My old television set started dying a few months ago. It wasn't so bad at first, just an inch of the bottom of the picture was gone, a black bar. I pretended I was watching widescreen. No biggie. Then the inch became two, then three. Three was when I couldn't rent subtitled movies anymore. That was a bad day. But I kept procrastina- ting.    

Sometimes it takes me a while to make a decision, as a result of which, sometimes, the decision makes itself for me.    
                             
And so it was. A couple of days ago all I had left was half a screen, and so left without a choice, I finally bought a new one yesterday.   

Earlier tonight I was rearranging my tapes --the new television set's bigger than the old one so I lost quite a bit of shelf space, thus the need to rearrange-- and I realized that I don't really care about most of them anymore. I had over 70 hours' worth of The X-Files for example. I still watch the show religiously but for the life of me I don't know why I ever taped them. What the hell was I thinking? Did I think I was going to watch them again, ever? Did I think I'd have the time?    

I guess it's true, the past is a strange place: they do things differently there. If I were to go back in time and meet my old self, I would slap me for doing the things I was doing. And my future self, were he to go back in time, would probably do the same thing to me.    
                          
But we're not a time-travelling species and hindsight is almost completely wasted on us.   

Maybe it's all for the best.