NaBloMoPo-ver, Thank God
That's right, it's finally November 30, and unless some sadistic bastard adds another day to November (I'm looking at you, Julius Caesar...), National Blog Posting Month is mercifully over.
And it's about damn time. I made it, but the ole Dry Spot has truly run dry. My brain is a rocky place where ideas can find no purchase. But I had to finish, because I'm something of a completist.
I won't stop reading a book once I start it unless I lose it, no matter how bad it is. I'm the guy that renews it three times at the library and then xeroxes the last four chapters at work or checks it out as a book on tape because he's run out of renewals.
When I was a pre-teen, my mother gave me a Hardy Boys book. Curses! It was something like #37 of the series, "The Mystery of the Homoerotic Gym Coach" or somethinorother. Once I read that one, the obsessive/compulsive in me had to read them all even though I realized after about four or five that they were all the same damn story. Luckily, Franklin W. Dixon was already dead, so I figured I could get ahead of him. Then I found out that "Franklin W. Dixon" was actually a pen name for an entire syndicate of writers who were pumping out drivel like the proverbial million monkeys working on a million typewriters. Crap.
VCRs and TiVo have compounded the problem of my completism. Once I get hooked on a show, I must watch every episode even after I have stopped liking it. "Jumping the shark" does not drive me away. For some unknown reason, I felt compelled to tape every episode of "Seinfeld" and "Northern Exposure" when they were still in first runs. Probably because I was usually so baked when they were on, I thought I might want to rewind and find out what I was laughing so hard at. But I never watched any of the old tapes or even labeled which season or episodes where on the boxes of videotapes which still fill my basement. Had I known about the advent of TV on DVD, I could have saved myself a lot of grief and just paid a lot of money for the box sets which I wouldn't watch. Oh yeah, I did that too. (See "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Sex in the City," "CSI" etc. taking up room on our shelves waiting for me or RUABelle to remove the plastic wrap.)
TiVo understands me, though. It knows that I've never missed an episode of "The Real World," "Road Rules" or any of the various incarnations of "The Real World/Road Rules Competition/Inferno/Gauntlet/Duel," so it saves them for me. Many a night I hear a loud sigh emanating from RUABelle as she falls asleep listening to "This is the true story of seven stragers, picked to live in a house..."
The one good thing about this cold I've been battling is that it has let me catch up on my TiVo while I lay in bed, weak as a puppy. At my peak, I was up to 18 hours of "Mythbusters" clogging up the hard drive of my DVR. Now that I'm back to working full time, I've at least caught up to October. I figure I'm one sinus infection away from clearing the queue.
Here's hoping...
And it's about damn time. I made it, but the ole Dry Spot has truly run dry. My brain is a rocky place where ideas can find no purchase. But I had to finish, because I'm something of a completist.
I won't stop reading a book once I start it unless I lose it, no matter how bad it is. I'm the guy that renews it three times at the library and then xeroxes the last four chapters at work or checks it out as a book on tape because he's run out of renewals.
When I was a pre-teen, my mother gave me a Hardy Boys book. Curses! It was something like #37 of the series, "The Mystery of the Homoerotic Gym Coach" or somethinorother. Once I read that one, the obsessive/compulsive in me had to read them all even though I realized after about four or five that they were all the same damn story. Luckily, Franklin W. Dixon was already dead, so I figured I could get ahead of him. Then I found out that "Franklin W. Dixon" was actually a pen name for an entire syndicate of writers who were pumping out drivel like the proverbial million monkeys working on a million typewriters. Crap.
VCRs and TiVo have compounded the problem of my completism. Once I get hooked on a show, I must watch every episode even after I have stopped liking it. "Jumping the shark" does not drive me away. For some unknown reason, I felt compelled to tape every episode of "Seinfeld" and "Northern Exposure" when they were still in first runs. Probably because I was usually so baked when they were on, I thought I might want to rewind and find out what I was laughing so hard at. But I never watched any of the old tapes or even labeled which season or episodes where on the boxes of videotapes which still fill my basement. Had I known about the advent of TV on DVD, I could have saved myself a lot of grief and just paid a lot of money for the box sets which I wouldn't watch. Oh yeah, I did that too. (See "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Sex in the City," "CSI" etc. taking up room on our shelves waiting for me or RUABelle to remove the plastic wrap.)
TiVo understands me, though. It knows that I've never missed an episode of "The Real World," "Road Rules" or any of the various incarnations of "The Real World/Road Rules Competition/Inferno/Gauntlet/Duel," so it saves them for me. Many a night I hear a loud sigh emanating from RUABelle as she falls asleep listening to "This is the true story of seven stragers, picked to live in a house..."
The one good thing about this cold I've been battling is that it has let me catch up on my TiVo while I lay in bed, weak as a puppy. At my peak, I was up to 18 hours of "Mythbusters" clogging up the hard drive of my DVR. Now that I'm back to working full time, I've at least caught up to October. I figure I'm one sinus infection away from clearing the queue.
Here's hoping...
posted by ceeelcee at 9:17 AM
3 Comments:
I'm the same way about the completionist thing with books & TV. I can rarely stand to start watching a show if I haven't seen it from the beginning, there are a very rare few I have ended up becoming a fan of without.
I am all about renting and buying DVD series now, tho, it's awesome! I recently cut off my cable 'cos I just don't have time for TV, that had been money on a bill wasted for a while now, and had canceled HBO/Showtime about a year before that for the same reason.
So I did that, and upgraded my Netflix account instead, plus now most of the network stuff I still watch, I can often watch online at my leisure which I love. But with the Netflix upgrade, I am having an absolute blast getting full seasons of some of the HBO/Showtime series I like and catching up, and I just LOVE being able to watch a whole season in a weekend.
And old school Real World/etc watcher here too. Except I finally couldn't take it anymore starting a couple of years ago, I applaud you for being able to stick with it. I still watch a Challenge now and again tho. (And am a longtime reader of Dan Renzi and Melissa Howard's blogs...)
Hope you feel better soon!
I just broke my niece's heart about a month ago because I told her that Carolyn Keene was a pen name.
She's ten.
I shattered her heart and she had to process this information for a couple of days because I'm not quite sure she understood it.
I'm a bad aunt.
Are we related? Between your completionism and my obsession to watch everything in order, we could create a strain of OCD that therapy couldn't break through.
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