Monday, December 22, 2008

chungking express shipping

the short before the show: i was in a crabby mood today. i don't like being in crabby moods. i'm trying to work on that.
but i went to see wall.e in the dollar theater here. there's so much i love about that movie... at the core, i love wall.e for the same reason that i love ducks: he's just doing what he can do and being the best at it.

the feature presentation: when we arrived here on friday night, i was expecting to have a few packages waiting for me. one was in my room, but nothing else had arrived. strange, but i decided to give the shipping industry some more time.
today i checked my criterion order and it said that it had been delivered on the 16th. to the office. and signed for by "muller."
i had had criterion change my shipping from utah to minnesota the day it shipped (turns out it would have arrived in provo before i left), so sent them an e-mail to find out where they had shipped the box and were things got mixed up.
i thought about it.
ok. "office"/"house", tomato/tomato, fine. whatever; it got delivered. and with their electronic signature thingers, maybe "valerie" read as "muller."
i mentioned to my mom that the tracking number said it had been delivered here days ago. she asked what movies they were, (criterion's first blu-rays, chungking express and the third man, for those of you interested), and then said that they had arrived. but, in the flurry of package activity that is Christmastime at the gustafsons, it seemed that they had been wrapped and were probably under the tree already.
i had a good laugh about this and smiled in the false sense of security akin to when a movie seems it's over, but there still 20 minutes left.
i came home from some friends' that night and there was chungking express, shink-wrapped and lovely on my desk. everything was solved and it was a happy ending.
like an fbi detective rushing in with new lab results, criterion had returned my query. the address they had shipped it to lacked the starting "2" of my parents' house. they had called, and found that this muller character had, indeed, signed for it at the office, which was probably two miles west of here. the criterion rep offered to do further research and track down the fedex driver and find out just who gave it to whom.
to quote alice, "curiouser and curiouser...."

where did this disc on my desk come from? mom said she must have ordered it for me, but i never told her that i wanted it. is the third man wrapped under the tree? what is "muller" doing with my movies?

my mother is very good at keeping track of all the Christmas inventory, and she has it all logged somewhere, we just haven't bothered to check yet. afterall, nothings going to change much in the next few days anyway. so i'll wait until everything under the tree is revealed and go from there.

further, my dad's present that i ordered on dec. 2 hasn't arrived, and i haven't heard back from the company on that one. maybe he's on the naughty list and santa intercepted it?

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