I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

SLIGHTLY AMUSING BLOCKBUSTER ANECDOTE...

Hmm... for legal reasons, I probably shouldn't identify the person involved in this story. It involves the semi-intentional wanton destruction of Blockbuster property, though something that probably only costs a few cents each.

So, "nameless" walked over to a Blockbuster store on M_______ on Thursday evening, not entirely sure what he was going to rent. He had just eaten a lot of Chinese food the previous two evenings, since it was his father's birthday on the Tuesday and they had ordered so much food that it took them two suppers to finish it all.



At some point during the walk, "nameless" got the idea that he might want to rent the lesser-known 1992 Hayao Miyazaki movie, Porco Rosso, which he had seen a couple of times before, but both times were almost a decade ago at an anime club at the Université de M_______. He was kind of curious about how celebrated French actor Jean Reno would sound as Marco Pagott in the French-language dub (which is included on the DVD as well as the English-language dub, with Michael Keaton, and the original Japanese audio), but, somehow, this was the first time since the release of the DVD in March that he was actually in the mood to watch it.

So, he got to the Blockbuster just before midnight, picked Porco Rosso off the shelf, didn't see any other movies which struck his fancy, paid for the rental, and returned home.

It wasn't until Friday evening that "nameless" noticed a little something odd about his rental. You know how, when you usually rent a DVD from Blockbuster, they remove the yellow security strip thingy from the side of the case so you can open it? Guess what the clerk at M_______ Blockbuster forgot to remove?

"Nameless" was unable to get the DVDs from the case as the yellow security strip thingy was still in the case. He could have just walked back to M_______ Blockbuster and asked them to remove it, but he was in a lazy mood. He decided to see if he could try removing the security strip himself, without damaging the case.

Could it be done?

Answer:



Yes.

It wasn't that easy, though. Since "nameless" didn't have one of those handheld things that are designed to take out the shoplifting prevention device, he had to improvise with a pair of scissors. He had to cut off the flat top of the strip, and then used the blades of the scissors to squeeze the sides of the strip, which he could only access the top few centimetres of because of the way the case was designed.

After many tries, it worked, but it was like pulling teeth. According to the guy, whom shall remain nameless. I... umm... just happened to read about this story somewhere obscure that won't show up on Google and thought I'd share it.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 7:00 PM