The past several days, while riding to the... er, well... "office", I couldn't help but notice the big "Now Hiring" sign hanging outside the Great Harvest bread shop. So today, I finally went in and asked about it.

The girl at the counter handed me and application, along with a free slice of warm bread. She said it's likely to be just a summer job, subbing a few evenings per week for one of the regular guys who will be gone for a few months. Not a problem for me. Although this fact did clue me in to the likelihood that (1) if it's a "summer job", it's probably meant for somebody far below my "qualification level", but who gives a fuck about that? (2) There's a good chance it's minimum wage.

Anyway, I took the application, filled it out within a half hour, and returned it. Good times.

I feel like Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty. "I want as little responsibility as possible." But no, I will not be wasting my money on a hotrod, nor do I plan on smoking $2000 joints. And as for underage high school cheerleaders? Fugget about it. Yea, dream on suckah.

(See also: article explaining how supposedly anti-mainstream movies such as American Beauty and Fight Club actually work to promote values of consumerism. But they're still great movies anyway. So says me.)

Which brings me to my next subject. Not long ago, I ran across Peerflix (from a google ad, incidentally), and decided to give it a try. Even though my first movie hasn't actually made it into my mail yet, I think I'm already becoming hooked.

Here's the concept: We all know how Netflix works. Peerflix takes it to the next theoretical level: No central distribution hub. No inventory held by the company to speak of. It's an online movie store about nothing! (Ok, so I've obviously been watching too much Seinfeld lately. Blame tv torrents for having the entire goddamn series in 1 big ole torrent.)

It works like this: You go through your movie collection and sort out all the crap that you probably should have never bought in the first place. For every movie you decide you can part with, you enter the UPC into the website, and it flags the title as available to other users. They send you a pile of envelopes. When somebody else picks a movie you have, it gives you a page with their address to print out, you stuff the disc (sans packaging) in one of the envelopes, and send it away. In exchange, you get a specified number of "peerbux", which can be used to order movies from other users.

Advantages over netflix:

• Monthly fee: $0. Each trade costs 99 cents for the person receiving the movie. (That's where the company gets its revenue.) Unless you're a very heavy user, the monthly bill will probably be a lot cheaper than netflix. Also much cheaper than renting from meatspace stores.
• Not only are there no late fees, but you could potentially hold on to the movies you receive forever for no additional charge. But of course, if you pass them on to somebody else after viewing, then you get more credits to order other movies.

Disadvantages:

• In order to use the system at all, it requires either an upfront investment of movies you're willing to part with, or they'll also happily take U.S. dollars off your hands and credit you peerbox at an exchange rate of 5 to 1. The latter is not at all a good deal, IMO.
• If nobody else wants your shit, you're stuck. (Again, you can buy peerbux, but that's a lousy deal.)
• The selection of available movies is, of course, limited to what other people are geting rid of. You can flags titles that aren't currently available to be sent to you as soon as somebody else puts them up, but who knows when that's gonna happen.
• The potential exists for some idiot on the other end to not be prompt about sending when they say they will. Since I just started using it, and only sent away my first film -- and subsequently placed my first order -- a couple days ago, I don't know how much of a problem that will turn out to be. It does have a mechanism for reporting undelivered items (and refunding credits), which should mean they can detect any chronic misbehavers. Time will tell how well it works in practics.
• User pays postage. Plus you have to print an address page to send stuff away. (Or, in my case, since I realized my trusty old printer is totally dry on ink, write the addresses down.) So sending is bit more hassle.
• The thing has quirks, and the queue management system needs some serious help. I've noted a couple obvious misspellings in the interface. The label is "beta". Unlike certain google projects that have been stable for ages, this thing really does deserve the term.

Obviously, it's not a drop-in replacement for netflix addicts, and probably won't be for a long time. But I'm having fun with it anyway. I like the lack of a monthly fee, so if a month goes by during which I don't feel like ravenously watching movie after movie (which happened occassionally when I was a netflix user), I don't have to feel like I'm throwing my money down the toilet.

Also, when browsing through the list of available titles, though there was unsurprisingly a lot of total crap, occassionally, I would bump into something so totally off-the-wall that it would tickle my fancy. Example: As of this afternoon, I've got Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases on the way. A disc containing a bunch of the original cartoons from back in the day. Cost: 1 peerbux. (The lowest possible value.) Why not?

Another one I hope gets sent pretty soon (it's now only waiting for the owner to confirm that they will ship it): A documentary entitled The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick. 2 peerbux. Where the hell else would I have run into that? Sweetness.

There's also a bunch of more common movies from the past several years on my want list, but I tried to make sure the rarer stuff gets sent to me first (before somebody else might snag it), so the rest can wait until I get more peerbux.

It's like a goddamn micro-economy, all running off of one little website. Anyway, enough babbling about that.

My head feels like toast, for reasons I don't feel like delving into at the moment. I think I'll lay back for a bit. Peace.