Right here waiting for you--Smallville DVDs

Flashback: It is 12:30 am. My wife and I are sitting on the couch, struggling to keep our eyes open. My hand shakily grasps the remote control. "Must–must–hit select episode button–must–hit play button–must stay up until next episode is watched so we can put DVD in morning’s mail and not have to wait extra day for Blockbuster online to ship the season finale! Once more into the breach!"

Is this pathetic? Or is it instead the triumphant story of spirit over flesh, of perseverance in the face of adversity, of neurosis over comatosis? I am engaging in a life and death struggle eternally repeated since the dawn of time. The DVD is my friend and my nemesis, my lover and my viper. In the track competition of life, the DVD is not a discus but a boomerang, ever returning to me by mail, as I must ever return to my tv screen. We are co-dependents, the spectator and the spectacle, the voyeur and the exhibitionist. We are the remote controller and the remote controlled, yet I do not know which of us is which. I am the eternal Frodo, casting the DVD into the same envelope from which it was metaphorically forged, and Blockbuster is Sauron, the enemy ever bestowing his dangerous gifts upon the race of man for starting as low as 9.99 a month.

Now, many of you might be unaware of the concrete details of how one’s endurance is tested and refined by fire by watching Blockbuster DVDs. Is it simply by sitting on a couch for three hours consecutively so that I can return the DVD in the mail the next day? No. It is more. Much more.

It is the trudging through the snow to go to the mailbox in order to see that the mail has not come. It is the trudging through the snow an hour later to see that the mail has come, but there is no X-Files season 5 disc one. It is the trudging through the snow the next day to see that Blockbuster did not have X-Files season 5 disc one available, so they have, without sapience aforethought, sent you X-Files season 6 disc 1 and 2 instead, so you need to update your queue and wait patiently for the DVDs to arrive so that you can send them back without watching them. It is the asking of your wife to go trudging through the snow to drop the DVD off in the mail so you do not have to. It involves pacing yourself, planning ahead for the lack of mail delivery on Sundays. It involves shaking your fists in impotent rage and waving your foot at the mailbox in a threatening manner, shouting, "Who the freak made Columbus day a national holiday?" It means always being ready to reschedule evening plans at a moment’s notice, in case Blockbuster’s estimated date of arrival is off by a day; you might need to postpone a romantic rendezvous for a day when all the DVDs are still in transit. It means requesting Smallville season 4 and having successive seasons of X-Files sent to you because there are stupid people who rent the Smallville episodes from Blockbuster and never bother to watch them, training you in both the arts of patience and of hatred for your fellow man. Good stewardship over the resources we have been blessed with mandates that we watch the episodes as fast as we can, in order to measure up to the high standards of endurance that excellence demands.

In closing, I can’t help but notice that Christmas is fast approaching. In the spirit of Christmas, I ask those of you who have the later episodes of Smallville from Blockbuster to give a gift that costs you nothing, namely, show some courtesy by watching your freakin' Smallville DVDs and returning them so other people can see them!

-Leopoldtulip