For a man so highly regarded, it seems clear that Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., more commonly known to us as “Indiana” Jones, deserves little more than the contempt of the average man. Throughout the episodic adventures of his self-titled 4-part trilogy, we glean a many-faceted glimpse of Dr. Jones, as the Adademic, the Dashing Traveller, the Ruthless Greedy Hoarder, and all in all not one that in the grander scheme reveals him as any more than a petty criminal with a nearly unremovable hat. One only need examine his much-beloved ‘heroic’ antics to see him in his true light.

First, let us consider his rampant destruction of an incredibly preserved Peruvian temple. Who could have imagined that the Incans could have created a pneumatic dart security system that could survive nearly a millenium of disuse in such a humid and corrosive climate? And the technology to carve and raise an enormous granite sphere, if not then to burrow such an enormous mountain channel for it to pass through, these skills are thought to have been quite beyond the capacity of the local tribes as we understand them today. These revelations alone could have occupied a team of research scientists for several years. But instead of conducting due dilligence, or even wearing gloves for christ’s sake, Dr. Jones instead summarily destroys this amazing temple, with the end result of donating more wealth to the Third Reich’s dark coffers.

In general, Dr. “Indiana” Jones has little concern for anyone except himself. On many occasions, Dr. Jones has had the pleasure of being assisted by the much honorable Dr. Marcus Brody, whose creativity in his curatorship of the Triesten Remains was matched only by his skill on the Polka dance floor. Upon their myriad excursions in the Sudan, or when poring through the cavernous libraries of Paris, or even on those many occasions where Dr. Brody’s live was so periolusly threatened by the thoughtless acts of others, did the magnanmious Dr. Jones ever once show him any more than the barest hint of gratitude? No, of course not. And can any of us truly remember the number of times in when Sailah was forced once again to rescue Dr. Jones in some grand Deus-ex-Machinian fashion, the recklessly adventuous result of which seems to have only made Indiana’s fortunes rise like so much sweet cream? No, of course not. Nor should we overlook the Oedipally-infused encounters with his brilliant father, the Biblical scholar Professor Henry Walton Jones Sr., in which our ’sympathetic’ protagonist bares out his psychological complexes with such a flamingly literal replaying of the Resurrection myth.

And then there is his relationship with women. It is best to refer to the female Anima in her archetypical form here, for Dr. Jones seems to have issue with that entire spectrum. Poor Marion Ravenwood, who was left sweeping their floor in Kenya, pregnant and alone, after Dr. Jones crept out late one night to “scare away some dumb old ivory theives” only to end up lashed to a cargo hull speeding away from the Gold Coast. And how could such a gorgeous and multi-talented cabaret entertainer such as Wilie Scott get so caught up in his clutches, only to be dragged through the most diseased slums of colonial India, forced to eat the brains of a monkey (a rather disgusting ethnic delicacy), and then to nearly be sacrificed in a bloodthirsty sacrifice to the goddess Kali? Oh, the shame! And even moreso, both the esteemed Dr. Elsa Schneider and the highly-decorated Agent Irina Spalko themselves had such bright careers ahead of them, until they too fell befoul of Indiana’s crazy, wacky, mad-cap adventures of comedic archeological rape.

But to be sure, the most damning evidence must be his complete and utter disregard for supernatural forces. To recount the sheer number of times in which Dr. Jones has been exposed to fantastical relics, the pursuit of which which has soon bloomed forth with entities of such ridiculously supreme power, is it not true that even one experience of this nature alone could inspire a generation or more? But not only has Dr. Jones been remiss in showing the professionalism, nor indeed even the basic good faith, to document or publish such experiences in even the most coarse of details, the smallest morsel of which would so enlighten both his peers and the scientific community as a whole. But also he has shown a consistent level of arrogance and wanton disrespect towards these true-to-life walking-talking deific manifestations. Not one, but two relics of the Christian faith have been utterly desecrated by his impudence, also resulting in significant amounts of collateral damage to the surrounding area and high-ranking Nazis officers. But to spit in the face — or more accurately, in the skull — of our first contact with another galactic civilization? Dr. Jones might seem to be more of a existential threat than just a capricious historian who has clearly lost his battle with his adrenal addiction.

In summary, our idolatry of this man is not only misplaced, is is completely unjustified. Oh, how suave Indiana is, what with his perpetual three-day stubble. And that long slender whip of his, which commands such shock and awe from the fairer sex. All these things are but a mask, a crude mask that only hides his lunatic gaze, that of a hackneyed filcher of priceless artifacts. Pray that the world has heard the very last of Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., a more damnable bastard we may never see.

California has been going through a drought this winter. the weather’s been awesome, but there’s been little if any rain. not that i’m immediately affected by the drought, thanks to the fine water utility in San Francisco, but i hear it ain’t good

last night we had ourselves a little storm. it makes for a great sleep environment. but i wake up this morning and it’s sunny. now it’s getting overcast again, and i’m reminded of two of the most awesome things that i miss about the climate in Seattle

i lived there for 8 years. and, yes it rains a lot. but once you’ve lived there a while, you realize that it’s not the rain that’s an issue, it’s the constant cloud-cover. it took me years of living down here in the Bay Area before i didn’t feel some sort of urgent pull — a panic even — whenever there was a day of solid sunshine. the pull to get out there and take in the sun you don’t know when you’ll see it again that gets engrained into folks who’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest

but that climate gives you a couple of unique and beautiful things:

The Convergence Zone

nestled in between the Olympic and Cascasde mountain ranges, the winds whip through Seattle in a pretty directional way. usually north-to-south, if my memory serves

several days a year, you would be downtown and perchance look up into the sky. and there, with a shudder of astonishing beauty, you would take in a living, breathing palette of moving brushwork

up at the Cumulus level, there would be fast moving short streaks of clouds, thin and puffy. they’d streak by like vaprous cotton streamers. up in the Stratus region there would be their much larger cousins, puffy clumps that were holding together but still racing across the sky, pulled along, stretched out, and coaxing along its trailing wisps like a mother duck does her ducklings. all of this was formed through the rapid channel of the Convergence Zone

and up in the Altostratus and Nimbostratus there’d be two additional layers, the large impenetrable stormcloud variety lay far above, like a heavy grey fleece over the city, and below that a similar yet lighter and more fragmented variety of the same

the overall effect was breathtaking. four layers of organic motion

whereas in San Francisco, it’s fog and / or a cloud layer. the closest equivalent is the breakup of the heavy fog over Twin Peaks, or the odd cloud tubes that only seem to come in over the Golden Gate and dissipate into the Marina

The Rain God Tryouts

Generally one day a year, or maybe two, the Rain Gods would gather together over the Emerald City to duke it out for yearly supremacy. the torrentials, the sputterers, the light-drifters, the slow-and-heavy pelters. all the glitterati of the precipitation industry

one by one, our candidates would approach the stage and perform for between 15 and 30 minutes. then, the rain (of whatever variety) would stop for about an hour. often the sun would come out, a celebration of the auspicious competition that we were all so lucky to witness. then the skies would grow heavy again and it was one to the next. or maybe not — many an audition that day takes place under significant sunlight

usually there were a good five or six Gods vying for the job, clearly having won their regional championships in Southern India, Scandanavia or the Amazon Basin. and it wasn’t readily apparent to the audience who the victor was, but it was guaranteed that at several points in the day, you would feel some sort of delight at the show. “wow, that was quick and intense!” “jeez, how did She make it mist and hail at the same time?” such a magical show to behold

whereas in San Francisco, it rains. and people forget how to drive

i have a flexible schedule :) these days, and i like to watch CNBC in the morning, at least until the market bell rings at 1p PST. it’s very entertaining to see the financial pundits trying to, well, entertain the viewers while we all watch the lemmings of Wall Street goes through their bouts of panic and temper tantrums

however, it is clear that there is at least one consistent message : anything is justifiable these days, given This Economic Climate. massive job slashing, foreclosed property redistribution, Congressional bail-outs of the porn industry — all are sensible responses to This Economic Climate. yeah, if that last example’s funny once, it’ll be funny a million times

so, am i the only person (besides mr. Flynt) who thinks that This Economic Climate is being pushed, like, really hard. i mean, doesn’t it feel branded. as if someone is making a profit off of being the one who emphasises the most strongestest about how how terrible things really are? how this is the Worst it’s been since the Depression. how America Will Never Be The Same. you can literally see the news orgs as they scramble to out-pessimist each other

we live in a Media driven age. but doesn’t it feel like we’re all being driven towards some sort of cliff or something. because i mean, boy, back in late September, there sure was plenty of open grazing land to go around. we were all a warm & happy & prosperous flock. yet four months later, This Economic Climate requires that we all herd ourselves here onto this precipice. “yes, it’s cold and windy here too, so watch your footing. and, no, don’t turn around and look down. you’ll get dizzy, and might fall. no, don’t look. you remember what happened to the last guy who did that. no, i said don’t. i said …

“oh dear.” tonight on CNN Special Report : The Sheep Who Looked Down. perhaps Nancy Grace could switch to focusing on that story for a couple of times a week. “see, that’s exactly what we’ve been warning everyone about. now, be careful that you don’t slip on the rocks here near the ledge. and whatever you do, don’t look down …”

and in its speed and fury, This Economic Climate has permitted, no fostered, no demanded a rapid and significant psycho-cultural shift. the Media has now raised it to the front-and-center of our collective consciousness. everyone has heard of it, and everyone understands how This Economic Climate is expected to affect them

thus revealed, it can become a justification, a sensible excuse, a pragmatic discretionary decision, to be leveraged when appropriate. massive $700B hand-outs here, budget cuts there, terminations of employees and pensions. all very large and dramatic moves that weren’t in any way justifiable four months back. but now we’re in This Economic Climate, and well, you know …

how rapidly things change in this Media-driven society. how reactive we are allowed to become. how permissible it has become to seek out anything to alleviate the pain — layoffs, hand-outs, pork-barrel infrastructure projects — and the quicker the fix the better. because like they tell us, This Economic Climate is here and it has a message and you are not going to like it

i mean, this has got to be fear-mongering at its best! does anyone else feel that same sort of overall chthonic vibe being layed down on us now, as it was when seven years ago we the Media suddenly realized that the terrorists were real, and we weren’t immune to them anymore? a radically different event — but it’s that same message of unassaliable, almost federally-mandated, fear

sure, like 9/11, this is indeed a real crisis. our banking institutions gave out ridiculously structure housing loans, and we took advantage of a better-greased opportunity to slide into the American Dream. silly people like Them setting up poorly-conceived investments, goofy people like Us living too far beyond our means

but the message of fear, that’s adding insult to injury

sure we can’t really blame the Media, because every eyeball kept is a dollar earned. moreover, This Economic Climate is new and it is distractingly shiny, so it’s going to be leveraged as such, like fresh Bradgelina triplets. then we reinforce the Media’s button-pushing with our reactions, and when it sees us jump, it simply tries to find out how high. that’s what it does

we as a people need to understand that This Economic Climate is as much a product of real circumstances and events, as it is a product of what we’re being told by our trusted authorities of information. they’ve long since wandered off the path of pure Journalism into realms of Entertainment. and we as consumers have allowed this, probably because Bread and Circuses are still an excellent way to distract a crowd … i mean, this consumer here likes his food & spectacles as much as the next person too

and in This Econcomic Climate, who doesn’t need a little distraction

but be wary. we’re good people, all of us, but we’ve all been pushed back up against the cold, wet, windy ridge of this cliff and the tension is being kept high. that sort of fear will trigger Survival Mode, which will divide us and lead to impetuous self-protective decisions

we are still very fortunate. it is wonderful to see that there are strong counter-influences out there. our new President for example, who stands proudly on the political pulpit and exhorts us to come together, work together. these are wise and inspiring words, the sort of tones that inspire cooperation, not fragment it

and there’s Drake Bennett. he wrote a great article on what a mondern-day Depression might look like. what i found that struck me the most about this artice was how measured it was. no doom, no gloom. just pragmatic insight. as in, maybe things really aren’t going to get that dreadfully bad

shocking words, yes, i know, to find that the sky isn’t falling around you, unlike that someone with a bullhorn and press credentials over there who’s insisting that it is

don’t believe all the negative hype. don’t let those turkeys get you down. i’ve heard it on good authority that we will indeed rise above

in prior posts, i’ve waxed rhapsodic about generative music apps, and how the iPhone platform is the perfect vehicle. well, Sherilyn clued me into this one …

the Buddha Machine, in its original analog form, is the creation of FM3. it’s simply plays back one of nine tone loops. not all of them are sleep-worthy, but several of them are definitely so

Robert Henke, of Monolake fame, released an album called Layering Buddha which features the space between the loops. the album itself leverages the generativity of the device, in that the fact that it’s analog tech, which means that it experiences both intermittent manufacturing flaws and natural entropy

of course the iPhone App is defect-free, every time. now, it seems a bit pricey for what is effectively less than 3 minutes of audio content. yet the App is a superlative white-noise generator, and that alone makes all the diff

and yes, it comes in multiple colors — just swipe from left-to-right. i chose Orange

PS: check out the online Wall. mix, match and layer your tones, just like the Godhead intended it

Mozilla’s Ubiquity project is the best thing since sliced bread. it’s a command line for the web. download the plugin, learn the keyboard shortcut, and you’ll never go to ‘google.com’ again. really nice shortcuts for Wikipedia, Google Maps, TinyURL and a lot of convenient services, with keyword completion

then there’s the Herd and Commands in the Wild, effectively a yum / gem / CPAN for scripts. I just picked up the PingFM mashup shortcut

PingFM made the great decision to give each user a secret API key. it’s not OpenID by any stretch, but you don’t have to reveal your password. grab it from the Application keys link under Services / Tools (http://ping.fm/key), apply it to the ‘pingfm-key‘ shortcut, and then the ‘pingfm‘ shortcut does the posting aggregation for you. it just sends raw text, so the ‘@s’, ‘@m’ shortcodes work as well

so nice & convenient. much thanks to everyone involved in putting these things together!

[ WARNING : includes shoegazing ]

so here I sit on New Years Eve in a triage room at UCSF Medical. apparently I have me a nasty absess (no URL necessary). sure, I could make it til morning, but tomorrow is New Years Day. so no doctor til Friday

what lovely timing

and as I wait here in an open-backed gown, iPhone in hand, I have plenty of time to collect my thoughts :)

at around 7:30p, I convinced myself that it’s best to deal with this now. not to wait 36 hours for it to get more systemic than it already has. lymph nodes, bloodstream, the usual suspects. no fever yet, only mildly nauseous, body-tired

but I am sooo going to pay out the wazoo for this. Emergency Room vs. HMO doctor is a big cost swing. that’s the heavy thing on my mind. and it ain’t an emergency … but there’s no other way to get timely care & anti-biotics

still. I remember a lesson from my youth about not dealing with your health in a timely fashion. if only Jim Henson had gone to the hospital in time, we might yet still be hearing Kermit’s lilting voice (rather than the sincere-yet-empty facimile we hear today)

rationalization. I know. totally different degree

anyway. time for some I & D with Doctor Marjorie. ta ta!

ahh. Saturday evening, and time to write it all down…

we opened Star Wars at The Dark Room on Friday, and our second show was tonite. there’s 6 more; Fri and Sat through the end of December, including the weekend after Xmas. we just gave a real good performance, and the place was packed. we’ve already seen nice promo press from SF Weekly, the Examiner, and the local press of The Onion. mikl_em has sprinkled us into Laughing Squid as well. and the show is 100% legit, licensed from LucasFilm and everything!

we’re also kicking back into rehearsals for Walken in a Winder Wonderland. that show will be performed B2B with Star Wars on the weekends of the 12th & 19th. i have the distinct pleasure of playing both Kris Kringle and a mis-guided elf, from those animated specials whose producers’ names shall remain unmentioned. it’s a delightful holiday meme mashup for the nostalgic child in all of us

Sean Owens, star of Snowmiser, made us a hilarious trailer for the show. thank you YouTube, it’ll have a longer life than the staged version itself, and deservedly so

and of course, to top it all off, there’s Santarchy. that will be one heck of a day, our stage being wherever the spirit of Santa is needed. could be a lot of places. some of them age-restricted. the pub crawl aspect of it is nice & all, but i’m always thinking of the little children

shows at The Dark Room are available at Brown Paper Tickets, $15 all shows. door cost is $20, and there should be a 2-for-1 going on for a full rich delightful evening of science fantasy and laughter if you come for both shows

UPDATE: SF Weekly published a brief review and a really nice slideshow after the first week’s performances of Star Wars.

UPDATE: Laughing Squid has dropped love on Snowmiser as well!

UPDATE: Subsequent reviews from The Examiner and SF Weekly give us all the low-budget praise that we so justly deserve.

UPDATE: Laughing Squid has posted a whole mess of photos from both Star Wars and Snowmiser. Oh, the sheer delight!

UPDATE: John Kinsella brought his sweet camera along on our Santa trek through the city and mounted the results as a Flickr set

peace! good times

the S E B stream has returned! the router / dynamic IP issues which occurred over Thanksgiving week have magically corrected themselves through no efforts of my own. i’ll continue to monitor its stability in the interim.

for the moment, the S E B data server is staying off-line. it’s draining too much CPU from the transmitter itself, so i’m mounting it in the cloud some time in early December. i’ll provide an update when it’s back, up and happy again.

thank you very much for your patience!

no, i don’t expect to post a Daily Diary of this experience :) but this is a necessary theraputic dump, for my own personal posterity

the Back Story:  i quit my job, with 4 weeks notice, because i’d decided that i wanted to work on a personal project.  today is my first day in that New Reality…

and sure enough, it’s being all i imagined it would:

• i’m anxious as all hell. I-Don’t-Have-A-Job. i didn’t make any money today. Everyone-Else has made money and advanced their careers. but not me. yes, this is a Story i’ve been told and am continuing to tell myself, but it’s tried & true & strongly resonant to someone like me with a strong work ethic
• i’m all ache-y. last week in SF was electric, what with the Barack Obama victory and the unwelcome passing of Prop 8. and this all followed on from a three-day Halloweeny bender. moreover, i’m rehearsing for two different shows in December at The Dark Room. and much much more. the sum and total of this has taken its toll on the musculature around my chest & back. Heart Center stuff, ya know. always a trip in times of transition for those of us still working on our body-mind balance
• i’m under-motivated. moving slow. being quite unproductive. basically, i’ve ended up taking a Mental Health day. sure, i had so many grand expectations of myself, but it became pretty clear to me (considering all of the above) that, as much as i wanted to, i wasn’t going to get half of Rome built today
• i’m receiving immense support. family, friends, etc. and one of my errands today allowed me to bump into a pal who had some good sane advice, and if nothing else, projected a big smile and a demeanor of confidence in his own free-structure employment world

and sure, it’s the same old story. this is all transitional, and will pass. but like anything else, it feels thick and intense in the moment

i wish i had some sane advice to offer to others in summary, but this is new & scary territory for me. some day yes, i’m sure i will be a reassuring mentor to someone experiencing this for the first time in their own life, but in the meanwhile i have to be more on the take

peace, y’all. and to myself