I know it hasn’t escaped your attention that I haven’t rented anything since my DVD Freedom Pass expired a while ago. Maybe you’ve noticed me outside, pointedly not making eye contact with any staff members despite the fact that I can see you all perfectly well through those ginormous windows and I walk by at least twice a day because you’re, like, right next to the train station. Blockbuster, baby, I know my behavior must seem hurtful and puzzling to you, perhaps even cold and a little bit fruity: we used to be such pals, you and I. I defended your Freedom Pass to scornful Netflix members of my acquaintance and even forgave you when told you didn’t carry Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, not even on vile VHS.

But my patience, oh you villainous video vendor, is not entirely without limit. See, here’s the thing, or anyway one of the things, perhaps even the most annoying in the great heaping pile of things: your store is in a serious state of disarray, to put it mildly. All those little empty DVD boxes that are supposed to go in front of the Blockbuster DVD boxes that actually contain the rentable DVDs are just kind of scattered and stacked up all over the place: any hope of alphabetical ordering or indeed general categorizing at all has long ago fallen by the wayside. I’m having difficulty conveying an accurate sense of the incredible frustration attending any attempt at finding a specific video. Let me give an example: I tried for, like, two weeks to rent Requiem for a Dream. The first couple of times I went to Drama and then found the sort of vaguely demarcated R section (R as in Requiem, not as in Rated), I found the empty cover box, but no Blockbuster DVD box behind it. Okay, no big deal, said I: I assumed it was out. But each time I returned, I discovered the vague R section became more and more vague until it disappeared entirely. The empty Requiem cover box was eventually located in a five-deep stack of other empty cover boxes (with their DVDs nowhere to be found), while its former spot was occupied by another stack containing the Britney Spears movie, Ice Age, and Die Hard.

It’s not like this was the standard sort of mess you might expect to find at a video store on, say, a Monday morning, after an endlessly abusive weekend of Manhattanites looking to do some serious renting. It was bad when I first got my month-long Freedom Pass and got progressively and indeed exponentially worse over that entire month, such that when my pass finally did expire I swore never to spend another furious forty-five minutes in search of Requiem for a Fucking Dream. So, thou treacherous Blockbuster: I say farewell to your surly, unhelpful staff, to your complete lack of DVD categorization beyond Action, Comedy, Drama, and New. It’s not me, it’s you.