r two of you crack a smile. The wheel of karma turns back my way. Until, of course, I go out and tease some local orphans and have to repent with another smile-inducing tweet.

It’s all very exhausting, and the problem with what I do on Twitter is that everyone else is doing it too. Many are doing it much better. Look at today’s news. Etiquette expert Elizabeth Post died. Randy Quaid and his wife were sent to jail for a bizarre litany of crimes. Joe Boxer bought Charlie Brown. Surely quick witted tweeters have already ribbed these subjects thousands of times in any number of clever ways. Even if I did have a good joke on deck (which I don’t), I’m not a fast enough typist to get a digital copyright on it.

If she were alive today, Ms. Post would surely tell you that if someone else has already cracked a similar joke about Mr. Quaid on Twitter, then you should defer to that humorist, even retweet them as a sign of respect. As you might guess, not everyone follows this etiquette, and Twitter is full of plagiarists who steal jokes word for word and pass them off as their own. Stand-up comedians are livid!

But it’s comedians who will end up the defendants in any copyright cases. When IrishStallone36 or HappyKelly! have already done a Charlie Brown in boxer shorts joke, a similar joke ain’t gonna work as well for Patton Oswalt a week later at the Kansas City Giggle Factory. And if it does, then HappyKelly! is going to be ranting on her blog about how Ratatouille stole her thunder. With thousands of people joining Twitter every day, the next generation of comedians will have to go completely obscure or absurd if they have any hope of surviving in our tweet-happy brave new world.

And me? I’ll just have to give up entirely. There’s always boat waxing to fall back on.

April 19, 2010

As an author of novels for young people, I have to stay on top of the trends. The trends have shown that girls these days are swooning over magical old men who sweep into their high schools and offer danger and breathy decla