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Have You Wasted Your #Hashtag?

I have never been a fan of Twitter or Facebook or the other social nooses that now pass for content creation, and I’m glad when I read — every so often — that I am not alone in my disdain for the lonesomeness of a hooligan world gone viral:

Twitter

It’s toast. Over. Done. History. Soon to be as behind the curve as Facebook, someday completely forgotten like Friendster.

Huh?

It’s the cacophony.

You see there are too many people on the service. As a result, very few are heard. It’s happened over the past six months, tweeting is like a stone in a waterfall, or more accurately, pissing in the wind. In other words, if you tweet and nobody reads it have you wasted your time?

Today Rick Warren tweeted something I wrote. He’s got in excess of a million followers. The fact that I can reach him stuns me. But despite his only tweeting twice since then, the retweets have not gone nuclear. Oh, there are plenty, a double digit number, nineteen to be exact, but if it had been six months ago, I’d be a hero at the Saddleback Church.

Continue reading → Have You Wasted Your #Hashtag?

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The Rats’ Maneuver of MV Lyubov Orlova

Morning fog, cool and thick, hovered just above the churning peaks of the water that enveloped the grey Kerry Coast. The spot was hundreds of miles away from land, and despite its loud, sloshing waves, the word that a witness would use to describe the scene would probably be “dead.”

The wind was at a standstill, and there were no sea hawks or gulls unleashing proud squawks, nor any eager creatures jumping out of the sea for a gulp of air. The spot seemed frozen and untouched, and when a dark, looming shape began to emerge from the east, its presence was so startling that it seemed to crash loudly through the fog.

Continue reading → The Rats’ Maneuver of MV Lyubov Orlova

1.  Drug Laws Are Fair

2.  We Must Always Help Each Other

3.  The Boy Scouts of America are All-Inclusive

4.  Terrorism Only Happens on Foreign Soil

(more…)

Sitting in a big hotel in Lusaka
Very Western
Pleasant but sterile
Sitting by a lovely “water feature”
With koi and papyrus and purple flowers
And water lilies

(more…)

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An Old Man and a Lost Wife: Ten Sentence Story #177

A couple are visiting a family friend; one who stepped in to save the home of one of their parents after their eviction from a country where they had farmed for years, employing local people, feeding and educating local families and whose recovery from their loss of everything was then about to be lost again in their own countries’ revolution.

A word was given and later a simple legal paper signed, a house changed hands for nothing and was saved for their family, now many years later the time had come for that house to be sold.

Continue reading → An Old Man and a Lost Wife: Ten Sentence Story #177

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Stuck in the Land of a Thousand Tarts: Ten Sentence Story #175

Since I moved to Portugal, I have “inherited” two new families, one Portuguese consisting of my partner’s step-children and their families, and one French consisting of his brothers and sister and their families, his mother and his ailing aunt.

Both his mother and his aunt are now in their 80s, his mother providing ’round-the-clock care for the aunt who has — as the French say, “has diminished responsibilities” — a softer and kinder phrase than the harshness of Alzheimer’s or senile dementia and which describes her condition with accuracy and grace.

Continue reading → Stuck in the Land of a Thousand Tarts: Ten Sentence Story #175

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Visiting a Late Relative in 2103: Ten Sentence Story #174

Akiva and Ahuva Lewin were with their father at the Lakewood Cemetery to honor their grandfather, as it had been ten years since he had passed away.

Their father had held off on taking them until this day because he had felt that they were too young to understand what it meant that their grandfather had been gone for so long.

Continue reading → Visiting a Late Relative in 2103: Ten Sentence Story #174

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From Inspiring Hope to Big Dopey Dope: Ten Sentence Story #173

For the longest time, I was incredibly inspired by the story of Lance Armstrong — the man who survived testicular cancer and won race after race, seemingly unbeatable.

He was a tremendous winner and the foundation that he created raised well over five hundred million dollars for cancer research.

Continue reading → From Inspiring Hope to Big Dopey Dope: Ten Sentence Story #173

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Thoughts on the Year that Was 2012: Ten Sentence Story #172

As Jerald and his wife Matilda watched the New Year’s Eve countdown on television, they talked about the year that had just passed and how happy they were to have each other.

Jerald recalled how happy he was to have an office to go to in the morning, even if it meant that sometimes he would have to have less than pleasant encounters on the train — but it was these encounters that sometimes reminded him of how lucky he was in life.

Continue reading → Thoughts on the Year that Was 2012: Ten Sentence Story #172

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A Thanksgiving Feast Without Bloodshed: Ten Sentence Story #171

Jerald and his wife Matilda invited a number of friends over for their Thanksgiving dinner — it had its time changed a few times as Jerald and Matilda argued over the real meaning of dinner and how some people preferred having it closer to the evening and others liked it earlier in the afternoon.

Continue reading → A Thanksgiving Feast Without Bloodshed: Ten Sentence Story #171