Do you like Twitter? If so, you’re wrong

Twitter is crap.

People call Twitter a “valuable tool.” No, a bottle opener is a valuable tool. Twitter is the magnet on the bottle opener that degausses your flash drive.

With Twitter you get – what? – 175 characters to say something meaningful? You can configure these “tweets” to show up on your cell phone. Wow. T-Mobile charges 20 cents per text message. I can see myself paying 20 cents to see “I had a painful BM this morning.”

I’m gonna start a new social media service. Call it “Crap.” You’re limited to three words and two punctuation marks. Each message will be called a “fart.”

Several possibilities come to mind. Remember that line from Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator”? Not “I’ll be back,” but the one where he’s in his hotel room and somebody knocks on the door and says, “Hey buddy, you got a dead cat in there?” That would make a cool fart. Or there’s the ever-popular KMA.

Speaking of T-Mobile I had a message stuck in my outbox that kept sending to Robbyn and the brain trust at T-Mobile couldn’t get rid of it so they told me to do a hard reset on my phone. Great, except that wiped out all my pix and videos and ringtones except the ones that came with the phone.

So I’m at work the other day and the phone rings and it’s using the default ringtone, which just happens to be “The Beer Barrel Polka.”

Can you imagine my humiliation?

I refuse to pay $2.34 to download a 10-second clip from “Viva la Vida” – hell, the entire album only cost $10.

Why couldn’t they include a ringtone that sounds like a tweet?

Or a fart?

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .