[lit-ideas] Re: A Memory of Fearing Scratches

Many of the DVDs we've recently borrowed from the library have been unplayable; they've either been used for frisbee golf putting practice or possibly some hybrid blend of skateboarding and ice skating that I have yet to see performed. No mere contact with the player could have done such damage.
I am reminded of when, in my childhood, our local library first began to lend records. There was a simple extra checkout procedure. In addition to the usual date stamp, there was also a verification of condition deal, not unlike the thing you still sometimes have to do with rental cars; walk all around the vehicle and note where the bumpers have been crushed by tanks, or where needles were dropped on the record. The marks, recorded in pencil on the small cardboard card, with its simple circular simulacrum, were a contract between lender and borrower. For additional scores, fines were levied.
Clearly some such system needs to be brought to our local DVD lenders. Either that, or reverence for community-owned property needs to be beaten into the youth of today with surplus sticks from the euro-mountain of Brighton rock. 

David Ritchie,
a hard man, but fair
Portland, Oregon 
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