This has very little to do with anything.

Getting out of the rain yesterday evening, I stepped into HMV and taunted myself with their DVD sale. I didn’t buy anything – I’ve half got out of the habit, but I still amble around the shop identifying things I would have succumbed to in more impetuous days.
As usual, I picked up a few things and looked at them with my carefully cultivated almost-indifference. Anything to waste time until the weather improved: New releases, half-price boxed sets, the usual things. I read the backs of them, the lists of special features which I know I would never actually watch. There was a copy of Halloween which boasted seven hours of special features. Seven hours, a good night’s sleep.
As I was about to leave, gratifyingly empty handed, I spotted a new release of Sin City on DVD by the front door. Idle curiosity made me pick it up, that and the shiny tin-packaging which clearly appealed to some latent magpie-like tendency within me.
I wasn’t going to buy it – I thought the original version of the film was rubbish; a pointlessly slavish attempt to replicate the look of a comic book which was in turn, a slavish attempt to replicate the look of a 1950s film noir. It was a like a photocopy of a photocopy, a dumb film whose only understanding of the noir genre was that it was in black and white. But I was curious and looked at the box just to see how it tried to justify its new incarnation – two discs, a new cut, hours of new extras, a big badge saying “Comic Book Violence Is Cool”.
Not the badge. That part wasn’t true.
“That’s amazing.” Someone said.
They said it two more times before I realised that they were addressing me.
I turned to see a large man standing beside me, jabbing a thick finger at the DVD case in my hand.
“Amazing.” He said again. Three syllables emphasised as though they were three words.
I didn’t say anything. I just blinked at him stupidly.
“I’ve had it for three years.” The man said, “I got it when it first came out in America. Over the internet.”
He was probably quite a young man, but he was enormous on all three axes. A black leather raincoat parted either side of a bulbous T-shirted stomach; lank black hair parted either side of a bulbous smiling face.
A good natured smile; remarkably so given the film he championed included a scene in which Bruce Willis stamps repeatedly on someone’s genitals.
“It’s really interesting too.” He enthused. “Loads of special features. Behind the scenes things. Amazingly interesting.”
I adopted one of those mask-like expressions which substitute a growing sense of panic for something which might resemble a smile. Blindly, almost mechanically, I replaced the disc-box on the shelf, noting the light in the man’s eyes dull fractionally as I did so.
“It’s a classic.” He said, but he was loosing his impetus.
I didn’t have the heart to contradict him. Not that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, more that I didn’t want him to hurt me in some sudden outbreak of geek rage.
“Amazing.” He said finally, and it almost sounded like a question.
I retreated out of the shop and into the rain.

It was still raining, when I passed the entrance to the shop again after buying some provisions from Sainsbury's.
He was still there, hovering near the display rack, hopefully swaying towards anyone who so-much as hesitated near the discs. The security guard in turn watched him obliquely, as though trying to calculate if the number of sales the man had inadvertently prevented constituted theft.
For a brief moment, I felt a little guilty. And for a briefer moment still, considered going back into the shop and buying the DVD, wretchedly conceding to pity.
But as I said, I’ve half got out of the habit of buying DVDs I don’t need or want. So I went home instead.