march 17, 2001. My computer has now been busted for a month (or as we say around the rockethome, fucking busted). Since I'm paying almost seven grand for tuition on a "fully wired" campus, I didn't think that it was too unreasonable to expect some level of technical help from the university support centre. You know where this is going, right? Do I have to tell you what they said? It bears repeating, actually. They said, "we don't do that." Just like in the Ellison story, Whimper of Whipped Dogs. I'd quote it, but my copy is in Ontario. I didn't yell at the guy - which I can't figure out now; either I was stunned by the answer or I was just neutralized by his strong aura of computer geekery (you don't attack your brothernerd). But goddammit. When will post secondary institutions stop giving me the shaft? They say that the problem with U of T is that you're just a number: well Acadia has less than 4000 students and they still lose the specific in the general. Every situation fits into a policy that ensures minimum ass-riskage. If he had just said, "we're not mandated to fix them" or "our insurance doesn't cover it" or "we don't have time to fix computers that don't belong to the university" or "our training doesn't cover your system," I would've nodded & smiled & walked away calm. Those are all perfectly understandable reasons. But to refer to protocol, to serve me a single phrase that contains all the contempt the institution has for every part of my being that isn't dollars and cents...well, that's just lame. Lame and stupid and wrong. I may not deserve my computer fixed, but I do deserve a better answer than that evasive piece of shit. Ok. Rant is over. Today is chore day in the rockethome. We're far too lazy to do any household work during weekday evenings, so basic home maintenance always takes place in between the extreme slackness of the weekend. This is only to provide context for what happened next. We were in the van, heading toward the supermarket with nothing but duty in our hearts, when the Boy turned into the movie theatre parkinglot. If anything, he was more confused than I was. We started to turn around, and then we noticed the sign: among many other thing, there was a matinee of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." I must be the only one in the world who hasn't seem this movie yet, and it was a temptation too big to resist. Since everyone's already seen it, I'll merely report that it deserved to be the first movie I've seen in a theatre in half a year. The first fight/chase scene brought tears to my eyes. I don't know how they managed to make the wirework so dignified and graceful, but it was a delight. And the story was just as satisfying as a work by Neil Gaiman (who pushes my story buttons right now.) I suppose you know all this. It doesn't make my pleasure any less intense.