I don’t know whether this is real or not. Probably both real and not real, depending on the situation. But assuming for a moment that it is true that families have certain shared traits (be they genetic or otherwise), I have come up with a list of reasons why I might, then, be adopted.

1. My dad is building an airplane. Not a model airplane. A real fly-through-the-sky airplane. He’s been working on it for a few years and it should be finished sometime in July. I once tried to build a cheap DVD case. There were approximately four steps. I got bored with reading the directions and, consequently, screwed up.

2. My mom doesn’t mind cooking so long as someone tells her what it is she should be making. She hates having (or being invited) to select the dinner menu. I prefer baking, from scratch (no bread machine here!), and one of the best parts of the process is, for me, deciding what to make.

3. My sister is an amazing singer. She has made certain members of my family cry from the beauty of her voice. She walks around the house singing, sometimes all day. The best anyone would say about me is that I’m not tone deaf, though I do have the unfortunate habit of changing keys in the middle of songs.

4. My dad is neat and tidy (though he does have doctor handwriting). He has been known to put away the milk while someone is still using it and to arrange all the shoes in a closet. A single paper left on the banister at our house is enough to spike his blood pressure. I hate dirtiness (you won’t, for instance, find things growing in my fridge, and I do vacuum once a week), but I like things organized in piles. I like the term “organized chaos,” and believe such a thing does exist. On the other hand, I clean my cats’ liter box every day, whereas my dad seems to think liter boxes clean themselves.

5. My mom has no problem talking to complete strangers if she feels some sort of connection with them. This connection is usually sports-related. If she sees someone wearing MSU paraphernalia, she can’t help herself from striking up a conversation. If she sees someone wearing something from a team MSU plays, she has to say something. I sometimes pretend I don’t see people I know, because I don’t know what to say.

6. My sister has spent the last year learning ancient Greek and the last semester learning Latin. She is already better at both these languages than I am at French—which I spent four years of school on and have been studying on and off since then. She wants to go back to Greece. I want to go back to France. She is taking steps to see that it happens, where I make plans and then cancel them whenever anything the least bit inconvenient arises.

Of course, the evidence for the contrary may be stronger, for the possibility that we’re all shades of the same thing, the same person. My sister and I enjoy the same types of books. Though I can’t sing, I can harmonize to someone else fairly well, a skill I learned from my dad during church as a child. My mom gave me her love of all kinds of puzzles—jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, number puzzles, logic problems, etc. I’m trying to learn to play the guitar, like my father. I’ve taken up cross stitch, like my mother. Neither my sister nor I like any of the following: salad, mushrooms, onions, seafood, celery, cottage cheese, sour cream, ketchup, or chili. My dad and I, the only two wine drinkers in my family, both dislike the same kinds of wine (chiefly Chardonnay). My whole family has the same general lack of allergies. My sister gets the same types of tension headaches and migraines I do. We all prefer Coke to Pepsi.

Top 5 reasons this is one of my favorite speeches of all time:

1) The way he says “decade.”

2) LBJ’s delayed clapping. He acts as if setting a pen aside is an arduous task.

3) It pushed the Gemini and Apollo programs into full, fevered, frenzied, action.

4) His brazen attitude in talking about something so far fetched. It was September 1962, which gave the country a less-than-eight-year-window to get to the moon. It was only May ’61 when the US got their first human into space, Alan Shepard. And even then he was only in orbit for 15mins before splashing back down.
Bold, Mr. President. Bold.

5) His word choice.
For a speech that would be heard everywhere, for a speech that would go down in history, and for a speech that defined America’s fortitude, JFK decided to say “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.” (00:20)
Do the other things? Really? Couldn’t find a way to narrow that down, Jack?
If one of my ENGL 201 students handed me this speech I would circle that phrase and write, Vague.
I always imagine someone saying their wedding vows in the same fashion: “I love you for your strength, your beauty, and your other things.”

I could talk about this speech and this era until the end of this decade, but I’m busy this week. Life is happening. So excuse me while I go and do the other things.

Your Momma’s so out of shape, she runs out of room evens when she sets.

Your Momma’s so dirty, her writing has to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

Your Momma’s so cheap, she plagiarizes from Project Gutenberg.

Your Momma’s so simple, she always asks if it’s copy edit, copy-edit, or copyedit.

Your Momma’s so repetitive, she dittos quotation marks.

Your Momma’s so old school, she thinks the Chicago Manual of Style is the Marshall Field’s catalogue.

the GOP presidential hopeful was apparently something of a bully in high school.

steve almond wrote a thoughtful response to this news on the rumpus.

according to a politico poll, most americans who were aware of this news—two of three—said this didn’t change their view of romney.  but maybe many americans thought he was an asshole even before this came out.

whether it was just the effect of time passing, or the sympathetic portrayal of the president in w, my feelings toward george w. bush softened since he left office.

the other night i watched taxi to the dark side for the first time, and was shocked.  not by the evidence of the u.s. torturing middle eastern men (which was already pretty well documented in print media well before this movie was released).  i was shocked how quickly my feelings of vitriol, and maybe actual hatred, arose in response to seeing old clips of bush speaking about allegations of torture.  the sheer arrogance of his words, posture, and incredulity about even being questioned on the matter made me so irate i couldn’t sleep.  those vacuous statements about “the bad guys.”  the seemingly utter lack of remorse, or empathy, or reflection. the asserted black & white fact of it all.

alex gibney, who directed/wrote/produced taxi to the dark side also directed/wrote/produced catching hell, the story of the infamous “steve bartman” incident at wrigley field.  the ugliness of some of those cubs fans, who (even in retrospect, year later) still don’t seem to be aware of what they did to that man (in the moment, and in the aftermath of that game), is astonishing to me.   but also not really astonishing at all.

david beckham took part in an anti-bullying campaign in 2005, which handed out over 1,000,000 blue wristbands.

bully is now playing in theaters, to some critical acclaim.  i have not seen bully, but i did see the trailer, which featured rallies on capitol steps & the releasing of massive amounts of balloons into the sky while a dramatic score swirled in the background.

i worry that people will wear wristbands, and feel good about the “progress” they see on a movie screen, and just think “yes—it’s gonna be okay.”  i recoiled, dumbfounded, when i heard that father in bully say “we can change the world.”  that was actually the most disturbing thought i had after seeing the trailer.

growing up, i operated in a bit of a social no-man’s-land.  i had a few really great & close friends, but never fit in with the cool kids, or the jocks, or the arty types, or the nerds, or the brainiacs.

no one has ever held me down & beat the hell out of me.  or even outright punched me.  i was taunted occasionally as a “freak” or “loser,” and sometimes tripped or pushed around—but most of the time i was ignored by my peers.  though even “ignored” seems too active a verb.  it was more like not really being a consideration, one way or the other.

in my grade school, there weren’t any horrific sexual assaults (at least to my knowledge) like the one almond wrote about.  the worst i remember it getting was a stretch of bra-snapping by junior high boys.  our principal—a woman—was disgusted by this, and put an end to it quickly.  i never snapped a girl’s bra, but i never tried to stop another boy from doing it either.

i remember my parents’ exasperation at my teasing of my little brother, seven years younger.  they said they “just couldn’t understand” why i taunted him.  they had siblings growing up, so i don’t know if that was really a true statement, or just something my parents said in a moment of frustration.

i was never beat up by other kids, and i never beat up my brother.  but much like how bush & alberto gonzales & john yoo & the rest of that administration equivocated on the definition of “torture,” i could equivocate on the definition of “torment.”

i mercilessly ragged on my brother—for a long, long time—over an incident where he literally cried over spilled milk. he couldn’t have been older than six.

i used to forcibly pin my brother down, and when he screamed “(l)emme go!” i would ask who “emmy” was & whether she was his girlfriend.

i am certain there are things i did which my brother remembers, but i do not.

i still feel appalled that romney can claim to never have remembered forcibly giving another kid a haircut.

i love my brother—but much like romney never asked john lauber for forgiveness, neither have i.

Are you mindful of the other driver?

Between home and work, those huge digital matrix signs loom over the interstate, the ones intended to keep you abreast of traffic situations. But, except during snowstorms, there are no real traffic situations between home and work. It’s not that kind of town. So, instead, the signs display helpful messages and driving tips. Usually somewhere between self-righteously bossy (“Texting and Driving Don’t Mix”) and winkingly practical (“DUI Patrols Tonight”), lately the DOT has turned more philosophical. The other day, all over the state, the signs asked, “Are You Mindful of the Other Driver?”

It is the word “mindful” that seems out of place in square letters above the interstate. I am used to the DOT being concerned about my driving habits and even about the more physiological aspects of my mental state (who doesn’t like rest stops with free coffee?), but this seems to enter another kind of territory, a territory that is normally the domain of poets and pastors (and—on a side note—of Dinty W. Moore’s new book). I’m not used to hearing about such existential stuff from the lower levels of state bureaucracy. Not that I mind. In fact, I kind of like the idea that they might have more to say than “Merge Left in 1500 Feet.”

But that “mindful” and the abstract “other.” The word choice suggests authorship in a venue that is normally dominated by anonymity. This is not, I think, language that could be produced by machine or by government committee. This language was created, composed. So, reading it, driving beneath this message, I imagine the DOT copywriter in his cubicle, the perfunctory fabric walls, the smell of canned air.

On his breaks, he walks outside. It is spring now. New grass is coming up around the ponderosas. He shuffles his feet, kicks at a cone half-buried. He carries a paperback in his right hand, his thumb holding the place. This week Pedro Páramo, last week that Annie Dillard book, slim volumes that feel to him more like companions. He also keeps a book of poems in the top drawer of his desk, and he steals moments with them between memos and newsletters. He has recently discovered Dana Levin and thinks he might be in love.

The DOT office is in an office park off the highway, so the cars zing past. Most of them don’t notice the little building, one-story with large tinted windows that the copywriter cannot see from his cubicle, buried among the other cubicles. Most of the drivers do not notice him walking there, paperback held loosely between his fingers. But he stops to watch them.

Unless they merge onto 184, they will see one of his signs 2.4 miles ahead. Today, they will see his “Are You Mindful” message, his favorite, the first one he created and the only one he’s created that has gone into the state DOT’s permanent Dynamic Message Sign (DMS) message library. He thinks of this as his opportunity to shape society in his small way: his words, present, glowing above the flow of traffic, sliding easily into the eyes and, thus, the minds of 64,372 commuters each day, on average (based on the December 2010 report; he did the math himself). More on weekdays, fewer on weekends.

Watching the cars pass, he tries to notice each passing motorist. The traffic is light in late morning, so he almost can. The woman in the new Hyundai, probably his own mother’s age, hands at ten and two, sitting up straight so her hair doesn’t press against the headrest and deform. The man in the wax-sheen 4-ton pickup, broad shoulders and short hair: a contractor, he thinks, not a laborer. The girl in the early-90s Honda Civic, a carseat in the back, too young and pretty to have planned for that. These are his audience, his readers, and they are legion. It is a kind of power. More people will read his words today than will read Dana Levin: 64, 372 readers. And that’s vehicles; it doesn’t account for passengers. How many people will read Annie Dillard today? How many people will read Rulfo? Shakespeare? 64, 372 people will read him. Every day he has something to tell them, and every day they hear it.

He thinks of the sign past the 184 exit as his sign because the control box is in his cubicle. For the most part, each sign is controlled locally—normally by a sheriff’s dispatcher, but since this sign is so close to the main DOT offices, the duty defaults to him.

His fifteen-minute break is nearly over, so he dog ears the page in Rulfo and tucks it into his back pocket. He thinks he’ll steal another moment with Levin before writing the weekly road status update, a press release that no one in the press actually reads. If his supervisor were to catch him reading poems on the clock, he has decided he will explain that it is vocationally necessary. He will explain that, since he is a copywriter (a writer, really), he must keep language in his mind. If he does not keep the language fresh, he won’t be able to do his job well. His supervisor is the kind of person who believes in things like inspiration, and she already sees him as a creative type, so he thinks she’ll buy it. And, anyway, he hopes not to be at this job for long.

He fantasizes about his last day on the job, about how he will sign off. He’ll need to leave his readers with something larger than the normal fare. For some among his 64, 372, his words are the only thing they’ll read that day. He’ll need to leave them with something substantial. Like that line from Howard Nemerov: “The world is full of mostly invisible things,/ And there is no way but putting the mind’s eye,/ Or its nose, in a book, to find them out”

But that’s a bit pedantic, and it won’t fit on the sign.

Maybe this one, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, “And, for all this, nature is never spent”—But that’s too topical. Or, “For Christ plays in ten thousand places,/ Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his”

Or this one he just read in Levin: “I know,/ I’m tired of the battle too”

It is his duty, he thinks, not sacred but nearly so, to reach into their lives for an instant, to remind them that, for better or worse, they are not alone.

A Brave New Book

I can understand why some Germans would like it if the rest of the world’s fascination with Hitler, the Holocaust, and the rise of the Nazis would dissipate. One German woman told me the Germans find talk of all of this “boring.” I was supposed to be helping her with her English so I probably should have helped her determine if boring was the word she really meant. Another German woman told me that what happened in WWII wasn’t the fault of her generation and she wishes people could stop talking about it.

At the same time, some people are engaging with and adding to our knowledge of this particular part of history impressively. One such project is a book written by a German historian called, Mein Großvater im Krieg 1939-1945: Erinnerung und Fakten im Vergleich (My Grandfather in the War: 1939-1945: Memory and Facts Compared). In the book, Moritz Pfeiffer, who is a historian, interviews his grandfather who was in the Wehrmacht infantry.

After interviewing his grandfather and examining letters written by his grandmother, who he describes as a “committed, almost fanatical Nazi,” Pfeiffer checked the testimony of his grandparents against factual, historical documents. The result is what I would imagine is an uncomfortable confrontation with painful truths, a brave act. About the project, Pfeiffer says:

I believe that people will learn a lot if they understand how their respected and loved parents or grandparents behaved in the face of a totalitarian dictatorship and murderous racial ideology. Dealing with one’s family history in the Nazi period in an open, factual and self-critical way is an important contribution to accepting democracy and avoiding a repeat of what happened between 1933 and 1945.

Pfeiffer is encouraging others to undertake similar oral history projects, to listen to those who were involved in the war before we lose access to their testimony and perspectives.

Another piece that engages bravely with history is the film, “Eyewitness Archive of the Nuremberg Party Rallies,” made by Reiner Holzemer. The film is shown at the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, an exhibit that chronicles Hitler’s rise to power and the details of the Nazi rallies on the Nazi rally campus. There is much to criticize about the exhibit—it offers facts that have been sterilized, ironed, and starched. They are so clean one is almost able to forget the horror to which they are attached. The highlight of the museum is Holzemer’s film, which is shown in the last room of the exhibit and is comprised of interviews with Germans and Jews who lived in Nuremberg during the war.

My favorite quote from the film is that of a German, Edi Sers, who explains with impressive honesty how exciting it was to see the Nazi tanks and machine guns. He describes himself as a “fellow traveler,” in the course of Nazi history, as one who went along with things—with “enthusiasm,” even. He says a fellow traveler can’t claim to have been detached, that in going along with things, he “indirectly supported” the movement. He says now he realizes, “You had to shoot yourself in order to stay alive.”

The team I coach is fifth grade girls. Most of them are eleven now, but a few are still ten. We have one sixth grader. Our league has tryouts, but we cut only two girls this year. It’s really a rec league. I work hard to make sure the girls get equal playing time, and while I usually let them play the positions they like, I make them try out new ones as well.

We were in first place and undefeated before our game today. My girls may be ten, but they aren’t stupid. They know that the score matters, no matter how much I sometimes wish it didn’t. They were ashamed and sad, and each goal made it worse. After the game, after we shook hands, the other team made a tunnel for my girls to run through, and they chanted B-R-A-V-O bravo! at them. My girls couldn’t meet their eyes. They were embarrassed. Not just because they lost, but because the other team pretended like it didn’t matter, when they all knew it did. If it didn’t, the other coach wouldn’t have screamed at the ref when one of my girls got too free with her elbows (and we got scored on anyway). If it didn’t matter, he wouldn’t have kept his star player in for all but five minutes of the hour-long game.

After the game, I didn’t know what to say to my team. I wanted them to leave with some message that would make them feel better, knowing full well that even the best message can’t stem the emotions you feel after a loss. I wanted to give them back some pride while still using the loss as a teaching moment. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do remember feeling so silly as I said it. I was trying to make meaning where there wasn’t any. I thought, if this were a story, we would have had some come from behind victory (unless the story was about a Jamaican bobsled team, but even then, there was something good in the end—or so we’re led to believe). Even without a victory, of learning a life-lesson, there would have been some purpose there, some bigger meaning, some sense.

A few hours later, I got an email from one of them asking me if I thought she could have saved any of the goals. Some of the girls—maybe most—went home and forgot about it. They did their homework, or watched some television. Maybe they thought about our practice tomorrow, but maybe not. But this girl was bothered enough to ask me about it, but I have no answers.

What I said: Don’t worry about it. We play as a team, and no one person’s mistake will make or break us. You did a good job when you stopped their break away. I thought you played with heart. You made me proud.

What I didn’t say was the thing that makes me most proud is how she handles herself, how the pain eats at her, like it always did me, but how, unlike me, she owns up to it. I’ve always been one for making excuses because I want so desperately to believe that my shortcomings are things I can’t help, like being too short. I went home after the game, and I didn’t spend time analyzing my coaching performance, considering what I could have done better because it’s too easy for me to make those excuses. And I’d like to say now that I’m learning the lesson from this, that I’ll be a better coach/role model/human, but the truth is that most likely none of that will happen.

You did well, I told her, and for now, that’s good enough.

“In another receptacle, granulated sugar is slowly mixed into chilled limestone water to make a silvery mixture as smooth as some rare Egyptian oil, then poured on top of the ice. While beads of moisture gather on the burnished exterior of the silver goblet, garnish the brim of the goblet with the choicest sprigs of mint.”
-from Henry Clay’s diary

May your Derby weekend be decadent and depraved.

It started with just the bangs, but people with curly hair haven’t pulled off bangs since the ’80s.  Then a few chunks came out of the sides: once you start cutting your hair, you can’t just stop.  You have to keep snipping and snipping, trying to find that hairstyle that you imagined when you first began.  You have to find the sculpture within the marble, the bob within the mass of curls.  You cut one bit just a little too short and then have to trim the rest to match, eroding your mountain of hair until there’s practically nothing left.  You start out methodical—measuring the strands against each other, trying to work in sections—and then you get artistic.  You chop and hack.  You feel instead of thinking.  You’re not just cutting off your hair; you’re setting yourself free.

My face morphs as the hair falls away, a new landscape at each length, my cheekbones and jaw starting to look solid, losing some of their bread-dough quality.  I am becoming someone else.  After I make the final snips, I violently tousle my head, sending dirty blonde needles everywhere.  I’ve cut my hair dry—apparently that’s better for curls.  I’ve used tips from former hairstylists to fly in their faces and usurp their job.  I shower quickly, to get the curls to tighten up again, washing away as much of the dead hair as I can.  I stand before the mirror in my towel, short curls dripping, and wonder if I’ve made a mistake.

I’m going to have to wear earrings now.  Long, dangly earrings and eyeliner—as much as I can to declare my gender.  I’m going to need sparkly hair clips and headbands to identify myself as a girl.  A woman.  I look at my round cheeks in the mirror—maybe softer than a boy’s—and my large eyes with their long blonde lashes.  I survey my curveless frame, my collarbone the only real intimation of femininity.  It’s probably worse in the towel, which doesn’t have the kind of seaming I tend toward in clothing, the kind that nips as close to the waist as it can, that highlights the breasts, even if they’re barely there.

I’ve had short hair before and I’ve had to cut it myself.  It happened the first time in a fit of rage, a self-hatred that I hear is common among teens and young adults.  It happened with the scissors I found in my father’s desk, in my bedroom, where the hair ground into the carpet.  After that, I spent a good deal of time with old ladies addressing me as “sir” in the grocery store, when my back was turned, and then blushing when they saw the small bulges under my shirt.  The old ladies invariably asked for help fetching items from high shelves, taking advantage of my long arms and six-foot frame.  Finally, I learned to wear skirts and girlish shoes, dangly earrings that wobbled as I walked, brushing rhythmically against my neck.  I learned to use “product” in my short curls, dyed them black to keep them from blending with my skin.  Eventually, the old ladies started asking who set my hair, looking for a recommendation.  They were always impressed that my hair was naturally curly, that I and Mother Nature were responsible.  They smiled instead of blushing.  They stopped calling me “sir.”

I change into a dress and put curl cream in my hair, feeling each strand wrap around my fingers.  There’s a short spot on the right side, but I won’t be cutting any more; I just fluff it up and press the rest of the hair down, hoping for camouflage.  I smudge on eyeliner—too thick a line—and follow with shadow.  I try to remember the techniques I’ve read in magazines and seen on TV.  Highlights around the tear ducts and the eyebrows, shadow in the crease.  I brush on mascara.  I blot my skin with a makeup sponge, aiming for a more ideal complexion.  I’m still afraid I look like I’m in drag.

I’ve always wanted to have long hair, really.  Long, wavy hair that a man could draw his fingers through.  Marilyn Monroe pulled off shorter hair, but she had assets I just don’t have.  I could never find a movie star to relate to, but I found legions of them to look up to.  Ideally, I would be Rita Hayworth, with long red curls that had to be coaxed into existence instead of springing from my head of their own accord.  I would have her curves, her sex appeal.  I would flip my hair and say, “Hello boys,” and knees would melt in my presence.  No one would have to look twice to know I was a woman.

It’s not that I haven’t had long hair; my hair has been long for most of my life.  But rather than growing long, down my back, it grows out like the branches of an apple tree, like a shrub, like a tumbleweed.  It grows slowly and it breaks where it’s tied or clipped away from my neck.  A tangled mass, like quicksand for fingers, growing rougher and wilder with every inch.

When I first cut my hair short, I worked in a hotel.  I came to work in a swingy skirt, clingy top, and earrings that were probably more appropriate for a night club than a front desk.  I hated my boss, but that day as I walked into the office, he said, “Suzy Q!” and smiled so broadly at my new haircut that I could ignore his money-grubbing, phone-bill scrutinizing, long-lunch taking self and take it as a compliment.  I imagined myself a curly-headed cutie, circa 1954, as close to movie star status as I’d ever been.  My hair was classic.  That was good enough for me.

But it’s been a long time. Now, I wait for my husband to come home, hoping we’ll go out for dinner, a celebration of sorts.  Part of me worries that he might not notice; he has so much on his mind, and I did have short hair when we met.  I grew it out for our wedding, because a bride could not have a boy cut.  I treated it with more care than I had ever imagined giving hair, trying to keep it out of ponytails and barrettes that might compromise my hair’s integrity, suffering the heat on my neck as the spring grew warm.  I had my best friend style it on the big day, since the professional stylists I’d auditioned could not deal with my curls and felt the best solution was to straighten them.  But my hair does not go straight—it merely turns into hay.  I imagined, during the reception, that I looked like Cinderella or some Disney version of a princess.  But then it was back to ponytails and breakage, fighting with myself every morning.  Now I am back to where I was when I met my husband, back to the beginning.

My husband comes home late, having been detained by a chatty coworker and then the downtown traffic that, while ultimately tame, he daily bemoans.  He doesn’t exclaim when he sees me; he goes through the mail, goes to the bathroom, comments on all the hair in the sink, which I promise I’ll clean up, though he doesn’t demand it.  He tells me my hair looks good and gives me a good, long kiss.  We go out to dinner.

Note: This essay was originally written over two years ago for a nonfiction form and theory class (in imitation of “On Shaving a Beard” by Philip Lopate), and yet yesterday, after taking the scissors to my head once again, I felt exactly the same way. My husband and I even went out to dinner.

Simultaneously posted at The Sensitive, Bookish Type

I also like Twitter because 140 characters is some sort of mathematically magical number for the creation of terrible and surreal thoughts, such as below, courtesy of the @thecatamites:

YOUR BLOOD IS EVIDENCE IN A CRIME. PLEASE MAIL ALL YR BLOOD TO TRANSYLVANA POLICE STATION C/O DRACULA. THANKS. SIGNED THE POLICE. URGENT.

@thecatamites is the maker of games called “Space Funeral” and “Murder Dog IV: The Trial of Murder Dog.” You probably wouldn’t have guessed that, but you’re probably not surprised either.

Cramming everything you want to say about life and the universe in 140 characters or less is harder than it sounds. It takes a lot of good old fashioned creative writing work to tell a story of a vampire scamming innocent people over the Internet, in a medium that’s stereotyped mostly as method to communicate to millions of people about what one had for breakfast. If it can be argued that Twitter encourages inanity, it must be conceded that it also forces brevity. Adjectives and adverbs are a luxury tweets cannot afford, and throat-clearing is pure decadence. Rachel Toor is fond of a Blaise Pascal quote that goes something like “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” It takes a very long time to say everything you want to say in 140 characters, but once you say it, it’s such a weird funny little jewel.

Twitter didn’t invent brevity: the 1948 horror story “Knock” by Fredric Brown opens with a complete horror story in 76 characters: “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…” Much like the haiku, Twitter forces a certain kind of creativity by forcing so much meaning into a tiny space with a lot of rules. Many of these people are no one special, but like them.

Sometimes the results are jokes:

if a girl invites u in “for a night cap” be aware this means something totally different and she may not even have any hats you can put on—Jerry Beans

Sometimes they are double reverse jokes:

joke: a man walks into a bar and asks for punch “u’ll have to wait” says the bartender “theres a line” the man looks around but no punchline—Charmandork

Sometimes they are sadness:

we’ve deciphered cave paintings. they were just lonely. we’ve deciphered everything. everyone is just lonely—arealiveghost

Sometimes they are disturbingly relevant to the personal longings of MFA students:

SEXT: I AM SHORT FICTION, YOU ARE A LITERARY JOURNAL. YOU REJECT EVERYTHING BUT ME FOR YOUR UPCOMING ISSUE. EVERY WORD IN ME IS “YES”.—regisl
and sometimes they are disturbingly relevant to the job description of MFA students:

I tweet too much. My therapist says I have a problem. My problem is I don’t have a therapist, I made it up. I make stuff up. It’s my job :/—Bryan Lee O’Malley:
So, for all of the rest of us with jobs in the making-stuff-up market, see what you can do in 140 characters.