As I've mentioned a few times now, I feel like my blogging here is really falling off. My D&D game is still going, but I have been a huge slacker about typing up session recaps or anything. On the running front, I need to change my blog name to "not running with dice", because I'm not running. Its, well, just too damn cold. Like I do every year, I stop running when it gets cold, even though every year, I swear I'll do better.
But here's what I'm really up to: Obsessing about a computer game. Surprised? You shouldn't be.
Its called "Chaos Gate", its a turn based tactical combat game set in the Warhammer 40k universe. It was released in 1998 (!!!!), and I played the hell out of it and loved it. It was a little crashy even back then, and once I moved from Windows 98 to Windows XP, I never was able to get it really running. All crash and no play. Every year or two I would pull it out and install it, and try for an hour or three to get it to run, and then put it back in its place amongst the other computer games. Well, I decided to pull it out again, and even found some info on some people who had gotten it to work under XP. Woo! Only now I can't find it. Apparently its gone to the same place as my copy of Fallout Tactics- Brotherhood of Steel went. Which is to say that I have no idea where the hell it is. I'm naturally a little bit obsessive, and something like this kicks my obsessive gene right in the balls. I went home for lunch today and tore apart the "computer closet" looking for it. I checked all of the cd cases and everything. Nothing. We purged some of the crap games that I had, and a bunch of empty jewel cases, and I hope that it did not accidentally get thrown out with those. It also could simply be stuck in a drawer somewhere. I mean, my house is not *that* big, but there's tons of out-of-the-way places that it could be. So, meanwhile, I'm downloading the torrent of it. But still, I'm mighty melancholy about not being able to find it. Remember that I'm a huge game nerd. I still have the blue 3.5 inch floppy disk for Civilization on the Amiga (!!!).
Speaking of collecting things, let's talk about my relationship with DVDs for just a moment. Krissi and I have a large-ish collection of DVDs. I have no doubt that there are collections that dwarf ours, but we have a goodly many of them. See, we (I, really, I think that Krissi is probably just my accomplice) like to buy DVDs. Because we like to collect them really. Its not that we don't watch them, because we do, we just don't watch them alot. Like - to be brutally honest, we probably only pop a DVD into the player and watch it like... maybe twice a month, and that's being kindof generous. And yet, I can sit here and think of half a dozen DVDs right off the top of my head that I'd buy if I could. And if you let me think about it longer, I'm sure I could come up with a few dozen. Because they're movies I like, and they're movies that I think that I'd like to own. Because I want to put them on my DVD rack and go, "See? Look at this movie I've got here!" And I'll do the same thing I do at least once every other weekend, and I'll say, "Hey you guys, let's watch one of these great movies that we've got!", and I'll always return to the same set, I'll say, "Let's watch Fight Club, or Seven, or Usual Suspects, or Memento, or Fargo!", or I'll get desperate, and suggest that we pop in Anchorman or SuperTroopers. And in the end, we'll watch The Soup, and flip through some channels, and the weekend will pass, and 99.99% of the DVDs on my shelf will continue to sit, untouched and unloved. Because the more movies I end up buying, the less likely I am to watch any one of them again. I'm not certain of my math, but it feels right. I think we may have a movie or two on the shelves that still are in plastic, because we bought them, eagerly brought them to their new home, pulled them out of the bag, held them aloft in glee, and stuck them in the DVD rack to gather dust with their peers.
What does any of this mean? I don't know either. But I think that I'm going to make an effort to not buy DVDs just because I liked them, anymore. Finances and economy aside, I just don't need to own them as much as I think that I do. Weird, huh?
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1 comment:
No, you must own those DVDs its a moral imperative, life or death matter. I'm serious here. You cannot live without them....
Speaking of which, you seriously don't have anything to worry about. Think about it this way while you may not watch those movies every weekend, the majority of them you have or will have watched multiple times over the course of their lifetime. Considering how much it costs to rent a movie or worse yet go see it in the theaters, watching them only 2 or 3 times would pay for the cost of each of them. Hell, going to see one movie once with your wife is about equal to the price of buying a dvd!
I struggle (on rare occaisions) with the size of my own dvd collect which dwarfs your own, but in general I am pleased with collecting dvds. They may get a little dusty sometimes, but when you are able to pull out the right movie at just the right time, it makes it oh so worth it.
However...your situation is quite a ways different than my own. And I wholely support the decision to fight off such consumerism in lieu of more sensible purchases for the family you are building
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