I have a friend, V., who loathes chocolate. She cannot bear the taste of it, and if offered a piece of something chocolatey, she will demur and, if pressed, explain.
For some reason, most people refuse to accept that she doesn’t like chocolate. They believe that she is somehow wrong about her own tastes. They urge her to try their favorite upscale chocolate, or their mother’s brownie recipe, or their childhood favorite candy bar.

I never understood that.

Related: what is the deal with all you some of you Twitter and FaceBook people, and your insistent winking enticements to join in?


If, in the future, I have a practical use for either format, I’ll start using it. At the moment? I do not like them, Sam I Am.

(sidenote: man, am I the only one who thought Sam I Am was a terrible jerk? His creepy persistence always wigged me out when I was a kid, and all the more so because the narrative vindicated his dreadful, relentless dunning. I much preferred the pale green pants with nobody inside them.)

Do I mock and tease you for your obscure-to-me enjoyment of these formats? I do not. I could, for example, have titled this entry “TwitFace,” but I resisted. I shrug and think “That’s nice.” It’s nice that rugby players enjoy playing rugby, too, and even nicer that they don’t email me and tell me to get geared up and onto the field.

You know, if it were only one person winking emoticoning and coaxing and teasing, it might actually be kind of adorable, even the eighteenth time. But it isn’t only one person, and that means that every few days, I get an email from someone urging me to ignore my own preferences for their convenience. Often, it’s from someone who cannot be bothered to contact me except to tell me how great it would be to stay in touch through FaceBook or Twitter, so… yeah. Not persuasive.

And now as a gesture of understanding, I offer you two awesome things on Twitter:
- Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Twitter feed (mentioned previously).
- The Bitwrathploob’s Twitter feed.

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