You know what’s BUUUUUUUUULLSHIT?

DVDs. I already talked about the excessive packaging and security stickers, but there’s so much more wrong with them.

With any TV series or movie sequels sold together, they’re guaranteed to fuck it up. The first issue is the packaging. It seems like a game: “How many boxes can we fit the DVDs inside?”. Do we really need all of this? And second, this is the James Bond series, why couldn’t it start with the first movie and work its way to the end? Was there any reason to rearrange them in any order they please? A regular customer might not even be aware of the order. So here’s what I do: throw the boxes in the garbage, and fix the DVDs in the right order. Now that’s the way it should be! Besides, don’t you like the convenience of grabbing a DVD off the shelf? When are you ever gonna want to cover them up in boxes?

Another thing that can be confusing about box sets is when not all the movies are owned by the same company. This is the Bruce Lee set. Would you believe there’s no Enter The Dragon, but instead Game Of Death 2? I mean, come on! He’s not even in that movie, except for stock footage! Even the DVD has the balls itself to claim it stars Bruce Lee. Everybody knows he never completed the first Game Of Death. It’s false advertising that persists to this very day. If you’re buying a box set with the intention of owning all movies in that franchise, you need to have prior knowledge, or do the research beforehand and know exactly what you’re getting. Box sets are bullshit!

Here’s another thing I hate: those little snap things. What’s the point? The DVD shuts fine just without those! Break 'em the fuck off! That would be like putting them on a CD jewel case or a book. You don’t need them!

I also hate how many versions of DVDs get released. We have the Rated Edition, Unrated Edition, Special Edition, Ultimate Edition, Collector’s Edition, knock it the hell off! But what pisses me off the most is when there’s a Fullscreen and Widescreen Edition. Unless you pay attention, you might be suckered into buying the Fullscreen! There’s no reason the Fullscreen should even exist, and if it should, make it the other side, not its own DVD! It’s BULLSHIT!

Now, you wanna talk about “region coding”. So what if I buy a perfectly legal DVD in one part of the world and want to watch it somewhere else. What if I travel a lot? All these rules treat the customer like a fucking animal! “Better keep your eyes on those animals! Put up an electric fence! Give the dog a shock collar! They might be bad!”.

Have you ever looked at all the tiny logos found on a DVD? Most of it is pretty useless information, but where’s the runtime? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s not on the disk, not on the box, not on the individual DVD case, and not in the booklet! Gee, runtime? Why would I ever wanna know that? How about if I have an appointment, or there’s a show coming on, or I’m just planning to go to bed soon. I don’t know! Is it such a taboo thing for me to know how long the movie is before I watch it? Most DVDs seem to have them, but they’re in such tiny print, they’re so hard to find, and they’re always in minutes. Just a minor complaint, but look - “153 Mins.”. Why can’t it just say “2 Hours, 33 Mins.”? That’s like if I say “I’ll see you in a week”, I don’t say “I’ll see you in 168 hours”! The worst I’ve seen: sometimes, if there’s more than one movie, they just add the total runtime of all the movies: “325 Mins.”! That’s beautiful. Maybe that’ll come in handy if I’m planning to have a marathon!

But the most inconvenient thing about DVDs is the menus. All I wanna do is pop in the DVD, hit Play, and watch the movie. But instead, you get all kinds of shit you don’t wanna watch! Trailers, logos. That would be fine if you could skip it, but no! You have to watch this bullshit every time you start the DVD. You find yourself pressing the Menu button, just hoping in vain that the menu appears. But it doesn’t. And sometimes, even worse, if you hit the Menu button, it starts the logo all over again! That’ll teach ya!

Sometimes, they even put ads in the beginning. That’s just a step away from having ads on your TV. And I’m not talking about regular commercials, I mean, in addition to that, every time you turn on your TV, it plays ten minutes of ads before it starts. Or, how about even better: let’s put TV screens in elevators! Before the elevator can move, you have to watch some ads. We got 'em there!

And if the DVD is a TV series, just please have a list of the episodes. Here, you go to pick an episode, wait for the animation, and then… what is this? Every episode has their own screen with chapter selections. Who cares about chapters for a 20-minute TV show? So, you have to go through all the screens, find the episode, move back up to the first chapter, and hit Play.

With DVDs, I don’t care about any of this shit. I don’t wanna wait for logos and trailers. I don’t even wanna see clips of the movie I’m about to watch before the menu appears! Just put in the DVD, take me to the menu, that’s it. With VHS, you had to rewind, sure, but at least there is nothing prohibiting you from fast-forwarding to the movie. And that’s another thing I miss. You get that fuzzy line at the top, but isn’t it better than that stuttering, digital fast-forward we’re so used to today? You get that awesome telephone dial sound in the beginning of the tape. Okay, that’s just weird. But the best part is, no matter where you stop, you can always start the movie exactly where you left off. And DVDs fuck up way more than VHS. With analog tape, it deteriorates gradually. Worst case scenario, it may get caught up in your VCR, but DVDs, once they start skipping, they’re never the same.

“No, I- am your- fa- t- her.”

It’s like we’re going forward in technology, but only making our lives bullshittier.

And when the Bullshit Man says that’s bullshit, that’s bullshit.