Banned by Twitter

No Duck Livers or Dry Butter

I have been back in the US for a couple of weeks now and it has been super busy—catching up with friends, dealing with everything that goes wrong in one’s absence from home, and opening three months worth of mail that my husband ignored guilt-free—can you imagine? So sorry if we missed your birthday party, wedding, christening and whatever else may have been lurking in the mountains of unopened mail. A gift is on the way I promise! As an unexpected bonus though, I have really enjoyed reading everyone’s Christmas cards and letters in April—so much more entertaining than in December!

Since I have returned from Paris I have been thinking about my writing and about maybe putting my blog across some social media platforms—which I almost never use, only to find out that one of them has banned me-before I even got started! It is painful to say, that I —possibly the most harmless person in the world on social media —have been banned PERMANENTLY by Twitter. Seriously! You must be asking yourselves—what could she have done that is so egregious that she was permanently banned? Even Donald Trump only had his account temporarily suspended. Apparently I am even more subversive and a bigger threat than DT—or more likely, Twitter really has no idea who it is banning and who it isn’t. They need to pay better attention.

The offense for which I am banned has something to do with using Twitter for mass spam campaigns which I most certainly did not do. In fact, to tell the truth—though I occasionally look at Twitter, I have never actually “tweeted” anything. In a very strange twist, a Chinese hacker compromised my largely unused account and is advertising something on it— I actually don’t even know what it is. And would never have even seen it if I hadn’t received the suspension notification from Twitter. The hacker could be selling small children —if you can even do that on Twitter—for all I know, but that is beside the point.

The point is, it was not me sending spam through my Twitter account, so I wrote to Twitter and told them my account had been hacked and I have never tweeted anything at all and to please reinstate my account and I promise I will get a better password, etc.. Well, Twitter responded that they would “look into it”. Two weeks went by and…nada. Doggedly, I wrote again to Twitter explaining in even more detail that I had no idea who this Chinese company advertising on my Twitter account was and would they please reconsider reinstating my account.

You may be wondering why I care so much, especially if I don’t tweet. I will tell you—personal pride in my own name. I kind of loathe social media—mostly because I have no talent for it and don’t know really how to use it. I think I lack boundaries, (which is a whole separate issue we won’t get into here) because it has a strange power to suck me in and I find myself like Alice down the rabbit hole, so I tend to avoid it. But as different social media platforms came out in the early 2000s-I grabbed all that I could that included my own name. Twitter was one of those I got in on early, so my “handle” is actually “amyaware” which I don’t want to lose to any other Amy Wares lurking around the internet just waiting for a chance to steal my name. There is already a woman in Oregon who gets a lot of my email because she beat me to the punch and got amyware@gmail and I had to be amyaware@gmail. It is a source of much chagrin for me, as she always responds to the mistakenly received emails haughtily stating that she is not the Amy Ware they are looking for. But we all know she first reads all my juicy emails and wishes she was me, or maybe she just feels sorry for me, or maybe-I shudder as I write this -she is bored by me and my uninteresting emails. I guess I really don’t know. But she does know A LOT about me. Kind of frightening when I think about it.

I digress. So Twitter finally writes back and says my account is permanently suspended— and I am outraged. With all the hateful, untrue and just plain stupid stuff floating around the internet how could Twitter pick me to ban? If anyone out there works for Twitter or knows anyone who works for Twitter please put in a good word for me. I may have some really interesting Tweets that people need to know about and now I have no account. Pure tragedy.

Besides this sad news, there are also no duck livers or dry butter anywhere in Dallas. Maybe you already knew this as you yourself had been unable to find any, but I was surprised. I have been all over the city looking for duck livers and dry butter with absolutely zero luck. I don’t know how I am going to cook my newly acquired French recipes if I can’t even source the ingredients here. My husband is so desperate for this particular duck liver pie that he has reached out to two different friends who are restaurant owners to beg for help. I think the duck livers may be coming as a special order, albeit in 5 pounds increments—which is kind of a lot of liver. The dry butter though,—who could have guessed— is even harder to find. I know that puff pastry exists in the US and someone in this country has to make it before it goes to the frozen foods section of the grocery, so there has to be dry butter somewhere in these continental United States. But it has proven to be quite elusive.

However, I feel very intrepid and optimistic and will continue to track it down. I have promised more than a few friends that I will teach them how to make feuilleté, or as we call it— puff pastry and I am not going back on my word—even if I have to buy 20 pounds of dry butter to qualify as a commercial purchaser. Anyone have extra freezer space?