Twitter - trying to figure out the point of it all

I started out by following a few basic news sources: Reuters, CNN, StarTribune, Huffington Post. I dropped CNN because it was pretty much a duplicate of Reuters, but Reuters has more international news. Dropped Huffington because they were too verbose. Added The Onion, thinking it would be funny. Mostly, however, it hasn't been. Weirdly, they seem to be tweeting "What Do You Think" topics. Not sure if they are looking for serious discussion or if there are embedded links to their joke on-the-street interviews. I may drop them. Realized that since I actually subscribe to and read the Strib, following them on Twitter is just redundant. Added a few local sources, like City of Minneapolis.

Then I started looking for people I know and followed everyone that i found. Not sure if I want to do that or not, since i really have no feel for what normal people tweet about, or how often. So far it hasn't been too overwhelming - most of my acquaintances don't seem to be the tweet-every-hour type.

I'm following a few celebrities, mostly funny ones like Weird Al Yankovich and George Takei.

I've had about half-a-dozen spammers find me already, which is startling. They must have very efficient bots. I figured out how to block and report them as spammers in one click.

Now I'm being followed by some entity called "Know Minneapolis." I assume this is some kind of marketing entity, but they seem benign, mostly tweeting about local happenings. Why are they following me? How exactly are they planning to make money off of me? Is Twitter too paranoia-inducing for me?

State Fair Report

I took Monday afternoon off and went to The Fair with Richard. The weather was lovely and we had a nice time. Mostly wandered around listening to music at the small stages and eating over-salted meat on a bun and ice cream. The only thing I had on a stick was a Pronto Pup. I used to love those, but now they taste so salty to me that I really don't like them. Same thing happened last time I was at the fair. I also found the pulled turkey sandwich to be too salty by about 100%. Not sure if fast food is getting saltier or if my desire for salt has really declined that much. The only fair food I truly enjoyed was an absolutely delicious soft-serve cone from the booth that has all the extra flavors. I got a chocolate/peanut butter swirl. The honey/sunflower ice cream was good too, but the soft-serv just hit the spot. All the music was good too. I was so entranced by the bluesy-rock group that I bought a couple of their CDs, but it turns out they're one of those bands that sounds much better live.

The only exhibits we spent much time at were the usual: the Crafts and Fine Arts Building, and the bee wing of the lovely Horticulture Building. Not a lot of livestock activity this year. The chicken barn was closed for cleaning and the sheep were all wearing burkhas.

The grandstand show, "Happy Together," was way better than I thought it would be. As appropriate for Geezer Day, it was a collection of second-string 60's bands (or what's left of them) that have been touring together all summer: The Association, The Buckinghams, The Turtles, Grass Roots, and Mark Lindsay (lead singer for Paul Revere and the Raiders). This was their last stop and they seemed to be fired up to fever pitch by the idea that the summer nostalgia trip was ending, and who knows how many of them will be left standing next year. That's not just a cheap shot - the lead singer of Grass Roots dropped dead during the tour this year. Anyway, all the bands gave energetic performances, backed by a solid (much younger) backup band that kept the momentum going from act to act. The sound was crystal clear in our high balcony seats, but it took a while for the wave of crowd energy from down on the floor to make it to the back rows. Eventually the energy wave reached us, and we were standing and clapping and singing along with the rest of the mob. Despite a little too much stage chatter, it was overall a great show. The frontman for the Turtles led an electrifying curtain call montage of each band's biggest hit that brought down the house. And then the fireworks went off. Zow!!!