My Favourite 19 Tweets of 2019

Hello again everyone,

I begin with a surprised confession: This is apparently the only thing I’ve posted on this blog all year? Sorry about that. I encourage you to check out my Facebook page and my Twitter account for regular updates relating to my writing, as this blog is very clearly on the back burner in terms of my priorities.

With that said, since the earliest days of my blog, I’ve made a tradition of collating what I consider to be my top tweets of the year. It’s time again to do that. For anyone interested in the previous collections, here are the lists from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014, 2015 & 2016, 2017, and 2018. I do think they have stood the test of time.

I mentioned in last year’s post that I now use Twitter differently than I did when my Tweets were also automatically my Facebook status updates. That automatic cross-posting functionality has been lost, and I notice a lot of what I tweet about after the break-up is not what I believe all of my friends and family would enjoy. I talk about politics more. I am snarkier. I comment on and retweet stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily share on Facebook. Still, in my ‘Top List’ I want tweets that say a little about myself as a person, not the Twitter exchanges I chose to engage in. As such, I will not be taking comments from conversation threads out of context and putting it on one of these lists, nor any retweet with comments where the original comment is needed to explain what I am saying. I also don’t think it’s fair to highlight tweets that went along with a picture I’ve taken where the picture is the point. My use of Twitter was –and I believe remains– primarily a writing exercise. Maybe I’ll change my opinion on that for 2020, but for this year, no tweets with pictures were considered.

Anyway, this is a longer preamble than I usually manage. Without further adieu, here are the tweets I want to highlight and look back upon from the past year:

Jan 3, 2019

My coworkers were admiring a story on CP24. “Good for her!” One exclaims.

My desk doesn’t face the television. I turn around. “What happened?” I ask.

“She’s old, and she’s going to a Leafs game.”

Even with 24 hours of airtime to fill, how slow is today’s news day?

(For context for all the non-Torontonians out there, CP24 is a 24-hour news channel with the screen divided into four quarters: Traffic, weather, an all-text headline newsfeed, and video footage recorded within the past few hours. Some of the things CP24 does to fill that video footage quarter gets pretty ridiculous. One sixth of all Canadians live within an hour’s drive of Toronto, and you have to think some of those people are doing something. How did this old woman going to an NHL game make it on the air? NOTHING else was happening?

Also, upon reviewing past lists, this is the third time I’m highlighting a negative comment about CP24. I didn’t realize how often I chirp that channel…)

Feb 7, 2019

While standing six feet back from the curb, I got hit full in the face by a blast of icy, muddy water. There’s a new pothole on my street. A van hit it at speed and the water pooled within leapt up and out a good twenty feet.

That’s one way to start your day…

Feb 7, 2019

Scarves make excellent towels, but afterwards they no longer make excellent scarves.

(This tweet was written about five minutes after the previous one when I realized using my scarf to get the freezing, muddy, salty water out of my eyes and off my face was the right thing to do, but putting the scarf back around my neck afterwards was not.)

My Favourite 18 Tweets of 2018

Hello everyone,

Well, it’s been another great year. Time for my annual round-up of things I’ve said on Twitter that I think are worthy of remembering. For anyone interested in taking a trip down memory lane, here are the lists from 2010, 2011, 2012. 2013 & 2014, 2015 & 2016, and 2017 as well.

A fun thing that I said in 2017 that panned out? Upping the character count from 140 characters to 280 characters did indeed give me a lot more room to craft a fun tweet. With that said, Twitter and Facebook are no longer on speaking terms, so my Tweets no longer double as Facebook updates as of some time last summer. While putting this list together, I noticed I have started using Twitter very differently since the change. I wonder what my 2019 list will look like..?

Anyway, here are the 18 tweets I am happiest with for 2018. Enjoy!

Jan 15, 2018

Reading J.P. Mallory’s The Origins of the Irish. He begins with the supernova(e) creating the heavy elements in our solar system. Two years ago I read an Irish history written by a 19th C nun who began with God creating the Earth then drowning all the poor sinners except Noah.

Feb 8, 2018

It snowed yesterday.

It’s snowing today.

There is snow in the forecast for the next three days.

February? If something is bothering you, use your words. Acting out like this is unhealthy for you and for the people around you.

Mar 20, 2018

‘Probity’ is a word with a positive meaning that you only ever see used in bad connotations: Someone either lacks it enough that people bemoan its absence, or the abundance of it has rendered a straight-laced person so boring that praising their probity is the go-to compliment.

Apr 5, 2018

My Dad is home alone. I asked what he was going to have for dinner.

“Well, I’d order a pizza, but your mother threw away the Yellow Pages.”

I explained his computer or phone could get him the phone number. It was a brand new idea to him. He said it sounded like a lot of work.

My Favourite 17 Tweets of 2017

Hello everyone,

Well, it’s a few days before the end of the year, but I’ll risk it and post my top 17 tweets of 2017 a little early. This has become something of a tradition of mine. Here’s 2010, 2011, and 2012. I did 2013 & 2014 and 2015 & 2016 as combined posts.

As I’ve mentioned, I have my tweets from @faceintheblue set up to automatically post as Facebook updates, so I get a lot of enjoyment from micro-blogging: It keeps me writing even when I only have a few seconds; it gives me something to look back on to reflect upon; it lets me engage with friends and strangers. I think these are the best I’ve done this year. Enjoy!

Jan 24, 2017

Dry winter air plus layers of warm clothes has made me more static electricity than man. The bathroom door handle is metal. God help me.

(Someone on Facebook advised me to touch the drywall before touching the doorknob to ground me. That tip saved me many a painful shock.)

Feb 5, 2017

Just overheard little kids and their father grocery shopping. A kid says, “Mommy doesn’t let us eat this stuff.”

“Well, Mommy’s away.”

Mar 13, 2017

Work conversation:
“Is this bag of stuff on my desk yours?”
“Nope, not mine.”
“It’s full of mayonnaise packets?”
“Hey! That is mine!”

(The coworker in question has since upgraded his condiment collection from a bag to a series of sorted cups. Any day now I expect he’ll open up a fast-casual dining restaurant. He has half the ingredients already stored up…)

May 12, 2017

My 91-year-old grandmother has expressed a desire to get in a canoe again. I’ve booked the day off work. I’m taking her to Algonquin Park.

(A fun thing? This actually went viral. In the end, I got my grandmother featured in a canoeing magazine’s blog.)

May 15, 2017

Sometimes when my computer freezes at work I anthromorphize its struggle into a type of pain. Right now it’s having an ice cream headache.

Fast Fiction: Motorcycle Drivers are Philanthropists, or at Least the Unselfish Ones

Hello everyone,

As I mentioned last month in this post, I’ve decided to pre-schedule a new series of blog posts based around writing exercises I’ve done during my monthly writers’ group meetings. This is the third that I will be sharing, and like the first two I feel it stakes out some contrasting ground for the ground and tone I want to cover in these displays of fast fiction.

Okay, as with all the posts in this series, let’s begin with a rundown of  the rules:

Rule #1: These pieces of fast fiction were generated from a prompt chosen at random, and that prompt will appear clearly labelled before the fiction and then clearly labelled again where it appears in the prose.

Rule #2: WordPress allows me a ‘click here to read the rest of the story’ break, and that will be used before the fast fiction begins in earnest so people browsing through this blog are not overwhelmed.

Rule #3: The prose of the fast fiction shall be transcribed from my handwriting accurately: Line breaks, grammar, punctuation, spelling, what-have-you. The point of showing a 10- or 15-minute first draft is saying what you tried to do in that time, so what does editing really get me? It’s more impressive showing how few mistakes I made and what I managed to do in the time allotted rather than correcting my errors or improving my first efforts for the sake of appearances. The very rare changes I really do deem necessary shall be noted with an asterisk and an apologetic explanation at the end.

Rule #4: After the fast fiction I will include a few sentences about my first thoughts of the prompt, what I was trying to do, what I am happy with, what I am unhappy with, and some other general thoughts. These entries are less about the actual prose and more about the exercise as a whole. Post-gaming that exercise will be a big part of the end result.

Rule #5: I have all my blog posts set up to automatically go out through Twitter. If I’m going to queue up twenty or so of them into the distant future, I will schedule them to go out at 3 am. I would not want to find myself in the midst of a happy moment or a sad moment tweeting some piece of irrelevant and therefore inappropriate short prose. Hopefully a 3 am posting time will keep me clear of that concern. I also reserve the right to reschedule these posts based on other things that should take priority on this blog.

With all that said, let’s go!

Prompt:

On the sticky paper next to my bare ass was a Polaroid picture of my foot that no one wanted.

Fast Fiction: It Came From Above

Hello again everyone,

As I mentioned in this post, I’ve decided to pre-schedule a series of blog posts based around writing exercises I’ve done over the last couple of years as part of my monthly writers’ group. This is the second that I will be sharing, and I chose it to go second both because I like it a lot, and also because it’s a stark contrast to the first one I posted. I might as well show some range as long as I am getting this idea up and running.

So, with that introduction done, I said I would start each one with a quick recitation of the rules:

Rule #1: These pieces of fast fiction were generated from a prompt chosen at random, and that prompt will appear clearly labelled before the fiction and then clearly labelled again where it appears in the prose.

Rule #2: WordPress allows me a ‘click here to read the rest of the story’ break, and that will be used before the fast fiction begins in earnest so people browsing through this blog are not overwhelmed.

Rule #3: The prose of the fast fiction shall be transcribed from my handwriting accurately: Line breaks, grammar, punctuation, spelling, what-have-you. The point of showing a 10- or 15-minute first draft is saying what you tried to do in that time, so what does editing really get me? It’s more impressive showing how few mistakes I made and what I managed to do in the time allotted rather than correcting my errors or improving my first efforts for the sake of appearances. The very rare changes I really do deem necessary shall be noted with an asterisk and an apologetic explanation at the end.

Rule #4: After the fast fiction I will include a few sentences about my first thoughts of the prompt, what I was trying to do, what I am happy with, what I am unhappy with, and some other general thoughts. These entries are less about the actual prose and more about the exercise as a whole. Post-gaming that exercise will be a big part of the end result.

Rule #5: I have all my blog posts set up to automatically go out through Twitter. If I’m going to queue up twenty or so of them into the distant future, I will schedule them to go out at 3 am. I would not want to find myself in the midst of a happy moment or a sad moment tweeting some piece of irrelevant and therefore inappropriate short prose. Hopefully a 3 am posting time will keep me clear of that concern. I also reserve the right to reschedule these posts based on other things that should take priority on this blog.

With all that said, let’s go!

Prompt:

She turned to the television screen waiting for me to finish my sentence. I didn’t because I couldn’t.

Inca – Prologue and First Chapter

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I expect there’s going to be a spike in traffic to this blog in the coming days. A friend recommended I should put up sample chapters of my novels. I will start with Inca, which is my most popular book to date. It really seems to have found a home with people going to Peru as tourists, as it isn’t a travel guide or a text book.

It’s the life story of a high-ranking Inca bureaucrat: He is born into wealth and privilege; he spends his early adulthood living as a fugitive from Imperial justice; his middle years see him watch the Empire he loves tear itself apart, and by his old age he lives in the ruin of his life’s work, telling a Spanish friar to write down what he has to say so that through his words, his people will be remembered.

Here’s the Prologue and First Chapter:

My (Belated) Favourite 15 Tweets of 2015 and 16 Tweets of 2016

Hello again everyone,

Once upon a time I made a regular habit of picking out my favourite tweets of the previous year and posting them on this site. Here are the posts for 2010, 2011, and 2012. I did 2013 & 2014 as a combined post, as I am now doing 2015 and 2016 together.

I have my tweets from @faceintheblue set up to automatically post as Facebook updates, so I get a lot of enjoyment from micro-blogging: It keeps me writing even when I only have a few seconds; it gives me something to look back on to reflect upon; it lets me engage with friends and strangers.

Anyway, if I am going to start building new content into this blog, I suppose resurrecting this little tradition will be a good place to start. It’s worth pointing out Twitter now allows line breaks in exchange for a character, so some of these tweets will use that freedom to allow multi-line structure.

Here are my favourites from the last couple of years. Enjoy!

 

My Favourite 15 Tweets of 2015

Feb 21, 2015

Through a Toucan Sam-like ability to follow my nose, I have found a bar specializing in local craft beer. I am establishing base camp…

(I tweeted this upon my first visit as an adult to Atlanta, Georgia. The beer was excellent.)

April 3, 2015

Saw my first guy out in shorts non-ironically: His legs are the same sun-starved white as his tube socks. #Toronto #SpringHasSprung.

(Spring in Toronto is often a fickle, tentative thing.)

June 8, 2015

This is a lot of rain, #Toronto. I’m pretty sure there’s a field mouse equivalent of Noah leading earthworms two by two into a shoebox ark.

July 24, 2015

A friend and I were talking politics at lunch with such gusto that the guy at the table next to us bought us a round and paid for our meal!

September 5, 2015

I have a theory that my cat’s joy in life is eating spiders while I’m away. In four and a half years I’ve never seen a spider in my home.

September 27, 2015

I just caught myself having an opinion about soup spoons: I prefer a broad, shallow bowl. Child-Me is appalled at what Adult-Me cares about.

September 30, 2015

That raccoon (or “trash panda” as I’ve lately heard them called) was the size of an obese border collie. I’m crossing the street. #Toronto

October 3, 2015

Forgot to buy cat food yesterday. My cat is having cat treats for breakfast. This does not bode well for my hypothetical future children…

October 10, 2015

Ah, the old ‘Visit your parents on Thanksgiving weekend with a suitcase of dirty laundry’ trick. It’s a classic!

October 29, 2015

Co-workers have discovered a service that rents kittens by 15-min increments. A new office threat? “I’m going to rent you so many kittens!”

November 12, 2015

#FIFA’s presidential candidates sound like Bond villains: Prince Ali Al Hussein? Jérôme Champagne? Gianni Infantino? Tokyo Sexwale? C’mon!

November 14, 2015

Thoughts on the flight: The distance between Air Canada Rouge’s seat rows is exactly equal to the length of my femur. Ask how I know that?

November 15, 2015

Disconcerting: When my drycleaner puts a note in with my suits & shirts saying, “Sorry, this is the best we can do”  but nothing is wrong.

(I never did figure out what was wrong.)

November 22, 2015

Half of the conversations at antique fairs are customers telling exhibitors what they would do if they were exhibitors instead of customers.

December 10, 2015

My co-worker has taken ordering food online too far: He just had a cup of coffee delivered by bike messenger. He’s gone mad with power.

My Favourite 16 Tweets of 2016

January 9, 2016

I’m a bachelor. I don’t know how to shop for babies. I’m about to give a 3-month-old a copy of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. He’ll grow into it…

February 20, 2016

There must be a class at Barber College about hating sideburns. I asked to keep mine as I sat down. “What? You want-a look-a like Elvis?!”

March 17, 2016

An old man asked if I was in line. I told him there’s no line at the bar.

“Aye? Then it’s a race, then!” He said.

I won.

#StPats

(This was on St. Patrick’s Day at a crowded Irish pub. I ruled that place with an iron fist. No one seems to understand the importance of eye contact, tipping early and well, and knowing what you want when it comes to getting a bartender to serve you over someone else.)

March 31, 2016

Shooting some of the best pool of my life on a first date. This was not the plan.

April 21, 2016

I’m trying to think of the last time I bought new underwear when I was not also out of clean underwear. So far nothing. #BachelorLife

(The hashtag #BachelorLife is a barrel of laughs, by the way.)

April 24, 2016

Just thinking about lucky rabbit feet: How lucky can they be? The rabbits had four apiece, and it didn’t do them any good.

May 22, 2016

I just passed a man walking a dog so pregnant the word ‘gravid’ came to me unbidden. That was one gravid bitch, technically speaking.

May 27, 2016

Some say I chose the Procrastinator’s Life. I disagree. The Procrastinator’s Life chose me… Eventually.

June 17, 2016

Sentences you don’t expect to say? I’ve joined my mother & father at a high-end hotdog joint to hear what Dad describes as, “A Hootenanny.”

(Note: This may have been tweeted after midnight on the 18th. If so, I stayed at the ‘hootenanny’ for a long time. It was a lot of fun!)

June 18, 2016

After the first stop, the only free seat on an otherwise sold-out bus is the one next to me. I feel like a leper: A leper with elbow room.

June 23, 2016

If I can liken my work computer to a dog –and I believe I can– it is starting to look like the last twenty minutes of Old Yeller in here.

(I did not end up having to put my computer down.)

July 8, 2016

‘By the skin of my teeth’ is an expression in the Bible. Exactly how much dental plaque do you need before you start calling it skin?

August 9, 2016

Trump gets that it’s not a dog whistle if everyone can hear him, right? I’d make a slide whistle joke, but he’s in trombone country now.

(This was when Trump said Second Amendment People should do something about Clinton after she wins the election.)

September 24, 2016

It’s interesting how often men in their 60s refer to table salt as ‘White Death.’ Oh, they still eat it, but they know they’re doing wrong.

October 20, 2016

“Trivia starts in 15 minutes. It can get a little loud.”

“That’s my fault,”” I admit.

The cafe’s polite laughter confirms it is true.

November 20, 2016

Baileys on the rocks? Check.

Music from 30-300 years before my birth? Check.

Very old Santa hat? Check.

Let’s decorate a Xmas Tree!

#HoHoHo