Out of the blue this weekend Zack looked up at me and asked,  “You don’t have a twitter, do you?”

I was so surprised by his question, I audibly guffawed at him.  I was like, “PSH. Um, yeah.  Of course I do.”  He  knows full-well that I am an avid collector of online real estate, so I was bumfuzzled that he wouldn’t have assumed as much.  “But,” he continued, “you just use it to follow people, right? You don’t actually write anything on it?”  I was all, “OF COURSE I write on it!”  I am still in a state of disbelief that I have had a twitter for almost a year (my first tweet was on 4-1-08) and he, man who knows everything about me, had no idea.

Our weekend discovery made me realize that I never formally announced my twitter.  I don’t post there as consistently as some people, but I do every once in a while.   When I do, I like to try to use the 140 characters allotted for a tweet as an exercise of the phrase ‘brevity is the art of comedy.’

For those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about: Twitter.com is a website that hosts what is essentially a mini-blog.  Instead of writing a post however long you’d like for it to be, you’re limited to 140 characters, which is about the length of your average text message.

Here’s another way to explain Twitter:

Last night I was (dorkily) talking with a friend of mine about sentence structure.  During my undergrad years an English professor complimented me on my varying use of different sentence structures.  He was impressed because I tend to write papers with roughly equal numbers of simple, complex and compound sentences.  I didn’t mean to do that, I guess my brain just thinks in all three ways.  My friend responded to this fact by saying,”That is pretty impressive. Simple is hard in academia.”  I said that yes, they are.  But difficult or not, I love using simple sentences sharpen the tip of a proverbial point in a paper.  Nestled in paragraphs of 4-line sentences, a 6 word sentence gets bolded by default; it stands out because of its seemingly curt nature.

Twitter is the simple sentence structure in blogging.  I have my blog and I can write sentences upon paragraphs upon pages here.  But sometimes, I just need 140 characters to make a point.  Twitter is the perfect platform for life’s simple sentences.

In anticipation of this post, as I asked a few friends to pick some of their favorite ‘tweets’ that I’ve posted on twitter.  So without further ado, here is something akin to my ‘twitter portfolio.’  You can follow me, read me or just complain to me about how I don’t think in simple sentences near often enough.  But at least now you’ll know that I’m out there.

Top 10 SarahThe Tweets, As Chosen By People Who Are Not Me:
10. Tried on clothes at Target, didn’t notice a panty-protector stuck to my shirt for over an hour. Until I ran into one of my co-workers.
9. I rode my bike to work this morning. I felt fantastically environmentally friendly, until I realized that I just looked poor.
8. Just got excited about a hallmark movie commercial. Any minute now, I’m going to start lactating.
7. I chose not to pet the cat, but he’s still purring anyway. I’m such an animal owning badass. I’ll give you lessons for $10.
6. just teared up talking about the social implications of the movie Juno. HEY PERIOD, I’VE MISSED YOU, TOO.
5. AP2 bent me over its knee and beat me like a disobedient 4 year old. I was all, “I’m sorry, daddy. I’ll never be ambitious again.”
4. oops. hope that dissipates before it gets to the next cubicle.
3. Expecting company in a few hours. I should clean, but who am I kidding? I can’t even motivate myself to put on a bra
2. I just informed someone on the phone, “This is Sarah, from the Registrar’s Awesome…”
1. Just one-handedly dug an ingrown hair out of the back of my arm. My satisfaction level is currently immeasurable.