Today was quite a big day for me (actually).

Alpha Papa was released today and I haven’t bought it. You’re not sure how impressed to be right now are you? Well try being pretty bloody impressed. Why? Because I really, really, really want it.

Why have I displayed this amazing restraint? So that I have something I really, really, really want to watch on Christmas Day. I have given up on the broadcasters of television programmes to provide this for me. They normally put the good stuff on Boxing Day or the 27th anyway. I don’t know what’s on BBC1 Christmas Day evening but I wouldn’t be surprised if it involves a Scottish man dressed as a middle-aged woman (that some people will suggest I am a snob for saying is fucking shit – even though it definitely is fucking shit).

The other thing people watch on Christmas Day is stuff you have been bought for Christmas. And I stopped getting stuff I was really, really, really excited about for Christmas a long time ago. Because I am 35 and have been employed for the last 13 years and so if I really, really (I’ve grown tired of three reallys) want something on DVD then I buy it.

Let’s be clear about one thing – loud and clear AND right now: this is not to suggest I didn’t I didn’t want DVDs I’ve asked for and receive for the last decade. I have loved every gift DVD I have ever received*. I just don’t get ones I am really excited about AT CHRISTMAS. I have received them on non-Christmas Days (eg Drive – which I can’t remember the exact date of but I do know was NOT December 25).

I think one thing to remember is that this is not a big news story. It is not big news that someone hasn’t bought a DVD. If me not buying a DVD was on the news people would rightly say that it was a bit odd that news of me not buying a DVD was one of the stories on the national news.

What if not buying a DVD was still something people were judged for doing though? What if a lot of society still considered not buying a DVD somehow different from normal. And that people were bullied for not buying DVDs? Or that people still got depressed from not buying DVDs when they got pressure from society to not not buy DVDs (known in orthodoxy as buying DVDs).

Then if I, young and handsome and confident in my own not buying DVD skin posted a You Tube video saying that I was happy to admit that I was in a happy not buying DVDs – and this did get on the news and it made a few people think differently about not buying DVDs then would it be so bad that it was on the news?

Thinking this wouldn’t mean that I thought buying DVDs or not buying DVDs as a way of living should be newsworthy. It shouldn’t. We are all the same – DVD purchasers or not. But some people might just take the news that I was someone who wasn’t buying DVDs and wasn’t bothered by it might help someone feel more comfortable about not wanting to buy DVDs themselves.

Eh?

*This isn’t true. I have got a couple of shitters. The worst? That wouldn’t be a very nice thing to share. What kind of person would I be if I said my friend Tom gifting the Adam Sandler film Little Nicky was definitely the worst gift DVD, nay gift, I have ever received.