Sure I love Twitter. I love teh tweets so much that I ditched my "personal" account and opted into a read-only experience. Twitter is history's most advanced way yet of obtaining small blips of useful information... anywhere you are. On the desktop, on the phone, in the van, in the can. I'm not so convinced that its legacy is as a interpersonal communication tool.

A lot of people are going to point to recent situations on Moldova and Iran as proof that Twitter has come of age, supplanted traditional journalism, changed the world. These people won't likely mention that week of endlessly cascading Swine Flu misinformation and paranoia last month, or the service's losing battle against truth verification and endless spam. Try this: read 1,000 scattered updates from #iranelection, then read a dispatch from a BBC reporter who's lived in and studied the region for years. After that, go ahead and tell me what the future of journalism is all about.

Recently, I came across the 1936 B-Western California Mail on Turner Classic Movies. The late Dick Foran, who had the worst teeth of any of the singing cowboys, has top billing, and there's a thin plot about romantic jealousy, mistaken identity, and the end of the Pony Express.

But the real star is Smoke the Wonder Horse, a grey palomino with an complicated harness who's credited as "himself" and is responsible for all the major plot turns. I was watching the movie in the "background" while doing some divorce paperwork on the couch, but halfway through, Smoke turns on a bad guy who's stolen and mounted him, throws him off, then kills him with his front hooves before galloping off and leaving the man for dead. I was, like, "Whoa! I didn't see that coming!"

Then, in the climactic chase scene, Smoke runs down another black-hat and stomps him until he dies. It's shown in quick-cut edits (because of the Production Code, most likely), back and forth from close-ups of the dying man's frightened, bloodied face to the rearing horse shown from an upward perspective. The blood-curdling neighs and the screams signaled the day was saved. I leapt from the couch and gave the film a standing ovation, much as folks in the theater must have all those years ago!

Finally, I checked the Internet Movie Database so I could find out what other movies Smoke appeared in. He was in 13 other B-Westerns from 1936 through 1941, forgotten films like Empty Holsters and Winners of the West. He's credited as Dick's Horse, Red's Horse, Rod's Horse, Chip's Horse. The grey wonder-steed never found a regular rider, never had the opportunity to be Silver to any Ranger, lone or otherwise.

Millions of other people have made that decision for themselves, too. Twitter is telegrams without the news, a ball-point pen, a subway platform conversation, maybe even the second coming of the telephone itself. Twitter challenges creative folks to shoehorn big thoughts into 140 characters, and it's a way for others to consume celebrity culture in unprecedented ways. What's fascinating to me is that such a uncomplicated data construct is capable of being so many different things to so many different people.

During one of the 379 commercial breaks, I checked the map to see how close I was to the town where the film was shot. Too close not to make a pilgrimage, it turned out. On my way south to Utah, I slid off the interstate down the one-lane mountain road to the small town of Preston. I'm not the first to make the trip, and it's to the point where it's organized religion, but my trip was flippin' sweet anyway.

This mindset has helped me immeasurably when it comes to being less of an embarrassment as a journalist -- at least less so than my meager training indicates I should be. I go in, ask around, record things, then organize them. The end-result is some kind of verbal conduit-product, one that bridges a moment in time and an audience that couldn't make it. If I do my job right, there's no piece or part of me at all in the story. It's as if I was never there.

And this is all why, I've finally realized, video games are not for me. I've had a PlayStation 2 for years now, as well as a dusty stack of jewel cases containing games that were played for about half an hour each. I never upgraded to the PS3, and had four different trial accounts with GameFly before I finally realized that it was a waste of money. For a long time I thought this was some sort of generational thing, but I didn't like video games when I was 16 either.

Each time I've seen this car insurance advertisement (and with the Olympics on television non-stop, the impressions are well into the hundreds), I've gained a deeper appreciation and affection for it. It just never gets old. It may be the first 30-second ad spot in the history of television to utilize Existentialism and pataphysics, and may possibly be based on a lost work of Eugène Ionesco.

Another thing I like to do is look up the bands and singers on the internet. That's how I learn how they got their start, how they were "discovered," and how many fans disowned them once their public personas were styled after the peppy cheerleaders, mysterious rebel loner boys or doe-eyed heart-scribbling female diarists that the general public easily recognizes. I believe that artists don't sell out to giant entertainment conglomerates, they sell out to audiences.

I can't find an authoritative history of website comments anywhere, but I recall seeing feedback solicitations on blog entries as far back as 1999. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to write. "Hey, good job?" "I really agree with what you're saying?" "Me too?" If I disagreed with whatever theory was being posited, I could always post something myself somewhere and reference it via a newfangled "hyperlink." Written opinions have been traded in similar cross-referenced fashion for centuries.

But as the new century began, it was clear that people wanted the ability to elicit responses that were not only instant, but inline and attached. In my life as a developer, I was being asked to build not only blogs, but comment submission forms as well. In a relational database, this is roughly what the relationship between the two looks like.

This, to me, represented the absolute root, the nerve center of the sporting world. Just as the stock and bond grids were to the financial section, those block paragraphs (team name in all caps, followed by an em-dash and a succinct description of the action taken) represented the heart of what was really going on. Most of the stories on the preceding pages were just longer versions of what was found there, colored with interviews and other flowery details.

Along with millions of Americans of my general age, Jim McKay introduced me to the beauty, the grandeur, the full width and depth of the Olympics. More than any other, Mr. MckKay ignited in me a life-long love for the Games and all they represent, in spite of the forces and elements that would corrupt and cheapen them. When drugs, bid-fixing and gigantism threaten to render the Olympic Movement irrelevant, I remember all those things Mr. McKay would say in those post-Games monologues. He'd use those few post-Closing Ceremony minutes to remind us about how those past 16 days had represented the best parts of the human spirit, how the modern Games can serve as a fleeting glimpse into a truly peaceful world, one where sport promotes cross-cultural understanding.

But the reason OK Soda is legendary is because of the way it was sold. In 1994, the Coca-Cola Company used slogans and art and marketing concepts that were specifically designed to appeal to "Generation X" types (like me) who had grown up bombarded with sales messages, enough to become cynical about consumerism. It was all very awkward, a zillion-dollar company attempting to speak the language of the disaffected commoner. The populace rebelled. But in this society, "rebellion" means don't buy it and complain.

You could connect with people on Q-Link, in a place called "People Connection." You'd type stuff into a text box, others would too, and occasionally you might find someone who was typing things you found interesting. You could then access their profile with a few keystrokes, and read a list of the things they liked -- movies, bands, books and whatnot. If you liked the same things they did, maybe you'd send them an "instant message," or perhaps an "e-mail." If they reciprocated, they'd be your friend. When you'd hit the send button on your e-mail, the word "MAIL" would flicker on the lower right-hand corner of their screen.

It's an innocuous enough transaction, free of its context and actual signifiers -- it's the same kind of advance on future earnings that happens every day in your local bank's loan department. But the story of young O.J. Mayo is a tremendous scandal in the making, and it'll keep most of the people in my profession busy for the foreseeable future. Set and printed rules were broken, "allegedly" or not... people will be punished, fired, blacklisted for this. It's still in the debate stage, though, and which of them allegedly deserve to take the hit is still entirely up to you.

From the fallout posted here on the interweb, it would seem that all hell broke loose on HBO's Costas Now. Poor Will Leitch practically lived out that R.E.M. song about talk shows, ambushed by a crazy has-been writer, while an athlete sat in the corner wondering if he was in the right universe.

Me, I didn't get to see the segment until it was posted online yesterday (the show is carried on a channel I haven't received since Flight of the Conchords last aired). It certainly wasn't as explosive as everyone made it out to be, which was a bit of a disappointment. In fact, I'm just surprised how bad everyone looked coming out of it. From Bob Costas (the Voice of the Olympics) saying "fuck-face," to the athlete's description of his own web egosurfing, to the aged one's mouth-froth. Oh, the mouth-froth.