Right Wing Nut House

After feeling SO left out of the Twitter revolution because it all looked so…so…geeky, I found myself with some time on my hands this morning (I am on vacation from my PJ Media job), and decided to gird my tech loins and enter the dank, overpopulated, incomprehensible Twitter Universe.

I had signed up for Twitter back in April but contented myself with using the social networking button on my blog to update all 170 or so of my followers about my brilliant blog posts.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing of course. I just discovered today that a few people actually responded to these whispers in the Twitter wilderness, which REALLY made me feel like an idiot. A dozen or so Twitterers actually took the time to Tweet back about what I had posted.

For those of you who so kindly tweeted me these last few months only to have that response summarily ignored by a technological pea brain, I apologize. I plan on using the Krell mind expander a little later just so I can figure out how to get back to you.

For these last months, I was using the handle “roddy mcorley” instead of my name because when I signed up, the computer told me that someone else was using my name (imagine the gall!) and that I had to come up with another one. It never penetrated my vacuous skull that I could use a variation of my name and people would then be able to recognize my tweets.

(It should tell you something that I thought there was only one other “rickmoran” in the Twitter world and that I actually believed I might be able to buy the guy off and take my rightful place in Twitterdom, proudly using my real name. Today, using a simple search, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered about 50 “Rick Moran”s, most using variations of my name, all tweeting away happily, secure in the knowledge that people knew who they were.)

Who was roddymcorley? Roddy McCorley was an Irish patriot, who fought during the rebellion of 1798, and was later captured by the British and hung. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded a ballad about McCorley that was written at the turn of the 20th century, and is not only one of their more well known selections, but has also been a staple at Moran family gatherings for more than 40 years of campfire/living room songfests.

The song is both tragic and uplifting - as only the Irish can do it:

Up the narrow streets he stepped
Smiling proud and young
About the hemp rope on his neck
The golden ringlets clung
There is never a tear in his blue eyes
For glad and bright are they
As young Roddy McCorely goes to die
On the bridge of Toome today

Today, I killed off Roddy McCorley as my handle and adopted “rickmoran_rwnh.” In exploring the Twitter site, I accidentally found out how you can change your username. Imagine my sheer delight when I discovered I could use my real name so that my legions of blog fans can now follow me on Twitter.

Maybe sometime this weekend I will peruse the instructions (also discovered by accident today) so that I can actually get in on the conversation. No promises though. If it is any more complex than pointing and clicking, faggetaboutit.

Maybe I should just give it up. Readers of this site are probably giggling at the thought that I can say anything meaningful using 140 characters. Or 140 words for that matter. I am well aware of my propensity to babble, to digress, to wax poetic when simple declarative sentences will do. But then, how would you get to sleep at night without my somnolent scribblings to make your eyes glaze over and get heavy with sleep? I am better than Sominex and cheaper than Halcion, and I challenge anyone to a “sleep-off” to see which blogger - Andrew Sullivan or me - is a better sleep aid. I will bet $50 dollars that I can put you to sleep faster than Andrew.

Yeah…I still don’t get Twitter. And probably never will.