the corner office

I could have slapped the smarmy assistant at Look & Listen this evening, but since I'm a pacifist kinda dude, I only briefly visualised doing it and then got over it.

In response to? I've been going back to Look & Listen at Cresta for the past few weeks to see if they have the Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers Extended DVD version with the Gollum statue and the whole toot in stock. Last week one of the assistants at least knew what I was talking about. He wasn't sure when it would be in, but he'd heard that it was due this week and couldn't wait himself. A Brother. A Fellow Tolkein Nutter.

I digress. I pop into L&L this evening, and ask one of the assistants, who does a quick check on his pretty DOS-like retail system which says there's no such thing in stock.

"It's not in stock yet", says he, "but if it does come in, it's going to be just as expensive as this one", as he highlights the Fellowship version on-screen, in its R1,200 glory.

Duh. Perhaps he was trying to be helpful, but from his tone of voice I had the sense he was trying to tell me I was nuts to spend my money on something so expensive. It was one of those moments when you want to "Dude" someone. Which in the vernacular, would be a preamble to tuning someone the odds.

Dude. (very brief but heavy pause, for the import of the interjection to sink in and the pressure to build) ... I already own that one and the reason it's so damned expensive is because it has four DVDs and two Argonnath statues, and even if it didn't I'd still have payed that much to get it. And now I want the second one too. I could try to justify why I want to buy an overpriced box of DVDs and Gollum statue, but any attempts at explaining the significance and desirability of this collector's edition with 43 extra bloody minutes of screen time and commentaries and a frigging Gollum statue to boot to a non-fan would probably fail. You either get it or you don't. Clearly you don't, so just stfu and tell me when you think it will be in stock.

... (at which point you stand back and look really the moer in) ...

But since I'm as much a wuss as I am a pacifist, I belatedly expressed my disappointment and left.

Anyhooo, I'm now in a quandry. Do I wait it out at Look & Listen and/or CD Wherehouse, or do I go ahead and order thru Amazon or the like? I don't trust a Gollum statue to our postal service, but the fact that I don't have this DVD set is now seriously messing with my karma.