"Available"...PSYCHE!

It was with much frustration that I finally downgraded my Blockbuster subscription yesterday from the $20-a-month plan (3 discs at a time and five in-store trade-ins a month) to their lowest $4.00-a-month plan (2 discs a month with no in-store trade-ins).

The reason for this was their availability of certain discs. When you add titles to your queue, you're told the title is either "Available", "Short Wait", "Long Wait" or "Very Long Wait". About 90-95% fall into that first category. The other three are either for extremely popular new DVD's or obscure ones.

As you can imagine, my tastes bend towards obscure. My long list had included about twenty titles that were categorized into one of those three statuses and had not changed for over a year. It was as if Blockbuster was taunting me: "Yes, we have these movies... but you can't have them! BWAHAHAHAHA!".

Back in January, I decided to drastically cut my list down. Out of the dozen that I had left, I included two that had been forever in limbo: One listed as "Short Wait" and one listed as "Long Wait". I figured that if I had so few movies on the list, they would be compelled to fill these two requests.

So earlier this week, I saw the "Long Wait" disc turn into a "Short Wait" then on Thursday list as "Available". WHEE! I placed the title at the top of my queue and promptly returned two of the three discs I had out. When I checked my Blockbuster account the next morning, I saw the disc had changed back to "Long Wait".

You'd think that after that anticlimax, I'd just cut ties with Blockbuster for good. But, no, their service is still worth something. And though it may seem cruel, I'm going to get as much worth out of them as possible during their likely slow, agonizing death this year.

See, Blockbuster? I can be sadistic too!