"Call the Fire Department, this one's out of control"

First and foremost, I would like to thank our loyal reader Marc, from Hoboken, NJ, for designing the Shampoo Effect's new look. His mastery of binary code speaks for itself. Now while I am appreciative for what he has done, I must take this chance to condemn him for an entirely different matter. Marc is a contributing writer for a blog that I have linked to on the right hand side, and from what my sources tell me, it was at his urging that this blog (EBC) succumbed to the latest media craze and joined Twitter.

About a month ago a friend suggested that I join Twitter. She said that it was definitely something that someone with my scope of the media and politics should look into. At this point I didn't know too much about Twitter. For those of you that don't know, it is basically a website that is devoted to Facebook status updates. You have 140 characters (that number could be off) to answer the question, what are you doing? Much of the hype is based on being able to follow "tweets" (postings on Twitter) of celebrities. Now I didn't want to write this new fad off right away because based on my track record (AOL, Napster, Facebook, iTunes, Gmail, Blogger) I have fallen for each new trend as they have become mainstream. I instead waited for the man who shapes most of my opinions to decide for me.

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Twitter had infiltrated my friends, politics, and I guess I should have known that it was only a matter of time before it ransacked the world of sports. Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva infamously "tweeted" during halftime of a game against the Celtics on March 15th. The halftime "tweet" didn't seem to hamper Villanueva's performance as he scored 11 of his 19 points in the 4th quarter to lead the Bucks to victory. Upon hearing this news, Bucks head coach Scott Skiles, a hot head by nature, gracefully banned "tweeting" from the lockerroom, saying that anything that remotely gives the impression that his players aren't fully committed to winning will not be allowed. Of course the media ran wild with the story, which I'm sure wasn't Villanueva's intention because he's not the brightest (he went to UCONN for a few years and I'm sure he went to all of his classes). This "tweet" heard round the country gave Villanueva more media attention than anything he ever did on the court. It even prompted PTI's Michael Wilbon to say that "Twitter is one of the worst things to happen to the United States of America."

The "tweeting" did not stop there. On Saturday, Suns center Shaquille O'Neal "twote" (is that the past tense of tweet?)"Attention all twitterers I'm a tweet at halftime and not get fined like vill a new wave a whteva his name is." He then went on to "tweet" "Shhhhhhh" shortly before the start of the third quarter. When asked, Suns head coach Alvin Gentry said, "As long as he gets 25 [points] and 11 [rebounds], he can do whatever he wants. He can Twitter, Facebook, MySpace."

This Twitter craze is getting out of control. Last week a court case seemingly cost a building materials company $12.6 million, but the verdict was appealed on the grounds of a juror "tweeting" during the case.

It looks like Twitter is here to stay, at least until a new fad comes along. It is in the news more than A-Rod, but it's just not for me. I mean who wants to read that I'm on the toilet for the 3rd time in one day?