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Digital Slob
Curt Brandao
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Netflix picks underscore life’s emotions
Cell phones. Internet phones. Text messages. Instant messages. Voice mail. E-mail. In the Digital Age, it seems by the time we figure out how to communicate to our significant others, we're too brain dead to figure out what to say.
Still, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes, or even have an avatar dressed like him on a massive online multiplayer game, to see the writing on the relationship wall, even if it is in a digital format.
For example, my wife got us a Netflix account recently, adding our family to the more than 6 million households using the DVD-rental-by-mail service. Netflix boasts more than 75,000 titles and, over time, can serve as quite a vocabulary for self-expression.
I wondered if its online "rental history" page could provide an emotional time line when cross-referenced with day-to-day events. So I began to keep a weekly journal of my life with my wife, to see how it corresponded with her weekly DVD picks (this material is published with the expressed, written permission of my wife):
Feb. 18: We were busy this week. Either she was working on my day off, or vice versa, and the isolation made us quick to bicker. One night, angry that I "chose" to pay bills rather than give her attention, she mumbled something about what her ex-boyfriend might be up to these days, that Brad Pitt look-alike who always brought her roses. That was a low blow.
Netflix Queue: 1) "Fight Club," 2) "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," 3) "Troy."
Feb. 25: My wife is traveling solo to Europe in April on business, and was excited to tell my mother all the details. My 79-year-old mom asked her nicely to pay attention and not lose important documents like her passport, because she knows how my wife can be forgetful sometimes, like that time four years ago when she left her purse on the bus.
"Remember, you won't have Curt there to keep track of things for you," she said.
Netflix Queue: 1) "Monster-in-Law," 2) "Throw Momma from the Train," 3) "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
March 4: My wife and I stopped and watched children play at a park this week. I asked her if she'd given any more thought to when, or if, she wants to have kids. I thought we had a pleasant, civil, even-handed discussion of the topic, and we agreed to table the issue for now and keep an open mind.
Netflix Queue: 1) "The Omen," 2) "Children of the Corn," 3) "It's Alive!"
March 11: We went to my friend's birthday party this week, and I had maybe three or four more slices of pizza than usual per 24-hour period.
"Maybe you should go on a diet," she said the next day, with an emphasis on "maybe" that suggested it was the most charitable use of the word since the emergence of language itself.
"You said you wanted me to make more friends," I said. "More friends means more birthdays. More birthdays mean more pizza." I love my logic. It's so powerful. If only it burned more calories.
Netflix Queue: 1) "Super Size Me," 2) "Fast Food Nation," 3) "Pilates Workout for Dummies."