I was lucky enough to go to a high school where most of the girls were nice, because I was the Geek of Nerddom. It didn’t change. But back at the turn of the century, for a tiny minute before the dot-com crash, I was the cat’s pajamas: working at a Beltway Web firm doing that edgy thing called *snort* HTML. I was hip, baby! OK, still way more comfortable hanging out with the codemonkeys than my fellow producers, who were mostly marketing droids, but still. This was 1999; and to give you an idea of the zeitgeist, while on my way to a client conference, I spotted a PA license plate with the state URL. Enormous impact. The Millenium was at hand. All of a sudden, the little things started popping up everywhere. Revolution!

And then all of a sudden a whole bunch of us were on food stamps. So it goes. It was still a valuable experience, and I’m very grateful to be able to pop the hood under the little tab in front of me labeled “HTML” when I need to tweak. And did you know that Google Calendar needs formatting in its event details? Doot-do-dooo! Captain Codelass, to the rescue! “Never fear, choir music list! I’ll save you!”

But what this has mainly done for me is turn me into that person those other people ask about their computers. I’m not rich (heh) or trendy. Although I’m reasonably tech-edge, what with Singe and the Snow Leopard here, my wired-ness leaves something to be desired. I’m just a little writer nebbish, out here in cyberspace. I only have 187 “friends,” and about 50 of them are people I (*shrinks down in the chair*) play games with. And I got my Twitter account just to communicate with some people I needed to reach who weren’t responding to their e-mail.

There’s nothing like spending five years writing what turns out to be three novels, and then realizing that the world is NOT, in fact, clamoring for it automatically at your door. In fact, more negative souls might mention the word “depressing.” What helps is knowing that there are legions of famous, successful, and gloriously talented people out there who also went through a period of morosely continuing writing although admitting its complete futility–and who, moreover, took drinking very seriously. Sooner or later, I figure. Sooner or later.

But no! It’s actually true! I really am a fa-a-aa-ailure!! There’s this new thing called a Klout score, and it will show me up as a loserbabe with only 187 “friends.” I’m only an e-ee-ee-ee-leeee-vennnnnn!!!!!!! Fail! Epic life fail!! *storms up to room, slams door, falls on bed, cranks tunes, calls all friends*

My life as I know it is now over. I am clearly wasting my time on all the sheeping prose. 140 charactahs baybee!!!!! (Note the partial deprecation of Standard English in this post. Preparations are at hand, is all I’m saying.)

The HORRIBLE thing is that now I really am going to keep up with Twitter. Maybe I’ll start doing that whore thing where I’ll follow random people in hopes that they’ll follow me back. In other words, I wanna be popular. At least I have a reason: I want to be published and/or at least have people read my stuff. (Some hipster dweebboy completely harshed on one of my posts on Plinky, and I thought, “Ooh!! My words have touched a life!”) But I think the majority of people will want it just to have it; and by the end of the summer, there will be an explosion of frantic tweeting and re-tweeting. Gotta be cool kids, because that number those marketing geniuses made up now tells us who and what we are, and if we’re really cool, then we get free potato chips.

Obviously, they’re what you have for lunch with all the other cool kids. Save me some.