IDIOT'S REVENGE

Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

The thing is, I'm not sure if that's pointing a finger at paranoid buffoons or making a statement about the nature of the act. Maybe both. We'll all just have to keep reading and see.

The interconnectedness of all things is always staring us in the face, for all the good that does, but maybe a little digging and recollection will get the juices flowing and clear the perceptual passages. Out here in the high desert anything the wind blows in stands out in bold relief: clouds, rain, good vibes, bad vibes. . .and keeping your balance takes a little more horsepower.

We get our emails at the speed of light out here too, just like you do, and they have a way of vibrating in the glare and stillness like everything else. ("Whoa, lookit that sucker!") At the same time, it's just possible that some of you living in clatter and confusion out there in Beltway Land have sensititve souls not unlike the quiet blue openess of the sky I'm looking at right now. Something to keep in mind, yes?

Anyway, "Crack that whip!" as Devo used to say. At least I think that's who it was. The last time I saw those guys was at a concert in D.C. The audience was mostly 14-year-olds yelling their lungs out, the music went right over their heads, and nobody gave a damn. Cool!

Speaking of great shows, I attended a fantastic gig in town on Friday night. The performance by Robert Mirabal and his band was so honest, musical, and exciting that I drove all the way home in third gear without realizing it! I couldn't go to sleep for hours afterwards, though I had been so exhausted beforehand that I almost didn't go. (Now that is positive energy!)

Robert Mirabal is a multi-talented 33-year-old Taos Pueblo musician who was recently named "1999 New Age Artist of the Year" by somebody or other, a moniker he seems less than totally comfortable with, and for good reason. His record company is marketing an an aloof image rather at odds with the personality I saw on stage: a totally warm, hilarious, down-to-earth person you instantly want to have as your friend. As a performer Mirabal is polished and professional, radiating grace, dignity, and passion, all at the same time. He has assembled a group of outstanding musicians and singers who are an utter joy to see and hear on stage. Some of the Indian dancers I saw had driven two thousand miles just to be a part of this show, and that speaks volumes about the man himself.

Mirabal could easily make a living as a comedian,and my new brother is a living rebuttal to the Hollywood Native American stereotypes he satirized mercilessly in his long talks to the audience! Commenting on the false image of the gruff, inarticulate Indian ("Man, they made us all look so mean!"), he revealed that he and his friends used to root for the cavalry when watching cowboy movies at the pueblo day school ("Yay, John Wayne!"). And why not? Little kids know from good guys and bad guys, no priests or rocket scientist required.

He joked about "funky Taos" and made fun of just about everyone, including himself, who wants to live here (Julia Roberts voice: "The mountains are so pretty, I have to live here! Oh--where can I get my nails done??"). He talked about keeping his computer alive in the high desert environment ("All that dust, man! Like, where does it come from??"), joked about sagebrush and smudge sticks ("Wow, those 'Taos stogies'-- we're all allergic to sage, you know? And everyone's always sending these things back East: 'Here, have an allergic reaction!'") The home-town audience ate it up! Damn, I wanted to be in the band! I wanted to drive the bus. I wanted to buy him a beer. I wanted him to like me as much as I liked him. I wanted to join the tribe.

And the music was fantastic! He began with several flute and drum compositions that blew me away, then assembled the band one player at a time, number by number, building the energy until everyone on stage was rocking and rolling to "Acid Rain Dance"! My favorite composition was one he said didn't make it onto the CD because the record company nixed it, a long, very spooky song for synthesizer, cello, and drums all about cow mutilations! What a hoot!! ("Jose, did you see what happened to my cows? -- Yeah man, an' I'm not going to drink milk any more!" [aside to the audience:] "Got milk??" A riot!!!) For local consumption only, sure, but I still wish it were on the CD I bought in the lobby. (Damn "marketing experts!")

Yes, every single thing about that show made me happy and excited to be alive! (Third gear, remember?) Mirabal connected with the audience and created a setting conducive for good spirits to come in and work their magic. what a night, and nary a drop of booze or an illegal smile in sight. Them's powerful vibes, chill'un. . .

Unfortunately, the next day I found myself dealing once again with a medium desperately in need of either a large dose of mood-enhancing drugs or a good bashing with a 2 x 4: the Internet!

I swear it's time to go back to paper and start all over again. I don't know what it is about human nature that makes us so good at turning gold into crap, but there sure is a lot of that reverse alchemy going on in cyberspace. Every time I turn around there's more bandwidth devoted to stupid strip malls in the sky. If that were the only idiocy to report, I'd have more hope, but mostly what I see is greed, lies, and bullshit.

A reader sent me the URL for a story about Dell's new wireless networking system, but it was posted at a Microsoft channel where my Netscape browser just didn't seem to work. (Funny how Communicator 4.5 tears through all the other sites!) Must be a "bug," right? Information should belong to everyone, dammit! I thought that was the promise of this thing, the basic propulsion behind the altruistic rush I experienced when I first hit the Internet. But now everything is proprietary or trying to become so.

Editing the daily news is a depressing exercise in reading how this company or that is trying to dominate this or that niche, and how Microsoft wants to buy the winner and kill it. (Have you been reading Doonesbury this past week?) Frankly, I don't care about dueling standards, I just want something that works on my Macs, and why can't that something also work fine on PCs? What is the problem here? Just how many bipedal vipers did the man upstairs allow to be spawned this century, anyhow?

Some of you "get it" just perfectly. One of these is My Mac Online columnist Beth Lock, who's fond of saying, "Isn't the Net cool?" She's talking about the lightspeed sharing of consciousness this technology makes possible. What an incredible boon for mankind! . . .and what a heinous insult to and defilement of our godly potentialities we have to endure in the name of profit and market share. There oughta be a law (of nature).

Things are getting just a wee bit out of hand. I was recently accused of "totally unethical behavior" because I linked to a news story that an indexing site had put "dibs" on by smearing cyberspit on the URL. After I read the item and casually pasted the page link into my own news story, I was accused of "stealing content." I guess this means if I write something like "Applelinks 724 West 39th Street," I own your house!

And what is it about email that encourages people to ignore basic human courtesies they would not fail to extend to a real person? Yes, I know, the answer is there in the question itself, but that doesn't excuse the practice. We'll all have to explain ourselves some day, right? And it doesn't have to be that way.

Last week I took what I thought was a justifiable but harmless satirical jab at a fellow columnist who writes for the Wall Street Journal. His reaction was to send me an email that eloquently and simply communicated his personal injury to me and made me realize I had jumped to conclusions and misjudged the man. He signed himself "Best Regards" and left me feeling like the ball was in my moral court, which it certainly was. I had a good time posting a humorous apology that he later thanked me for, and each of us came through the encounter elevated in spirit and full of good feeling for our fellow man. (Thank you, Walt!)

You see, I'm one of those poor deluded misfits who believes there's more to life than seeing how many skulls you can crush. (I'll admit that there's a certain satisfaction to the act, but it tends to diminish with repetition, much like the sensory buzz from emptying a box of chocolate-covered cherries like I just did. Ooogghhh. . .) And if all those dot.com thugs and email vandals wake up in heaven someday and realize their lives actually mattered, anyone left alive on earth will surely sense the distant wailing, somehow, and wake up suddenly in the middle of the night: Brrrr! (If there's revenge to be taken, will it be performed by idiots or will the revenge be idiotic? You decide!)

Local hero Robert Mirabal feels the ineffable and has the gift to put it into a funny story. When he introduced master guitar player Stev (that's how he spells it) Castillo at Friday night's show, he told how Stev had let him poke around one evening in a room of the ancient trading post and museum the family owned. Left to his own devices, he started pulling out one artifact or another to use for stage duds. When Stev came back, Robert asked:

"Hey man, what's that?"

"Man, those are Kit Carson's pants!"

"Whoa! Well hey, what's this?"

"Dude, that's Kit Carson's hat!"

This recollection led to a really funny onstage monologue addressed to the guitarist about how "I guess that's why we're all here in this band, 'cause some of your ancestors probably murdered some of my ancestors and vice versa, we're all working out some kinda weird karma, man. . ."

Amen, brother! (Now, do you need any work done on your Web site??)

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives have links to all past columns and occasional snippets of biographical info.

To be notified whenever the column is updated, just send a message titled "Subscribe FSN" to this address.

.

January 08, 2009