Why twitter is awesome. A true story.

A lot of my friends know that I am an avid user of twitter. Thanks to a friend (@mohsin) who introduced it to me, I have been tweeting for quite a while now; well before the press started making it popular. Anyway, at first I used it to accompany this blog as a way of advertising new posts to the world. Now, I use it less for that and more to follow friends who I have never met in person but whose updates I find very interesting and informative through their sharing of links to cool stuff amongst other things.

As the media started to report on this new phenomenon, celebrities and personalities began to jump on to the bandwagon and being the sad cool person that I am, I began to follow a select few, occasionally sending tweets to them in the hope of getting a reply. Mind you, only the really cool ones have had the honour of being sent a direct message from me. People like John Mayer and Andy Roddick to name a few. Anyway, after watching United’s first game of the new season against Birmingham (did I mention I’m a United fan?), I sent a tweet to Wayne Rooney after he checked in to twitter after the game.

As usual, I didn’t expect a reply. I continued on my merry way on the tinterweb, when this pops up on my screen:

I couldn’t believe it! One of my favourite players replied to my tweet!! Is twitter nuts or what?? Please note the poor grammar and lack of punctuation in his original post, which both confirm it’s actually him.

But none of that matters to me as he is the first famous person that I follow on twitter to reply (besides the TRS guys that is). He is a legend in the eyes of all United supporters and I am no different. Wazza is ace!

Now that he’s my homeboy, I hope to keep in touch with him from now on. It just goes to show how the web is ever-evolving and in particular how the advent of web 2.0 has changed the ways we connect with people. Adding famous people to your facebook account is so 2007. Now you tweet with them and make them read your messages (well, if they use a twitter app with growl notifications at least). Cheers Wayne!

I can’t wait for Ramadan to start next week so I can begin to feel guilty about wasting time like this.

We spawned the flipping English language for God’s sake

those of you that have known me for a while will know that i like football. i do but one thing that always ticks me off is the way in which a lot of footballers butcher the english language in their various media duties, starting every sentence with either “at the end of the day” or “as i say” and then ending with “we done that”. however, the thing that made me blog this actually came from a cricket player, a sport that is traditionally played, at least professionally, by semi-educated people here in england. graham swann, in the tms podcast for the 4th day’s play of the 5th test against the windies, said that jimmy anderson was “literally on his death bed the night before”. i actually stopped what i was doing and waited for him to say “sorry not literally” but it never came. what the heck?!?!

im probably being way too worked up about this but still it sounds so lame when you hear people saying literally to emphasise something when “practically” or simply saying “almost” would be so much more appropriate. when it comes down to it, its sports people that alot of the kids these days look up to so maybe the death of our beloved language is nigh. well perhaps not. ok im going to stop now as its probably not even that much of a big deal.

obama-rama

well it’s been 2 weeks since my last forage into the bloggersphere and quite a bit has happened. israel managed to just about stop killing gazans but not before fracturing an international law or two, obama was inaugurated (are the 2 linked?), i watched the last episode of binbo danshi, and kaka’ turned down a stupid-money move to city. oh yeah, and my flat mate went to a labour party dinner and met david milliband, who said a lot of (bad) things about the illegal state of israel. nice work dave!

oh and a development over the last 48 hours has been the BBC’s refusal to air a disastors emergency committee (DEC) broadcast appeal for gaza. this is starting to take the piss really. so pleasing some seriously messed up lobby with no morals is more important than doing your bit to help your fellow human beings who have been exposed to war crimes by an illegal state? wheres the morality in that? i love the bbc because its a british institution so im proud of it but this will really test people’s affections for it. and the fact that the chief operating officer (caroline thomson) has the audacity to say that the massive number of complaints doesnt really matter is BS. simply because its us, joe the plumber and friends (the public), who pay for the bloody bbc! do we really have no feelings towards a people who have been subjected to so much over the past 60 years? the excuses that the bbc bosses have come out with make them sound like they went to the same school of bull that mark regev went to. at least this fiasco has been reported enough on british news channels to publicise the campaign anyway.

on to more positive news; that of kaka’ turning down a move to man city that would have made a lot of people lose any remaining respect for our most beautiful game, had it gone through. im happy that there is at least one player who doesnt just play for the highest bidder but for the team he loves. kaka’ has confirmed his status as not only one of the top 3 players in the world, but also a cool person.

ermmmmm…. so in summary, i think its time for milliband and obama to lead us and the americans into israel and liberate the land and give it back to the palestinians. ahem…..