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As bragged to you previously, I finally deactivated *my Twitter account (*actually an account I inherited from a disinterested party). I won't replace it by going on another site, either, so don't come calling around with suggestions. I'm done with other vox populi sucking all the time and energy out of my otherwise awesome life.

Hear me now, listen to me later. Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, it doesn't matter what kind of misanthropic billionaire freak💩 owns Twitter. Vox populi will ruin it like it ruins everything. Vox populi should only have a voice at election time AS DEMOCRACY INTENDED.

Cripes, it got so I was sick of my own opinions, never mind anybody else's.

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Also, since leaving Twitter my skin has recovered its healthy glow, colours are brighter and everything everywhere smells like sunshine and lollipops.

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I even got a spiffy new haircut to symbolize my coming home to the real world of beg buttons (that's what we pedestrians call the manual walk signals we must push so we can somewhat safely cross Ottawa streets, because Ottawa was built for taxpayers who drive their privately owned vehicles everywhere, not taxpayers who walk or get around in other non-habitat-destroying ways not applicable in winter) and packaged news and entertainment delivered by professional journalists on our publicly funded airwaves.

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Oh and the Saturday Globe and Mail, I've returned to reading it, even Andrew Coyne, because he knows more about politics than I do, AND doing the crossword, although not the cryptic crossword.

How do you people do the cryptic crossword? It seems impossibly difficult to me, although I am a bit of a philistine. Not Ricky from Trailer Park Boys territory, or even Doug Ford, although I'd be further ahead had I gone to business college or trade school than university. I've even saved last week's cryptic crossword to check answers provided in the next week's Globe and STILL have no idea how you people can do it.

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(Yes, it's true, I'm Team Ford on streaming grade whatevers into the trades and whatnot. I saw a news clip on CBC Ottawa last night and was actually jealous of the little buggers gittin' therselfs sum skillz. Let the eggheads waste their learnin' years on hi falutin' nonsense when they could be out makin' $$$ to buy a monster home on a Greenbelt or wetland or somesuch.)

I think soon I'll buy a couple of magazines. One of my Millennials recently realized she wanted good old fashioned fashion magazines lying around her overpriced apartment that eats up 99% of her meagre salary (she went to university - even got an MA - like a chump) she could pick up and flip through. I want the same, although different. I loved fashion magazines growing up, starting with Seventeen and progressing on from there, but that sort of fashion isn't my interest anymore.

Perhaps a sewing fashion magazine. Get inspired to sew up some of the fabric I've bought over the years still sitting neatly folded in a closet. Waiting to be turned into a real live outfit.

I learned more in home ec than I did in any other class except phys ed and that's a fact jack.

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For sure Vanity Fair was a monthly must back in the day, Christopher Hitchens a delight until his sexism overtook his intellect, but by then I'd moved on to enjoy other writers amid its fashion ads - always part of its attraction.

Graydon Carter once penned an editorial explaining how an issue thick with fashion ads was paying for the in depth articles I was reading, as if they otherwise presented a problem, so perhaps he didn't quite understand Vanity Fair's demographic. I mean, if we didn't want the fashion ads we'd buy Harpers or The Atlantic, ffs, which I will likely buy now as I have no idea who the young celebrities are on the covers of Vanity Fair and I've got my own thrift shop style now, thanks.

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But that's not what this entry is about because this entry is about a book I finished reading on Monday to help me in my cold turkey break with my Twitter addiction - because it definitely was an addiction, an habitual behaviour I knew was harmful and I didn't want to be engaged in but which I was nevertheless powerless to quit until I did, quitting being a skill some of us need to learn in grade school instead of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again": 

Trust the Plan

The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America

By Will Sommer

I highly recommend it if you want to be even more freaked out about the state of affairs these days, particularly south of the border, than you already are. It was a great Twitter substitute, too, if you're trying to ween yourself off the greatest time and energy sucker ever invented.

Repeat after me: There are no good billionaires and vox populi ruins everything.

Put me in charge of increasing national productivity AND improving our collective mental health. I'll do it in one fell swoop by taking over Twitter and only allowing professionally accredited journalists - graduates of journalism schools working in lamestream media - on it.

Fact: Vox populi doesn't understand journalism. There is no such thing as a citizen journalist. Journalism is a profession. Either go to journalism school or don't but unless you do you're not a journalist. End of.

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Don't believe me about improving productivity by taking over Twitter so only professionally accredited journalists can waste their time and energy on it? I read an actual book in two days and probably could have read it in one, I was so into it, but made myself put it down so I could take advantage of climate change and get a first coat of paint on a bedroom while the temperature was in the upper 20s C. In Ottawa. In early April.

It's a wonder CBC's meteorologists don't just break down and cry delivering the weather news now. And yes, the weather is news. Some Debbie Downers might even argue it's the only news that really matters.

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Hey, come to think of it, if Doug Ford had been Premier back in the 70s I could've had a career as a professional painter, dammit. I'm like the Mike Holmes of painting I'm so good at it. I'd bet I'd be rolling in $$$ instead of living this, well, admittedly great life on a barely five digit income.

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Don't worry about me, though. Or us. A couple of plucky paupers we be and proud of it. Also if the government of Canada doesn't bring in a guaranteed annual income of, oh say, $30K a year for Canadians 65+, it can go #$*&! itself in the ear.

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(By the way, a friend recently suggested I just read Twitter, without having an account, but that's because she doesn't understand addiction. I used to just read Twitter, without having an account, and I wasn't on it any less than I was when I was adding to its vox populi content.😬)

But back to Trust the Plan. It's shocking, what conspiracy theorists (i.e. nutcases) are willing to believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, but I can't judge too harshly because the higher up and further in the book I went, the more clear it became to me - I'm a conspiracy nut, too.

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For instance, back when I was just reading Twitter, and immediately after Donald Trump was "elected" fake POTUS 😡 I looked to a handful of American Tweeters for reassurance all would be revealed, justice would prevail and he would be sent packing to prison where he belonged.

Any. Day. Now.

I wasn't *on* Twitter, tweeting, I was just reading it. Obsessively. Checking in constantly so as not to miss the big story when Donald Trump, fake POTUS, would go down.

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Well, Twitter being somewhat of a Peyton Place (I'm not old enough to have watched Peyton Place, just old enough to know it refers to a soap opera) my handful of American Tweeters became an unlikely trio of Louise Mensch, Eric Garland and Claude Taylor. Then Louise Mensch, Andrew C. Laufer and Ming Nethery.

Yes, yes, I know, I know. You think Louise Mensch is this or that. I don't care. She was a lifeline for me. An anti-Republican-Party-in-the-time-of-Trump Conservative. She called it wrong on occasion - she initially designated Bill Barr a White Hat - but always corrected the record. Just as importantly, because I respect her, she helped me understand why some people are Conservatives, their very different perspective on what government should be, how they view individual responsibilities vs collective rights, etc etc etc.

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Eric Garland turned out to be a creep 👺and Claude Taylor hawking shit I wasn't interested in buying on his feed all the time.

For the record, Twitter and its Tweeters never received a dime from me, so if somebody's making money from Twitter, as opposed to destroying their life and/or career, I'd be interested to know who and how much.

Andrew C. Laufer is a New York city civil rights lawyer, a Democrat, and well-informed on the legal ins and outs of the miasma of US politics, particularly with regard to Trump, the Russian Mob, etc etc etc.

Ming Nethery, however, about whom I knew exactly nothing because they were tweeting under a pseudonym, turned out to be some loserish guy who made wild predictions I shared conspiratorially with others (😝) EVEN AFTER LOUISE MENSCH HAD EXPOSED HIM AS SOME LOSERISH GUY MAKING WILD PREDICTIONS.

I believed because I wanted to believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, Ming Nethery was a special agent operating behind the scenes who would save us all from, not just Trump, but the Republican Party, the NRA, the Russian Mob, and Putin.

All the bad guys and dolls. Ming Nethery would save us all. He knew shit, he did.

NOT!😡

Louise Mensch even posted an old mugshot of the guy (who responded by alleging she would go down soon for committing multiple felonies, yet another wild prediction I actually worried about coming true because I really really really liked Louise Mensch) proving he was basically Florida Man, and STILL I could not be dissuaded from believing, well, he must somehow someway be in the know because, well, he just must be.

Maybe Louise Mensch just, like, I dunno, something.

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I can't even remember now how, when, why I stopped checking in with him, Louise Mensch, Andrew C. Laufer, but I imagine it was not long after I inherited an account and started tweeting myself, but on Canadian politics, not American, because, of course, I wasn't getting any likes or retweets from my trio.

I was too unknown to play with the big guys and gals.

Anyway, suffice it to say the best thing that could probably happen to the world, other than SOMEBODY FFS!! taking out Putin, is for Twitter to go belly up and everybody on it to go outside to experience climate change.

Because it's real. I know I live in Ottawa where the weather can be tricky but we went from an ice storm to a heat wave to snow flurries in just a few days. C'mon people. We need all our time and energy on deck, not sucked up by addictive products created by billionaire misanthropic freaks💩 who think they can tech their way to immortality on Mars while the rest of us argue in cyber space over the spoils of our precious finite lives here in real life.

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