So I bought a new TV and Blu-Ray player. Very good deals, relatively, anyway. $900 + insurance + tax + shipping for both. Am I bragging? I’m trying to be straight up, here. I declined to buy a Sony PS3 because I won’t play games on it. I don’t want to play games on it. I want to play games less often, not more.

I don’t need a TV, but the one we have is dying, and I like watching movies. Sometimes I watch broadcast television. I don’t have cable or satellite. I despise telecom companies, and have no use for the vast majority of television programming. What I like, I watch on DVDs (I rent from Film Fest Video on Duplex north of Eglinton in mid-town Toronto).

I got the TV and player online; they’ll be delivered on Wednesday, probably. Means I’ll have to work from home New Year’s eve. Tomorrow I’ll go down to College Street and find HDMI and optical cables so I can actually use them, and then maybe buy or rent a couple of Blu-Ray discs. Kim says she’s going to buy the Planet Earth boxed set. That is a worthy purchase, I think. Maybe I’ll buy Blade Runner. It now makes sense to own movies that have real photographic artistry.

I don’t buy many movies. I download some. I think I would like to be part of a Blu-Ray rental club. I don’t really want to “own” movies, nor do I want to download massive Blu-Ray movie files and store them or burn my own copies.

As much as I hate consumer culture, I’m a product of my generation. But if I like consuming anything, it is information. And I still like books the best. But that’s probably just how my brain is wired.