“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

@ennis and @jack can't believe some of the things I've said either.

Apparently you can quit me.

I checked my e-mail this morning and found a whopping 23 new messages, a large number for a Sunday. On closer inspection, though, I found sixteen of them came from one service Qwitter, which “e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter…” Since I hadn’t received a message from them before (hey, I’m not bragging, I’m just telling it like it is), I was taken aback by this sudden mass defection of Twitter followers. “Was it something I said?” I wondered. Could my latest use of blip.fm have caused a particular song to get stuck in a bunch of peoples’ heads? Was it the occasional tweet about my daily routine?

I’d better get going. That cup of coffee isn’t going to buy itself.8:16 AM Mar 20th from TweetDeck.

Or did I rub a group of Star Trek fans the wrong way?

I like Star Trek, too, but this is going too far: » link to nytimes.com

As it turns out, Qwitter lets you know exactly what your last tweet was before one of your followers dumped you. My offending message? @bicoastalite Good heavens. You all are running machines! I don’t know why so many of my former Twitter followers found that particular tweet offensive. Perhaps they are all cyborgs who thought I was making some sort of joke at their expense. In fact, looking at the timestamps of each of the e-mails I received from Qwitter, I noticed a behavior only a machine could produce: all sixteen followers quit me at the same time. No group of humans could possibly do that.

So, I’m sorry @rents14, @abbyjaye, @thirstycrow, and all the rest. I didn’t mean to offend you with my 140 character observations and bon mots. And, if it’s any comfort to you, I for one welcome our new alien overlords.