As some of you may be aware there is a new Indiana Jones movie coming out tonight. Because of this I’ve gone back and been watching the first three movies, to gear up and get my head in the right place. And in the movies, Indiana Jones is an archaeologist who travels the world having all sorts of adventures, many involving Nazi’s.
But the thing is, I’m not sure that real archaeology is that exciting. From what I’ve seen on TV, it is a lot of sitting out in the backing sun, surrounded by a fruity little grid of string, patiently scraping and dusting off crap that, honestly, no one cares about. There are no Nazis. No mysterious arcane artifacts. There are bugs and heat exhaustion.
This got me thinking. Maybe there is a great story, or four, waiting to be made about me. Not me exactly, but follow me. My job is horrendously boring. I sit in an office poking made up words around a screen for 40 hours a week, hoping that some combination of those words would make something incredibly mundane happen. Right now, for example, the words I’m poking around are supposed to allow people to evaluate various deans and stuff, and if they do this, they get a coupon for a free small soda.
What if instead, though, I was working on something that would allow some ancient secret of the ancients to be unleashed on the world. And in the process I get to travel all over the place, killing Nazis. Wouldn’t that be way better?
I think I’m going to get to work on making that happen now.
4 Comments
Your Mom had taken a class in Archaeology once and found it deadly boring. Your grandpa always found excitement and drama in information processing. So have you from time to time, like setting up stuff for presidential debates and in your work on the Steve Fossett balloon attempt. Perhaps if you and Phil had been in charge of his last trip he might not be missing now.
There was this awesome History Channel program on a few days ago. It was all about archaeology and the Indiana Jones movies. I figured it would be a quickly produced cheesy show, thrown together on a dime to cash in on the new movie release. I was very wrong. It was great. Recapped the movies, and compared and contrasted it to real life. Watch it if you get a chance. http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=297340
Your cousin is getting her degree in archaeology and wants to get her PHD in that as well, I think. We’ve ben watching the movies as well, most of it isn’t too scary for Bubba. However I know which parts to skip for him…Grandpa does not. Apparently they watched one together on Friday and Bubba came home telling me the scary skeleton isn’t real, just pretend and that he isn’t scary. OK then. I think IJ will be the movie we take dad to for his birthday (we do the cheesy yearly blockbuster for his birthday, because seriously, what does that man need?!?!?!)
An old friend of mine has both a BA & MA in archaeology, then another Masters in library jazz. She did the archaeology thing for about a year; it involved a lot of digging and record-keeping and dirty-getting. Then she became a dot-commer, designing websites or something. Now she is a librarian/archivist. Not quite as glamorous as Indy, but she also brews award-winning beer and knows just about everything there is to know about Iceland, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, horses, breeding horses, and racing horses. She also has a son named Linus. And that’s what you get when you want to be an archaeologist.