2005-02-12 - 3:36 a.m.

I'm having my netflix movies sent to my work because some punk keeps stealing 'em. I had to find a way to warn and to explain to my work admin why the mailbox they just gave me two weeks ago was suddenly going to go from infertile to filled with not-letter-sized red envelopes that weren't junk mail.

I started with Do you know what Netflix is?, which was logical but less than couth, as she did know what it was and used it herself. She's at least 25 years older than me, and she might very well have inferred that I was assuming that she wasn't hip enough to be in the know.

I would have, where I her.

Anyway, here's to stupid evil. You won. You smelled up another subway car.

And here's what you won:

Two very, very late episodes of V, where nobody was taking it seriously anymore and Freddy Krueger had a big role.

Four episodes of first season 24. Okay, you scored with that one.

A Documentary about the Peter Jackson film The Lord of the Rings.

Late, late episodes of Futurama, my last four which I was going to watch to end my lengthy quest to view all episodes of that series (that was almost a month ago, and I'm still waiting for Futurama closure, which sucks because I timed it so I'd be ready, just like with V.)

And some random, random stuff, too random even for me to remember, but nothing interesting, nothing starring Will Smith.

And then it�s four more 24s, you snagged, and this is way more than a year later, and you got your big score again, didn't you?

So much crap to you that meant so much to me, and now there's no way you're going to enter the building without checking for that not-letter-sized red envelope, right?

(The postal lady blew up at me, the only time I ever tried to talk to her, and I was devastatingly polite, when I asked her to put the discs in my mailbox instead of laying it on the steps of the alcove for all to steal or commit to the depths of the reclining bin, through which�s paper towel and grape-ridden depth I�ve had to plunge to retrieve, or be denied, that evasive red envelope). She said that she'd break them if she stuffed them in there, and even though we were in the alcove and the mailboxes were open and I showed her how easy it was to fit a netflix envelope in, doing that just made her bristle and say that I'd just be calling about broken discs, and I realized that there was no way to convince her of my position without violating my rule of decency towards less intelligent people (a rule that ALL people should invoke, it'd save me a ton of guesswork and paranoia), and of course I gave up because I felt bad that she had to carry around circulars all day).

So, stupid random evil, let's tally this up, but I'm NOT tipping.

You got some pretty good DVDs that you probably didn't like, and eight episodes of 24. Your actual, in-the-flesh identity remains a mystery to me, so you got away with it, got away with crap like me missing busses because I chose to run back up three flights of stairs just to run my key through all three locks again, just to get that not-letter-sized red envelope you so coveted away from your greedy hands.

You suck. It could be worse, I know. It could be less harmless, more intrusive.

All you got were a few boring DVDs.

And a little bit more of my dignity.

Soon I'll be stuffing those quirky red envelopes into my book du jour on my way to work AND on my way home. It sucks because it adds one more distraction to the process of reading.

But it means no more potentially great (but usually not) red envelopes for you, and while I don't get any pleasure out of helping rid silent larceny from my neighborhood at the expense of a helpless fear of flying from the scene of a crime (by getting my netflix delivered to work) , I do feel better now. If it has to come to this, it has to come to this, and at least you can't steal my movies now, you little fucker, you can�t arbitrarily change the way I choose to spend my free time anymore, and as far as I�m concerned, you�ll never have to worry about getting caught red handed stealing a red envelope containing an adaptation of a book you would never read.

It�s not my fault you�d never get that joke, shithead. Did you enjoy the Crumb documentary? I�m assuming you did, because you never returned it.