I'm thinking of reading The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy again. It's years since the last time I did - I think my last encounter with the Hitch-Hiker universe was with the film from a few years ago. Didn't really cut it for me. But I was in Waterstone's the other day and I had a quick flick through the latest edition, reading the new foreword penned by Russell T Davies (the genius writer behind Bob and Rose - oh, Ninth Telly Recommendation ahoy. Joyous, joyous telly. Ninth and Tenth Telly Recommendation actually, that's how good it is). I was quite young the first time a read it (an American hardback copy that my next door neighbour's dad had brought back from working overseas. I orginally thought it was an American book), and as funny as I found it it's only as I've gotten older that I've started to understand some of the jokes in there.
In fact there's one joke in particular - in another book written by Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - that has only relatively recently made sense to me. There's a section featuring an Electric Monk, a robot that saves you the effort of believing in things by believing them on your behalf. A comparison is made with the way a video recorder will watch programmes for you so you don't have to.
In my younger days this didn't make sense to me. Surely you got a video to record the programmes you wanted to watch most of all. In the twenty-plus years since I first read that I have now realised the truth - Douglas was right.
I love my Humax PVR.
You can record off digital radio, the EPG has a search function, you can trim recorded programmes and you can upload files onto your computer. It's ace. But it's also full of telly I haven't got round to watching. The oldest is from 2 years ago - there's Series 4 and 5 of The Wire on there. Also Series 3 of Weeds, Series 2 of Dollhouse. I still intend to get around to watching all that at some point. It's all the stuff that I've recorded, didn't watch and subsequently deleted - stuff from Christmas, various films. The hard drive is more or less full so as soon as something new comes along that I might want to watch space has to be made and quite often the stuff that goes hasn't been watched yet. The most telling thing is when a film that's been on your recorder for a long time gets reshown. And you still don't get around to watching it. I think I've recorded Pan's Labyrinth 3 times - still haven't seen it. But the recorder must think it's good to have watched it again and again like that...
In fact, I'm saving up my pennies at the mo so I can afford to upgrade to a recorder that can watch in HD the things I'll never get around to seeing. So at least if I don't see it, I'm not seeing it with the best possible picture quality.
I think that makes sense.
More soonliest.
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