My brother David wanted me to meet a loose acquaintance of his, who runs a billion-dollar real estate investment trust, and who he thought might be interested in some of the financial things we’re up to at Cyan.

Problem was, the only time he knew the guy would be free to chat during his pass through New York City would be at a McCain fundraiser this past Tuesday night.

Fortunately, David’s girlfriend’s good friend is a deputy director of fundraising for the McCain campaign, and got us in to the event free, exempting me from the moral calculus of whether it might be acceptable to donate money to a candidate you fervently hope won’t win, just because it might yield some personal avaricious gain.

But, it turns out, she didn’t just get us in, she got us in with VIP-room passes that implied we’d each donated $25,000 to the event. Which is how, despite my good San Francisco uber-liberal roots, despite my current political leanings which could best be called either free-market socialist or tax-and-spend libertarian, I ended up the night before the Presidential debate sandwiched between Sarah and Todd Palin and Cindy and John McCain for a photo I’m in equal parts fervently hoping I can find a copy of and that nobody ever finds a copy of.

Life is never dull.