Terrible Idea (.net)

MC Chris (wikipedia entry) may have voiced the most annoying Aqua Teen Hunger Force character ever, but he cranks out some amazingly good tunes.  His website has some tracks from his upcoming album; I recommend the titular “MC Chris is Dead,” and “Nrrrd Grrrl.”

Recently, however, I’ve been compulsively listening to “Fett’s Vette.”  (Not on his website; see video below.)  The song has been around for years, but I only just found it.  It’s is a gangsta rap song, sung by Boba Fett, a bounty hunter from Star Wars.  It is silly, of course, but it is also incredibly catchy.

The video (done by a fan, but the best one I’ve found):

The adult in me appreciates the killer beat and rapid-fire rhymes, but the kid in me loves the Star Wars references.

Via Slashdot, the NY Times reports on an online community that hunted down a car thief.  (NYT requires registration.)  Stealing a car is a pretty stupid thing to do (not to mention pretty illegal), and there should be some serious consequences for it.  But look at the last line of the article (quoted in the Slashdot summary):

“This guy has worldwide recognition for being a car thief for the rest of his life,” Mr. Ironside said. “The Internet is not going away.”

This is way, way more punishment than a stupid teenager deserves.  The quote neatly captures the geographical and temporal scope of internet fame and infamy: world-wide, and forever.  GW Law Prof. Daniel Solove has a book called The Future of Reputation (available free online) that talks about the effect of technology on social interaction.  I’m guessing he’ll have something to say about this article over at Concurring Opinions pretty soon.  I have yet to read his book, so I can’t tie this story directly in with what he writes.  But I do have a few thoughts of my own.

In undergrad, a friend of mine did a stupid (and illegal) thing that justifiably pissed off a lot of our mutual friends.  There was no legal action, but “justice” was meted out swiftly and harshly through social means.  He apologized, but his reputation never really recovered.  Talking about it years later, he said that it basically ended him at that college.

So, he transfered.  He left that social circle, left his reputation, and got another start.  Now, he’s doing very well for himself.  He learned his lesson, and he was able to benefit from it because he had a way to start over without that stigma.

That’s the problem with the internet.  There is no getting away from it, either by going far away, or by waiting it out.  In order to learn from your mistakes, they need to be forgiven or forgotten.  But like Mr. Ironside says in the article, the internet doesn’t go away.

So, my initial thoughts are that to account for the infinite duration of any mistakes that manage to make it to the internet, we need to rethink the way we deal with other people socially. People change, but their public record no longer does — it’s all out there, and it’s all very searchable.  We need to take this into account when we assess people.  Of course, how can you really tell if they have changed?  Instinct would tell us that having someone’s life at our fingertips would make it easier to make judgments about them, but if you want to be fair to them, it’s still just as hard as it ever was.

I’ll write more about this after I see what Prof. Solove has to say in his book.  Hopefully I’ll also get to take a class with him while I’m at GW.  And hopefully, Jamie Jacobson can find some people who are willing to forgive the stupid theft that will follow him the rest of his life.

At some point in the past week, I was introduced to Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, by Meat Loaf.  The song is spectacular.  And I mean that both in the sense of “it’s awesome” and in the sense that it’s a spectacle, in form and in content.

It’s a retrospective of two lovers who promised to be with each other “‘til the end of time” in the heat of the moment in highschool, but now are “waiting for the end of time/so I can end my time with you.”  And the singing… the singing.  Meat Loaf could sound passionate and sincerely intense singing his grocery list.  (If he could find something to rhyme with orange…)

I had never heard anything by Meat Loaf in his pre-Bat out of Hell II days, and I finally understand what the big deal was.  As fun as I Would Do Anything for Love is, it pales in comparison to this song.

The video:

Via Volokh, the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning feature article, about a world-class violinist who played world-class violin pieces on his world-class violin to a stream of morning commuters at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro stop.  There are plenty of things to say about this article.  It won a Pulitzer Prize, after all.  I find myself wondering two things:

First, if I had been there, on my way to work or class or whatever, would I have realized what was going on?  I’d like to think so, but I see a lot of myself in the descriptions of the disinterested passers-by, who willfully pay less attention the more something tries to grab it.  The article asks this question — how much does the circumstances surrounding the viewing of a piece of art affect the way people perceive it.  The obvious answer is “a lot.”  But would that sublime music have worked its magic on me?  Would I have noticed?

Second, a “meta-question.”  The same question, applied this time to the article itself.  If I had just seen the first few paragraphs of the article in passing, would I have seen it for what it was?  I try to keep apprised of the news as much as the next guy, but I hadn’t heard about this story until it popped up in my news reader and the word “Pulitzer” caught my eye.  The award became the frame that let me appreciate the article.  I read it and was deeply moved.  Would that have happened if I hadn’t known it was a Pulitzer prize winning article?

I’m more confident about answering in the affirmative to the second question than the first.  I read articles for their interest and yes, for their art.  I don’t listen to street musicians for their art.  It is frustrating beyond belief to realize that so many people passed up so great an opportunity, and to realize that I probably would have, too.