Guest Blog Post by @pprlisa

Lisa’s guest post was originally written on August 14, 2008.

I am having a very bad day that has topped off a very bad week and it doesn’t seem to want to end.

9:30 AM

Doctor’s tests that scared me. I don’t have the right paper work, I have to scramble.

11:00 AM

Got into work way too late for all of the things I have to get done.

11:30 AM-4:30 PM

Almost unending phone calls with progressively more work to do.

4:30 PM

Like a punch in the gut, I get an email that means the rest of my night, the next day and beyond, is going to be awful.

4:45 PM

Damage-control planning and painful phone calls.

5:00 PM

I tweet this:

pprlisa Dear this week, Its me again. Perhaps you missed my last tweet. You have to end. Have. To. Please. Pretty Please. Thank you. -Lisa

I am waiting on some return phone calls, so I peek at Summize. (Yeah I know, it’s Twitter Search now, whatever.) I see @jayhmt as a cartoon talking to @FabGirl.

Kimber Schmahl

Knowing my “avatar rules” and likely seeing my bad mood tweets, they start taunting me with their new avatars as they maliciously break my rules and flaunt it in my face! I’m really in no mood to play—much less fane the umbrage I usually do—they’ve broken the rules! So I just respond with a minor insult. Then they point out that @wendym was their ring leader!

WendyM

I start looking around and I see that my avatar-switching-old folk home-future-roommate-pal @JuliaGoolia has also transformed. No surprise there! Although aware of my rules and the first to point them out; Jules changes avatars like Sybil changes personalities! (Wow, how badly did I just date myself?)

Julia Goolia

Looking further—is that @PopDaddy showing his love for Fabs!? He will do anything to get her to leave Canada so he can be her cabana boy again!

Rob

Oh no, they’ve talked @lizwebpage into it haven’t they? Her eyes look kinda shifty though. It’s as if perhaps she’s looking off toward the root cellar where maybe she has put @thronkus… Who, come to think of it, none of us have really heard from in over a week!

lizwebpage

While I am waiting for the return call that I am dreading, I decide I might as well play along. But of course in line with my week, day, and night, the mangatar site wouldn’t work for me and I pout about it to Fabs on IM.

What does she do? She makes me one so I can play! Slowly my spirits are rising a little. My girl Gools sees my avatar and knows something’s missing. So she does what any good army seamstress would do; she adds my beret!

When your Twitter friends are all cartoons, they are begging for you to play along and you now look like this, how can your mood not start improving:

Lisa Dilg

After that, it was a rapid fire transformation. About every ten tweets there was someone else asking how to get in the game. I was asked this on IM, DM, email and on tweets and the answer was: Faceyourmanga.com.

My favorite transformation of all however, was the reluctant but always hysterical @akamonty who summed up exactly how I was feeling and made me laugh out loud:

Shannon

My point of all this is, some people say you can’t have real conversations on Twitter—Hi @BethHarte ;)) Twitter has been absolutely amazing for me, both personally and professionally. I can say that Twitter has really changed things for me.

On another day, I might have called a couple of friends, grabbed a wine bottle, and then turned on the TV. However, because of the incredible connections I’ve been fortunate to have made on Twitter, I was able to talk to over 50 people that night! They made me laugh, made me feel better, and made me forget, even if just briefly, the kind of day/week I was having.

I think its crazy how people can develop friendships—real friendships—140 characters at a time. We find ourselves caring about what happens to each other; illness, tragedy, problems with the kids, and vacations. We even miss each other when someone “goes off the grid” for a little while. (Yeah, I’m talking to you @JamiMiami).

Yesterday, I got DMs from people whom I barely know that were so wonderfully supportive! Without Twitter, they wouldn’t have ever known I existed, much less known that I was having such a bad night!

So the Fail Whale, crazy pictures of robots, and wrenches be dammed—Twitter has been the best thing to have happened to me in a long time! I’ve gotten to know people from all over the country. (And yes @giggey and @FabGirl, from Canadia too). I’ve even met several of these crazy people—I’m on a quest to meet them all actually—and I’ve stayed in my pal @lizwebpage’s root cellar more times than I can count.

Also, thanks to you Mark, for giving me a forum for this today. I really want to thank all of the crazy cartoons for helping me out yesterday and making me remember not to take life so seriously.

Mark Davidson

Here are some of the cartoons people that I played around with yesterday. YES, @eeUS, I know there are more, but for the love, please stop DM’ing them to me

VickiH

Extra special shout out to @JuliaGoolia and @Fabgirl once again for making sure I could play along, not letting me pout, and for their emails and IMs throughout the evening that made me smile.

Oh, and this just in: I got a DM from one of my favorite social media gurus when I woke up this morning—looks like he wanted to play along too—can anyone guess who this is:

(HINT: It’s Chris Brogan)

This was supposed to be an image of @chrisbrogan’s mangatar but he changed it back before we could publish it! The Twitter Stars art department did its best to faithfully re-create Chris Brogan’s mangatar in Microsoft Paint. (Our apologies to Chris who will hopefully have a sense of humor about our disastrous art skills.)

Thanks again everyone and let Crazy Twitter Friday begin (revolution members—it’s a berets optional weekend as these cartoons are soooo funny :-)). And don’t forget @akamonty’s crazy radio show at 10:00 PM EDT/9:00 PM CDT tonight. Check out her page for details tonight, it’s the best part of my week!

 

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Some other Twitter followers who joined us in the mangatar fun:

Adam Snider: http://twitter.com/ink_slinger

Adena Bailey: http://twitter.com/adena

Amber Watson Tardiff: http://twitter.com/jerseymomma

Anna: http://twitter.com/ShoeSmitten

Astacia: http://twitter.com/mamikaze

BethHarte: http://twitter.com/BethHarte

CalamityJen: http://twitter.com/CalamityJen

Dara Rochlin: http://twitter.com/darar

donthorp: http://twitter.com/donthorp

Erin Noel: http://twitter.com/ErinNoelG

Helen ThompsonMosher: http://twitter.com/helenmosher

Jay Huber: http://twitter.com/jayhmt

Jeff Crites: http://twitter.com/JCrites

Jeremy Herbel: http://twitter.com/JeremyHerbel

Jessica Rosenberg: http://twitter.com/kikarose

Jessica Smith: http://twitter.com/JessicaKnows

Julia Goolia: http://twitter.com/JuliaGoolia

Kimber Schmahl: http://twitter.com/FabGirl

Lisa Dilg: http://twitter.com/pprlisa

lizwebpage: http://twitter.com/lizwebpage

Marc Kevin Hall: http://twitter.com/mkhall

Mark Davidson: http://twitter.com/markdavidson

Matt: http://twitter.com/mmWine

Mike Doe: http://twitter.com/mikedoe

Minjae Ormes: http://twitter.com/thebaggageclaim

Mykl Roventine: http://twitter.com/myklroventine

Natalie: http://twitter.com/Natallini

Nick: http://twitter.com/kionee

nuthinfancy: http://twitter.com/nuthinfancy

Paisano: http://twitter.com/Paisano

Rob: http://twitter.com/PopDaddy

Shannon M Davis: http://twitter.com/sdavis

Shannon: http://twitter.com/akaMonty

ShannonNelson: http://twitter.com/ShannonNelson

Tamar Wallace: http://twitter.com/justTamar

Tracy Lee: http://twitter.com/StarrGazr

True Jersey Girl: http://twitter.com/truejerseygirl

VickyH: http://twitter.com/eeUS

WendyM: http://twitter.com/WendyM

YatPundit: http://twitter.com/YatPundit