You know what I’m enjoying, and I have enjoyed for the past, like, two years?

I only have to pay like eleven dollars per month to the Netflix corporation to watch as much of The Office as I like. I like that show. I do a podcast about that show. It’s a classic. Also, now, I’m into It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I know I’m about five years behind the curve on that. I like being about five years behind the curve on that. I just watched This is the End like last year.

But now, just as the tide turns, Netflix is losing these shows to Hulu or Crackle or Blockbuster or whatever, and they’re never ever coming back. I’m gonna be paying eleven dollars per month for my monthly viewing of the Enron documentary and my daily viewings of the scene in Friday Night Lights where the nerd kid murders a man. I didn’t even get to finish the Vince Vaughn boxing movie.

It is during times like these when I am reminded of this image that I apparently made back in 2012 when I was sixteen.

Ninety nine percent of rational people would have never made this image in the first place. Ninety nine percent of rational people who slipped through the cracks and made an image like this wouldn’t have remembered it. Ninety nine percent of rational people who made an image like this and then remembered it wouldn’t have put it up front five years later for the purpose of being ridiculed.

But that’s the Joe Bush Dot Net Difference™. I’ll show you the things that I did five years ago, even if I’m ashamed of them. Especially if I’m ashamed of them.

Anyway, it is during times like these when I am reminded of the image that I linked to earlier. I had to pull my memory of that PNG’s existence out of a deep, deep cavity in the back of my brain, probably adjacent to the place where the URL of the Anime forum I lurked on back in 2011 is. I had to also pull the context of the image’s existence from those deep, dark recesses, then I had to use Twitter search to find the original Tweet from that time. The search was “SOPA from:@joebush_joebush”. I’ve tweeted about the Stop Online Piracy Act four times. Then, I had to navigate through the blanket of ads on PhotoBucket, the place I used to keep all those images, a once proud website that has fallen upon hard times and now requires hundreds of pop-up ad overlays, like it’s 1998 or something.

Understand that I don’t do this for my health. I do this for your health. If you’re having a bad day, and a twenty-two-year old dunking on his sixteen-year old self’s past actions is cathartic for you, then I hope it benefits you. It’s cathartic for me as well, but so is breaking Heineken bottles out behind the KwikShop and I don’t have to think to do that. I want you to laugh at my sixteen-year-old ass because he deserves it.

Look at him. Look at those smug eyes and the hat which came free with the ESPN 30 for 30 Season 1 box set (I loved that hat) and the 2009 Kansas Jayhawks Football t-shirt that they gave out for free (Who would’ve thought that the History that Awaited was actually the longest ever road losing streak). I thought I was so cool because I drank Snapple. I can tell that’s the old Laser Time website on my laptop screen, too. I still go there, though. I’m still down with Chris, Hank, Bob, and Dave. But, god, my facial hair, what the hell was that supposed to be? Was that a real attempt at growing a beard or was it just forgetting to shave for weeks on end? The sign I’m making with my hand, that’s supposed to be a shadow puppet duck. That was a joke from my tenth grade chemistry class, like we’d call ourselves the Mighty Ducks but the joke would be that we wouldn’t actually do anything.

Anyway, it is during times like these when I think about that image from earlier, and I have to wonder – how am I going to save my shows? How can I keep watching when the stream goes away? Back then, I was worried that the government would take it, and now I know it’s the corporations that will take it. Oh, little, naïve, sixteen year old Joe, so worried about the government, so trusting of the corporations, so ready to just sort of co-opt AAVE in a way that makes Joe at twenty-two incredibly uncomfortable.

But how am I going to save my shows? Back then, it was with a PlayStation 2, a VCR, a VHS tape, and a DVD of the first season of Community. I don’t remember if I actually went through and ripped those episodes on to VHS or not, but it wouldn’t have done anything, I already had the episodes on DVD.

But, now, time has come again. Time has come again to find a way to hook my computer up to a VCR, then play a bunch of Netflix shows to said VCR, then save those episodes on a VHS tape. It’s tough work, but it must be done in order for me to save money and not start paying for Hulu again. A stack of VHS tapes beats $7.99 per month any day. I knew that at sixteen, and I know that now at twenty-two, and that’s all that matters.