Tagline Abusers Anonmyous

[Ed. Note: I should point out that the following is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but not so tongue-in-cheek that I don't fear it may get taken more seriously than intended. I don't want to have to invent another program for sardonic blogging.] Hi, my name is OWenJ, and I am a Tagline Abuser.* It's time for Step Five, which I've been dreading, but it has to be done. To quote the Tagline Abusers Anonymous Twelve Steps:

Step 5: We have blogged about the nature of our transgressions, so that our contacts could read it and Google could index it.

So here I am, admitting that I have a problem and I am powerless to stop changing. I've had my BlackBerry Pearl for almost six months now, and it has become as indispensible as my 7100** had been before it. Any time I'm bored for a minute or two, I can see who is online to chat, check my Milk list and Reader items, read messages... I guess I could even talk to people, if I wasn't so much more comfortable with text these days. Anyway, it wasn't very long before I was whipping it out every time I had a free moment. Stop lights, smoke breaks at work, trips to the bathroom, waiting for the Subway guy to finish my sandwich... every free moment. Of course, these moments aren't often long enough to do any serious web-surfing or say much more than hello to someone on GTalk. Ultimately, it became clear that the best I could do was type a line of text most of the time. And increasingly frequently, that line of text was my GTalk tagline. At first I struggled for something clever to say each time. It was surprising (given my exceedingly clever nature ;-) how often I failed. Sometimes I'd lose those precious spare moments to thinking (which is so 20th century), sometimes I'd put up a (mis)quote from something, sometimes often most of the time I'd put up something completely nonsensical. Unfortunately, it seems that not everyone quite understands the mental shift a toy like the BlackBerry brings upon one. Or perhaps it's because many IM programs refer to this as a "status message" rather than "tagline" or "subtitle," which is certainly what it had become in my mind. Apparently it's supposed to embody some sort of mental, physical, emotional or spiritual metric that can be used to give information in addition to the default 'Normal' and 'Busy' messages. Who knew? I thought it was a way to convince people to talk to me. For that, it worked. Just not always the way I wanted it to. Fe0₂ asked me if I was okay when I quoted "I'm the new Cancer" from a PANIC! At The Disco song (Coolest Song Title Ever: "There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought of It Yet"). Joule was concerned when I quoted something with the word contagious in it. And then there was the issue the logging. See, I didn't realize that these changes were showing up in peoples' open conversation windows. I mean, I knew it, but I always closed the windows when I was done... didn't everybody? Turns out, the answer is no. The Brat read through about eight gazillion of these changes when she left a window open for three days. She thought it was funny (she's a little weird sometimes), but in most cases it conveyed unintended meaning. A few people thought I was providing commentary on conversations already in progress, and someone seemed to think I was providing commentary on his relationship issues. And who knows what Google magic would cause the dueling text from my desktop and BlackBerry connections to argue over which one was most recent or sometimes give me two or three messages on the display. I'm done with all that now, however. I've entered a program... well, okay, I made up a program but whatever. They've supplied my Tagline Methadone and I blogged about using Twitter a week or so ago. It has served as a good replacement for my addiction, and I have pledged to do all my stream-of-consciousness blogging on my Twitter page from now on. While it won't help me quit, I'm confident that with the help of the Tagline Abusers Anonymous Twelve Steps I can be completely clean in another 24 days or so. Maybe less if I give myself some time off for good behavior. [Update: I'm over half-way through the program!

Step 7: We have humbly asked Google to remove our Status Message.

You can see my Humble Request in the GTalk Group on Google Groups.] *Note that I am not a Tagline-oholic, as I do not drink Tagline-ohol. (c)199-something Random **Not nearly as sexy as the Pearl, but a cool toy nonetheless. According to BBHub, Amazon will currently give you $75 (eventually) to take the upgraded model of this (BlackBerry 7105) of their hands. Jump on this if you've been thinking about upgrading but don't have the scratch.