This Girl

Insanity laughs, under pressure we're cracking Can't we give ourselves one more chance --Under Pressure Queen, David Bowie I got my first taste of the news when I was a young sap, watching the great Walter Jacobson with my Dad. It was pretty much an evening ritual--newspaper, Wally, and maybe a little Dan Rather. Somewhere in there, Dad managed to eat dinner. I just can't remember the order of events. What I do remember is that this pretty much sums it up. There was no gluing of eyes to the tube watching talking head after talking head report the same exact story over and over, but with a different touch of flair. There was no getting up early in the morning to share your coffee with two spiffy gents and the token female who should really rethink the amount of time she spends in tanning beds. Reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter or repeating what the producer says in your earpiece is hardly what I would call "analysis," but somehow it passes as

BREAKING: ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: Reality TV power house, Bravo announced today that it will be addressing Punctuation Mark Addiction in a new series, Breaking  Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Habits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The idea for the show was pitched by the Collective Union of Simple Messages, or CUOSM, after a campaign to fight message loss through punctuation mark abuse failed miserably. CUOSM teamed up with the informal organization the Punctuators to stall what appeared to be unsustainable punctuation overpopulation. The message had an anticlimactic effect, though, when social media users started sharing the memes originating from the campaign, while adding comments like "So True!!!!!" and "IKR?????!!"

My first encounter with social media was Facebook. At the time, I had no idea what it was and felt I had passed the age limit for such things anyway. A bit old school, I still held on to the belief that social networking meant popping by your friend's office and seeing what's doing for the night. When we had a meet up, we'd actually meet up--as in, at someone's house. It was expected that you just wouldn't BYOB, but you'd also bring your game face, belly laugh, tears and your provocative commentary. It was kind of like "The View," but without the redhead...Did we have a redhead in the bunch? I'm just not remembering a redhead. But I digress. Again. Anywho, I had moved on to another phase in life that was met with yet another circle of friends who were younger and more tech savvy than yours truly. We'd get together a couple times a week to blow off steam. One time I missed an opportunity to smack down a rival bar trivia team once and for all