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.

An upside to sleep deprivation?

I've spent the past week complaining about the effect sleep deprivation has on my mood, concentration ability, IQ, energy, and memory--but now I think there may be an upside. I am more creative. I suppose some of the aforementioned factors--fatigue, lack of focus and IQ--weaken my usual obsessive grip on What Needs to be Done and my rigid ideas about What Ought Not to be Done. As a result, I've been less productive and done things like eat French fries and take the elevator rather than the stairs--but I also find my mind expanding. I think more, rather than constantly seeking something on the agenda to do. New ideas are occurring to me. Suddenly I have half a dozen blog posts to write.

Life tracking after school

Activity	Average time spent per week (hours: minutes)
Sleeping	8.08 (per day)
Reading	17.10
Homework	15.50
Class	15.15
Getting ready	10.13
Exercise	9.28
Socializing with significant other	7.13
Internet	6.45
Lunch talks	6.15
Food	5.43
Socializing with others	4.30
Watching movies	4.08
Errands	2.55
Cleaning and organizing	2.40
Travel by bus or car	1.57
Walking	1.15
Relaxation	0:25
Hedonism	0:23
Wasted time	0:13

 Compared to when I was working, there has been an increase in time spent

• sleeping
• exercising
• working
• internet
• getting ready

While there has been a decrease in time spent

• reading
• socializing with my significant other
• watching movies
• wasted time
• travel by bus or walking
• errands
• cleaning
  
  No change in time spent
• socializing with others
• cooking and eating
• hedonism
• relaxation

There's been a dramatic increase in working time, from 20 hours to 31 hours. A dramatic (but unsurprising) decrease in travel time from 6 1/2 hours to 3 hours. Time spent on errands decreased from 6.23 to 2.55.

Most of the predictions I made about my schedule before going back to school were true, with the exception that, while I thought internet and "getting ready" or transitional time would decrease, the former actually increased by about an hour, while the latter doubled! There are some real possibilities for improvement here. For instance, when I get home from class, it's common for an hour or two to disappear in what I've been calling transitional time, but much of which is wasted.

Probably the biggest surprise is that, after moving in with my fiance, time spent focused on him actually decreased by about two hours. Guess that's a function of not having weekends anymore.

Life tracking

During two recent weeks, I recorded what I did with my time. I find this fascinating and hope you will too.

I took notes every hour, which means this is more of a big-picture view. For instance, if I spent an hour training a new person at work, that is counted as an hour of work and not as socializing, even though I spent some time chatting with her about non-work topics. And the lunch eaten in front of my computer is counted as Internet time, not food. I would also suspect that the “wasted time” category would be a lot bigger if I were examining my time at the five-minute level.

Activity	Average time spent per week: Hours.minutes
Sleeping	53.45 or 7.41 per day
Reading	23.33
Working	19.42
Socializing with significant other	9.30
Socializing with others	7.15
Watching movies or TV	6.30
Travel by Metro, car or walking	6.25
Exercise	6.25
Errands	6.23
Food	6.00
Internet	5.55
Getting ready	5.13
Cleaning/showering	3.25
Computer science class	2.15
Driving practice	1.15
Wasted time	1.15
Hedonism (leisure activities not otherwise specified)	0:45
Napping/relaxation	0:30

Overall, I wouldn’t have thought I spent so much time sleeping and socializing. Very pleased that I read more than I work. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the wasted time/hedonism category was kept pretty low.

The working category looks low because a) these were slow weeks for the company and I got more time off than usual and b) I excluded everything one might normally think of as part of the work day that fell under another category, like traveling from job to job, chatting with coworkers, or surfing the Internet while waiting for work to appear.

Watching movies and travel were almost always done multitasking; listening to podcasts while I walk or folding laundry, planning, or sewing while a movie plays. The exercise number dropped radically from 10 hours on Week 1 to 2.5 hours on Week 2, reflecting the fact that my gym membership ended.

Seems like there is a lot of leeway in my schedule. In my future life in Chicago, commuting and "getting ready" time will be down, and I could cut way down on movies and Internet and moderately down on reading without any pain.

Loudness and class

This morning, as I left my apartment, I paused at the sound of raised voices downstairs. Three of my neighbors were yelling at each other. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they certainly seemed angry. I was afraid that they would get violent and the police would be called (as has happened before) and I didn’t want to get in the middle of things, so I lingered for a few seconds before going downstairs.

...Then, getting bored, I figured it would probably be okay and went downstairs anyway. As I got closer, I could hear what they were saying. The phrase “home fries and cheese eggs” was used. I realized that, far from arguing with each other, they were actually just making friendly small talk about breakfast foods and the weather and such. I had completely misinterpreted the feeling tone of their conversation–because the tone of voice they considered appropriate for friendly small talk was so loud that I would never use it unless in a state of extreme anger or fear.

Now, I am an unusually quiet person. It’s difficult for me to raise my voice even when I have a good reason to do so. So this is an introversion/extroversion thing, but I also think there’s a class difference here. In general, upper-class people perceive clearer differences between the private and public spheres; they can afford to buy a great deal of privacy. Lower-class people have less spacious and comfortable homes and are less able to afford third places such as bars, restaurants or coffee shops; their private conversations are forced out into the public sphere. Hence the hanging out on the street corner/front porch/sidewalk behavior that upper-class people find hard to understand. Hence also, I would hypothesize, louder voices, even when close proximity makes loudness unnecessary.
                                   
This must lead to lesser understanding between classes (or races). If I can misunderstand people of a different class without even hearing a word, what do I fail to understand in a real conversation? And they must be misunderstanding me too–for instance, I’ve known several people who assume that a confident person will naturally be loud, so a quiet person must be sad or intimidated. Every word an upper-class person says may come out as slightly less aggressive than intended.

A classic kook

For the abnormal psychology enthusiasts. This is a man who is telling the sober truth, it seems to me. The things that happen to him are exactly the same irrational, annoying, and inexplicable things that happen to all of  us. But his strong perception that everything that happens around him is all about him is what makes his thinking classically schizophrenic.

Also interesting that he seems to believe that such a simple thing as a newspaper to read in line would be a weapon against the secret police. As if some part of him knew that the real problem is what happens inside his head when the secret police start their machinations.

 

I looked at around ten apartments...since the secret police had already selected and prepared an apartment for me this proved to be a futile endeavor. It is difficult to relate to and impossible to adjust to the artificial, arbitrary and hostile living environment the secret police have created...they try to turn the most commonplace life experiences and the activities of daily life into a maze-like obstacle course.

While descending the stairs from my apartment I usually meet one or more of the “tenants” trying hard to look as if they live in the building or staging a scene for me to observe. Frequently groups of men are standing or sitting on the stoop when I go out or come in; sometimes blocking the steps so that I have to ask them to move. On days when it is felt some special intimidation is necessary a police car will drive by as I go out and again as I come home...A corner with a hardware store, a sometimes open grocery store and two abandoned buildings is not likely to be a favorite neighborhood hangout yet there are often groups of Puerto Rican and black men standing around. As I approach the intersection, a signal is given and people, most of whom are young men, start crossing the intersection from every direction; people walking on the sidewalks, boys riding by on bikes, and other people driving by in cars...

A male child or a handsome young man presents himself to be looked at while other people observe me. Presumably, if I look at the conspicuously displayed bait, the observer-witnesses claim to have seem proof of sexual interest or an attempted seduction. A few thousand such scenes were staged to create incidents that could be  used to discredit me...

On Tuesday I left my apartment intending to pay my Con Edison bill. At the Con Edison office I looked in the window; the office was unusually crowded and the bill-paying line seemed suspiciously long. I was  generally apprehensive about entering a trap, so I decided to come back the next day.

I left my apartment around 3:05 p.m. on Wednesday. Walking across 14^th street, I looked at every newstand for a copy of the New York Times so that I would have something to read while waiting in line. Over a two-year period, I frequently bought or saw papers late in the afternoon at the various newstands; it is highly unlikely they would have all been sold out. I believe intelligence agents asked the newspaper sellers to hide the papers so that I would have nothing to do while waiting except to observe the planned operation. I joined the bill-paying line; there were around ten people in line and as I approached two young men placed themselves directly ahead of me in the line. There were five bill-paying windows. While I waited in line the clerks closed their windows until only one window was left open for customer service. The four people in front of me all went to the same window. I believe this was a delaying tactic to keep me in the office for a longer period of time.

While waiting in line the secret police operation being staged was very obvious. Seven young men presented themselves to be looked at and a man and a woman each walked by me twice staring holes through me...intelligence agents had set up an elaborate but thinly disguised covert operation within the office of a legitimate business. A few weeks earlier I found myself surrounded by game-playing collaborators in a line at my bank. I became angry and denounced them for participating in secret police operations. I believe intelligence agents chose to restage a similar scene in Con Edison’s offices hoping to elicit the same or a similar response; an angry outburst that could be used as “proof” that through paranormal powers I had somehow triggered the transformer malfunction and resulting blackout.

--Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief, Donna Kossy

A story of Marriage

A man lost his job for watching pornography on his work computer. He explained that he is struggling to overcome a “porn addiction.” He has been married to his fat, deaf wife for about twenty years. They don’t have a conventional relationship, he said. They are “not intimate in any way.” She’s way too good for him. They are in counseling to help him overcome the “addiction.” He has no friends. But he has grown closer to his church group. Is this what marriage is like?