{"id":15558,"date":"2014-10-23T13:56:50","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T20:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=15558"},"modified":"2014-10-23T14:00:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T21:00:47","slug":"evil-twitter-saintly-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=15558","title":{"rendered":"Evil Twitter, Saintly Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"evilI’m souring\u00a0on Twitter. It’s still of use as a check on breaking news, but god, so many\u00a0assholes piling\u00a0on other assholes. It’s not just #gamergate<\/a>: the other day I read\u00a0a long series of tweets that seemed to be accusing\u00a0actor Rainn Wilson of being a rapist. That was news to me, so I Googled it: apparently Wilson is<\/em> a rapist, if by “rapist” you mean he once tweeted a date rape joke that fell flat, and is making some videos with\u00a0a man who was once accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend (I’m not going to link to any of this he said\/she said stuff).<\/p>\n

Author John Grisham is in the Twitter crosshairs\u00a0for saying\u00a0something in support of a friend accused of downloading porn videos with underaged women in them. Date rape accusations against Bill Cosby are making the rounds again. OMG and what Twitter veteran can forget the steaming heap of abuse\u00a0Woody Allen was buried under, the hatred directed at singer Michelle Shocked,\u00a0or\u00a0the poor PR lady who tweeted\u00a0an AIDS joke as she boarded a flight to South Africa only to land 12 hours later and learn her company had reacted to the Twitter firestorm by firing her?<\/p>\n

In Orwell’s 1984<\/em>, the\u00a0Two-Minutes Hate<\/a>\u00a0was a daily event. On Twitter it’s constant, its targets shifting from minute to minute. What the hell is with all this self-righteousness? Haven’t we all done things\u00a0we wouldn’t want\u00a0dredged up and\u00a0hurled at us\u00a0on social media?<\/p>\n

I wonder how many more of these “recent converts to Islam” are going to go on the attack in Western cities? It occurred to me, watching the news from Ottawa last night, that young white men with Muslim-looking beards can from now on\u00a0expect to be profiled and treated as potential terrorists. And\u00a0dark-skinned\u00a0men with Muslim beards? Katie bar the door!<\/p>\n

Well, enough of that. Our daughter Polly dropped by this morning to pick up\u00a0her bicycle and take it back to Ajo with her. I gave her a\u00a0bicycle tire pump and a motorcycle nose wheel stand she can use when she changes the oil in her Ducati.\u00a0Not to worry, she still has tons of things\u00a0in our garage. As every parent of adult children knows, they’re not really gone until their stuff is gone too!<\/p>\n

When Polly got here, before we knew she was here, the dogs saw her through the window and ran back to the office to let us know it was Polly! Polly! Schatzi normally barks, and so does Maxie, but this time Maxie was so excited she whined. It’s the first time we’ve heard her do that. I don’t know why that seems important enough to mention, but it does.<\/p>\n

Speaking of kids, we’ll spend Thanksgiving with our son, daughter in law, and grandson in Las Vegas. I’m not sure if our granddaughter Taylor will be there too … I hope so … and according to Polly this morning, she’ll be there too, with her boyfriend David.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>My swollen black eye is slowly getting back to normal. The cut under the bandage is vicious-looking, T-shaped, an inch-and-a-half across,\u00a0and deep. I could post\u00a0a photo of it, but I don’t want to turn the\u00a0blog into\u00a0a charnel house. When the stitches come out Monday I’ll have a nasty mark\u00a0on my cheek, like those German university students of old with their fencing scars.<\/p>\n

The first two days I couldn’t read. The swelling left a narrow slit to peer through and my left eye could only look straight ahead. When I put on\u00a0bifocals to read the left eye saw through the top while the right saw through the bottom. This made for an\u00a0unpleasant double vision so I watched TV instead since I could do that without the glasses. Now the swelling is down some, I can probably start reading through my glasses again. As for working on my blog, the monitor, like the TV, is\u00a0far enough away that I don’t need glasses\u00a0to see it.<\/p>\n

Donna’s scar is pretty impressive too, but should heal without leaving a mark. She’s convinced her nose is crooked now, but I don’t see it. I think she’ll be fine. Man, the things they didn’t tell us about getting old!<\/p>\n

The dogs have have smothered us in affection since we came home with our faces cut to pieces.\u00a0I’m going to reward them with a car trip to\u00a0Eegee’s for\u00a0a sandwich and some fries. Yes, they get to share a little bit of my lunch, and I’m honestly not sure which part they like better, going in the car or helping me finish off the fries.<\/p>\n

Back now. The answer appears to be c) both of the above. In heaven, doggies ride in cars and eat whenever they want, and damn I hope that turns out to be true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m souring\u00a0on Twitter. It’s still of use as a check on breaking news, but god, so many\u00a0assholes piling\u00a0on other assholes. It’s not just #gamergate: the other day I read\u00a0a long series of tweets that seemed to be accusing\u00a0actor Rainn Wilson of being a rapist. That was news to me, so I Googled it: apparently Wilson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,2,827,22,6],"tags":[871,1690,1692,1691,181,1689],"class_list":["post-15558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critters","category-personal","category-social-media","category-terrorism","category-a-series-of-tubes","tag-dogs","tag-kids","tag-ottawa","tag-scars","tag-twitter","tag-two-minutes-hate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15558"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15567,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15558\/revisions\/15567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}