I had a little memory flash tonight about a tweet I posted from South By Southwest a few months ago....

"Do you guys know Billy Elliot? Yeah? This is a song written under the influence of that movie."

And I realized that I had (and still have) a responsibility. To the internets.

Sorry it took me so long.

Billy Elliot is track 4 on It Might Like You.

Arms spread, festooned with blinking insects, he imagined that he was an airplane, or a rock star, the deeper beauty of the gift eluding him.

Chris Abani wrote that, in The Virgin of Flames.

I tried to post the quote on Twitter, but it's one character too long - or, three characters too long, if you count the quotation marks.

And I'm glad. Better to have it here. People read their Twitter feeds pretty fast, which I think would make the deeper beauty too elusive.

A story. With multiple characters. And a moral. In a single tweet...

A mule kicked Uncle Bob once. Broke his ribs. He punched it in the face. My point? You have an ingrown fucking toenail. Stop bitching.

Thanks again, @shitmydadsays. You're one of two Twitter users whose every post I read.

Not sure the founders had @shitmydadsays in mind when they invented Twitter. They could have, though. It's that obviously a hit, that perfect a fit.

It's a 28 year old son living with his 73 year old father and writing down "the shit that he says."

A taste...

"The dog don't like you planting stuff there. It's his backyard. If you're the only one who shits in something, you own it. Remember that."

Chris Weingarten is a freelance music journalist.

He doesn't like Phish, Fleet Foxes, or the way people talk about music on Twitter.

He misses the because of professional music criticism.

He worries about crowdsourcing...

If you let the people decide, then nothing truly adventurous ever gets out.

And I think the talk he gave at the 140 Characters Conference a couple of weeks ago is worth watching.

Because I want truly adventurous things to get out.

Thank you, Stacey Monk, for writing one blog post that inspired me to write two.

The Hype Machine uses that as their file not found error message.

Better than Twitter's Fail Whale, I think.

Which segues nicely into...

Twitter is electric/computerized and available at all times, except when sexual misconduct and murder are "over capacity." During these times, teen drug makers see a picture of a dead whale alerting them to bad energy.

Thank you Timothy McSweeney and Dan Kennedy.

Just started following THE_REAL_SHAQ on Twitter. 

Gotta love his bio:

VERY QUOTATIOUS, I PERFORM RANDOM ACTS OF SHAQNESS

Actually the real Shaq?

I say probably.

About three weeks ago, I saw something cool, wanted to remember it, and figured Twitter'd be as good a place to take a note as any:

jdegrazia: birds drinking from a puddle outside. water not the most appetizing. but watching those guys use their beaks to scoop water is awesome.

While I was there, I saw this:

odemagazine: direct message us if you'd like to be profiled on our site as a SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR!!! We're looking for positive stories!

I was feeling socially entrepreneurial at the moment, so I got in touch.

And, sure enough, a few emails later, this afternoon, the ODE people sent me a link.

Once again, I'm famous.  And pretty excited about the picture.  It's from the farm show (and the Carrot Project blog).

Thank you blackbirds.

Apparently, two blogs and a Twitter account isn't enough for me.  Apparently, I'm over my fear of multivoicedness.  And, apparently, I can't resist linking to Gabe and Max at every opportunity.

The Carrot Project Blog, as of a couple of hours ago, is happening.

And that means I'll be reorganizing a bit.  Thoughts about The Carrot Project there. Intermittently coherent rambling from a rookie social entrepreneur on A More Perfect Market.  Music and rumors about Himalayan dams on Radical Transparency.  Observations that fit into 140 characters on Twitter. 

Or something like that.  We'll see.

I started following @karlrove on Twitter the other day, and, ever since, a steady stream of conservative tweeters have been following me (conservative to the point of mentioning the word conservative in their tweet-size Twitter profiles).

Is that weird?  Cause for concern?  Cause for celebration?  Opportunity to make online friends with a totally new demographic?  Hmmm...