HEEE.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighing with happiness right now because my Captain America Blu-Ray just arrived. Yes, I pre-ordered something that arrived as a present to me even though it's actually my sister's birthday. (She isn't complaining--got a Kindle from me and my other sister and freaked the fuck out about it. Amazon is a many-tentacled gifting octopus.) Yes, this is enough to make me blissful right now. I have the "I am a consumer whore (and how!)" LJ tag for a reason.

And now my pre-Avengers collection of movies in which various Avengers star is complete. I just need to, like, buy a Blu-Ray player to play half of them on so I can get me some special features. I also need to schedule my pre-Avengers Avengers-in-their-own-movies marathon. Which is not a marathon but will be spread out over several weekends because everyone is not me and won't just sit through several hours of movies to see a couple of hot guys with their shirts off for a collective length of a minute. (Everyone should be me, though. I'm fun!)

I'm starting to eye the calendar for next year. The Avengers is the May Movie, which means that I have to get through five movies before the first weekend in May. Since I'm also turning a significantly old age this year, and trying to go to PAX East, and a number of other things will probably come up relating to school, I should probably plan to do these sooner rather than later.

What weekends are people free in January?

The definition of not getting it.

The fallout from Netflix's attempt to spin off its services into two separate revenue streams has finally been totaled. It's probably not a surprise that Reed Hastings is still not getting it--a friend of his told him, point-blank, when he mentioned the Qwikster thing, that it was bad idea and he was ignored; he thinks that the uproar was more about pricing than the irritation of having to manage two websites for the same service; he mentions the general irritability of the populace (it's OWS! it's the Tea Party!); and so on and so on. It should not be a surprise that the man who's behind the decision that cost the company close to a million subscribers is defensive of his actions (and in complete denial about why his plan failed).

No, what surprises--and galls--is The New York Times' reporting (as ever, it seems). For example:
In its reliance on data and long-term strategy, the company underestimated the unquantifiable emotions of subscribers who still want those little red envelopes, even if they forget to ever watch the DVDs inside.

It was never about the emotional satisfaction of envelopes, be they red or otherwise. It was about convenience, pure and simple. Sometimes, it's more convenient to get DVDs by mail--because they aren't on streaming; because customers don't have high-speed internet to stream; etc. etc.--and sometimes it isn't. The choice was the attractive feature about Netflix, as was the convenience: you could get the discs or you could stream, and you could get it all in one place. Take that away, right after hiking prices, and you've just made your convenient service a hassle, for the honor of which your customers have to pay more. Why is it so hard for the damn newspapers to say as much? Why does a group of disgruntled consumers with a legitimate beef with a company have to be "emotional"? What, are they women or something? (DEAR GOD THAT WAS SARCASM, DO NOT KILL ME.)

In less aggravating news, G4 is making a trilogy of short horror films based on video games with almost no inherent stories of their own, and they've started with Duck Hunt. It's actually pretty good, and I think, even if you didn't know the reference, you'd probably get it after a while. Stupid laughing, mangling evil dog!