Writing, like any other form of self-expression -- indeed like any other conscious act -- can be done to 
varying degrees of rigor and differing intent. For example, the written word can convey it's message as a 
subway train transports passengers, slamming to a punfunctorily beligerant stop in a squeal of brakes and 
hiss of disinterest declaring "Here. We're at the point. Get out." or welcome rapt travellers to 
destinations of broad enchantment, electrifying possibilities, and sensual implication and depiction.

Personally, I see a need for both. Documentation and reference manuals, for example, are an infuriating 
theater for word-play. Damn little inflicts worse affront and injury than a frustrated English major jammed 
side-ways into the role of technical writer, venting bottled-up predilictions toward poetry and verse 
between Section 3.3: Fuel Systems and Section 4.8: Rear Suspension and Brakes. The purpose of these 
publications is to impart a clear, concise, and unambiguous message, and Shakespeare only muddies the water. 
Similarly, almost nothing cheapens the experience of literary interaction more than a half-assed or 
distracted attempt at connection, such as a piece of humor that's flat and obvious or a call to emotional 
awakenning falling wide of the mark. Although I would strenously deny literal identification with the 
subject, I liken these tawdry advances on the noble faculties of articulate reason to the proposition of a 
destitue hooker: base, desperate, and depressing over-all. The cloying application of a thing to be honest 
and elegant.

Recently, however -- more commonly now with the arrival of such staples on the social scene as Twitter, 
Facebook, and their ceaseless pantheon of similarly-featured, identically-insipid services -- a third mode 
of discourse has arrisen following neither of these patterns (professionally explicit or artfully 
suggestive), aiming instead at the relation of essentially no message at all jammed shapelessly into 
electronic hatchlings of mid-mall kiosks smaller yet and with even less commitment to sustained modernity 
than our apparent desire to communicate.

This new path, I can't get my head around. Enigmatically, it appears to be an elective excercise approached 
with all the zeal and autonomous gusto of a household chore -- cutting corners wherever possible, trampling 
the roses instead of smelling them in the burning desire to complete the task of relaying an intention 
ironically marred by the haste of the process. Anyway, analysis of the trend awaits more data, but what I 
can say about it all is this: When all is said (most appropriately) and done, what remains of the pain, 
uncertainty, affection, resolution, apprehension, and elation of our lives is a wisp of recorded history. A 
handful of photographs and videos (in formats as naked to the depredations of technological advancement as 
the devices mentioned earlier) to show posterity what we were and a few choice words to tell them who. 
Because of this and the perhaps vain desire that my autobiographical eulogy not be ";P", I strive to gather 
my thoughts with calm composure, erasing confusion where applicable, injecting latitude for interpretation 
where desired, and defending the poly-glyphic dignity of the pronoun "you" whenever possible. Realizing this 
makes me a timepiece or social curio in the burgeouning age of end-rush contraction and vapid abbreviation 
of both script and signal doesn't weaken my conviction in the slightest. Tweet your hearts out, suckers, and 
we'll see who's the last one laughing... or at least who's understood to be laughing sixty years from now.