The Zhivago Effect

I would've already posted something else tonight except my roommate became a victim of what I would call the Zhivago Effect.

The Zhivago Effect: the inability of any human being who watches the first half of Doctor Zhivago to continue on with his or her life without immediately watching the second half.

Here's what happened: My roommate felt like watching a movie tonight, and he took a look at my film collection. "What about Doctor Zhivago?" "Yeah, you should see that." "But it's long, right?" "Yeah, it's like three hours long." "Then maybe I should watch it some other night." "But you've said that for a year now." "Hmm. You say it's good?" "If you liked Lawrence of Arabia, you'd like Doctor Zhivago." "I don't know, dude..." "Look, just watch the first half tonight, and then you can watch the second half some other time." "Yeah." "Otherwise you'll never watch it." "OK, sounds good, let's do it." "All right, but I'm not gonna watch the whole thing with you, I'll be in and out." "OK."

Two hours later. I'm still sitting in front of the T.V. with my roommate. He looks up at the clock. "OK, you know what's gonna happen, we're gonna put that second disc in..." "No, you said-" "Yeah, forget about what I said, I've gotta watch the rest of this." "But it's already midnight!" "Yeah, well, all I've got to say is that I'm glad it's the weekend."

So here I am, an hour and a half later.