setTimeout isn’t cool for a couple reasons:
1) you can’t pass arguments to your callback function which means i’d have to export my array and index to a global context
2) the timeout parameter is absolute time. so, say i call setTimeout multiple times with 1000, 2000, and 3000, so we have a function set to fire off once per second. now the user goes to a new tab and loads a page which hogs all resources for three seconds. when the user returns to your page, then it’ll be clusterfuck of events firing off all at the same time.

what i really want is a chain effect. after you do x, then do y and so on. it looks like the only way to do this in js is to blow up the function stack buy continually recursing.