For those of you who aren’t twittering, you’re missing the answer to “Where have all the stand-up comics gone?”

They’re all twittering.  I love this tiny comedy/life log – the whole world in 140 characters or less.  I mostly lurk, but every now and again answer the basic question:  What are you doing right now?

What is Twitter? Basically, it’s a way to send a text message to a lot of people at once. You can find entertaining people and “subscribe” (Follow) to their text messages. When they send a text to Twitter, it comes to your phone or browser. People can Follow you, too, if you let them.

I have two distinct types of people I Follow. The everyday “This Could Be Me” type, and “Stand Up Comics.”

Example: _True Tales Of Smart Asshat History_: Boss <reproachfully yelling>: A little knowledge is dangerous! Me: How would you know?

Entertaining folks to Follow, in no particular order:

matthewbaldwin –  pretty all right guy and keen observer of the political scene, I just love his Defective Yeti blog. Great writer.

wilw – Wil Wheaton, all around nice guy and movie/tv star, pimps his blog a lot but still worth following because sometimes he pops out real zingers. Plus I loved Wesley Crusher.
lonelysandwich – some funny guy, does the site You Look Lovely Today
awryone – funny in a painfully weird way
moltz – more funny ++
smartasshat – funny and eccentric (as are ALL these people)
hotdogsladies – Merlin Mann, more funny plus a sarcastic, sardonic hatred of PR people who are trying to pimp their blogs/business to him + “Dwell is full of fresh ideas for the livable spaces we could create with as little as 80 times my current income.”  His best asset is an incredibly cute girl child named Eleanor.
seoulbrother – more funny ++
mogrify – more funny “After years of abuse, Keith Richards’ liver became sentient and escaped. It now lives independently as Amy Winehouse.” – I don’t know if he blocked me or just doesn’t write, there was this, and then nothing
emilybrianna – chatty, nice, funny
ejacqui – seamstress extraordinaire and tech blog writer – arstechnica.com
ainsleyofattack – funny bi warrior type.
Reading Twitters/Tweets on my phone is fun, and it’s like TopFive – you have to read 8 or 9 of them until you find one that brings on the Guffaw. I’ll set my phone down and come back to 24 tweets waiting. Daunting!  I pick up my phone and catch up on the Tweets. It looks like this: Silence, silence, silence, Guffaw with Milk out the Nose.

Since I have no friends who text me, it’s very invigorating. [Note: the problem is that I’m in my 50s and a lot of 50 year-olds don’t use text messaging, much less Twitter, not that I’m unfriendly (not very, anyway – ed.)]

Only problem is at the moment is that Twitter is built using Ajax which is apparently not very scalable. And Twitter has grOWN by leaps and bounds. They’ve been having all sorts of problems, and when they do, they put a picture on the website of a whale being carried with ropes, sling style, by birds. The Fail Whale. 🙂 Lots of tweets about that, too. And sculpture.

The other thing you can look at it is textism.com for Favrd status. It’ll show you who can bring the funny. Warning: if you are looking for serious info, don’t look here.

If you want to follow me (and why would you?) Follow MrsMagoo. I post MAYBE one tweet a day. And it’s dull as dry toast. But at least you’ll know when I’m at the airport. You can post from the twitter site, or from various other little front ends/clients (like twhirl) or post straight from your phone.

Steps for the uninitiated:
Go to twitter.com
Sign up.
Add a picture if you feel like it. Fill in some more stuff if you feel like it. (My 140 words or less bio: Smart, cynical gray she-geek interested in all things gadgety)
Login
At the top, there’s a Name or Location search bar. Add one or six of the names I have posted above.
You’ll go to their page. Click Follow. Click the messaging bar by follow so you can have Updates On.

Sit back and wait for teh funny.