Take me down to the Video City

Since my friends have recruited me into this faceless army of slanderous neophyte bloggers, I feel compelled to attempt to take over the entirety of the interwebs with a single vicious but profound statement. However, that probably won’t happen. Mostly because I have too many things to say, and unfortunately I have only one mouth with which to say them (or in this case I have one keyboard that, for reasons better left unsaid, has too many sticky buttons). But also because anything I say will most likely fall short of “profound”. Be that as it may, I think I’ll start by bitching about something that most people might bitch about people bitching about.

It seems that in civilization hell bent on instant gratification there would be very few things less “instant” and less “gratifying” than walking into a structure with various items of interest hanging from the walls, taking one or more of those items and walking out with said items on the implied contract that you will bring them back when you've had your way with them. I’m talking about video rental stores and how they're steadily going the way of the buffalo. For those of you who missed the better part of the eighties and nineties, think of these places as like libraries (no wait, bad example. Who goes to libraries anymore?). Think of these places as like Netflix but with real life objects made out of matter that exist outside of this relatively new digitized parallel reality.

It’s possible that I’m just some kind of strange throw back from an earlier time, like a living, breathing Otzi the Iceman. Only instead of an axe and bearskin cap, I’m rocking a Blockbuster card and some serious nostalgia. I get why video rental stores might not be optimal in every scenario. After all, you can only fit a finite amount of “things” into a finite amount of space. So, clearly the selection isn’t going to be as good as ordering whatever you want out of the infinite ether that is the Internet. But, never the less, waiting two to four days for something to show up in the mail seems like a ruinous business model that runs counter to a society that values instant gratification.

Unless there is a caveat.

Essentially, what this tells me is that people are saying, “hey, I want it. And I want it now. Unless I have to leave my house or interact with other human beings, in which case I will gladly take it later.”

Now, hopefully this little bit of social commentary does something more than just crudely mask the fact that I don’t like waiting for things to download or show up in the mail. But if it doesn’t, oh well, I’ll be cramming in a marathon session of James Bond movies so I can have them back at the store before I incur any late fees.