The diversity of professionals and therefore topics that happen on my twitterstream is staggering. Every day I learn something new from any number of people who I follow on Twitter. Which is why I ended up writing this post.

This morning I was trying to follow one of my twitterinos. She's a finance expert and everything she had to say seemed not only interesting but important. Yet I grew frustrated trying to follow her writing due to her unfortunate use of shorthand and abbreviations. They may have been clear for other finance professionals following her, but they were completely lost on me.

I do consider myself a rather good writer and twitterer. I love "talking through text" and it's something that I've become rather good at by sheer volume of practice, practice, practice. I live, breathe, eat not just "writing" but "writing for the web".

Let me then share with you some tips on how to make your twittering better:

1. Don't abuse shorthand, abbreviations or acronyms: OMG, OMFG, BTW, IAWTC, SFM are by now part and parcel of forum, blog and chat speak. Yet if you are using AMA for "American Medical Association", hashtag it (#AMA) so people understand it's a "special" phrase or term


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Salma Hayek confirmada para "Notas de un secuestro" del Gabo - Noticias - Cine - www.aztecaespectaculos.com

Gabriel García Márquez ha participado activamente en la elección del elenco. “La semana pasada, Gabriel recibió el guión completo y ahora estamos a la espera de sus comentarios para terminar de elegir al elenco," comentó Constantini hace unos días durante una entrevista.

Y aunque aún falta completar el elenco, Salma ya es de las confirmadas, así como el novio de su mejor amiga Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Benicio del Toro, Victoria Abril y Pablo Pedro Ibarra.

There is still no confirmation at IMBD.com that the adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez' "Notas de un secuetro" is going to happen. Still, it would be not just totally hot but epic if this movie had this cast. So let's keep our fingers crossed.
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Today is Veteran's Day and instead of saying something trite, I wanted to pay a small tribute to my baby brother, Frank Sabater-Tirado. My brother joined the Army at about 19-20 years of age and served for over 15 years after years of debating whether to join a seminary, go to college or join the army.

He ended up in the military at a very young age. He trained all over the United States, Korea (from where he has some hilarious stories about the kinds of foods he tried to eat with very little success) and Germany.

Then Bush #1 declared war on Saddam Hussein.

I was visiting with a friend in Italy and we had literally talked to him over the phone the very day before the war was declared. What a fucking mess it is to have the US declare war and have yourself carrying an American passport, looking like you could come either from the enemy country or its neighboring states. To say I was harrased in Arabic, Italian, French and English for looking Arab and having a US passport is to say the least.

Anyhow, I totally freaked out because, after all, he is my baby brother.

At the time there were no cell-phones, no web, no digital cameras nor mainstream use of email. The fastest I could get him anything was a week because even if I sent things Express Mail or money through Western Union, being he was in a war zone, he would receive things one or two weeks delayed.

I felt I wasn't doing enough. I felt that I was a pussy for being here while I knew he was over there in a war he really didn't look forward to. At the time, being in the Army was more about peace-keeping but this was Bush #1, who had a score to keep with the monster he and his covert US operations had created in Iraq. My brother was going to war to fight a grudge between a tyrant and a maker of tyrants.

Yet letters and care packages are what kept him going. In those little things I found that I least, I gave him a reason to go on. They were not only incredibly important to his sanity; they became important for mine as well.

9/25/1990

Dahran, S. A.

Dear sis,

[...]

If you've been keeping track of time (something that iI'm not doing because it's a mental health hazard) I've been in the desert for a month or so. I'm used to the climate (it's as hot as being caught in a traffic jam in Bayamón at noon with no A/C in the car) but the scenery sucks. There's nothing but sand, dust,, rocks, a few bushes and not a single cloud in the sky all around you and as far as the eye can see. The wildlife is limited to a heard of camels every once in a while, jackals or wild dogs at night and lizards, scorpions, sand vipers and ants as big as your toe nail roaming around you all the time. Oh, I forgot the never missed desert flies and sandfleas which manage to get anywhere --even inside your protective mask or the crack of the your ass after you've used the field latrines. It may or may not be funny to you but for me it's just a reality.

We work between 12 and 14 hours a day, our days starting at 2 o'clock in the morning or "o-too-dark-hundred hours" in our lingo. Then, if possible, we go to the rear in our trucks for a shower and a hot mean and a "beauty sleep" in A/C before we go back to work. We rest for a whole 24 hours but it's not enough for almost a whole day of scorching sun and no place to hide from it and working at a rate that makes ants look like the laziest creatures on Earth. But that's part of the mission and "ain't nothing to it but suck it in an' drive on", or so we say.

[...]

Love,
Frank

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First, an apology. When I wrote a piece last January entitled “Re: a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn,” I should have used a better heading. It was a pertinent quote in the review. And then came a bit from a review in the New York Times, which I suggest below at (1). What happened to me tonight was a journey in time and I give some sites at (2).

Two literary giants of my generation were being interviewed by a knowledgeable host who really wanted to know why it took them so long to write a book dealing with Hitler. Gunter Grass speaks very good English in a strong voice but has some difficulty hearing so he had a lady to repeat the questions in German. You will be able to read and perhaps hear what he had to say. Then Norman Mailer came in, and they were to have a dialogue. I’m assuming you, who care to, can find the conversation.

Just the three of us. Me and Norman and Gunter. I didn’t know Mr. Grass very well and I would apologize to him if I could see him in person. In very good shape. It’s the first thing we octogenarians think about. After all those years since 1945 the German people have to remember how things turn out, and it will be until his children and grandchildren’s lives are spent, the author says. I nodded back to him. We here are still in the same boat. Don’t we argue and discuss whether America made it too easy on Stalin? Or gloat about the wall falling?
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Kurt Vonnegut, the post-modern Mark Twain, died yesterday after suffering for two weeks of brain injuries related to an accident at his NYC residence.

I have to admit to being ignorant about his work --he's one of many American writers I overlooked during my college years to focus on his Latin American counterparts.

I got how funky he could be through his essays and interviews as well as his constant criticism of the Bush administration. Yet it's his becoming the subject of the Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen urban legend that made him take cool to a whole 'nother level.

The man was what myths are made off.

Here's the brilliant hoax and here is a parody featuring Yoda --yes, The Yoda from the Star Wars movies.

VAYA CON DIOS, Kurt! You were a storyteller, a teacher, and a friend.

You may think you've gotten off easy, my good man! But I promise to infect as many minds as I can with your pearls of nonsense, and recommend your books to every wand'rin child I find. In this way you shall live on. As you ought.

Adios, mi amigo.

And so on.