John McBride

The HLS Film Society’s screening of Oldboy was a tremendous success. The all-time low of 4 attendees gave it a particularly intimate air, although it did make me wonder whether the group might be becoming a bit too elite. As plastering the campus with posters has failed to arouse any interest whatsoever, perhaps a system where we actively conceal the film and the location of the screening would be more succesful in encouraging future attendence.

I’ve been quietly jamming out to The 1900s album “Plume Delivery” for about six months now.  Like me, the band’s from Chicago but was unable to escape the inexorable gravity of the small, dirty peninsula that some call San Francisco.  It was only last night when Mary quizzed Keith on the details of Aleister Crowley’s life (for those keeping score, Keith was batting about a .33)  that I realized that the chorus for the song “Whole of the Law” is actually the Law of Thelema from Crowley’s Book of the Law:  “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law[,] . . . Love is the law, love under will.”  Strong work, boys. Strong work.

I read this article in the Times about Hollinger which has confirmed all my deep suspicions about those who go into business. They look the same, talk the same, have the same double-chins, the same double-breasted suits, and they apparently all violate their fiduciary duties in the same way.

Can we please have just a little variation in our corporate looting? Who hasn’t expensed the lavish party for the wife, had the company purchase a Park Avenue apartment, and flown around on the corporate jet? Is this the best that titans of the industy, men of genius, and natural born leaders can do? Where’s the micro-nations, the harems, the floating fortresses, and the underground lairs? If Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen” describes a night more shocking than anything you’ve managed to accomplish with the billion dollars you’ve stolen, you might seriously want to reconsider your life of crime.

I’ve become so lazy that I can’t even be bothered to search for this idea on Google. Couple that with the fact that I haven’t really taken the time to look at the Bittorrent protocol and this idea becomes even more suspect.  Nonetheless, I really need this idea to become reality because I’m always out of the loop, and the only person in the first world under 30 without a laptop, with the result that I always hear about the cool stuff a week after everyone has stopped seeding the file du jour.  So I really should write an app that will broker requests for files based on id – it’ll create a (hopefully redundant) path of people with who you can swap something you’re not seeding in order to get something you want seeded.  Actually, that’s such a great idea that someone else must already be doing it.  Screw it, I’m Googling it after all.

I’m not certain it must, but it does. Tools enabling anyone to instantly publish their thoughts no more ensures great discourse than the existence of a Michael’s in every strip-mall ensures great art. Ah, the cautious and the clever say, but is that what we want? Absolutely. And, to take a page from the bloggers’ book, I’ll leave it at that.