TECHNOLOGY

Sometimes it sucks.  I have a new Tai Seng DVD wuxia series I am watching, but the first DVD in the set has some problems. (May be all six of them do, but don't know yet.)  A few minutes in, it completely freezes my Apple DVD player forcing me to shut down, restart, and execute a special command to eject the disc.  To return the flawed product (the receipt for which I have since discarded), I would have to go back to Wal-Mart, where I shop like twice a year (for the huge container of berry-flavored Metamucil I can only get there). When I'm in Wal-Mart I'm never quite sure where I am...they're exactly the same in Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, possibly even Beijing (although the cast of characters is probably different there...I'm not sure what Chinese Wal-Mart shoppers might look like). 

When last buying that Metamucil, since I was in le plus grand magasin  (a nod here to Target), I also was checking out the cheap DVDs on offer ( where I found Jeremiah Johnson, a truly great  movie, kind of Western wuxia, with Robert Redford, that I believe I saw in its premiere** in 1972 in Pocatello, Idaho, (which geologically is really part of Utah), and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I have never seen, but maybe it's time to find out what THAT is all about.) Then I discovered that our local Hawaii Wal-Mart has a respectable section of wuxia and kung fu videos. (Maybe I wouldn't have found this stuff in the Ocala, Florida, Wal-Mart. But then I wasn't looking, I was buying cheap household supplies for my aged father.)  On my Metamucil run, for a good price (the price you pay for enduring Wal-Mart) I bought Shaolin Grandma (subject for a whole 'nother blog post); a not half-bad Korean movie called Shadowless Sword, and a couple of multi-disc Tai Seng series. (I feel really guilty because for these I should have patronized my Chinatown vendor, but I will be back there soon, before Chinese New Year, and will certainly spend some bucks. Maybe I will ask her to stock Metamucil.)

Alas, Sword Stained with Royal Blood is giving me trouble. The Wizard, not a fan of the Mac DVD player, suggested I view it with VLC.  But I decided to test it first on the DVD player connected to our rarely used TV, where it plays just fine.  Except that the DVD player remote control doesn't work, so I can't select subtitles or control the DVD in any way. I asked the Wizard to investigate.  Indeed  something's wrong.  Why would anyone design a device controllable ONLY through a remote?  He can't determine if it's the remote or the IR sensor on the DVD player.

"I need a detector.  I need to order a new tool!"  Which he is enthusiastically now doing on line.

In the meantime, I have learned that the DVD DOES play on VLC on my Mac, (so I don't have to go back to Wal-Mart) although it occasionally burps and reverts to the Cantonese track from the preferred Mandarin, and loses the English subtitles. I can easily recover, but really something is wrong.  I hope it's only this first DVD.

In any case, it's a good story, from a Louis Cha wuxia novel.  They didn't have technology in that setting...except for fine sword production.

I wonder what would happen if I greeted the Wal-Mart greeter with a sword in hand?  Ideally with the receipt for the faulty (Chinese) product impaled on its tip. Prease to lefund this?

**I have the idea that I saw this movie in a theater in Pocatello with Robert Redford actually introducing it.  It was sort of a big deal.  But I could be imagining this, or conflating it with some other event. This may be why I now like to occasionally order shoes and bags from Robert Redford's Sundance catalog.