Musk, Twitter and anonymity

One problem with Elon Musk buying Twitter is that elevates him to Trump-squared or -cubed, and that it extends the paradigm of the biggest, richest guy having the biggest megaphone to say whatever the fuck he wants to. Platform as penis.

I am carried back to my memory of Woolf's To the Lighthouse, in which a female character (the narrator?) listens to a male character blather on about politics or philosophy or something but all she can hear is him saying "I, I, I, I..." Earlier in the blog I classed this masculine tendency to try to stick out, however possible, as "Protuberance."

To counter this tendency myself, I continue to leave this blog pseudonymized. I of course love it when people read the blog, and try to gently promote it here and there in person to person dialog and one-to-one correspondence. Although there is wisdom in Jaron Lanier's idea that we should always speak from our own name on the internet, that is countered by Walter Benjamin's assertion in "The Task of the Translator": "No poem is meant for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the audience." It has to be for the work itself, not for the attention it garners.

Speaking of which, the work day is well underway. Onwards

Input/Output, or, return to Protuberance

I woke my computer up this morning with the full intention of writing.  I have the most energy relatively early in the morning -- though certainly not first thing, not these pre-autumn time change days when we rise well before the sun -- and often it is "squandered" in reading and musing, or, worse, worrying and kvetching. I consider writing to be a "strategic" activity for myself and therefore should really devote some time to it, if only the measly 15 minutes I try to squeeze it into.

But today, when my computer finally deigned to show its screen, I was hijacked by a lot of activity on Facebook.  What's going on over there?  I thought.  I had sent out an invite last night, a post or two, and somehow had to see what had bounced back.

All too often this is the case, Facebook draws me in, and it cuts into my writing.  And is this a bad thing, necessarily?  Here I am on my own, asserting my ego, as it were, laying myself out. Over there, at its best, I am participating in a conversation with many, a flow of ideas, sometimes global.  Right now I have friends around the US, and in Spain, Russia, Italy, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Japan, Germany, Sweden, France, and probably other places too, if I stop to think about it.  There's a lot going on. There is flow.
Gay people are being beaten in the streets, and friends' kids are doing silly stuff and winning volleyball games.

So what is more important, in the long run, to push myself out, or to participate in flow?

We are right back to the question which I deemed "Protuberance" some years back, to Ramsay at the dinner table in To the Lighthouse running his mouth but all the time saying "I, I, I, I....."

(Commenters, please begin)

Protruberance

I cheated earlier and edited last night's post, which took up 4 of what should be today's 15. Will be brief.

Graham was up three times in the first hour of last night's sleepytime, striking terror into our hearts. He kept wedging himself crossways in the crib, dropping the pacifier and all that, and then exercising his mighty lungs. "Can he carry this through the night?", I thought to myself. Thankfully, the answer was no. A good night's sleep.

On the way to work, I spied a yellow Subaru WRX. I drove one of those things not long ago. 230 horsepower growling like some Camaro that got lost and transplanted into this little body. The automotive equivalent of Freaky Friday. The arms race for horsepower is pretty disturbing. I don't get it. You can't possibly run your car that hard. My little Volvo has more power than it knows what to do with. I know it's going to get me in trouble eventually.

In general, the universal applicability of the male quest for dominance, power, and protruberance has really struck home over the years. Anything that sticks out is good, so long as it sticks out in the right way (no clown noses at work). Perhaps the most telling instance is in To the Lighthouse when that intellectual (Ramsay?) is talking and the female narrator is listening and all she can hear is "I, I, I, I." That was sort of like me in grad school.

I remember when, in college, feminists would tallk about "the phallic" as a general principle and I would just be sitting here thinking "this is absurd. There's no general type of phallic behavior." But of course I never said anything, for fear of offending them and diminishing my chances of sleeping with them.

Time up.