I had made a promise not to post negative things. This has only resulted in silence from my end. That says a lot about a lot. But in the words of the artist Bill Alexander “without the dark there can be no light”, so let’s slip into a dark room and watch some flickering light on the silver screen.

Or to put it less poetically, watching movies is a distraction from the bad things going on.

However, this is not about a specific movie but rather a collection of them. A collection that was eliminated in a big patch of life’s darkness known to me as The Great Disaster of 2024. Or when my entire collection burned up along with everything else I’ve ever owned.

They tell you that after such an event you must rebuild your life, although I’ve yet to figure out why this is so. Anyway, I dutifully went about trying to acquire some of the replaceable items that had been lost.

Such as the movies.

This has been hindered by a few uncontrollable factors, starting with my bad memory. Step One being to make a list of all the DVDs I had, so there’d be something to reference when searching for replacements. I’ve almost finished that, I think. Just when I believe it’s complete another neuron gets fired and another title gets added. The latest was yesterday, when something reminded me of something that reminded me of something else that resulted in “Fat Man and Little Boy” being added to the list.

“Sorry, Inigo; I didn’t mean to jog him so hard.”

Anyway, the list grew a little longer. It had been written down in random order as titles came to mind, and I did re-organize it in simple alphabetical order so it would be easy to reference when I came upon a question as to whether or not some work of cinematic art had already been included.

In case you’re wondering, it’s over 70 titles. Not including the TV series listings which are separate, nor the films I had managed to find. That’s a lot of films, and at today’s prices …

Ah, there we have the second problem: inflation. Currently running between 3 and 300,000 percent in Canada, depending on what you’re looking to buy. Most of the DVDs I had before were purchased for around $10. Some were less, some were more. Whereas when you go hunting for film these days the price generally is around double to triple that amount.

In the words of the late, great economist Lester Thurow: “Inflation is self-correcting, given an educated consumer.” In other words, if people won’t pay stupid prices other people can’t charge stupid prices. (I may have over-simplified that.) Another way of explaining it is that I have a limited budget due to living on a fixed retirement income and needing to concentrate financial resources on more essential goods like food rather than entertainment.

Also, I’m a cheapskate.

Nevertheless I have managed to acquire some of the DVDs I’ve been looking for. But there’s still over 70 left to go. According to some rough and inaccurate calculations, this means I must have about 30-40 in the cupboard now. Let me check.

Forty-two. That seems appropriate, and means I’m doing better than I thought.

Obviously given these constraints I am prioritizing certain titles over others, because there are some I’m more fond of for whatever reason. This can include how entertaining they are, how visually spectacular they are, or just because they have a certain personal significance (like the first movie I ever saw at a drive-in, which manages to fulfil all the categories. You can guess what it is. I have yet to get it replaced.)

The worst example of the inflation issue is a certain sci-fi miniseries which I’m sure I had purchased for under $20 and now can only be found (so far) for $100 more than that.

By the way, Yangtze.com isn’t much help anymore as they seem to have set their sites on selling you single views of programming rather than a physical disc you can watch as much as you like. More profit for them, see?

Did I mention there were three problems with rebuilding the collection? I may have; can’t remember so many paragraphs ago.

The third difficulty is a big one: you can’t get it at any price. Admittedly some of the titles I had in my collection were difficult to obtain even however-many years ago I did, but that “unavailable” description has expanded considerably since then. I expect the main driving force of this is an assumed “lack of interest” in the title, making it not worthwhile to stamp out a few more copies. Another factor is probably an attempt to promote dreadful remakes over the originally successful films. In some cases a single copy of the first version costs more than if you buy it with the ‘updated’ release, meaning they are essentially paying you to haul away a copy of the remake because they know it’s that bad.

Before anyone suggests I can find these lost treasures on fleaBay, let me just point out that I (along with many others) was banned from that disreputable site for no stated reason and they won’t discuss it. Since I couldn’t afford a lawyer for the much-needed class-action lawsuit which they so richly deserve, I just don’t bother with them. If a web site is going to be crap, I’m going to be elsewhere: I don’t need to give idiots my money.

Now I’m not sure if this post is light or dark or some mixture of the two. Perhaps it is 18% reflective grey. Perhaps it is just somewhat cathartic for me. If it’s bothersome for you, sorry. It’s only meant to be a temporary distraction. (I’m not even going to re-read it before posting to correct the numerous mistakes and wavering train of thought.)

Look to find a reason.

Saturday is Valentine’s Day.

Monday is Family Day here in BC.

Tell that to the people in Tumbler Ridge.

See if they care about holidays anymore.

Shortest day of the year.

Seven hours, forty-eight minutes, and fourteen seconds of possible daylight. Mainly cloudy, so we won’t see much of it even if there weren’t mountains on both sides.

Okay; let’s get it over with.

About six inches of cold and fluffy. Not exactly a good thing. Still a little shy on those.

Naturally this means I spent Saturday shovelling. That wasn’t fun either. Half hour of shovelling, an hour of rest. Fifteen minutes of shovelling, an hour and a half of rest. Et cetera. Pretty much used up the day.

It warmed up above freezing, so what’s left has been melting. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain, and then … go below freezing again. That means ice everywhere.

Oh, also the area has been cut off from the Lower Mainland due to flooding and avalanches.

Sheesh. Not much good to be found around here lately.

Yep: try to be positive and see what it gets you.

Stopped myself from writing something negative today.

Actually I wrote it, hoping it would be therapeutic, but didn’t post it publicly.

Trying to stay positive, but it’s not easy.

I have not been posting much because … well no one wants to read bad things and it seems that’s all we have in the world today, no matter where you look.

On the other hand, this post might be considered bad for that reason alone.

Or maybe for this one:

15 cm (6 inches) of heavy, wet snow fell Monday-Tuesday. I’m not a fan of snow. I’m especially not a fan of having to clear it with a shovel. It’ll get done. Eventually.

All things considered, it would be a good time to start winter hibernation. Whether you’re a bear or not. I think I’ll try to stay inside until at least next year, if not longer. We know that won’t happen, but it could be worth the effort.

Maybe humans just haven’t tried this hibernation thing hard enough.

Yet.

(Phone pic so of course it sucks.)

Unexpected 2″ of it. Most melted by sundown, the rest turned to water on Sunday.

This week none is expected. The week after however … Highs below freezing. After that, the snow might stay.