How I save time

1.  I don't read The New York Times.  At least, not every day.  I don't pay for it any more (cancelling that subscription was only a little more complicated than resigning from the Mafia, I'm guessing), so I only get ten articles a month, which more than covers Charles Blow's column.  I don't read it because of headlines like this one:  "NYC Is Getting Safer, But Hate Crimes Are Up."  Reading it again to make sure I haven't had a minor stroke, I see that murders and rapes are down but hate crimes have increased by 64% in the past year, most of them against Jews.  The city is opening an office to discourage that kind of thing this summer -- it was supposed to open in November but everybody was busy with the Macys parade.  In other words, New York is much safer unless you're Jewish, black or gay.  Which is most of the population.  Which is why I don't read The New York Times.*

2.  I ignore Game of Thrones.  "Surely you mean 'ignored,'" I hear you exclaim, "for it has concluded."   Oh, you are adorable.  This thing will be around longer than Chernobyl, judging by the long, dense articles I keep finding everywhere from caffeine-fueled blogs to serious journals like the Times Literary Supplement.  A lot of people believe the genre I have named Tits & Torture is the most important cultural development of our monstrous new century.  I only wish Edmund Wilson ("Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?") or Dwight Macdonald ("Masscult and Midcult") or Hunter S. Thompson ("Are You Fucking Kidding Me With These Lannisters and Frannisters?") was here to see it off.

3.  Same for all these comic book movies.  I am an adult.



*I didn't even bring up the anguished think-piece about glamorous Hope Hicks and whether she should respond to a Congressional subpoena like a common Fifth-Amendment-taking crime boss.  Which even Rose Mary Woods did, if I remember correctly.