Wednesday, November 14, 2012

1864 Page Tweeter

Every now and then I'll just flash on certain words. Like not long ago I was listening to a news story on the radio and it was about an action taken by the WSU football coach. He was forbidding his players to "tweet."
For some reason the concept of giant burly football players tweeting sounded amusing. And even more so when the news story went on to say that the reason the coach was imposing a twitter ban was because some of the players had been indulging in "vulgar tweets."
Is there anything that sounds more oxymoronic than "vulgar tweets?" Okay, okay sure, if you are a Husky the whole idea of a Cougar in College is oxymoronic, but still. To the regular public a “vulgar tweet” sounds like Tweety Bird suddenly developing fangs and claws and tearing into Puddy Tat like a velociraptor on steroids.
On another note, the term "page turner" caused a slightly different sort of mental catch. I was reading one of the blurbs on a book from a reviewer and it said that the book in question was suspenseful and "a real page turner." Hah, I mentally scoffed, what book isn't when you get right down to it?
And then it occurred to me, with electronic books you don't have to actually turn a page. You just click the forward icon.
As e-books become more and more ubiquitous, and even Luddites like me finally adopt them, the whole page-turner reviewer cliché is going to have to change. An exciting book will be a page advancer. Or a page refresher perhaps. Or a rapid scroller.
"Have your read Stephen King's new book? Vulgar in places, but it's a real page clicker."
America, ya gotta love it.

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