For some unknown reason, I persist in
maintaining a Twitter account, even though I am terrible at it and virtually
never tweet anything except a link to my newest blog post. Nevertheless, I
recently had a flash of Twitter ambition and decided to clean up my follower
lists, banish those who annoy me, and follow some more interesting thinkers. I’m still terrible at Twitter, but I enjoy reading
the Tweets of my newly-minted ….followees? (I’m so bad at Twitter I don’t even know
what to call people I follow.) I don’t know if my failure at Twitter has to do
with my introversion, or simply my complete lack of interest in sharing all of
my fascinating opinions with the world. I can’t imagine having a thought and
immediately feeling an overwhelming urge to hammer it out and announce it to
all and sundry on social media. Also, Twitter is a garbage barge under the best
of circumstances. It’s a terrible form of electronic crack that caters to the
absolute worst of our instincts. It’s a rage factory, a sewer and a societal
blight. Yet I cannot bring myself to delete my account, because I am no better
than anyone else and I get a little smirky, feel-good charge out of observing
the gladiatorial verbal death-matches. Also, I keep thinking there has to be a
more interesting way to use it, like writing a short story in a series of Tweets,
or posting short poems…and then I could build a huge following and get
Twitter-famous! See, I barely even use it and yet I’m still addicted and plotting
some grubby rise to cheap fame through its auspices. It's bad news.
Along those lines, I have discovered absolute
proof that trolling was alive and well long before Twitter ever existed. I
recently a read a very interesting article about a German-educated British
scientist named Marie Stopes who became the first sex advice writer during the
Edwardian era. Her sex guide, “Married Love", was a response to literally
thousands of letters she received over the course of her career from desperate,
confused, woefully uniformed Edwardians. The article details some of the
content of the letters, and it’s heartbreaking. “I am writing to know if you
would give me some advice, as I am only 27 and have five children, the oldest
nine years and the youngest 18 months. My husband is always out of work and it
is a continual worry from one month to the other, as I don’t want to have more
children. Hoping to have an early reply.” And, "I am a young mother of two
beautiful children. I had a terrible time for both. The doctor told me I wasn’t
to have any more. Could you please give me some advice on how to prevent any
more coming." Apparently, there was also widespread confusion at the time
about having sex in a bed versus another location. It seemed to be widely
believed that sex outside of a bed would not lead to pregnancy.
Dr. Stopes was beloved by her readers, but she
certainly had her detractors. One hand-written letter featured in the article stated:
“Go back to your own country and preach your dirty methods there. Decent
English people are disgusted at your filthy suggestions in Married Love. Sexual
gratification is not the only thing that makes life worth living as you seem to
think. At any rate, yours is a paying game, and naturally that is what matters
most to you. GO BACK HOME.” Fantastic.
I know that my legion of followers get antsy
when there hasn’t been a Buddy update in a while, but there hasn’t been much to
report, because Buddy got his *ss handed to him by Giant Gray Cat, and now he just
stays inside and rightly minds his own business. Giant Gray Cat appeared
mysteriously in our neighborhood a few months ago and made overtures of
friendship towards Buddy. But Buddy being Buddy, he wasn’t having any of it and
decided to the best approach would be to take this interloper down. The problem
is, Buddy is both a runt, and deeply delusional about his fighting abilities.
Over the course of three weeks, he turned up with bites on his neck, his back,
and his tail, one of them leading to an abscess. GGC 1, Buddy 0. Having lost
the territorial battle, Buddy now just skulks around on the deck, flexing his
puny muscles and fantasizing about what he would do if he could just have one
more shot in the ring with GGC. But so far, hasn’t picked another fight, and things
have been a lot more peaceful around here.
In honor of Buddy's fighting spirit, here is a video by Dorothy. Warning: It's actually pretty wholesome, but it does use the h-word repeatedly.
--Kristen
McHenry
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