In the last week I have gathered and done so much that is blog-worthy, I'm a little aghast at how to fit it all in and still get to sleep at a sane hour, so I'll probably spread it out over the next few entries.

Probably the biggest highlight of this week so far, is getting Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on DVD. Needless to say I've been waiting for this since May. Buying the DVD was a story in itself, but for the sake of not rambling, let's say that I ended up with the DVD in a 'Limited Edition' cardboard sleeve which is in-line with Episodes I and II that i've bought over the past six years (very happy about that), but also accompanied by a few more good movies acquired out of necessity, namely Snatch and BASEketball.

Below is a quite hilarious image that was sent to me in the last few days, i'm sure most will find it quite amusing:

Edit: Click here to view this Image (too big to fit on this page)

I'm still not sure why this blog is getting so many views. I'd like to think that a lot of people are reading it, but somehow I don't think so (I think I do have a realistic view of this site's popularity). The site stats don't really reveal much either ...

I'm going to attempt something never done before on this blog: just for the sake of seeing, could everyone who happens to read this post please post a comment so I can see how many real people read this blog?

Go nuts!

Edit: below is the complete DVD story! thanks to everyone who has posted a comment, everyone else reading this please post one! 🙂

I went into the City with Michael to buy the episode III DVD. We went straight to EzyDVD because we knew that they were selling them a day early. For the past two Star Wars movies that have been released on DVD in 2000 and 2002, they came with a 'Limited Edition' Cardboard sleeve which the normal DVD case slid into. After emailing EzyDVD last week, they had told me that they had spoken to 20th Century Fox, who told them that they were not making the cardboard sleeve this time.

Back to the story: as i was buying the DVD, I mentioned to the guy how I was disappointed I was at how they weren't releasing a cardboard sleeve version for Ep III, as with the last two movies. Then he told me that apparently it was rumoured that Target did have copies with sleeves and it might be a Coles Myer exclusive thing (I had bought the last two movies from Coles Myer stores). By now the payment had already gone through, so me and Michael went down to Target, and lo and behold, they did have the DVDs with the Limited Edition sleeves.

I couldn't not get it, because that would mean that my previous collected ones over the last 5 years would end up without the last one in the set. So I bought that from Target, and went back to EzyDVD after lunch.

EzyDVD has a 'no refund' policy, but I could get store credit or exchange it for other movie(s). I ended up getting Snatch and BASEketball in exchange, both of which are really good movies. We walked back across the bridge to South Brisbane, and upon arriving back in the office all sweaty from the walk, we took out the DVDs and realised that the two movies that I had gotten from EzyDVD had the security tags still in them (the ones that stop you from opening the case and the DVD).

Rather than do the long walk again to take them back to get opened (that would have been the logical thing to do), we decided that we were going to attempt to break the tags. First up was Snatch, which Michael made a pretty big mess of the case. In the end the case ended up in about 50 or so shards, myself being the one lastly breaking the back-cover on which the DVD rests and releasing the DVD without damaging the it hardly at all. Pity about the case though.

Next was BASEketball. After making a mess of the first DVD case i had initially decided to take that one back to the store for them to open. After thinking about that for a few minutes I decided to stuff it and go for it. After successfully managing to open the case without breaking anything crucial, the main challenge was popping the DVD out of the things that hold it in place without breaking it.

The way the security tag works is that it slides all the way from the edge you open, to the spine of the case under the parts you push down to release the DVD, hence stopping you from being able to push them down. With Nathan helping, we squeezed those two things as much as we could and then bent the DVD upwards on one side and managed to pop out from one side, which made it very easy for the DVD to come out.

So much for security. If three office people who really have never stolen anything before could crack the security tags twice and salvage the DVDs in working order (and also one case), then I'm pretty sure a hardened criminal or experienced shoplifter would have no troubles at all.