What the hell is Twitter?

Let me start off by saying that I am, in no way, a Twitter expert. I am just a guy that typed in a very popular URL and started mucking around. I do not have thousands of followers. I do not have any appropriate nerd credentials. I do not have any fancy statistics or charts to woo you with. I have only my own experiences. You might find them useful, or you might not.

Kind of like Twitter itself.

I don't remember why I first came to Twitter. I was probably flitting around the web and happened upon yet another reference to "tweeting" and finally decided to set up an account. Or, more likely, one of my tech savvy friends talked me into it. Who knows for sure. After over 800 posts, I think it's safe to say I'm addicted.

Hold on, let's back up a step.

Q: What the hell is Twitter?

Wikipedia: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets.

That's it, really. Your screen is a constant flow of thoughts, links, jokes, confessions and pictures. You will only see "tweets" from the people you choose to follow, and you have to find them on your own. You start out with nothing, but they do offer a suggested user list if you need some help. I find most of the people on that list to be boring as hell, but that's just me. I have systematically crafted my own "Following" list over time, adding and subtracting people every day.

Q: Isn't it all just Facebook status updates?

There are many people who use Twitter in this way, but I don't follow very many of them. This type of behavior is brought on by the ubiquitous "What are you doing?" that stares you down every time you log in. It's a scary question, and it will freak you out in the beginning. Feel free to ignore it, if you like. I do.

Q: Why do people give a shit what I'm doing?

They probably don't, unless you're Ashton Kutcher. In that case, 1.6 million people want to know EVERYTHING that goes through your head. Indulge them. The internet is free, right? Fill it up.

Q: So, do I have to tweet?

You don't. It's as simple as that. Just like the rest of the internet, you can be a lurker. You can let the wave of news and nerditude wash over you as you bask in the dick and fart jokes. You can walk away from it for days and then jump right back in at random, choosing to catch up or not. It's up to you.

Now, if you want to contribute, there are many ways to go about it. You can try and be funny. You can post links to interesting things you find on the web. You can take pictures of weird stuff and post them for the world to judge. You can Re-Tweet (RT) things that other people posted. You can have semi-private conversations by starting your post with @ and the person's user name. You can do all of this and more, 140 characters at a time. If you're interesting, people will follow you. If you're not, they won't. It's as simple and as heartbreakingly difficult as that.

(A note about privacy. Unless you make your Twitter stream private, anyone can find it and read what you write. It will show up on Google searches. Try not to disparage your boss and lose your job.)

I tried it. I think it's boring.

I hear this a lot and I have two things to say about this:

1. You're following the wrong people. I don't know who the right people are because I'm not you. I follow people who make me smile, feel, think and respond. I follow athletes (Shaq, Barry Zito, CC Sabathia, Coco Crisp), writers (Neil Gaiman, Paul Feig, Max Barry, Nicholas Kristof, John August), celebrities (Hugh Jackman, Ellen DeGeneres, Trent Reznor), Mommy Bloggers (Melissa Summers, Finslippy, Dooce, Dad Gone Mad), my friends and lots and lots of funny people. I find myself checking in hundreds of times a day because I just can't wait to see what @badbanana is tweeting about. It's a lot, which brings me to point number...

2. I get it, okay? It's a constant stream of crap to keep tabs on, and you already have four email addresses, a Facebook page, two MySpace accounts, your friend's blog, a Fantasy Baseball team and your Netflix queue to keep track of. Who has time for Twitter? I'm a busy guy, so I wasn't really a fan until I downloaded one of the Twitter apps for my iPhone (I recommend Tweetie). Suddenly, it was the perfect way to fill in the gaps in the day and it also gave me an immediate outlet for tweeting up a storm. If you don't have an iPhone, you can set up your Blackberry or Treo to do the same thing. You can even post with text messages if that's easier for you. Stuck at your computer all day? Check out TweetDeck or the full version of Tweetie. This can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

So, where do I start?

Create an account. Let the address book search engine thingy scour your contacts and add the people you know. Go through their pages and click on some of the people they're following, adding those who sound interesting to you. You can always unfollow them later when you can't stand them anymore (I'm looking at you, Ashton Kutcher). That's it.

Again, I am not an internet guru. I do not pretend to understand everything about this cultural phenomenon. I am just another guy trying to change the world 140 characters at a time. Come join me.

I look forward to unfollowing you,

@drongo3

The American version of "Mow the Lawn"

It's missing something. Maybe a Tulip reference would fix it.

Life and death at my door.

When I opened my door yesterday, I found three little baby birds. There was a nest up in the corner of the building and it had collapsed, spilling the precious little things into the stone courtyard below. There was a heart-stopping moment when I realized that I could have easily stomped one without ever seeing it. They were so small, and so perfectly camouflaged that we were sure somebody else would stomp them into oblivion if we didn't move them.

When Jenna, my girlfriend, went out to find them, there were only two birds. We looked all over the place for the missing bird but found nothing. We did, however, find a little pool of blood directly under the defunct nest. Hmmm. Jenna scooped our two new friends up with a newspaper and gave them a new home in the big orange planter in the middle of the courtyard. They could live there safely until Mommy Bird showed up again.

Jenna, it should be noted, is a bird person. She has an African Grey and he's the love of her life. Naturally, she fussed over the little birds and tried to make them as comfortable as possible, even building a little shelter out of rocks to keep them warm for the night. I watched from the upstairs window as Mommy Bird found them and fed them. Woo-hoo! We went to bed, hoping for the best.

When I left for work the next day, they were still alive and hopping. I was elated. Turns out my morning grumpiness is no match for cute little birds. Jenna regaled me with updates all day and I was proud to hear that one of them had hopped off into the big bad world, strong enough to leave.

They grow up so fast.

When I got home, I took one last look at the tiny pool of blood on the stone slab. For the first time, I noticed tracks leading toward the building. I followed it with my eyes and found the body of the third little bird. He had made it as far as the stoop and had laid his little head on it. He could have been sleeping, but he wasn't. Jenna buried him in the potting soil after dinner. By then, the last bird had hopped away.

When I took Gypsy out for her evening walk, I stared at the planter. I'd spent the last two days worrying about three tiny little bundles of feathers and now I missed them. I wondered what they were doing and if they were okay. I wondered if there was an orange planter big enough for all of us, should we need it.

Americans miss out on all the good ads.

Feeling rough around the edges? Feels great to trim the hedges!

What's a Drongo?

Drongowski

Just look at my name for a second. It won't bite. I promise.

Say it with me: Dron-gow-ski. If you're Russian you can pronounce it Druhn-govf-ski and I will be fine with it.

When your last name has ten letters, people get confused when they look at it. They end up adding letters that aren't there, resulting in some pretty strange gibberish. I've been called everything from the earnest Dragon-kerchief-ski to the tongue-in-cheek Drunk-Cows-Ski. As an added bonus, my name has been spelled incorrectly on everything except my college diploma, my tax documents and my sales awards. What does this say about the priorities of the world we live in?

I needed a nickname. My father tried to call me J-Bird, but that one never made it outside the family. There had to be something better.

If you look at my name, you can see how I got the name Drongo. It started in grade school but it didn't really catch on until college. At that point I had to pick an email address and "drongo3" was shorter than "jeff.drongowski." The name stuck and I've been Drongo for years.

I like the name Drongo. It's catchy, it fits me and it's a lot easier for people to spell than Drongowski. Perfect, right? I even have a doctor who calls me Drongo P.I. and pretends that I'm a secret agent, ready to kill him at a moments notice. He came up with that on his own by studying my name tag. If that's not proof of a good nickname, I don't know what is. All was right with the world.

Until.

One day I met a guy named David from Australia. We started talking and exchanged email addresses. When he looked at mine he started belly laughing right away, even slapped me on the shoulder.

"That's brilliant, mate," he said.

"Um... what's brilliant?"

"Drongo3. I love it!"

"I don't get it." He stopped laughing, trying to figure me out.

"It's like, idiot cubed, right? Genius." Uh oh.

Urban Dictionary defines Drongo like this: Dumbass, idiot (Aussie slang) "You've really mucked that up, ya drongo!"

I did a quick Wikipedia search and found out that it was also a "family of small passerine birds of the Old World tropics." They also had a very helpful picture of a Spangled Drongo.


So to sum up, my nickname, the name I've been going by for over ten years now, can be boiled down to Idiot-Bird. I've learned to embrace it. There's a certain poetry to it and, I'm sure my father will agree, it fits me.

World Baseball Classic: U.S.A. vs. Japan

It was still the game I've followed since childhood, but it was different somehow. Tweaked. For starters, there were words on the scoreboards that I had never seen before...

How do you dream about playing in the Honkbal Hoofdklasse when you're a little kid in the Netherlands? If their word for fireman is even slightly better, we're never going to see that country in another W.B.C.

I tried to settle in and enjoy the game. As a Red Sox fan, this made me feel right at home.

And what's a game of good old American baseball without Ichiro standing on second and Derek Jeter scratching his balls?

Team USA trotted out some legends to try and impart some wisdom on the younger guys. Welcome back, Cal. We've missed you.

The problem with the W.B.C. is that the American fans don't have any idea what they're doing there. I could see it on their faces and hear it in their half-assed cheers. I felt weird chanting "U. S. A.!" at the top of my lungs and didn't do it more than once. The thing is, we like Ichiro, Matsuzaka, Fukudome and Iwamura. We've adopted them as our own and it makes us feel weird to see them in some other uniform, playing against us. They've become part of our culture... but they will always be Japanese at heart.

The Japanese fans weren't confused at all. They cheered every strike, booed every ball and went crazy for each of the nine runs their offense put up for them. They looked like this for the entire game.

They had better chants, better headbands, better noisemakers and better posters. In the end, they got what they deserved.

I think the World Baseball Classic has the potential to become an epic test of patriotism and talent. Maybe the American fans will figure this out before the tournament rolls around again. I hope so. Without us, Team U.S.A. doesn't stand a chance.

This Pharma Life: Ruined.

I listen to every "This American Life" podcast and I've recently started watching the TV version on Showtime. As I was thinking about writing this blog, I thought it might be fun to structure it in the T.A.L. tradition. Call it a tip of the hat to Ira Glass and all the fantastic people at Chicago Public Radio.

So, today on This Pharmaceutical Life, stories about things that are ruined.

My blog today is in three acts. Act 1: A mother misses the point of her own lesson. Act 2: The death of cool. Act 3: Mondays really are that bad.


Act 1

This morning I found myself standing by an elevator with my rolling file cart, waiting. There was nobody else around until another drug rep came up with another rolling cart. We nodded a casual greeting and looked at our phones. A mother pushed a stroller up and started fixing her young daughter's hair as the baby in the carriage started crying. Five other people walked up.

Ding!

One of the elevators opened and the last five people piled into it, blocking the rest of us out. The doors closed, leaving us all to wait for another round. The young girl said, "That's not fair, Mommy, we were here first." The mother said, "That's just how people are. They have no consideration for others."

Ding!

Another elevator opened and the mother raced over to it, jamming her stroller in, blocking me and the other drug rep out for yet another elevator. The door closed, leaving both of us, the two people who had been waiting the longest, standing in the corridor together. We smirked at each other. Good life lesson.


Act 2

I was standing in the back office of a prominent medical practice today when a famous Rocker was admitted to a patient room. I can't tell you who it was for legal reasons, but if you imagine any of the Hair Band guys from the eighties, you'll be pretty close. He still had the teased out hair, the crazy tattoos and the low-slung leather pants. I always wondered what those guys would look like when they got older... they look pretty much how you would expect.

As a rule, I try very hard not to listen to what people are talking about with their doctors. I'll go so far as to walk away from a room if I hear anything. Mr. Rocker was in the room for twenty minutes or so when he came out, still talking to his doctor, "...so my slipped disk is feeling a lot better but my sinuses are, like, impacted. It feels like there's a mountain of snot in my face."

The saggy skin, the trying-too-hard hair, the absurdly commonplace medical ailments... rock stars will never be the same for me.


Act 3

Last Thursday, I forgot to do laundry. This resulted in me having to reschedule Bow Tie Friday for the following Monday. Today. I was all excited about wearing the bow tie because, as a rule, Mondays suck. I figured everybody could use a little Bow Tie Monday, right?

On your average Bow Tie Friday, I get a dozen comments about the bow tie. People have shaken my hand, high-fived me, hugged me and dragged me around for other people to see. It's an event, and it makes everybody happy. Except, it turns out, if you do it on a Monday.

I was on my third call before anybody really even looked at me. People were locked into their Monday misery and refused to come out. No comments, no jokes and no breakthroughs with tough offices. It's possible that the bow tie has run its course, but I don't believe it. I last wore the bow tie on a Tuesday and got fantastic results. There is still power in that wacky little twist of silk, but nothing can overcome a bad case of the Mondays.


I'm Jeff Drongowski and I'll be back soon, with more stories of This Pharmaceutical Life.