on ownership

I go back to work today after a very relaxing 5 day weekend for the new year, and because i get up waaaaay too early sometimes, i just spent a few minutes with my dvd collection. This wasn't a spur of the moment decision, so much as a need to make room on the tv shelf for the ninth season of the simpsons. I had to make a tough decision to move the british mob films - layer cake, lock stock and two smoking barrels, snatch, and the new version of the italian job (i know, it's not a british gangster film, but it's set in europe and, genre-wise, is a lot closer to the others than anything else i have) to a new spot. This got me thinking, as it always does, about how much i love my dvds. i have something like 150 dvds, and i enjoy that. I could burn copies of the discs i get from netflix, but then i wouldn't have the cases to put on the shelf. It's like a weird geek self-expression thing. How i arrange them, what goes where, says something about it. If you've ever seen high fidelity, you'll know what i'm talking about. and if you haven't, i can let you borrow it. i know exactly where it is on my shelf, with the other rom-coms that i could justify as masculine enough to go on the same shelf as the Lord of the Rings trilogy.