There are two types of pirates surfing the information superhighway: first, there’s the normal variety, media thieves content with viewing the latest box office hits in grainy, Chinese-subtitled fidelity on some unpronounceable site. I imagine these deviants also shun liquid soap and eat Hot Pockets willingly. And then there’s the other class of pirate. The only class of pirate, really. The discriminating pirate.
I’m talking about standards, people, and Stage6 was once the premier destination for illicit materials among the thieveratti. At a certain point, however, I guess the founders realized that allowing millions of users to stream terabytes of data for free didn’t really lend itself to a viable business model. But that’s one for b-school, right?
When catastrophe struck, this pirate cast his Internets to the right of the boat and, thanks to a hot tip from King Calm, discovered Hulu, a place where media is legitimately dispensed with brief advertisements. Legally watching flicks online offends every one of my sensibilities, and yet I continue to click. One show has been especially compelling in its ability to deliver utterly tasteless situations in a delicious fashion. The movie selection is older, sure, but they just added–prepare yourself–The Scorpion King! I can already feel the cranial fluid escaping from my nostrils.
While I’m largely inured to the wiles of online advertising, print and packaging have an altogether hypnotic sway on me, but I managed to free myself from one devious machination today. “Oven-baked.” Previously the food industry could apply this term to anything–pizza, cookies, rivulets of garbage water–and down the alimentary chute it would go. But what does it mean exactly?
Where else can you bake something, after all, if not in an oven? Then again, this was an ad from Domino’s, so they very likely could have worked those new sandwiches to a crisp, flaky brown in a toilet or something. The phrase that continues to confound, however, is “limited edition,” which evokes a visceral, gotta-have-it response from me. I’ll unravel it eventually, mark my words.
Golf was indeed a disaster this weekend, albeit a necessary one, but we’ll return to this topic at a later time. One thing I would like to discuss later this week is my recent media diet, particularly after Stage6 closed. When illicitly procured movies and television shows must be consumed in the best quality possible, what do you do when the richest well dries up? You pack up camp and search for a new vein, that’s what.
With tee time lurching closer every second now, I decided to hit the range tonight in a desperate effort to get myself street-legal, opting this round for God’s green, unforgiving earth rather than a mat. Half an hour into rearranging the proprietor’s dirt for free, in a scenario hailing most certainly from an alternate reality, Boss G and the Operator–an awesome band name I hereby claim–appeared on the scene with a small, white dog and advice.
There were sound reminders, to be sure, about balance, backswings, and concentration, but what was invaluable was this idea of relaxed focus. Finding the quiet in the noise. I’m convinced now my refusal to seek expert instruction may just carry me far enough. Expertise isn’t my goal, after all. I don’t want to pay through the nose for some fossil to tell me to contort this way or that, as if I were in Cirque or some such shit, simply because golf lore dictates it.
It’s proficiency I want, which is a commodity readily available through this confederacy of peers, intuition, and the Internet. So, this Saturday. A slightly different green mile, one that’s manicured and properly fertilized, but a green mile nonetheless. I’m calm now. This may be because I’ve already resigned myself to disaster.