The hardest part about being a clerk and/or a human being in this day and age, at least one that lives in the Western culture at large, is that media boredom hits you often and hard. Seriously it’s the worst thing that could happen to someone. It happens to me as a video store clerk, and a tech worker on a daily basis. I’m seriously reconsidering life on a daily basis. I’m serious too. I don’t mean that to be some huge philosophical question that will transform this blog into one of those “life” lesson blogs or tip blogs, I just feel that I’m a victim and/or a willing participant in the media consumption that provides me with boredom on a daily basis.

As a video store clerk the customers broke through my boredom. However, there were times when myself and my coworker had nothing to do and we stood there staring out our monitors or the television sets watching some horrible movies to satisfy the “no rated r” standard at our store. We tried to make a game out of work, sometimes playing the most offensive of movies to see how far we could take the rating system.

I remember one time we played bum fights, and people that came in were not too happy. We had a grand exposure of different opinions. Some were laughing at the sight, meanwhile some customer got really upset with me and my coworker for playing such rubbish. It was ok to have adult films behind a red curtain, and it was ok to rent “unrated” dvd’s but when it comes to showing bum fights, people take exception.

The funniest of boredom killers was in the form of a huge Samoan looking guy. He would come into our store each weekend and yell at me. At the top of his lungs he would tell me that he would never rent there again if we continued to group the “girls gone wild” dvd’s with the rest of the population of dvd’s. To be fair to the owner, we put those dvd’s at the top shelf where kids can’t reach them. We also didn’t rent them to teens or anyone that didn’t provide identification first. But this guy thought it was necessary to yell at me for the displays. The funniest thing of all was the sheer fact that he NEVER rented movies from us, in fact, he wasn’t even in our database.

Now I know what you’re thinking, how do you know? Because, after working six months or so at the same place seeing the same faces, you get to know nearly every single customer that comes through the place. I knew everyone on a first name or id number basis. Most of them sympathized with me and my boredom, and knew me personally as the kid that was just trying to get through the last semester at college before leaving for Seattle, Wa. It was my finest moment, and although sometimes I talk negatively about it, I loved being a video store clerk. However, it was boring, and it didn’t have the internet to throw a wrench into my days.

I didn’t like the politics of the store, nor did I like cleaning the adult section on my hands and knees. (No innuendo please) But the boredom, oh the boredom!

I experienced severe media boredom over the weekend. On the weekends I basically shut down my computer completely. I hate going online at home. I work on the internet on a daily basis, and hate to go home and get on the internet. I do it if I have to, and turn on aim when I get home, just to see what’s up with some folks that are fellow bloggers. However, the majority of the time, I just stay away from the computer and stick to watching the netflix box, or whatever it is I find to do. (including coloring in my comic book. I’ll scan in a finished page sometime this week) I don’t understand media boredom though. I have all the entertainment I could possibly have in my life. I have dvd’s, music, books, magazines, and a brain that I’m still paying back on, but yet I felt so bored. I felt almost helpless, because most of the things that I could think of doing cost money.

I thought about going to a park, but there are no parks nearby my urban setting. I also don’t want to drive anywhere. I thought about walking, but walking the streets of my city is something that I do on a daily basis, each morning, so I threw that out of my mind. Maybe the store? And not buy anything? I hate that.

I took a shower, the ultimate boredom killer right? In the shower no one can violate my sense of privacy. When in there, I can go back to my days of being a youth, where I imagined that my bar of soap was a skateboard, and just took long showers, being really cool. It was dumb, I know, but showering sometimes break the monotony of watching movies. However, when I got done showering, the boredom hit me again. I figured it was time to sleep, I went to bed, figuring that sleeping could knock out hours of boredom at a time. However, Sunday nights, I have a really hard time sleeping. I can’t sleep on Sunday nights, because I know that on Monday Morning the dreaded schedule starts again.

I wonder if we are the only generation that is experiencing media overload. Cable, Dvd, Movies, Television, books, video games, and the rest of technology that is eating away at our time, hasn’t been a staple in the American life until recently, right? I’m not sure.

I’m bored often, this whole life is boring to me sometimes. Are you bored?