The New Science of Netflix Addiction

I hang on my postman's every step. It's true. I curse him when he doesn't show. I've written letters, angry letters, to the post office snitching on him.

I check my queues (yes, queues - plural) and make adjustments several times a day. The reason I have several queues is that you can only have 500 titles in one queue. So I created other family members. There are just too many movies to see. They're constantly coming out, pouring out faster and faster as technology changes. And then there's the backlog of classics, historically relevant or cult films that have influenced the films I love. It goes on and on, like an endless waterfall. (Jonathan Rosenbaum, a film critic for the Reader, makes this point in a couple of places but particularly in Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Cannons.)

And I've gotten my friends to match up with me on the site and now I can stalk them and their movie choices. I find it fascinating what they think is brilliant or ass. I love the list of films that we all agree on. No.1 is Monty Python and the Holy Grail (brilliant!) And then there are the comment debates. I love being opinionated and riling up others. I find we're all too complacent and blah and unfortunately sometimes an assinine statement can be quite enlightening. Assuming of course that we're all adults and willing to admit that we can be wrong and be proud of our endless process of maturation. An unexamined life and all that...

So a great deal of my entries are going to be about all the films I rent.

I will also make this disclaimer. I am deeply saddened by my contributions to the demise of the movie theater. I've got a big projector at home and a giant screen so I can watch really big pictures at home. I do lose out on the beauty of film, but for all the money I'm saving, and I'm one of the many living paycheck to paycheck, there's not enough remorse to make me sacrifice any more financially. I don't have cable, so it's all through DVD rental. I wish that for all the moping that critics make about the mainstream audience abandoning theaters and watching little pictures, that more would encourage people to buy projectors and watch movies on the walls of their bedrooms. It's bomb. I know too, that I'm contributing to the every progressing modern isolation that began with the radio and was cemented by the television, but I can smoke and drink at my movie theater and did I mention that I can watch the big screen from my bed? Yeah. It's bomb.

Aight, I'll have much more to say about my netflix jones in the future. I'm bout to watch Dr. Who season 3 from my bed from a burned cd copy of a friends. All the good side of technology. May I be aware enough to combat the dark side.