DVR Addiction

For months K. bugged me to get DVR for our television. The most common complaint was that her favorite shows aired at either 9 or 10 pm EST, causing her to lose precious hours of sleep each week.

So while I was at the Lesley residency, we made an appointment to have DVR installed. Instantly I became addicted to it, of course, and this has only worsened since.

As of yesterday, the DVR was 52% full, with all of the programming being mine, and the majority of it being either History channel specials or movies that I have never seen but suspected I should see.

Take Contact for instance. Why have I never seen this movie? I couldn't tell you, but with the assistance of DVR I watched it in less than 45 minutes--skipping over the trite parts, commercials, etc. And what an amazing movie it is too--visually stunning in parts and amazingly suggestive and exploratory. Jarhead, too, I thought was an incredibly moving film. Having read the memoir, I thought the movie sorely lacked in the hilarity and cleverness presented by the deadpan and dry underlying humor of the book, but I did feel like the movie was much more suspenseful than the book. I thought several of the scenes were extremely moving too. It is amazing to think that there can be such carnage and such ennui simultaneously. A "jarhead" really does need to have an "all or nothing" mentality to survive.

I wonder if other people have these same DVR addictions. I know a few friends who experience DVR anxiety when it either becomes too full and their DVR begins deleting programming, or when they don't have enough time to watch their scheduled programming. I think I'm beginning to feel this way about the DVR, but it is also proving to be a great catalyst.

While emptying the DVR of programming yesterday and today, I've managed to cut out nearly 55 hours of programming in only a few measly hours and I've managed to get material for at least 6-10 new poems and have written three (drafts) during this time.

Tomorrow K. and I are off for a surprise 'party' for a friend of ours, which I will blog more about during an appropriate time as they might be a regular reader here and I don't want to give anything away. I also may be taking a pilot test tomorrow morning for the MTELs (see previous post about the MTEL tests...), which is basically a quick test that I take and then rate on a questionnaire. It should take around 1 1/2 hours to take and rate the test and the 'reward' for doing it is a $30 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble--well worth it in my opinion.

Blogging again soon.