[In case you care to look, here are parts I and II.]

In the middle of my 8th grade year, my world was shattered. My parents announced to us that we were moving away from everything I knew and loved in Milwaukee to a tiny little backwoods ‘burg in Ohio. I was devastated. But, considering I had no choice, I decided to try to make the best of it.

Eighth grade was difficult in my new town. To the kids, I talked funny. They called me “Old Milwaukee.” Nice. So for the rest of my 8th grade year, I hardly talked. I’d go to school, do my work, eat lunch alone…basically try to be invisible. Just surviving, in a very pre-adolescent sort of way. You know the feeling, I’m sure. This is my 8th grade picture (no toothy grin – had to hide the braces).

Well, I got through the last 4 months of that year without too many humiliations. The summer got better. I had more friends, and I felt like I might someday belong. I changed my accent – right danged now. I made it my business to talk like all the other kids. Fortunately for me, I was good at the dialect thing, and I blended in pretty easily. Anyway, I was looking forward to my freshman year, which was to be a vast improvement over 8th grade.

Some hairstyles should not be photographed.

When 9th grade rolled around, I was still at the junior high school (that’s how they did it in my district) and a couple of my friends told me I should join the choir. My thoughts were, “Why not? I get to be with my friends more.” I then met a man who forever changed my life.

Michael Jothen was my junior high school choir director. How lucky was I? Under his direction, I realized that this singing thing was what I’d been missing in my life. I wanted to be a singer more than anything else in the world now. What Jothen got out of a bunch of 8th and 9th graders was nothing short of amazing. We sang SATB arrangements; there was a men’s ensemble; we did sacred stuff, madrigals (stock arrangements, not watered down SAB versions), and contemporary things, like Godspell, with a rhythm section. He brought in guest soloists, and featured a bunch of us on solos as well. It was more music than I had ever been exposed to before. I had to be a part of it — and I was, in my high school years, with some interesting (and some nasty) outcomes, as we shall see on the next episode of History of Me….

Fink out.

Why can’t I do it? I’ve tried several times. At twitter.com, I’ve gotten as far as this:

And that’s as far as I go. Can’t give up the cell phone number. Why is this? Why do I distrust any “free” online service wanting my mobile number?

For those who may not know (or care), Twitter is an insanely popular application whereby you post little personal updates about what you’re doing/thinking/feeling at the moment — and I do mean “little,” as you’re only allowed 140 total characters to say your piece. Anyway, the Twitter folks say that it’s more fun to use on your phone, because you’re not always at your desk when cool/amazing/infuriating/random stuff happens. So they want you to give them your mobile number so you can post directly to your Twitter profile from anywhere.

According to the official Twitter Directory, there are over 2 million users worldwide. That’s a lotta web posts and text messages, friends. And I’m no hand-wringing scaredy-cat when it comes to doing things on the web; it’s just that my cell phone is one of the last bastions of basically spam- and hassle-free communication devices that I own. [Has anyone used their cell number on Twitter and lived to tell the tale? If so, post a comment here.]

Still — I can see how Twitter can become addictive. I only have one person on my “follow” list (meaning the list of people whose Twitter updates I signed on to see), and going back over his posts, it’s quite interesting to look at some random stuff that’s happened in his life. But where does all this lead? Glasshoppa have many questions.

I remember reading a blog several months ago (wish I’d bookmarked it) from a guy in Japan, I think, who suspected that it was only a matter of time before Twitter’s business model was picked up by competitors, and then we’d have this mass glut of posts and text messages on the web from people saying that they saw a guy on the street walking a three-legged dog, or that there is a mad sale on socks at Macy’s, or that you’re sitting in a rehearsal and you hate your director (which never happens, I’m sure). In the big scheme of life, where will this huge archive of snippets fit? If I remember correctly, the guy said that maybe it could serve as a time capsule of sorts; your grandchildren can read about the day in 2008 when the drive-up lane at the bank closed just as it was going to be your turn. Or whatever.

So my point, and I do have one, is that I think an experiment is prudent at this juncture. For the next 12 months, I will post to my Twitter page on a semi-regular basis (though I’m still not sure I will post from my cell phone). I encourage you to “follow” me, if you like. And I’ll do the same with you. And feel free to respond to my “tweets” as well. If nothing else, it will hone your skills at saying what you want to say in 140 characters or less.

On 3 July, 2009, I will post my reactions and any data I’ve collected. Sounds positively twittillating. So do join me in the experiment, if you like.

But you have to get an account first, so stop reading this drivel and get on it, pard.

Fink out.

I just finished what is known as the definitive biography (there are many different bios published) on Nikola Tesla. I was speechless, basically. How I wished he were alive so I could slap him into tomorrow.

He let George Westinghouse and his lawyers walk off with what could have spared him years of living in near-destitution. He didn’t pursue Marconi after the guy claimed to invent radio. Tesla was such a horrible businessman, I’m surprised he got anything done at all. But brilliant, oh my goodness….

However, some of his ideas were so cockamamie, I’m surprised author Margaret Cheney didn’t do more to discount them. After seeing a movie like The Prestige, where Tesla was depicted in his Colorado Springs laboratory as a wise, mysterious genius, it was disappointing to discover that his time in Colorado in 1899 was almost a total failure, despite his experiments with “ball lightning,” which never went anywhere. The cool thing, though: no scientist has ever been able to duplicate his experiment with ball lightning. They simply don’t know how he did it. Creepy.

Speaking of creepy… Thirsty, my little vampires?

Speaking of vampires…I started a new novel last night. It scared me so bad I couldn’t go to sleep. That hasn’t happened since It.

Speaking of Stephen King…he has a new book out — The Gingerbread Girl. Plot: main character suffers a tremendous tragedy, then moves to a secluded Florida key, where she…wait a minute. That sounds awfully familiar. Ah, I remember. Duma Key from last year. Maybe King is doing a Florida series. Er sumthin.

Regardless, I’m mad because it’s only available as an audio book. I’d rather read my own books, as opposed to having Mare Winningham read them to me, thanks all the same.

Ok, non sequitur: I’m hungry.

Fink out.

So I was looking at 1930s-style dresses yesterday.

Check out this short reel from oh, I’d say around 1932-33, that predicts what clothing will look like in the year 2000. It’s awesome.

[quicktime]http://finkweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/1930s.mov[/quicktime]

Also amazing is how accurate a couple of their predictions were, like the telephone-on-the-body thing, and climate-controlling clothing. It got me thinking about how far technology has come in only 75 years. I know that sounds cliché (“look how far we’ve come!”), but it’s really true. Think about the expanse of time between when upright humans first walked the earth (between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago) and the year 1900. I mean, I know that the manufacture of materials like metal alloys, chemicals, concrete and glass helped facilitate these inventions, but consider this:

• Electricity was discovered in 1749, but 60 more years went by before Humphrey Davy experimented with arc light, and it was another 65 years after that before anyone actually filed a patent on the first electric light bulb (and it wasn’t Edison, but I won’t go into that right now).
• Joseph Niépce took the first photograph in 1837 (the exposure took an incredible 8 hours), but affordable cameras for public purchase were not available until 1901, when George Eastman developed The Brownie.
• The first self-powered (by steam) road vehicle was built in 1769 by a French guy named Nicolas Cugnot. Yet, self-powered vehicles (this time by internal combustion) would not be available for sale to the public until 80 years later, when Panhard & Levassor manufactured and sold their cars with a Daimler engine.

Now, I’m not complaining about the time it took people to invent stuff back then. Rather, I’m saying how amazing it is that so much has been invented *since* then, in a relatively short time. A very short time, actually.

Just 40 years ago, when I was in elementary school:

1. There was no such thing as a personal computer, affordable to almost anyone.
2. I never dreamed I could watch full-length theater movies in my own home.
3. Every telephone had a wire attached. I remember when push-button phones came out; I was bummed that our dad didn’t want to spend the extra money to get one.
4. Public phone booths were everywhere. A call cost a dime.
5. At a certain time every night, the television picture turned to snow, after which nothing was on until the next morning.

So the next time we want to complain about the long wait at the ATM, or if the internet is slow, or our cell phone signal drops out…well, you get the idea.

Holy crap, this was long. I amaze myself sometimes. I’m usually so quiet, so demure, so shy….

Fink out.

Video credit: www.itnsource.com (Pathe BP200339118416); “Brownie” photo credit: George Eastman House