The Stew

“Guilt is a Useless Emotion” is a track off the most recent New Order album. That title came to mind when I read a recent story on CNN.com about “TiVo Guilt.”

Apparently, people are having to deal with the fact that they’ve used their DVRs to record more TV than they can reasonably get to. I understand this concept for a couple of reasons. First, I grew up Catholic, so I know something about guilt. Second, I recently upgraded the hard drive in my home-built DVR from 200 GB to 500 GB — and I’m constantly in danger of running out of space.

However, even this recovering Catholic finds it hard to feel guilty about either not watching something contemporaneously with its broadcast (what is the point of a DVR, after all, if not for time-shifting) or deleting something without watching it at all. Here’s some unwatched stuff that I purged recently, without shedding a tear:

• The last half of season 2 of “Heroes.”
• The entire second season of “Notes from the Underbelly.”
• Five episodes of “The Graham Norton Show.”
• The movie “Flightplan.”

Some of these were probably worth watching. None of them were worth losing sleep over. And guilt? Please. Now I’ve got room for a few more episodes of “Fringe,” which I’m almost caught up on. But if I don’t get to them for a while, I think I’ll live.