Geeks find many way to set aside the mundanity of the real world these days. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies compete for our time and our money, and we can find ourselves with more escape pods than ever before, an embarrassment of riches that can be overwhelming, with dire consequences if we choose . . . poorly.

My limited time is the most valuable commodity I have. I can always earn more money; I can always eat more food; I can stay up late if I didn’t finish that load of laundry in the afternoon. (Curse you, Guitar Hero III: Thief of Daylight!) But I can’t get back time that’s already spent – in some cases, wasted (the time, not me) – on hollow pursuits, so I think very carefully about how I invest my limited free time, and my even more limited “me” time. Here's a look at a typical afternoon spent in a twisty maze of options, all enticing . . .

Oh . . . this should be interesting.

Well, that door wasn’t much fun, was it?

Does anyone (who does not live in easy driving distance of an Alamo Drafthouse [My editor, Andrew, who lives in Austin and goes to the Drafthouse all the time, made me include this. Bastard.]) really enjoy going to the movies any more? I don’t know anyone who says, “Man, I can not wait to go spend a crapload of money so I can watch a crapload of commercials, surrounded by idiots who just won’t Shut. The Fuck. Up.” What is the consistently compelling reason to go out to the movies? I’m trying to escape the frustrations of modern life and the idiots in it who just keep on making more idiots. Why not just stay home and watch something on DVD or cable? Thanks to Netflix and Blockbuster Online (okay, and bittorrent) just about any movie you’d ever want to see is rarely more than one day’s wait away. While there are certainly some films that deserve to be watched on a big screen, like Lord of the Rings, or work better with an audience, like Grindhouse, they are exceptions to the rule. I just don't understand why anyone with ANY sense of dignity at all would . . .

Right. Moving on to door number two . . .

That door made me--

--stabby.

So this problem with commercial loudness will eventually be solved by Dolby Volume, but until that day arrives (and we all upgrade our equipment) does any self-respecting geek watch a show when it airs anymore? Since I got my DVR, I don’t watch anything when it starts. Instead, I wait ten or fifteen minutes and then watch it delayed on my DVR so I can skip the commercials. It’s not that I hate commercials as a class (although, seriously, American beer guys? Beautiful, sophisticated women do not drink cheap, nasty American beer. Give it up already), it’s that I hate commercials that are so loud they wake up my neighbors. I find that I prefer watching movies on my home theater or television shows on my DVR because I control the environment and the experience when I watch. That takes care of the commercials, but what about those annoying animated advertisements that litter the screen and get in the way of me enjoying the show that’s on? Until someone develops AdBlock for television, our only choices, really, are to wait for the show to come out on DVD or just suck it up. I will admit to sucking it up a few times a week, for shows like Heroes and How I Met Your Mother.

Until things change dramatically though, non-DVR broadcast television isn’t earning my time at all. It can’t compete with washing the dishes, much less catching up on my blog feeds or what lies beyond the remaining two doors.

Speaking of . . . let’s see what’s behind Door Number Three . . .

If the biggest problem we have with books is that we just don’t know what to pluck from our two towers of “really want to read” and “really want to read again,” what is there to complain about? Books are great for getting away, whether you’re a geek or not. A book is relatively inexpensive (free at your local public library) and portable, and if you break down your investment by the hour, you get a lot more for your money in a book than you do in a movie. There are no commercials, no annoying idiots shoving fistfuls of popcorn into their mouths in the seat next to you (or, if there are, you can move), and – best of all – you have complete control over when and where you do it. You can read during breaks at work, between classes, when you’re avoiding writing your column, or, uh . . .

. . . when you should be doing other productive tasks.

It should be no surprise that, as an author, I love books and can’t find an awful lot to dislike about them. I freely concede that there are bad books out there (I'm looking at you, Dan Brown), but you can always set a bad book down and pick up five books that are more to your taste. There are more books published each year than anyone could ever read in a lifetime spent doing nothing but reading. We live in a rich, rich time -- reading is available for everyone who cares to make the effort, and you can read about any topic you want.

I imagine that if I were a filmmaker, or television producer, I’d feel differently about the first two doors than I do, but I just don't see the same variety, the same creativity in the visual media that I do in print. There is good work out there, but you have to really dig for it. In the bookstore, it's right there for the taking.

Finally. Let’s open door number four . . .

In real life, it’s a lot harder to settle down and choose just one game, especially when I’m faced with such limited free time. I read an article in Wired earlier this week by a guy who said he’d become a suicide bomber in Halo 3, because asymmetrical warfare worked to his advantage when playing multiplayer online games. He was time-poor, so he couldn’t develop the same skills as the hundreds of thousands of students and unemployed writers who have time to spend practicing non-scoped sniper headshots day after day.

Just like the huge stack of books, the best and worst thing about video games is the time involved. I can spend $40 to take my wife to a movie, and we’ll have a nice three or four hours together. I spent $50 on Halo 3, and without even finishing the campaign, I’ve already spent 30 or more hours with my friends in online matches. It’s the same way with Guitar Hero, and I assume you WoW players would have a similar experience to report -- if you just stopped killing boars in the forest long enough to talk to us, of course. (I keed. I keed.)

I think of my time as a valuable currency that must be earned by anyone who wants me to exchange it for whatever they’re selling. When we geeks talk about investing our money and our time into entertainment and escape, movies and television just can’t compete with video games, comics, novels, or going through a few hundred RSS subscriptions that you save for the times when you have a column due and need a geeky way to kill time under the auspices of--

Pushy, pushy. I'm just trying to figure out what I'm leaving out. I keep feeling like there's something missing . . .

I hate cliffhangers.

Wil Wheaton still remembers how to get the Babel Fish.