Twitter! Spelling! Underpants!

• If recent commentary by Lore Sjöberg, Penny Arcade, and Zefrank are to be believed, Twitter seems to be undergoing a resurgence since its last resurgence a year ago. In fact, I seem to be gaining several new and strange "followers" nearly every day, so that (for once) I have more folks theoretically reading my 140 character thoughts than I, myself, read. As someone who kinda thrives on having an audience and occasionally fancies himself an aphorist, this suits me fine--as with LiveJournal, I'm not forcing anyone to subscribe to my musings or accounts of my mostly-pedestrian life.
  
  So why the hubbub? Clearly there are folks (myself included) who Twitter things of a less-than-compelling nature from time to time, or even all the time. If I had cause to post such a surefire winner as "Demon child at the Chinese buffet just punched me in the nuts" every day, I'd be leading a miserable existence for everyone else's entertainment. Still, I like to think that (as with my bits of text-message based whimsy, usually cc:d to Twitter, incidentally) a decent portion of my output is at least mildly amusing, and at least more entertaining than those friends of mine who post song lyrics as their Facebook status on a regular basis.
  
  Of course, my Facebook friendslist includes actual humans that I've met, and each and every person I follow on Twitter could be a figment of my imagination--as I am theirs.
  
  Incidentally, Twitter spammers are kinda sweet when you compare them to the good folks who feel compelled to share every single thing that comes through their Google Reader. At least with Twitter it's over in 140 characters, and is limited somewhat by how fast someone can type or text message.


• Last night I went to see the touring company of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for the second time in as many years (I caught it in Nashville a little over a year ago), as much to support having actual good shows come through town as to see the show again. Thanks to the mildly improvised nature of the show, and a mostly solid cast, it holds up well to repeat viewing and was well worth the steeply-discounted ticket price, but I have to remark that Memphis has some seriously lousy spellers--I was afraid that they wouldn't make it to "Catarjunes" before everyone was eliminated. I actually sat in the midst of a group of friends who had all elected independently to come see the show and somehow got seated in the same two rows. Maybe it was the discount thing.


• They're supposed to be recording the performances of The Underpants tonight and tomorrow. I don't know if they get rights clearance to do that, or if they just flaunt the copyright law, but I'll probably be getting a copy for purposes of forcing guests to watch me. Naturally, I won't be watching it myself, as watching yourself on a television or laptop steals a little bit of your soul.