my old site "words mean things" know that I used to have quite a bee in my bonnet for the execrable du Toits, Connie and Kim. (Kim's the husband.) They have spent years spewing out some of the most hateful, xenophobic, gun-obsessed, anti-gay screeds that the internet has to offer. And I spent a lot of energy and time being outraged by what they wrote.

That's no longer true; I think I have a much better handle these days on what matters and what doesn't matter, and the du Toits don't matter. Except, perhaps, as examples of the worst in both human nature and the poisonous "patriotism" that's grown like kudzu in our society since 9/11.

Still, I continue to find their writings fascinating for all kinds of reasons. And Connie's latest "personal revelations" shine a light on the flip side of American freedoms. Yes, you can say whatever evil, hateful things you want to say. You can shout them from the rooftops, or write a massively-popular blog visited by every drooling idiot with an internet connection. Call liberals and Mexicans and gay people every name in the book, and some that aren't. Rant away.

But what you can't do is escape the fact that opinions have consequences. If an employer doesn't want to hire you because your writings send a chill of fear down their spine that you are a hairs-breadth from shooting up the place with an AK-47, that's the price you'll have to pay. If an investor doesn't want to back your business because your writing is poisonous and you advocate the violent death of anyone you disagree with, so be it. It's a much smaller price than many in history have had to pay for making their voices heard.

So welcome to America, Kim and Connie. And good luck in that job search.