Never say “I don't have time to.”

There are some things which I don't have time for. I could not walk 100 miles a day. I could not read 100 books in a day (well, maybe kids' books). 

But have you noticed that when people say “I don't have time to” they are never talking about activities that are actually, physically, impossible to find time for? 

“I don't have time to...cook, exercise, read, keep the house clean.” But other people do all those things. Do they have more time than you do?

A variation is to extend “I don't have to” to pretend that literally no one can do the thing. “I don't understand how anyone can work full time and still find time to cook.” Or: “once you have kids, you won't have time to exercise.”

These lines always trigger me because they are so obviously false. Look around you and you will see many examples of people who work and have kids and still manage to do X.

(We have a cultural taboo about talking about success, so the people in your life who actually do do the things might never tell you about it, unless you actively ask. [I'll tell you, but I have no social skills.])

So why do people claim that things they want to do are impossible? Partly because they don't have successful role models. Partly because it palliates the pain of failure. “No one with kids has a clean house.” “Of course I'm fat, I'm an American haha.” “Only rich people can save money.” Stop doing this. To invest in convincing yourself your goals are impossible is to commit to failure rather than success.

To steal a line from another domain: you have time for anything, but not everything. 

Note that I am not telling anyone what to do. You understand your own circumstances best, and I don't have the information or the right to tell you what your priorities should be. If you've looked into the costs and the benefits and you're happy not exercising, not reading, or whatever, that's fine with me. I hear TV is great lately.

What I want readers to get out of this is the understanding that their life choices are choices. Distinguishing between a choice you are making and a fate you have to accept is surprisingly hard. It took me about 20 years to break out of that sort of learned helplessness. No institution, and no parent, really has an interest in helping you build an independent life—they want you to conform, consume, and defer to them. It's hard—but you have to build the life you want for yourself yourself.

To a first approximation, your life is not imposed on you by Fate. You choose what your life looks like.

The Whedon Effect

Why is it that male feminists so often treat women badly? What they're thinking: I have the right beliefs, therefore I'm the good guy, therefore I can rest on my laurels and pay no attention to how I treat the actual women in my life.

"I'm pro-choice (and I swear not just because it leads to more sex)." "Okay, let's have sex. Do you have a condom?" Of course not. He doesn't like condoms. I guess I can get an abortion. And pay for it myself. 

His feminism means asserting his dominance over non-feminist men. It doesn't mean that he feels any heightened obligation to women, or that he even bothers to notice women's feelings. Examples: the male feminist who proposed an open relationship to me, where "open" would mean he got to have sex with anyone he wanted, and I got to have sex with...him. Or the one who somewhat horrifyingly told me he knew I wanted to have sex with him because of the color of my dress. Isn't that...rape culture? I did want to have sex with him, but that's irrelevant.

What if, instead of going around knowing you have the socially acceptable beliefs, you knew you had the wrong beliefs? What attitude would you have? My theory is that this might inspire you to be more careful and courteous with others. You can't assume you're the good guy, you have to prove it. This is the type of guy I've had success with. Of course, an alternative theory is that non-feminist men are actually motivated by chivalry more than courtesy, so that I am benefiting from the kind of sexism I object to. 

Gattaca

What a terrible movie. It's like the fantasy of a 10-year-old crying over the fact that his brother is taller than he is. So, here's this fascinating dystopian society, with deep-rooted class inequality, which raises many interesting political, moral and technological questions. The movie notices none of them. The only thing the audience is asked to care about is whether the hero gets to do his dream job. Is there a larger implication here? Will he try to fight injustice or help others? Nope. He just wants to be an astronaut because space is cool.

No one in the underclass besides the hero gets a name. They are all faceless, uniform men. There is only one woman in the movie--the blonde. No, I don't remember her name, why should I. Her job is to be a sex object and tell the hero that she likes him more even though his brother is taller. Their first sex scene occurs immediately after she has, in horror, watched him beat up a cop in order to avoid being questioned about a murder which she, and the audience, have strong reason to believe he committed to pursue his childish spaceman fantasy. This is below the moral level of a fairytale--and not just because the hero murdered an innocent man. At least in a fairytale, you have to give the beggar some of your bread before she'll do magic for you. Here, the hero gets special favors from a dozen other characters while narcissistically pursuing his dream with complete disregard for every other person besides himself. Disgusting.

"Glamour" magazine

We all know Glamour as the magazine which led Americans to start misspelling “glamor.” But did you know it also teaches many terrible life lessons?

To the best of my recollection, all of these wonderful quotes were in the same magazine:

“Engagement eyeliner” worked for me!

(“Carrie’s” boyfriend complimented her electric blue eyeliner. Less than 24 hours later, he proposed. Glamour helpfully provides the brand name, but I will not. It sounds dangerous.)

Reading comprehension hint: when you see the word “hardwired”, know that whatever you are reading is probably bullshit.

Like most women, I’m hardwired to try to keep everybody who counts on me at the office and at home happy. There are weeks, not just days, when I feel like I’m cheating on him—with my work.

(Real women never displease others. Also, men need constant supervision. Whatever will he do if you go out and he doesn’t get sex for a whole eight hours? Probably stick forks into the electric outlets and pee on the floor.)

A dumb celebrity hopes her daughter will never develop sexual desire:

Jamie Lynn Spears says: “It’d be dumb to sit here and say that [my daughter] isn’t going to like a boy one day and she isn’t going to have a boyfriend. I’ll just have to handle that the best way that I can. Both her daddy and me will caution her about having sex, and I would hope that she would not want to do that at all, but I have to make sure that I’m realistic too.”

A woman who is boring in bed feels insecure about it:

Maybe everybody is kinkier than you are. So what? Having standard-issue sex in private is my fantasy, and that’s the last I’m going to say about it.

(Kinky sex is something other people do. Not Glamour readers, who are too busy with magic eyeliner and keeping everybody happy.)

Another dumb celebrity (Amanda Seyfried) says she doesn’t want to have sex when she doesn’t want to have sex, and also women never want to have sex:

I’m terrified of being promiscuous. I don’t like the feeling you get when it’s not something that you truly want to do, and I hate the emotional abuse you give yourself afterward.

I will spare you Glamour’s advice on yeast infections, but it is also bad.

Why I can't enjoy film

Reading in our world has a sort of old, sedate, peaceful, slow image, while TV and movies are perceived as fast, exciting and youthful. Many people think that TV is shortening our attention spans! The truth is precisely the contrary: my attention span is too short to do anything but read. With 98% of movies, I get bored after about 20 minutes and start to multitask. Even with the few really good movies, I prefer to watch in 30-minute installments.

Think about it: how many words do you take in per second? Quickly testing it with a fairly easy nonfiction text, I found I read 7-10 words per second. That means that, several times per second, something is happening. In nonfiction, an argument is being presented or an example given. In fiction, even if nothing is happening in the plot, there’s a description, a philosophical aside, or a thought-provoking word choice to focus on.

(N.B.: This assumes you are reading an actually good book. If you are one of those people who read books for their plot, you might as well just switch to TV. I will not miss you.)

If I think the book is going too slowly, I can just read faster. Alternatively, I can skip forward, reading a few sentences every few pages, and see if anything more interesting promises to come.

With film, skipping forward is impossible. Watching TV or a movie in a theatre, there is no way you can figure out what’s going to happen--you have to make an absolute yes-or-no decision about whether to stay and watch. With a DVD, you can of course skip scenes; but that never gives you as much information as skimming through a book. You can skip to the beginning of the next scene, but that might not be the most interesting part. In order to see if it is, you have to watch the whole scene! It’s slavery! You can fast-forward, but all you’ll see will be vague moving shapes; you might be fast-forwarding past the best dialogue in the film, without knowing it.

Moreover, everything moves more slowly in filmed media. Things happen in the superficial sense, but anything interesting takes forever! A ton of any movie or TV show--even the good ones--will be taken up with shots intended to establish the setting or the time period--with shots showing you the characters’ clothes 0r houses or bodies or faces--with shots of their movements or observations--with fistfights and sex. Even in scenes containing dialogue, the actors speak incredibly slowly, compared to the speed at which you would read their words. If you’re familiar with the written text, it’s painful to watch the words dragging and halting by (compare reading “The Importance of Being Earnest” to watching the, nevertheless good, movie!).

I admit that there are certain respects in which the visual image can be more effective; but these are all relatively shallow areas of experience. The sex scene which might arouse male viewers--the sight of an emotional face which appeals to the sentimental--the skeleton jumping out unexpectedly which makes me jump. Anything deeper than these effects which a movie wishes to convey could probably be done as well or better in print.

The exception is comedy, which is actually easier to do in film. With a good episode of “Seinfeld”, for instance, something funny or at least attention-catching is happening every few seconds. (“Seinfeld” also illustrates the fact that in a comedy of whatever kind, all or most emotion must be leached out in order to maintain the comic mood and keep an audience’s interest.) Animated comedies are especially easy for me to appreciate, since their creators usually realize we aren’t interested in lengthy shots of clothes, faces or emotions belonging to animated figures.

I do think, however, that an authentically funny creation is a rare, virtuoso performance, which even the masters can’t keep alive for more than, say, 30 pages or twenty minutes. I honestly can’t remember any non-animated full-length film which I’ve enjoyed for the comedy!

There are other, vaguely personal reasons why I can't enjoy film--but, basically, if I refuse to watch a movie with you; it's not you, it's the entire cinematic tradition.