Netflix

Warning: This post is shameless propaganda for Netflix. I'm not getting paid for it, I'm just this lame of my own free will.

Who doesn't love to see that red envelope in their mailbox? Seeing it just cements what you want to do as soon as you can scrape together some leisure time. It even motivates me to get my chores done in a way that a Blockbuster card never could. (This may not be obvious to anyone but me as it only upgrades my house from "3rd world country" to "federal disaster area.") I used to think I wouldn't like Netflix. I thought I would feel so restricted by having to pick my movies ahead of time and not being able to choose based on a passing whim. But then M's grandparents gave us a gift subscription for a couple months. Now we're hooked. We are suckered in at the 2 movies a month level for about $5/month. Our current queue has enough movies on it to last us for the next 14 months, and yet we keep adding to it! Here are my favorite things about Netflix:

1) Speaking of our long queue, I love the Netflix queue. I love that it's called a queue. I love that it gives us a way to remember the movies we want to see and we don't have to keep a text file on M's desktop anymore called, "Movies we want to see"

2) I love that ever since we got Netflix, the quality of movies we see has multiplied probably fourfold. We used to be lazy and pick from whatever was in "new releases" at the video store. Now our selections span time and genre without a second thought. We feel so cultured and edified now by our movie viewing.

3) I love the rating and recommendation system. M and I sit around rating movies, always getting sidetracked into an in depth discussion about the merits of some movie. We get to reminisce about the movies we both saw growing up. We get to recommend movies one of us saw before our movie viewing became "one." As far as I'm concerned, sitting around rating movies is the next best thing to actually having time to sit down and watch one. And then we check the updated recommendations based on our ratings. They're really quite effective! And if by some chance that fails, we can always check out what's on his parents' queue or my sister's. These activities always swell our queue backlog by at least another month or two, and yet we persist!

4) I love the way Netflix filters out the garbage for me. Our account is set up to not even show us anything rated over PG-13. It's so nice not to have to stop and check what something is rated before you let your interest be peaked. And I don't even have to visually gloss over the anime, it's just not shown to me. It's also really nice not to have to even worry about averting my eyes from the morbid cover of the latest horror flick or for M to have to worry about the same thing with the mostly naked women. Carefree movie browsing!

5) And last but not least, I love that choosing a movie together no longer involves the kids. It doesn't involve strapping two children into car seats. It doesn't involve chasing them down aisle after aisle of videos as they try to escape. It doesn't involve desperately trying to pry DVD cases out of their hands and then frantically try to find where this bizarre movie goes before they knock down/run off with three more "only on home video" gems. It doesn't involve trying to explain why, no, we are NOT getting the Barney video they just found. And possibly most importantly, it doesn't involve trying to explain to them why they don't have to worry about a movie case they just saw that would give me nightmares or explain why the lady on that other movie case isn't wearing enough clothes.

I love Netflix.