Stealth!

Yesterday afternoon, Mum watched the movie Stealth.  It's a dreadful waste of celluloid, but she seemed to genuinely enjoy it - enough to rent it after she saw most of it on TV this weekend.

She spent the rest of the weekend saying things like "Those swallows look like stealth fighters!" as they swooped across the park or, "Those seagulls are like stealth fighters" as they hovered overhead, and by Sunday afternoon "Everything is like a stealth fighter!  Isn't life great?"

She watched the movie on Tuesday because Tuesday is "One Dollar One Rental - Any movie for a dollar!" day at the local video shop.

We meant to rent only Stealth, but when I went to the counter to pay my dollar, the dude winced and, looking at me warily, said "Are you aware of our rental policy on Tuesdays?"

            "Sure am!" I said cheerily, thrusting the video toward him in an "ante up" sort of maneuver.

            "Yeah." he said lugubriously.  "We've had to change it a little.  We advertised one dollar rentals on Tuesday, and people started coming in and renting movies.  Lots of movies.   Lots of people.   We lost MONEY on it.  People are just - "  He glared at me, representative of the great horde of rapacious Tuesday opportunists.

            "Anyway.  Now you have to spend at least five dollars on Tuesdays or you can't rent anything."

            "How MUCH" Mum asked "would this movie cost on any other day of the week?"

            "Four ninety five."  He said, somewhat smugly, under the circumstances.  "You want four more movies or d'y'wanna buy a few chocolate bars?"

On the other hand, we DID get five movies for the same price it would have cost to rent one under normal circumstances.  On the OTHER other hand, all but one (the one no one else would have rented in a fit) of the weekly rentals I was interested in had gone ("Geez, I'm sorry.  That one went out the door half an hour ago.... Geez.  That one too.  Just bad luck, I guess.") and we wound up with a pile of overnighters and three-day rentals  that we've been hard-pressed to do justice to.  In fact, it would probably have made more sense just to rent that one movie and pay the five dollar charge and  -  hmmm.... say... d'you think?