Meanwhile, across town, the crumbling of the newspaper industry crushes Rick Redfern's hope of continuing employment. After 35 years at the Washington Post, he is ejected into the blogosphere, where his prose now battles it out with that of 1,186,783,465 rivals, including Roland Hedley, who takes the art of Twittering to a new self-reverential low.

Truly, everyone in Doonesburyland is struggling to adapt. While white Washington insiders scramble to acquire some African American friends, longtime black conservative Clyde schemes to score Obama's Blackberry number, Clinton-era Dems are forced to attend the president-elect's "No Drama School," and Jimmy Thudpucker once again reboots his career--this time as a cell phone ring-tone artist.

No one ever said change was pretty....

"Hilarious!" -- Karen Tumulty, TIME

"Hilarious!" -- Erin Moriarity, CBS News

In March of 2009, Doonesbury's intrepid journalist Roland Burton Hedley, III, opened a Twitter account and began to tweet. A lot. Four weeks later, a sampling of his 140-character missives was published in The New Yorker to great acclaim, and his posts were featured in a one-on-one "tweet-off" in the Columbia Journalism Review. Rushed into print, this groundbreaking volume is the first book-length Twitter collection by a single author. With dozens of Doonesbury strips and over 500 tweets, it presents the best of Hedley's work -- frontline micro-blogging from the self-anointed dean of Washington journotwits.

Eight months into this project, author G.B. Trudeau can confirm that Twitter is a colossal sinkhole of time, but is gratified that he has found a way to monetize Roland's inane postings. (Follow Roland_Hedley.) When not writing comedy haiku on Twitter, Trudeau writes and draws the Pulitzer-prize-winning comic strip Doonesbury for 1100 newspapers worldwide, and lovingly curates his web presence at Doonesbury.com. He also hosts a milblog called The Sandbox.

From the book:

"Just spotted colleague Terry Moran in hall. Could wave, but easier to tweet. Hey, dude." 10:49 AM Mar 18th from Tweetdeck

"Bumped into an old stalker of mine at Borders. She'd lost some weight and looked terrific, but I tweeted 911 anyway. Cops arrived from 3 states." 1:43 PM Mar7th from Blackberry

"I refuse to apologize for making time for my kid's ball games, so I usually end up not going." 9:13 AM May 4th from web

"Had close call watching MJ memorial service. They ended 'We are the World' before I could jimmy open my gun closet and blow my brains out." 12:33 PM Jul 7th from web

"While speaking last night, someone threw panties on stage. Or boxers. Whatever. Times like that, always ask myself: What would The Boss do?" 5:13 PM Mar 12th from web

"Kabul. Awakened by huge blast in hotel lobby. Suicide bomber blew up complimentary breakfast buffet. Off to find bagel." 3:14 PM Apr 8th from Tweetdeck

"Accompanying HMMV patrol, used on-board computer to order Ab Rocket. And because I acted when I did, receiving second one absolutely free." 8:01 PM Apr 13th from Blackberry...