August 06, 2007
Love in the time of TechnologyHumor
As a sequel to my “Love in the Time of Terrorism” post I wanted to offer up this new one based upon a Wall Street Journal article published today titled, “‘Til Tech Do Us Part.” Although it does not specifically cite any South Asian peeps in the article, I am sure you can all agree that it is quite relevant to a great many of us (and probably tech-savvy SM readers more so than most). Here is the oh-so-juicy synopsis of the article:
Joint bank account? Check. Merging the MP3 collection? Hold on a minute. Couples are struggling with just how much to combine the digital aspects of their lives. Why spouses are bickering over shared email accounts and his-and-hers blogs. [Link]
It’s true, it’s sooo true. This is why our parents generation just cannot understand why we sometimes (well some of us) wait so long to get married. It is no longer a question of simply making sure that your prospective wife comes from a good family and that at least one of her siblings is a doctor if she failed to become one herself. No. There is the MP3 collection-compatibility-issue that is a constant cloud which hangs over many of our serial dating lives. God forbid she leaves behind an Ipod in my car and I accidentally play Akon or Fergie when there are people around who might judge me. “I listen to Kings of Leon. I swear.” What if she bookmarks the NYPost whereas I bookmark the NYTimes? Does she pay attention to RottenTomatoes.com like I do or does she just go to the movies and blindly hope for the best like some crazy free spirit? Getting to know someone and fall in love just takes a lot more research these days.
To stay on pace during his five-mile jogging workouts, Olav Junttila keeps his iPod stocked with fast, thumping electronic music. But an unwelcome sound has been intruding on his daily runs: Britney Spears singing her bubble-gum hit “Oops, I Did It Again.”
The culprit is Mr. Junttila’s wife, Katie. Her musical taste differs, but instead of setting up a separate music library in iTunes, she mixes her Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake purchases in with his picks. “I’m going, ‘Where’d this song come from? I don’t even like this song,’ ” says Mr. Junttila, a 34-year-old New York investment banker. [Link]
Then, of course, the article moves on to an issue even more troubling than music and one that I lie awake at nights stressing about. Yep. Blogs.
The growth of blogging is responsible for many marital flare-ups. James Griffioen and his wife, Sara Woodward, decided to start a blog together after they had their first child. They were inspired by other couples who were blogging about their newborns.
They agreed to give each other veto power over posts, which he exercised when she wanted to shout out into the blogosphere about his failure to do the dishes. “That’s a real sensitive issue,” says Mr. Griffioen, 30, who cares for the couple’s 2-year-old daughter at their home in Detroit. Readers of the site, sweetjuniper.blogspot.com, would have blown it out of proportion, he says: “They’re going to turn it into this whole thing of how I don’t keep up my end of the relationship…” [Link]
Sweet Jezzus. Abhi’s first rule of Blog Club is: NEVER mix blogging with pleasure (unless you have a weak will and it just happens). You would be freaking nuts to blog with your husband/wife.
“Honey, what did you think of my post on our blog? It was the bomb, right?”
“Ummmm.”
I wonder, just how common is this sort of digital angst among our readers? Here are some anecdotes. I know that SM contributing writer Cicatrix and Mr. Cicatrix have left comments on the same thread using different computers in different rooms at the same time. I also know that on a couple of occasions a commenter has emailed us because we banned their significant other/roomate who they share a computer with and they wanted us to lift the ban so as not to punish the innocent one (who still wanted to comment) too.
The bottom line is that I think it is okay to take your time and really understand if your blogs and your mp3 collections (we didn’t even talk about TiVO) are compatible before committing. Forever.
Note: For those interested there is a podcast of this story at WSJ.
abhi on August 6, 2007 05:37 PM in Humor, Science and Technology · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Oh Abhi! you are so good at highlighting problems of our lives.
Awww shucks. I just try to provide a voice to the voiceless. ;)
Any person knows that you can decide which songs and playlists you want to synch manually and not automatically. The mixing of his and her songs on his iPod is either laziness or not being tech-saavy enough to figure that out.
But I do think it's true that managing the digital music library could be a little tricky since more than likely spouses are going to have differing music tastes. I doubt my hypothetical husband will have the same guilty pleasure of Bollywood Pop that I do:P
As far as blogging, why would you want to put your marriage out there for other people to dissect? I agree with that guy not wanting to have his not washing the dishes all over the net. Frankly a blog about someone else's newborn seems as interesting as being forced to watch the Mahbarat TV serial everyday for your 1990 summer break.
Are you single? I like bad girls.
Never mind. ;)
What happens when they support different teams? Mets, Yankees?? Utd, City? Toon, Black Cats?
Would someone just think of the children!!
what about the homepage for their internet browser
come to think of it, what if one prefers IE over Firefox.. *oh the horror*
I am all for joint bank accounts and sharing money. Music collection and the link to my blog... NOT
I've read your blog Gulti girl. You have nothing to fear :)
I don't know any married couples with a joint email account - that is just taking togetherness too far!
I highly doubt when I get married I will have a joint account with my husband, unless it is one just set up for bills etc.
Mr. Ahbi, you are being quite snarky today ;)
Could it be because there is no Mrs. Abhi linking to your blog?
When Abhi comes home from work early because he is sick he becomes snarky. I licked an ice sculpture at a wedding this weekend which in hindsight was really stupid.
Joint bank account, email, blog, playlist? No. Naheen. Nein. Nyet.
“I licked an ice sculpture at a wedding this weekend which in hindsight was really stupid”.
What was the sculpture?
i can't wait to see what YoDad has to say
A peacock.
Computer related ED is primary cause for increase in divorce rate in Bangalore.
But Mr. Abhi, you couldn't have gotten sick from licking an ice sculpture (though it does sound like a crazy wedding if you were doing that).
It must have been from making out with the bride's father's cousins's daughter at the receiption ;)
Sorry, that's my last comment off-topic.
Seeing as I'm single, I can't really know what I'll do to meld my life togher with my hypothetical husband's. But of all my married friends, they each have their own email accounts, iPods and seeing as none of them blog that isn't an issue. I do recall some arguments over what gets deleted on the TiVo, so that seems valid.
I just think with people waiting to get longer to get married, everyone already has their own stuff, so it isn't really an issue per se.
Forgot to include quote from article
"Viewing the computer for long hours has proven to cause impotency," she adds. She also says the commission is planning to visit the IT companies and take stock of the situation.
Re: 5
Injuries "happen". I know of at least one Bengali couple (she was a fan of Argentina, he of Brazil) where watching the live telecast of a football (soccer) match led to his visiting the ER (she had a frying-pan, he ended up with a bandaged head).
“A peacock”
ok…..well…. as long as you learned sir. ;)
Bengali couple?? That much passion about Brazil and Argentina?
aah yes this is a toughy. I can understand sharing joint accounts provided you have your own account as well, share the ipod but not folders, share blog - uh..no please don't share blogs unless you get along famously all the time, everyday, everyhour of your lives.
I think sharing online personas (music, photographs, books, travel journals, etc.) to find your partner is a neat idea - is there an online dating site that does that? But in the end nothing beats a personal connection...ofcourse.
Another awesome post. :D My personal issue - when the boy comes over and uses my computer. As awesome as he is, I still feel silly when he uses my browser and laughs at the smattering of completely random blogs I follow (SM not included!), or browses through my mp3 collection which includes (shudder) Britney Spears and ABBA from before middle school (along with better stuff...I swear). It's always a good laugh though.
I would have *loved* to hear the explanation they gave to the ER personnel about the injury. Does it count as soccer violence? Come to think of it, why was this not on local news or on Dave Barry's blog?
I can put up with different musical tastes if I am not forced to go along with it. For this to work, you need to have a non clingy partner who can indulge in his or her tastes with friends. And I refuse to subject myself to a movie directed by Nora Ephron or Nancy Myers. It is more painful than watching a Bollywood movie with Shah Rukh Khan.
I think being married to a vegan would be pretty tough for me unless she is great in every other aspect and has no problem with my carnivorous preferences. BUt it would make eating out tough. I would have to be really smitten with her to get over that.
I do not understand how Carville and Matalin stay married. It's one thing to root for different parties. But the stuff they have to say on a daily basis about how wretched the other side is makes the mind boggle how they can respect each other the next day.
Interreligious must be tough too if at least one of the parties is very serious about his or her religion. I am agnostic Hindu. So I would need to meet someone secular(I rarely have the chance to meet a hindu who is unmarried and not related to me).
Re: 23
Probably because it occurred in Bangladesh (I read it in a Bangladeshi daily) several years ago. Oddly enough, despite the fact that the Bangladeshi national football (soccer) team sucks, Bangladeshis are mad about the beautiful game -- to the point that every four years, when the World Cup rolls around, students go on strike to postpone their exams so that they can stay up late to watch the live telecasts. And executives and workers of power plants get preemptive threats about what might happen to them if a power outage occurs during a telecast.
Pravin - where do you live for this to be the case? Just curious :-)
Dear Blog,
The
old haglong-suffering woman that I am married to has beenpesteringasking me in herclingy emotionalendearing way for joint access onmyour blog. Seeing as I am at the end of mypatienceabstinence, I have decided to give this to her so I can get some change fromher incessant squealinghow lonely my blog feels.Sincerely,
Pingpong and Mrs Pong
Ahhhh...the digital compactibility in the age of DRM,Blue-ray, HD-DVD,etc. I always had "great concern" about my digital compatibility - mp3s, podcasts, feedreader, blog, digital camera, PS2/ Xbox games including the dreaded question "Which Operating System do you use?".
Windows - boring; go away
MAC - nice! wanna iDate?
Is that a Ubuntu/Linux distro on your laptop? :) exec marriage -t now
My friend, Eric, recently got married. He is a linux loving geek, admin, gamer, pro virtual-life and online-life. His wife is a MAC OS loving artist, creating and collecting virtual arts and photography. To bring in some sanity in their digital life, they now have:
1. Windows media server to share their music/movie files
2. Apple Mac Book Pro for her work and media
3. Ubuntu for his servers and media
4. Backup server to keep everything safe!
5. Xbox/PS2 for him and Wii for her
6. Netflix for him / DVD collection for her
7. Separate ipods - No sharing - his Linkin park cannot co-exist with her Gwen Steff
8. Separate blogs - her content is too good and she doesn't want to disgrace her visitors by showing his blog
9. GBs and GBs of Tivo dump because their Tivo favs are not remotely similar
10. Online TODO lists for both
11. Online financial tracking for individual and shared accounts
12. Synching their friends list on facebook , linkedin
13. Synching their two cellphones to their Car's bluetooth system
He spent last 3 months setting up all these and he is not yet done. Oh, he also spent thousdands of dollars. What a nightmare! He might be asking himself "Why did I fall in love with this woman?"
Mutineers, don't underestimate the power of digital compactibility.
Sorry...please kill me for my typo...what did I smoke? "compactibility"....kill me...
thats why you need Firefox; it has a nifty little feature that starts putting re squigglies under mis-spelt names..I know I know geeky
I mean mis-spelt words.. :D
Gosh!
Re Babu@28 and your totally breathtaking list,
Is it necessary to link stuff in the first place? I mean, what's wrong with leaving all Ipods and video game consoles and computers separate, then just using the other person's stuff when they need to listen to or play or run something? Do they also try to share all the food they order at restaurants? What is going on here: is it acceptance or celebration or denial of differences?
I collect vinyl so its all good.
Re: Babu @ 28
It seems like your friends would never have time to meet physically in person because they both are "virtually" too busy with all their gadgets, game-playing, blogging, music-listening, TiVoing and NetFlixing.
Do they have virtual sex too?
Ok, that was just snarky I know, but the list was begging for that question!
Abhi:
Beware spaceman, while you're sitting at top of the technology food chain the occupational hazards amplify dude.
I wonder what they bickered about, maybe who got to spend more hours in a simulator, or practice time with a robotic arm? Novak must realized the other lady was sharing her, um, tech toys more generously with Mr. Oefelein...
B.I.G., Atlanta.
My social circle does not include Indians. I do meet a lot of them frequently, they just happen to be family or friends of the family.
I think my participation here is my biggest interaction with other Indians.
I think it would be hard to be with someone whose musical taste I HATED, though. I'm someone who listens to music constantly (at work, while I cook, while I clean, at the gym, sometimes to go to sleep), so that would kind of make it difficult. Even with headphones :(
I don't understand this need to meld everything together, though. Why on earth would I want a joint email account or joint blog? Puh-lease!
I believe in the following maxims wrt to relationships - opposites attract, friction is fun...too much smooth sailing is boring.
Oh not to mention I enjoy "kichdi".. so Abhi's concerns doesn't worry me too much.
I know, tell me about it.
Some of the stories in WSJ article are just old fashioned insecurities wrapped in new wrapper.
Camille,
As someone who mainlines music all the time, let me say this. Music is important and overrated at the same time. My wife hates majority of my collection. No big deal.
I am w/ you on rest of the stuff though.
" Why on earth would I want a joint email account..."
Sadly Camille, I have had 4 friends (men + women) who have busted their spouses for cheating with these. So sad, but so true. Emails started off at work, but then laziness set in, allowing the cheaters to be caught...and divorced. Not sure if I would want shared accounts either, but after seeing what my friends have gone through, Pavlovian conditioning might set in fear of not knowing.
But Saira, how does that prevent the person from having their own email account? I know that folks break up over these sorts of things all the time, but I the trade-off doesn't seem worth it to me. Doesn't a joint email, under those circumstances, imply that you don't trust your partner?
Shodan, thanks. I should have rephrased -- I'm more worried about someone hating MY taste in music, but who knows, maybe it's not important after all :)
i found this article rather amusing when i read it. when i brought it up with my dad, he said 'they're all bloody fools, kanna - couples fighting over the internet. btw, what are these blogs?' i'm glad to see SM appropriated a desi angle to it :)
Ipod-mania is something I can never understand - coz I am tone deaf and have never owned a music system or a tape / cd.
Any other tone deaf mutineers who have zero interest in music?
To prevent wild distortion.
You know what my pet peeve is? When my SO's bittorrent download bandwidth sucks up almost all of my ISP's downstream bandwidth, and causes high TCP packet losses on my itunes purchases, while causing bursty silences on my VoIP calls using skype? It forces me to put in priority rules in my iptables and mark peer-to-peer packets so they get shovelled into a less than fair share queue so that my latency sensitive traffic is not affected. I know all of you are nodding with me so far in full agreement, and saying, "I've been there."
Also, what if you use MSN messenger and she uses gtalk? Or you use Verizon and she uses Cingular, and you can't talk for free except on weekends and nights?
Camille, sorry I wasn't clear. Joint accounts didn't prevent them from having their own accounts. They did, and then they were discovered with the quick closing of thw windows, etc. In other words, the cheaters were caught with their correspondence in their own accounts, i.e by leaving the email account open, the MSN chat window open, trails through history, etc. My though was having a joint account implied I trust you enough to share my emails. I once shared an account with an ex, and once when he opened an email, he didn't expect it to be from a fling he had at an Indian conference, with the gal encouraging him to break up with me, and pursue someone with a similar background. I wouldn't have found out about the fling, unless I hadn't been sitting in his lap reading the very same email alongside him.
I'm just wondering if having a joint account keeps the comm. open between couples, or leads to such illicit discoveries. I wouldn't want one, as it's just as tacky as wearing his/hers sweaters over Christmas dinner, but then again, does having one mean we can share everything?
Dear Agony Aunt Abby,
When you break up, how do you split your itunes library? At least with books, you can put your names in so you know whose is whose. 'Cause someday, believe it or not, you'll go 15 rounds over who's gonna get this Toby Keith single. This stupid, wagon wheel, Roy Rogers, 99 cent RED, WHITE AND BLUE.
I don't want to reveal too many details of my modus operandi, but I have found that nothing fortifies trust better than installing a spyware keystroke logger. It is much more reliable and far less time consuming than building an actual emotional bond.
Ha Rahul! That's exactly how one of my friends got busted. Said he didn't keep a separate account, but cheap software proved otherwise.
Rahul, you are cracking me up!:-D
Also, I thought joint bank accounts were, like, a totally common married couple thing. Is this not the case?
I have seen so many people cheat that it is not even a big concern of mine as long as it is out of sight out of mind and no kids or diseases are brought into the relationship from outside. I am not the jealous type as long as it does not involve someone i know, lives in the same zip code and is kept so discretely that I would have to hire a PI to find out. Now if she is flaunting it in front of my friends or relatives or colleagues, sure i will get pissed and she will have to go. I think marriage has enough complications without one digging for secrets. I am not that concerned. If everything else is near perfect in the marriage and she or I occasionally get some on a trip far away, I see it as preferable to so many other marriages where couples put up wth a lot more shit. In the absense of a storybook marriage, I see serial monogomy as no ideal. Being in your 30s does that to some of our outlooks. I just want to live and let live. Make the most of the rest of my life.
So, Pravin, you have NO problem with your wife or girlfriend cheating outside of your relationship? My examples from the above mentioned all included married couples. After the break up, most men echoed your thoughts, not surprisingly. But, why would it matter if it is ok with someone you knew? What difference would that make?
technology has escalated attraction to repulsion and diversion.
Oh GOSH, Abhi. Given your love of blogging I have a feeling you could end up like one of those parents blogging about their newborns. "Today the baby pooped at 7:30am and cried for 1 hour straight...but it's all good because I played NPR to put her back to sleep."
As for blindly going to the moves without doing research and hoping for the best? That's just madness, I tell you :-)
You all do realize that the solipsism and cloistering produced by the iPod is a harbinger of the end of society, right?
Pravin, Anais Nin called and wants her husband back.
You are wrong about poop but so right about the NPR.
Abhi wrote:
Ah Abhi, that's coz I am not married, yet. If I ever get married, I'll anonymously rant about my husband and go home to be all zen and peaceful with him. The marriage will work, no? Technology will actually help my marriage not ruin it. :)
Ahhh... Abhi. a post even the admins can appreciate. hehehehehe.
SFGirl @ 30
I know....stupid Feedemon guys have not yet integrated firefox in their reader. I'm using dumb IE with no spell check. Did I just loose "cool" points because I use IE-enabled reader? man :(
pingpong @ 32
Of course, Yes....what is the use of having disconnected gadgets? You get the best entertainment by hooking 52" HDTV, with surround sound, to Xbox/PS2/Wii, stream audio/video into it from Windows Media server/Mac Pro/Ubuntu and Tivo....oh, you can stream all your video downloads via Windows Media server to the bigass TV too....
they are totally in sync with each other inspite of all their digital divide..
BadIndianGirl @ 34
No..they do all that together : game-playing, blogging, music-listening, TiVoing and NetFlixing. I know ....they are made for each other
hmmm...I'll ask him and get back to you ;)
Rahul, she didnt know how to be discrete. Wouldn't work. Heh.
Well, Edwina Mountbatten had left a message too.
Pravin, that's a little depressing. Or maybe I am too confined in my conceptualization of "serial monogamy" :)
Rahul, do you ever sleep!?
Better yet, install (secret) surveillance cameras at home and tap all the phones. I find employing a stenographer can also be helpful for transcript-production of aforementioned phone-tapping. t, I thought this was common also? But I've also heard that folks pool joint accounts and keep separate ones, as well. Babu, this doesn't make you "uncool," it just makes me sad for you :(I have found that, thanks to the newfangled intarnets, I can outsource this function to some people in Bangalore. They do it better than we in America can, and for less, thereby providing the most cost-efficient solution for my 24/7 coverage of SM.
Abhi: I hope you are joking. Why in the world anybody would lick an ice sculpture? A peacock? - for God's sake!! Even in hot India they would not do this. Now if it was a mermaid or a nymph - well that is another thing. Seriously, get a room, get a girl: good, bad, ugly, tall, short, skinny, healthy, white, black, brown, and so on and on. Tell you what? On second thought........Nah. I won't tell your Mom what you may have done. May be I will send her a text message - or e-mail her detailing your adventures last weekend. You figure out what needs to be done here young man - Houston we have a problem.
Manju: Boo !
but how fast can they provide youtube links
This fast.
Camille, we Computer folks already have a fancy theory/concept for it. Or is it this? ;) :)
I think Pravin thinks like the French when it comes to marriage and dalliances, and I can appreciate that. It hasn't caught on yet in America.
My wife and I have so many digital differences we just decided to buy separate laptops.
- She uses IE because she "doesn't trust the guys who built Firefox" (open source = rogue hackers and other evil nerds)
- Her wallpaper is a picture of her baby nephew (social suicide for me, not to mention the time when my parents were in town...)
- She insists on keeping the security settings on High Alert, which means annoying popups *every time* I connect to a new site
- The MMOG she is addicted to gives random "clues" any time of the day, complete with a loud ringer in case you miss the bright red popup that covers half the screen
Of course I am guilty too, with my obsessive sports-page refreshes and numerous in-your-face RSS alerts.
PS: I wonder if there is a way to partition the home bandwidth exactly 50-50, because I suspect she is using far more than her fair share for video downloads.
on another note, i didn't realise there was such discrimination against IE users (ok, maybe i did, but it came from a 70-year old professor, so i didn't take it seriously). but now you tell me there is spell check on mozilla? and here i was just impressed with rahul's failure to make typos. see how easy it is to fool girls into thinking you're attractive on the internet?
Not on Linux. I cannot believe your floccinaucinihilipilification.
Piece of cake, woman. Piece. Of. Cake. Which reminds me, I need to wash off all the icing stuck to my face from all the cake I've been stuffing myself with all night, and wipe the crumbs off my belly.
Please refer to myriad other comments citing the appropriate New Yorker cartoon that I am dog-tired of linking here.
Amit, I am not so clever. I was thinking as basic as this, but perhaps I am confined by my bit capacity?
Saira, I have no hard and fast rules for this kind of thing. It has not happened to me. So this is all strictly hypothetical on how I would behave. Like I said, I would have a problem if I knew about it. But it would not be a deal breaker as far as the marriage is concerned as long as certain things are met and the rest of the marriage is going great. First of all, we are jealous creatures which explains the conditions I specified where I may be OK with it. But I am a realist too. So a compromise would be something where I won't go digging in her business and we try not to seek out new people. I am not a swinger type though I will not judge swingers. I do have my limits. If I am with some lady, and she is flirting with some other guy too much in front of me, I will definitely not like it. And I wouldn't do the same for anyone I am with.
Trust a desi blog to devolve into tech support. Most routers support this, probably by MAC address/port combination. Show your wife her place in the patriarchy by keeping her bandwidth share lower than yours.
I protest. Your messages on many threads here prove otherwise. :)
Get webcams, you two!
"Her wallpaper is a picture of her baby nephew (social suicide for me, not to mention the time when my parents were in town..."
LOL wow that's exactly how my husband feels. He changed my nephews pic for a different wallpaper as he'd get everyone asking if that was our kid (he used the laptop for classes)and then when he said 'no' ...the inevitable when will we have kids
For those asking about joint bank accounts , well they are great for paying bills, vacations etc but separate accounts are also a must and separate emails. Joint emails is just going too far unless it's maybe a business account or something like that?
Pravin, something along the lines of this?
Rahul, don't be jealous just because this conversation has not included a e-panty-dropping overture in your general direction. :)
I also forgot to state, for the record, that I really do judge people by their "home" pages. Petty, I know. The kid-as-background is less creepy to me, but maybe also because my closest colleagues are too young(and single) to be asked if it's her/his kid?
Ooo, totally agreed. As a smug Mac user, I am especially hateful of those who use IE on Mac. :)[oooo, self-citation. I have reached a new comment-low]
If I had a penny for every time e-panties were mentioned in reference to me, I'd have 2 cents. Which is exactly how much my thoughts are worth.
How about those that use safari on a pc.
Rahul, such self-deprecation. Your thoughts are at least just under $0.50 (I've adjusted the $0.02 for inflation using 1913 dollars).
Peeps are just jealous because mac users have that big endian* thing going on. And Endians are like the Jesus, something that noone f's with.
*Of course, this is prior to switch to the intel core duo.
@82 Rahul:
May be they are just waiting for your 'Come-Hither' blog to be linked to your screen name here, so that they can show you their affection. ;) After all, you can't expect desi (or even other) Rahul-groupies to show PDA in such crowded comment spaces. You need your own personal blog space!
The secret to closeness is to be separate.
We keep separate browsers (he's IE, I'm Firefox), separate Outlooks (he's got the regular, I'm Outlook Express). My Documents has multiple folders.
My daughter logs in as Guest user!
We all share computer bugs though :-(
tamasha, you just lost yourself a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be cast as an extra in Cameron Crowe's next movie, Never Famous.
And for other folks who still believe, in lieu of money and flowers, please drop your e-panties at comehither.blogspot.com.
With all the self "referencing" you are doing, I am surprised you even have time to be a good gropie.
Rahul, I will spare you a graphic self-love joke in reference to your last comment to port :)
i meant separate accounts....
Agreed. Also, I'm assuming these people they are interviewing probably have a decent amount of disposable income, so I'm sure they could afford the second NetFlix account.
I mean come on people, another $20 a month is nothing!(which now includes 17 hours of online viewing I might add and which is very cool because I just used it the other day to watch a movie and no streaming issues at all - I digress).
It was May 2002, a very difficult period in my life. Thankfully, I have since found Jesus and an ability to spell. No checkers, though.
Thanks! I don't do graphic, remember? Although self-love means never having to say you're sorry.
Although, BadOne, you can do 2 DVDs for a discount monthly fee of $13.98 + tax right now (with a minimum of 5 streaming viewing hours). Oooooooo.
Rahul, I thought you were in the process of going graphic? It's true that self-love won't give you cancer, but it might make you go blind.Camille, I guess it really comes down to if you are willing to give up your 2nd daily venti half-caf soy chai latte of the day for a few days of the month in order to get your fill of Footballers' Wives and your spouse can get his fill of Steven Segal action flicks.
BIG - i LOVE FW! for the third series, i did away with the netflix queue and bought it on dvd. i have recently discovered mile high - not as good, but in a similar genre. have you seen it?
camille, i wasn't talking about objective taste, just subjective preference (which obviously does not overlap, as evidenced by my FW obsession)
I'm a bit late with this but...
abhi wrote:
My favorite line of the day. =)Pravin, I live in ATL, am Hindu, and can guarantee I'm probably not related to you. =)
You don't. Not unless you install a Trojan horse on my computer.
I guess when you're choosing between NPR and confocal laser microscopy, NPR is the clear winner...right? :-)
ak @ 101
Alas, I was only able to see one season of FW during a weekend marathon on BBC America when I was laying on the couch all day hungover. BTW, it is a GREAT show for just that. I loved the over-the-top dramatics and campiness. Unfortunatley I no longer have BBCA with my current cable package, but I do plan on adding it to the queue!
I have never seen Mile High, but I do plan on checking it out online. I can only imagine what it's about, maybe naught flight attendants or is it air hostesses? I never know what they want to be called these days...
I dropped Netflix three years ago after I discovered I could get the same DVDs from the public library for free. :)
It's great if you are not the impatient type and not hankering to watch the new releases the very first week. They even have BW movies!!
ak @ 101, I suppose that would be ok :) I haven't seen FW, but my friends in the UK are raving about it. Is it worse than Flavor of Love?
Amit, as an ardent lover of libraries (wish I could find the comment link -- Rahul?), it helps if you live near a really awesome one to peruse their DVD collection. However, if you are an idiot like me and move to a smaller area, you have to resign yourself to Netflix :)
Camille, yes, I forgot to add that proximity to a good library/library network is essential (which may not be the case for all).
Oh Camille, you can't even compare the two! It's not a reality show but a I guess a soap opera and it's awesomely cheesy, crass and over the top! I highly recommend adding it to the queue. One of the players is even married to this crazy Bollywood actress, so there's your brown spin on it.
camille, i agree with BIG - good trashy vs very bad trashy. the first two series were great, i thought, since they had different characters in them. after that, it was still pretty good, and the bollywood actress (laila rouass) is entertaining. it's a very different side of british culture that is not so apparent from the usual british stuff we ar exposed to.
BIG - mile high is not as good as FW, but if you're pretty bored, take a look at it. it is about flight attendant (i think that's the final PC word)
As Camille said this works if you live near a great public library.
But the point of Netflix is that you can be a fat, lazy bastard and not have to leave your house to pick up a movie. This is especially great if your local Blockbuster's smells like BO, which mine does. And you have access to so many great films from all over the world. I'm pretty impressed with the number of classic Hindi films they have available.
Also, with Netflix, you can rent Footballers' Wives and no one will know your dirty little secret of watching trashy British shows or not if you allow your friends to see your queue.
ak, I'm excited. I like "good trashy" :)
Re: 105
Personally, I prefer to have both going simultaneously.
Re: 114
Camille, Blockbuster also used to have a policy about not carrying movies which they deemed to be not good for you. And I'm not talking about porn, merely certain NC-17 or R-rated movies that they had issues with. I don't know if this policy has changed, but that was one reason why they didn't get my business.
I believe this is due to the fact that it was founded by a Mormon family.
BIG, my comment # 109.
I'm not down on Netflix - it's convenient and cheap, and I have used it before. But I'm lucky that I live near a library and as such, a trip to the library for free DVDs is totally worth it, with the bonus of flirting with the cute librarians there. ;)
Reminds me of Dominoes :(
Re: 118
Camille, are you referring to Tom Monaghan's support of pro-life religious and political organizations? What with the pizza delivery boy being such a staple of classic porn...
The same could be said for the founder of Curves. You will NEVER see me join one of those. That guy is a nut, he believes 9/11 happened because we allow women to have abortions in America. He supports radical, violent pro-life groups.