Sunday, December 18, 2005

It's the owning that's important

We were at the local Half Price bookshop this afternoon; I needed to buy something weighty to read on the plane to Dallas Monday. Uh huh, I'm travelling again. This time I'm looking forward to it; two and a bit months without travel now feels too long.

This trip has been threatening for a while now. I first expected to return to Dallas in mid October but one thing and another delayed it and delayed it. Naturally the trip happens during the week before Christmas! I'm returning to Phoenix on thursday. Anyone want to guess how crowded that Southwest Airlines plane will be? And anyone want to guess which boarding group I'll be in?

But I digress. There we were at the bookshop, standing in line to pay. I chose 'The Old Curiousity Shop' by Dickens - a good meaty read if I know my Dickens! Beside the register is the LP/CD/DVD VideoDisc section. I'm still trying to decide how anyone could think that a good album cover consists of a shot of a womans mid section from her navel to half way down her thighs, wearing red shorts!

I honestly don't remember when VideoDiscs were released. Sometime in the 1980s but I couldn't get any closer than that. But there they were, packaged in much the same way that LP's were. Curiousity got the better of me and I thumbed through the range - nothing so memorable that now, nine hours after the event, I can remember a single title.

But I was reminded of Robin and the amount of time, money and effort he expended getting hold of a copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey[^] on VideoDisc. Great movie. I must have seen it a couple of hundred times. A pity then, that, having obtained a copy on VideoDisc, he didn't have any hardware to play it!

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