Challenge: get those dangling-in-perpetuity little work projects done tonight!

Strategy: rent numerous videos* at Blockbuster, load them in and sit in the kitchen, half listening, simul-working.

Stage One: Go to Blockbuster, look for interesting videos. Find none. DVDs? Sure, but I may as well put the video player up for sale on ebay, because there are now only two videos for every thousand DVDs available for rent.

Stage Two: Play the video with the greatest potential: the Terminal. No! It’s all about the US government being mean to a poor traveler whose country (sounding, in accent, awfully like someplace in Eastern Europe) suddenly disintegrates while the traveler is in flight to the US. When I get to the point where he is eating saltines with mustard and ketchup for the second time in a row at the airport, I turn it off. Certainly no officials in the Office of Homeland Security would let a man under virtual house arrest subsist on saltines. Would they?

Stage Three: Play video that I have now watched maybe 865 times. Embarrassment prevents me from posting the title, it is THAT low brow. This is more like it! I can tune out (you don’t have to be a frequent viewer like me to move in and out of this story and still know exactly where the next scene is heading), or I can tune in. Abstract of paper is completed to the tune of La Vie on Rose as the precious Meg Ryan frolics in the vineyard of Southern France [yeah!].

Stage Four: Look at title of third movie and decide that it may well be even more low brow than the one about Meg Ryan in the vineyards. The title alone gives me pause: Ladykillers. Why would have I rented a movie called Ladykillers? After an afternoon with Sartre, she settled down for an evening with the Ladykillers. Beyond weird. But let me remind you: there are no videos out there anymore. It was either that or the Catwoman, for which Halle Berry got an award for the worst performance ever in a leading role. Of course I am going to pick the Ladykillers.

Stage Four, however, is interrupted as I receive phone call from Very Gloomy Person. That takes the spunk out the evening. Forget the Ladykillers for now. Out comes the blog, time to post. Will return to dangling-in-perpetuity projects next week-end.

* I did not rent DVDs because there is no DVD player anywhere near the kitchen. Question to mull over: why not move downstairs to where the DVD player resides, with stack of excellent DVDs instead of watching trashy videos in the kitchen? Answer: it didn't fit my image of how this evening should look.