I really cannot see myself getting a Twitter account. Absolutely not. Twitter and I are fundamental opposites, and I am putting my foot down on this.

We all have to take a stand, sometimes, no matter how counterproductive or bullheaded or fundamentally futile it will obviously end up being. I myself am an expert on such stands, fostering several of them at once like beloved pets. As such, I am willing to fight this one right to the death; you can expect me to go Enjolras on it until either my concerns are addressed or I'm slain in a climactic gunfight while waving a flag dramatically atop my makeshift barricade. You know, either/or.

So what sort of highminded ideological crusade am I on about now, you might ask? You might not, but humour me. What has me up in arms? It isn't an opposition to social media in general; as a future information professional (just one month left in my Masters degree, baby!) I'm all about the Web 2.0 tomfoolery, faithfully following fine local blogs and sifting through dozens of Facebook messages asking why I'm never on Facebook.

My motivations are not related to privacy concerns, such as the ones raised in the recent media furor over the potential breaches of Canadian law that may occur. In fact, those concerns haven't really seemed to have bothered anybody, considering how many Canadians have gleefully continued to hop aboard each new site. My umbrage isn't driven by unfortunate uses of the medium thus far, either, because I have seen Twitter used for several majestic and worthwhile ventures that may have been otherwise unrealized - such as professional wrestlers trading vaudeville insults for days on end, Shaquille O'Neal telling Yo' Mama jokes and otherwise rational human beings pretending to be Pokemon characters.

So, no, it's nothing as highfalutin' as all of that; I recognize and respect the impact that Twitter has had in such a short period of time, to the point that the President of the United States specifically asked the company to delay a scheduled system update so that Iranian Twitter users would be able to cover their national election. (This era is going to look so goddamn weird in the history textbooks, I swear.) My repulsion from this new outlet of personal expression is instead an individualized and deeply personal reaction, not necessarily to the idea, but to its execution - because the maximum length of a Twitter post is 140 characters, and good lord that would absolutely ruin me.

If you can successfully express your innermost thoughts and feelings within a 140 unicode spaces - which works out to about two haiku, give or take a line - then more power to you; you're a better person than I am, Gunga Din. But anybody who knows me knows (at length) that I'm incurably longwinded by nature; I blow through more characters than that just deciding what to eat in the morning, so I would most likely have an aneurysm within 20 minutes of opening an account. I've spent my entire life waxing eloquent, and that's not the kind of wax that just wipes off easily. So Tweet if you must, friends, but you'll have to leave me out of it. I think I'll just have to settle for chirping from the sidelines.

James Howard knows for sure that he would find a 140 character limit absolutely maddening, because just as he'd be roundi-
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