I am still only three-fifths of my way through them all, but the humdinger from Oscar that really gnubbled my crun, and I'm paraphrasing, was his assertion life never gets lower than being without your 50-inch telly for 29 days.
Coincidentally, we have just been without our 50-inch telly for 29 days, and I don't think I have ever felt lower.
The thing simply stopped going.
Geschplunk. Dead.
I would turn it on, it would turn itself off.
The technically minded among you will understand the electronic language for this - the telly used to go Splick, and then, when broken, went Splick Splick.
I drained Google Mishaps and found to my teeth-grinding dismay that the model we had bought often did this.
Punters spoke angrily of a Black Cap Plague, a cap being a capacitor, I think.
Clearly, enticed by the cheap price two years and eight months before, even though it was a thoroughly reputable brand, I had bought a pup, a huge litter of these having been flung willy nilly into marketplace outposts like New Zealand, where it was hoped they would die without trace.
But I am nothing if not a man who is mindful of trace, and I went back to the store armed with the Consumer Guarantees Act on the tip of my angry tongue, plus some very sound advice from the excellent people at the Citizens Advice Bureau.
The store and, later, head office, were not too savvy about the Consumer Guarantees Act, though to be fair, the legislation has only been in place for 20 years and repeatedly thrust down our throats by Fair Go and the Consumers Institute, so how on earth would a national retail chain have possibly known anything about the rights of a customer buying from a shop?
But after 29 days of wrangle, the black cap-plagued telly was fixed free of all charges and delivered back into our lounge last Tuesday by a lovely man called Tom.
What a joy it was to see television again!
I know my one working eye has seen better days, but I don't seriously believe for a second that anyone out there can see detail on a 32-inch screen, the tiny electronic box we had to put up with for 29 days.
There are sentences passed down in court every day that are far easier to stomach than this.
I couldn't even tell the difference between men and women, which, for a man whose sole quest in life is to stamp out misogyny, was a heinous and ironic blow.
Twice in those 29 days, apparently, the All Blacks were involved in shatteringly fine test matches, but throughout both I was sure I was watching the Black Ferns.
Those girls have certainly upped their game, I said to my friends.
Why do TVs break down so quickly these days?
Well, we know why, because they use parts made from used fire-crackers, installed by people being paid a penny a day.
When I was a child, a telly lasted 30 years.
Now, and salesmen confirmed this when I asked, you can only expect four to six years. Consumer Magazine wanly states 12 years, but that is surely pushing it.
But let's be fair.
TVs may be designed for planned obsolescence.
After all, if things went forever, the manufacturing industry would die on the vine, but they are real cheap.
The house we bought in the mid-'70s cost seven times as much as the 26-inch telly we bought at the same time.
Noting what we sold our house for five years ago, the 50-inch telly we bought nearly three years ago should have cost $106,000.
It actually cost $939.
Throw in the Consumer Guarantees Act and I almost feel sorry for retailers.
Almost.
I bought three packets of potato chips last Tuesday afternoon and watched Django, again.
The sun was beating down like honey, but I lay back in my telly chair and thought of Oscar Wilde and Cameron Diaz.
Life was good again.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
