A growing epidemic (posting challenge: day one)

Across the country, men both young and old are embroiled in a bitter battle with compulsion and indulgence. They slave away at nine-to-fives, eagerly awaiting the moment bells ring, the moment meetings end, the moment minute hands point straight up. Cars start up and the emigration begins. Exhausted laborers and drowsy businessmen head home, save for one quick stop. One by one, they make their purchases, expressions ranging from casual to self-conscious. At home, they ply their common trade in front of televisions and monitors, the walls painted with flickering blues. What compels these men to act this way?

It's Tuesday.

New DVD day.

I own a goodly number of DVDs, but I would say I have not yet approached too many DVDs. I'm sure the owners of those collections would probably say the same thing, though. I've come a long way from that summer in 99 when I bought Aliens and Rush Hour to start the collection and played them on the weak sauce DVD player in my computer. I joined Columbia House a couple times, got a bunch as gifts, and bought the rest at stores. The DVD format seems to have made collectors and film buffs out of people who may never have been interested if VHS still was the leading format.

There's a warped perspective at work in a lot of the mega-collectors. I present for your inspection this dialogue from a message board (unedited for authenticity):

Guy 1: (posts photo of big collection)
Guy 2: Why are most of your dvds unopened? dont you watch them before you buy others
Guy 1: Not everyone does that I would say 60% of my collection is unopened. It is because I want the movie not cause I need something to watch. I have seen a lot of the movies and just haven't watched them again.

Come on, dude.

Anyway, the size of the collection has reached a plateau as I stopped buying DVDs just because and began only buying movies I loved in the theater. There's a little fat to trim off the collection, but mostly I think I'm back under control.

Heaven forbid I walk by a $6 sale rack, though.

A challenge

In recent news, Pete has decided to categorize his blog links by posting frequency. I, of course, have been placed in the "Seldom" category.

I'm going to try to post once a day for the next week, beginning tomorrow. How's that for often?

It's on.

Intriguing

It appears that my comment ceiling is 5.

Usually one or two of those is mine. Dang.

A modest proposal

It would be nice to get some sort of web referrer statistics for blog owners, so we can tell how random visitors get here. It's strange to think that your various brain-droppings can be read by folks who've never even met you.

Maybe I'm thinking of my blog the wrong way, if there is such a possibility. It seems the intent is to cast your thoughts and comments into the aether with complete anonymity (or as much as is desired).

I'm not really prepared to lavish angst and deeply personal matters anonymously, to an equally anonymous community of indifferent ranters. I'll stick with attempting to amuse my friends and my esteemed random visitors.

I don't really have angst anyway.

This post occurs in real time

Man, I loves me some scripted television. I watched a couple seasons of reality shows, but for me it's gotten to the point that it's just the same "watch people be complete asses to each other while they starve/live together/run a business" theme over and over again. I've never found that terribly compelling, so I usually watch shows that take some actual craft to produce, that harness the awesome stallion of drama in a way reality shows cannot.

Here's what I watched this fine television season, along with haiku synopses:

24:

Oh no, terrorists
Hourly cliffhangers drop jaws
Jack Bauer yells; YES!

House:

That guy's really sick
Someone risks the patient's life!
House pops pills and limps

The Shield:

Gritty and brutal
The cops can be bad guys, too
Michael Chiklis rules

Lost:

Plane crash strands forty
Island life and backstories
Something eats people

Arrested Development:

Best comedy on
Bluth family sure is weird
This almost got canned?

Grey's Anatomy:

Unprepared interns
Start careers in medicine
Nicely bittersweet

I may not be cultured enough to read literary classics as my primary form of entertainment/enlightenment, but as long as I can express my love for television through mangled poetry, I can live with that.

One last comment about smell

On the matter of the smell of old books versus new books, I am undecided. There are few aromas as loaded with possibility and nostalgia as the smell of printed words.

Update: Okay, so I'm not undecided. Old books smell better. It's the whole treasure thing again.

If you put it that way...

Now that I think about it, posting about how old men smell probably shouldn't have garnered any comment-love.

I think I weirded out my two readers.

The nuanced aroma of old man

I've found that there's an interesting dichotomy in the way men use cologne and how it relates to their age. Young men wear cologne that tends to resemble radioactive air freshener, as confirmed by the large sample space of said hominids at Illinois. Most of these, of course, were unwillingly sampled due to the sheer offensive quality of Frat Boy Funk.

Older men smell like treasure you find in the attic. I don't know if there's some sort of catalog you get after you turn 50 or if they hand the stuff out or what. I'll be darned if I didn't walk into the bathroom at work this week and (expecting the usual bathroom odors--that's a topic for another day) think that I was going to come across some sweet trunk full of wicked awesome old photos and clothes and stuff. I thought to myself, "there was an old guy in here not too long ago."

As for me, I'll stick with my deodorant, thank you very much.

Please note: this apparently does not apply to women, who smell good all the time.