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A collection of thoughts too long for twitter (feel free to follow me @lukermartin, or if you feel financially obligated, I accept cash and checks) but too short for their own blog entry.

• Lemonade is for right after you’ve finished mowing the lawn. Beer is for the ballgame. But when is Root Beer time. Not Root Beer Floats, but just root beer? When’s the last time you wanted a beverage and thought to yourself “you know, I could really go for a root beer right about now?” Never. No one says that. Yet Root Beer continues to be sold at what I can only assume is a profitable pace. Are there that many people drinking it that I’m not aware of or is there a massive Root Beer Float industry that I’ve totally missed?

• Twitter makes live television infinitely better, especially sports. The sense of global community that takes place when everyone’s commenting on a game is unmatched. It’s the equivalent of a digital sports bar where the only things being said are either observations on the game or jokes made about the game or its participants (including broadcasters). It’s what you’d do with your friends if you were all in one place watching the game together. Only now you don’t have to be in the same place. Or, in the event your wife watches something like “The Bachelor,” you can make all the sarcastic comments about how terrible the show is and mock the contestants on Twitter while still spending quality time with your wife without her getting mad at you for making fun of the one show she really likes and she knows it’s trash tv but she likes to turn her mind off once a week and just enjoy the trash. Not that I’ve ever done that, mind you, but one could, if they were so inclined. While DVRs may have made television more convenient, Twitter has made it more enjoyable.

• Arguing about sports is, for the most part, more enjoyable than watching the games themselves. Assuming you’re talking to someone who also gets that it’s just sports and is supposed to be fun, there’s nothing better* than arguing whether Babe Ruth would have been a great player in today’s game (he wouldn’t) or if Tim Tebow is a good quarterback (he isn’t) or if the blue team will beat the green team during halftime of a college football game when they let the local recreation league teams play for 10 minutes as a way of forcing the parents to buy tickets they wouldn’t otherwise have bought because who is going to tell their kid they can’t play on the same field as their local sports heroes when the rest of their team gets to play?  (the blue team always wins.)

*There are, in fact, a few things better. Actually, many, many things better.

• What Jon Stewart does on The Daily Show is absolutely amazing. The ability to take serious issues and mock them in such a way that you’re both laughing and thinking is astounding. It also makes me realize just how very bad the traditional news media is at informing the public. Then I just remind myself that news organizations are in the business of making money and are simply catering to their customers who just want their preconceived notions reinforced by the pretty lady on the TeeVee. Watching CNN, FOX News or MSNBC because you want to be informed is like drinking root beer because you want to get drunk. No matter how hard you try, it’s not going to happen.