Reader el asks:

How should one deal with regrets about the past? How not to end up like this 70 year old person? Do you have any philosophical approach / take on the topic?

I think that if you are 70 (80, 90, 100), it makes sense to remember that you are not the same person today who did or didn’t do the things you now regret. Every cell in your body has been renewed (and probably several times over, too) in the years that passed since then. It doesn’t make sense to judge that completely different person for what s/he did all that time ago. This person’s only fault is that s/he wasn’t a fortune-teller and couldn’t predict what this older version would value and want. Some people manage to predict it but some don’t.

Also, these long-term analyses of either one’s past or one’s future are fairly unproductive. I suggest creating a detailed version of what you want your life to be in five years. This is something you can do at 70 as well as at 17. Imagine in as much detail as possible what you want your life in five years to look. Where do you wake up in the morning? With whom? How do the bed sheets look? What is the bathroom like? Where do you go after having breakfast? What do you do there and for how long?

After you create this precise vision (that, of course, can always be modified as the time progresses), you will find it much easier to elaborate a series of steps needed to create the life you want. But be careful: it has to be the life YOU want. Don’t allow the pictures from glossy magazines and movies or the ideas of other people to define your vision. If you do that, then I can pretty much guarantee that you will have a lot of regrets later on.

For the sake of educating the masses, I will share this painful and deeply personal story.

As you all know, my husband N. is a wonderful person who makes me very happy. He is kind, quiet, and normally very happy.

And then last Tuesday he suddenly changed. He became listless, he slept all the time, refused to talk, and looked extremely angry yet incapable of explaining what was happening. Then he started having fits of rage and experienced suicidal thoughts. I had no idea what was going on. Obviously, I was distraught because he didn’t even look like the person I knew and loved.

I tried talking to him but he couldn’t explain what was the matter beyond saying that nobody cared about him and everything was useless.

Finally, after trying to get it out of him for days, I discovered what happened.

N. had a tooth-ache. His dentist’s clinic is right around the corner. Besides, N. has a fantastic dental insurance. But he didn’t go to see the dentist because he thought his tooth-ache was not serious enough to bother the dentist and distract him from more serious pursuits than treating patients. (Yes, N. is like that. He doesn’t like to bother people needlessly.)

So instead of going to the dentist and getting his tooth-ache dealt with by a professional, N. decided to take care of it on his own. He disinterred a bottle of Vicodin and started popping pills. This was my Vicodin that had been prescribed to me but that I never took because I’m scared of it. I had asked N. to dispose of it but he forgot. Now he found this Vicodin and started taking it.

We are both very anti-drug and, as a result, our bodies are not used to any medication. Of course, after N. started gulping down these Vicodin pills, he overdosed on them.

If a few pills over the course of several days can do this to a person, I don’t even want to imagine the destruction of personality this garbage can inflict if taken over longer periods of time.

I took half a Vicodin pill once (it was actually for a tooth-ache, as well) and I never want to feel the way I felt on this medication. Just half a pill made me feel sociopathic. I didn’t experience any pain after I took it but I didn’t have any other feelings either. I knew that I could say and do anything to people and have no compassion for them. Thank God, I only took half a pill, so I was lucid enough to realize that I needed to stay away from other human beings until the effects wore off.

Don’t take this shit, people.

P.S. If you want to leave a comment telling me how Vicodin is great, please go and reread the first sentence of this post and then consider how stupid such a comment would be in this context.

“It struck me that the GOP convention featured speaker after speaker talking about the hardships their grandparents had overcome. Last night we heard speaker after speaker talk about the hardships they had overcome themselves.” I don’t know because I didn’t watch but this is a blogger I trust.

A great article from one of my favorite bloggers on why traditional anti-porn arguments fail. I have already had intense discussions with very weird anti-porn folks on this blog who, as I eventually discovered, had no idea what pornography even was. So do head over to the linked article to read an insightful post on this subject.

“So, y’all know how much I hate public proposals, right? I haaaaaaaaaaaate them. I hate them as much as I love Jesus appearing on a piece of toast. I hate them for a slew of reasons, but mostly because they are inherently coercive. Even if the person (woman, usually) being publicly proposed to would have said yes under any circumstances, the context of a public audience when being asked to make a profoundly intimate decision, no less an audience who urgently sides with only one potential response, necessarily creates an imbalance that subverts meaningful consent.” And I really hate it when people throw around the word “coercive” in a context that empties it of all meaning. Obnoxious, stupid, OK. But coercive? If the presence of people makes it hard for you to say whether you want to get married or not, are you sure you are of legal age to get married?

Our resident Libertarian Izgad wrote a beautiful piece about his wife, himself, their love and Libertarianism. Do read it if you still think that Aspies lack a sense of humor.

“In the early 1960s, both oral and anal sex were illegal in 49 of the 50 states. In 10 of those states, sodomy—which was variously defined but could, in some states, include oral sex—carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. Citizens in Connecticut who engaged in oral sex faced 30 years in prison—60 years for people who lived in North Carolina. In Nevada it could mean life behind bars. It was a time when 37 states outlawed sex between unmarried people and 45 criminalized adultery. Two states even banned heavy petting.” Really?? I had absolutely no idea. Now the American television has finally started to make sense. Many of the incomprehensible comments people have been making on my blog have become clear. After reading this article, I walk around, exclaiming, “Ah! I now get it!” every two minutes.

How to read Zizek.

Are you surprised that the horrible La Leche League is transphobic and pro-the most disgusting gender stereotypes ever? I know I’m not. These bigots would stoop to anything to bully women into housewifery and men away from their children.

“Speeches by spouses are one of the many aspects of American electoral politics that puzzle the rest of the world. As a reporter from VG (The Way of the World), the largest newspaper in Norway, was heard to ask, “What do these women do that their men can’t?”” Exactly. Why should I listen to anybody whose only claim to my attention is that she sleeps with a politician?

The $300 paper bag is finally on sale! Now it costs the modest sum of $290. What a great bargain! (For the especially humorless: the bag is real and my comment is a joke.)

And here is proof that for some intelligent people (OK, one intelligent person) my blog is the source of news on a very important subject.

“It’s certainly the case that education in the US needs to be improved but I’m not at all sure that the mantra of “college for everybody” would work.  That seems to be based on a worldview where all American workers are managers or white-collar or pink-collar office workers.  Who is going to do all the rest of the necessary work?  Is it people in China and India?  Or computers and robots?” Of course. That’s a fact of objective reality. We can neither turn back the technological revolution nor get the manufacturing, customer service, etc. jobs from China and India. In today’s America, we are moving towards a situation where people with no college education will simply not have any jobs available. Let’s just accept that and stop sighing about the 1950s because I can’t hear this any longer it’s so boring.

Philip Roth’s open letter to Wikipedia. It’s always funny when a writer begins to offer “the only correct reading” of his own work. The novel Roth discusses is so much more and is so much better than what he wants everybody to see in it that the whole thing is truly shocking. A work of literature is always much bigger than its author. Roth’s letter is a very boring and pathetic explanation of a wonderful book that he somehow produced against his own plans and goals.

How to write a good letter of recommendation.

“I’ve always thought the Cannabis-creativity link made by the 60s poet hippies was consequently both meretricious and absurdly self-serving: and in the end just another excuse for lack of talent.” Exactly.

“A woman who was groped by an off-duty DPS officer at a Flagstaff bar last summer says that comments to her by the judge during Wednesday’s sentencing were inappropriate and that the judge should apologize. Before giving the officer two years’ probation on his conviction for sexual abuse, Coconino County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Hatch said to victim: “If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you.”” And if the Judge’s Momma had had the good sense to use contraception, Judge Hatch wouldn’t have happened to all of us.

A REALLY, REALLY, REALLY good sexual health platform.

Zoe Heller makes herself look like an idiot when she offers her public hissy fit of a frustrated prude upset about the existence of a healthy female sexuality. I cringed in vicarious shame when I read it. Heller should be visiting a sexologist, not writing articles based on her severe issues.

And the post of the week: on how to publish more if you are a academic. A beautiful article on a very important (to me) subject.

Please look at the following image:

Here is an interpretation of this image provided by Nerdy Feminist:

When I look at this image, I can’t help but feel that the power is squarely with the man. Del Rey is vulnerable, with the placement of his hand over her breast and it is unclear what her feelings are about this or what is actually happening. The man’s other hand near her throat area furthers the sense that she is vulnerable and he is in control. We don’t really even know if he is threatening some level of violence. As he is dressed and she is partially nude, the feeling that she is an object is magnified. And as Miss Representation pointed out, it really is about her looks and body. He is in polished formal wear, and she’s almost a plaything or an accessory to him.

I had a completely different reaction to the photo when I saw it and Nerdy Feminist’s reading was very unexpected for me. In this image, I see a man whose only role is to gratify the woman sexually. He doesn’t even get a right to have a face. He is completely robbed of any individuality. He looks at the woman but she doesn’t look at him. He tries to gratify her but she is completely concentrated on her own feelings and is not willing to reciprocate.

This post doesn’t offer any criticism of Nerdy Feminist who is a talented blogger. Her reading is as valid and valuable as mine. The point I’m making here is that people bring themselves to every text they encounter. There is no single meaning even to a silly magazine cover.

Which reading do you prefer? Or do you have one of your own?

Busy is a person who is so dedicated to his or her professional or social realization that s/he doesn’t have a whole lot of energy left to invest into dating or romantic life. If Busy is beautiful and has many admirers, s/he chooses a partner early in life and never looks at anybody again. If Busy is less beautiful and popular, s/he might go happily dateless until quite late in life and not even notice it. Then s/he will grab the first person who comes along and will never look at anybody again.

Busy will accept quite a lot of negative traits in the partner, as long as s/he doesn’t interfere too much with what really matters to Busy (career, making money, working in politics, getting published, etc.) But if the partner’s faults begin to detract from Busy’s professional and social interests, Busy will shed him/her easily and happily move along.

Did you see Obama’s DNC speech? What are your impressions?

I was very impressed by how different today’s Obama is from the guy we saw win the elections four years ago. He has matured a lot and it’s obvious that these have been very hard four years. He has hardened but not in the sense of becoming cold and devoid of compassion. Rather, I perceived this new almost desperate decisiveness in him. I’m glad to see that he realizes how absolutely crucial this election his, how close we are to a very major transformation in this country, and how different the two pathways that this transformation can follow are.

I have read many (Liberal) sources that say the speech is boring, unexciting, and uninspired. I think what these commentators are missing is that we are not seeing a presidential hopeful in front of any more. We are seeing an acting President who is working hard and stays in control of things. The speech was realistic and didn’t promise the Moon and the Sun. And that’s how it should be.

The best thing was that Obama said very forcefully that the Republicans are planning to raise the taxes on the middle class. If this is repeated often enough, it will win him the election.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to be as impressed as I am with this speech. It is the most reassuring of all Obama’s speeches I’ve heard.

I’m really looking forward to the debates.

In class today I was explaining how Franco’s dictatorship imposed a very strict dress code on women.

“The kind of dress I’m wearing today, pants, short shorts, sleeveless blouses, open-necked shirts – all that was considered indecent by the dictatorship,” I say. “Now, why do we wear short skirts and dresses and shorts?”

“To look pretty and attract men!” a male student blurts out.

Female students roar with laughter.

“Believe it or not,” I smile, “I don’t come here to look pretty or attract anybody. That’s really the last thing on my mind when I come to teach. But let’s ask our female colleagues. Women, why are you wearing T-shirts and shorts today?”

“Because it’s +92 degrees F,” a female student explains.

“Ah!” says the male student who had advanced the “looking pretty” theory. “That. . . makes sense.”

I’m always happy to challenge the worldview based on the idea that women exist to look pretty and attract men and for no other purpose whatsoever.

The kind of worldview that I hate with a passion and despise with a vengeance is the one that is based on fatalism.

The idea that everything in the world happens by pure chance, that you can in no way control anything that happens to you, that no matter what you do the outcome is completely beyond your control is, in my opinion, wimpy and pathetic. It is a very good excuse never to do anything with your life, never to address your issues, never to solve any problems. Why make an effort if it’s all useless by default?

Of course, I don’t think that we are in complete control of everything that happens to us. There are forces beyond out control that mold our lives. There are influences that we neither requested nor welcomed that have a deep impact on our psyche, an impact that can be profoundly negative.

Ultimately, however, I believe that it is the duty of every rational, thinking human being to try as hard as we can to solve our problems. If you tell people around you, “I will not do anything to address my issues because it’s all useless anyways,” you are engaging in a deliberately abusive behavior where you force others to pay the price of your intellectual laziness, emotional sloppiness, and profound self-centeredness.

A fatalist very easily slips into the role of an emotional abuser.

P.S. This is not a post on politics or economy. This is a post on interpersonal relationships and individual psychology. So if you have an urge to blame me for promoting a “lift yourself by the bootstraps” mentality, you are wide of the mark.

Self-reliance used to be one of my favorite words. What a beautiful concept it could have been had it not been co-opted by so many unintelligent people!

Now the word has been killed for me by my blogroll. Don’t believe me? Read the following:

You have to ask yourself whether you want a culture of dependency or a culture of self-reliance.  What is so offensive about Obama and his ilk is their undermining of such traditional American values as self-reliance. And as I said yesterday, many of these same liberals such as the “race troll’ Chris Mathews got where they did in life precisely because of such virtues as self-reliance.  And yet they refuse to promote them and pass them on.  It shows the contempt they have for their clients such as blacks who keep them in power. If it hasn’t happened already, some liberal will now besmirch the beautiful word ‘self-reliance’ as racial code.  There is just no level of scumbaggery to which a leftist will not descend.

Now, whenever I hear this word, I immediately imagine a mean, spiteful curmudgeon who just sits there judging everybody all day long.

The most beautiful part of the word “self-reliance” is “self.” And it only makes sense when you cultivate this virtue in your own self without lecturing others on it. You can’t “promote” it or “pass it on.” A person who can’t exist without lecturing other on self-reliance is not self-reliant for the simple reason that s/he needs others to confirm his or her point of view as valuable.

Inspirational quotes look good at first but when you stop and consider them, you realize how incredibly stupid they are. Here are some that I find especially annoying:

With all due respect for Mark Twain, this is stupid. A person who chooses not to read for whatever reason has a sea of advantages over somebody who is illiterate and can’t even understand any of the papers s/he is signing. Do read Ruth Rendell’s A Judgment in Stone to get a perspective on what life looks like to an illiterate person in modern society. Rendell is no Twain, obviously, but the book is good.

I really hate these didactic, saccharine platitudes. Yeah, there are people who have to work 2 or 3 jobs and who can’t make time for things they really love doing. Let’s all sit here and feel superior to them. This quote really reminds me of the idea that people who don’t have jobs are simply not trying hard enough to find employment.

It turns out I just chose not to sprout wings and fly. This is really good news! The entire idea smacks of that horrible The Secret thing that was heavily promoted by Oprah a while ago. “If you are not a millionaire it’s because you don’t want to be one badly enough!” Vomit, vomit, vomit.

What is this, a threat for victims of stalking? There is nothing cute in people who pursue others against their will.

Except for people who throw out a knee, pull a muscle, sprain a leg, and meet their worst partner ever at the gym. Generalizations that are this wide always end up being ridiculous.

I found these priceless posters here.