Time wasting on Krypton and other adventures

So last night I decided that I needed to find the NetFlix DVDs that got delivered here, oh, a couple of months ago, and had probably been buried under all the children's DVDs, GameCube game booklets, Happy Meal toys, empty VHS boxes and loose tapes scattered and stacked throughout the sunroom. (Which is actually more of a shade room. Or maybe even an Anaerobic Bacteria Production Facility, as the trees on the property have had 80 years to grow big and block 80 percent of the light, not to mention the obviously dire clutter situation.)

So then of course I couldn't find any of the NetFlix DVDs except the one I had already watched. So I spent about 45 minutes watching the out takes, bloopers, and extras on that one while mating tapes and DVDs with their respective boxes and putting them away.

Now here's the truly saddest aspect of what was clearly a pretty pathetic evening: the NetFlix DVD I was watching was Trading Spaces: Viewer's Choice! (2002).

I know, I know. How lame is that? Unbelievably lame. I know. I can't even remember why I put this puppy in my NetFlix queue. I must have been feeling all decorating-a-go-go or perhaps it was the nefarious influence of my favorite TV show, How Clean is Your House? or maybe it was the devil-may-care NetFlix vibe, where, since you're paying a flat fee no matter how many DVDs go back and forth in the mail, why not watch every fucking thing they have?

So anyway, four or five years after the original Trading Spaces shows were broadcast, I'm watching the out takes on such classics as the "Crying Pam" episode, where the woman goes into the other room and sobs because they covered up her fireplace with painted plywood.

Well, either you're a fan, and you're thinking "Yeah! The Crying Pam episode! God, I loved that one!" or you're clueless, which I pretty much was for a long time, and you're thinking "Why in the hell would anyone want to watch that?"

Let me raise the ante here: why in hell would anyone watch the OUT TAKES of these programs? Aren't the fully-edited, released versions of these programs mediocre enough? That's a rhetorical question, but I'll answer it; yes, they are. And no, perky Paige of the piece-y, messy, supposedly-casual-but-scarily-lacquered-into-place hair style is not nearly as cute as she thinks she is.

But while I was neatening up the Chamber of Gloom, I found two more NetFlix DVDs, and at least one of them is another Trading Spaces compilation from five years ago. And tonight I'll probably watch a couple of the episodes.

(Oh, and by the way--don't think I'm not aware of the irony that the owner of a blog called "The Opiate of the Masses" is basically so out of touch with television broadcasting that her main way of keeping up is watching five-year-old shows on DVD. Which she orders from NetFlix and then loses in the Tomb of the Ghost of Media Past otherwise known as "the sunroom.")

No--all that notwithstanding, you must envy me, for my time-wasting abilities are, at the absolute minimum, bionic. And I suspect that they may actually be superhuman.

--P.