The Long Thought

There is a Tweet-like saying that was coined long ago, anonymously as far as I know. In fact it appeared long before Twitter or even the Internet. It is:

“Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

That should have been a Tweet that I co-opted to express those thoughts, when, a couple of years ago that view of the plight of my existence began to increasingly intrude upon my conscious and intervene in my reverie. I should have just keyed it as a text message, hit @twitter, and gotten on with things.

But I was unable to so-express myself. I could not, that is, so-express myself publicly and with apparent seriousness, or so-express myself as the final lasting verbal monument of what I might have thought that I had been all about.

Today I learned why. I am a victim of a malady known as the “long thought”. I heard a guy at Wired magazine use that term today. He used it to describe what he considered to be the legitimate (seriously, there actually is a legitimate alternative to the Tweet) opposite means of expression from the Tweet.

It turns out, I have learned from the foregoing, that Screen Saver is the Tweet that couldn’t be done in 140 characters: it is a long thought.