I was back on Twitter yesterday

I went back on Twitter yesterday for the first time in about two weeks. I was dying inside just dying to know what was happening on the Manafort and Cohen trials, in realtime.

FOMO.

The only thing I’m really addicted to is coffee which is pretty benign. I tried a lot of drugs. I mean that literally, I tried each of most drugs you could name — well the ones that were popular before about 1996, anyway — one time each. I smoked one whole cigarette once. I drink one or two drinks a day. More than two and I get a hangover so I don’t ever drink more than two. I watch basically no TV and barely play video games. All this stuff was all super fun but I was never tempted to do it to excess, especially the illegal stuff. About 2 months ago I quit Facebook not quite cold turkey but I just stopped hanging out there and I don’t miss it. When I go back honest to Jeebus it’s for the benefit of distant kith and kin with whom FB is my sole point of contact.

OK I am addicted to riding my bike over one particular hill.

But Twitter is different. When the world is quiet I can turn away from it but when it’s noisy I can’t NOT look. Its reflexiveness is its particular insidiousness: not only can I not look, I can’t not comment, too.

Some years ago I listened to Ursula K. LeGuin give a talk at OPB about Google digitizing all the books ever. She was surprisingly all for that effort, but thought it should be public domain, and managed by the government. Which, you know, Twitter should be that way too. Like the Post Office.

Tangent: the Post Office should offer broadband Internet and cellular data. Just like everyone would totally buy Medicare (out of pocket!) if they could, you know everyone would buy USPS broadband & cel service.

The neighborhood skunk is prowling around outside my window right now. S/he does that after I water, I notice.

Just thinking about Twitter makes me talk in a flittery staccato of 140char, dunnit?