the rabbit hole

One of my classes this year is a short fiction class that seniors can elect to take. In essence, we read short stories and novellas. Deep, I know.

Last week we read a short story by Ambrose Bierce called "An Occurrence at the Owl Creek Bridge." It's a pretty cool story, but what makes it interesting is it's unreliable narrator. That is, a narrator that only lets us see what they want us to see, and in the end, ends up failing us.

My curriculum is very flexible; that is to say, I can teach anything I want. And we all know that the only requirements for teaching something is a) it needs to be cool and b) there needs to be a movie to go with it.

I was able to find the Twilight Zone episode on youtube, which is horrifically cheesy and skips at the end. And then I got to thinking about unreliable narrators. Which got me thinking about The Sixth Sense. Which got me thinking that we should probably watch that.

So I searched high and low. I search every library within a 10 mile radius. All checked out. I checked Target, Best Buy and WalMart. None carried it. I was at a loss.

Until Netflix saved me.

So I fell down the Netflix rabbit hole. And I can't say I regret it. This instant streaming is worth my free month trial (which I will probably extend).

For someone who loves television as much as I do, it's really a dream come true. I'm not even that excited about getting movies in the mail, it's the instant stuff I'm excited about. In the last 2 days I've watched almost the entire first season of 30 Rock, right there on my computer.

I put it on when I'm cooking. I put it on when I'm grading. I lay in bed watching. Anything! It's all right there for me.

I suppose that my only complaint would be that since I do most of my television watching while surfing the interwebs, I feel like I can't really do both anymore. I have to give up one love for the other. I am torn between two mistresses.

Or, I could just buy another computer.