The Autobiography of an Anesthetized Patient
Thank GOD it wasn't me!
Now with 2 new slides added Lent 2010.
Too stunned to speak
Too numb to weep
Wisdom is gained
Which rulers disdain
Ah, what the cost
Of innocence lost
To go on alone
With no way home
The cycle starts again
The story never ends
--MES, September, 1997
Click here to view a very colorful PDF poster
What had humbly begun at the beginning of Lent '09 as a postscript to
Consumerism quickly took on a life of its own. I just had to codify my devastatingly traumatic discovery that my all-time favorite movie is really about my lifelong worst fear. This heartwrenching, unforgettable presentation is at the very vanguard of film criticism, social medicine, psychology, and human rights. Its perspective is over a half century overdue.
Click here for a document version in Word 97-2003 containing all of the content including the footnotes(recommended for dial-up connections). After reading it,
click here to read the postscript (Word 97-2003). If the postscript is hard to read, scroll down to the bottom of this page for corrective tips.
WARNING: if you have been anesthetized, viewing the presentation carries a risk of overwhelm (a nervous breakdown). If you feel vulnerable or susceptible to overwhelm, the above Word document version for dial-up connections is recommended.
Running time: approx. 45 min. Rated PG.
Instructions for downloading:
- If you haven't seen it recently, watch The Empire Strikes Back to refresh your memory. It doesn't matter whether you see the original video release or the 1997 special edition, because each version has advantages and disadvantages.
- Ironically, due to a plethora of technical obstacles and file size limitations, you will have to perform surgery on the presentation in order to hear the Tchaikovsky soundtrack, but it is well worth the trouble, because it significantly enhances the show. Anyone who does not already know how can, by following these steps, learn how to underscore a PowerPoint with music. Create a new file folder on removable media (OTHER than a floppy disk) to download the presentation and the 3 music files. If the files are downloaded onto a hard drive, the presentation will be read-only and uneditable, and the music files might not work at all. Floppies have inadequate disk space to hold the MB-sized files.
- Click here to download the presentation into the new file folder. Select Save instead of Open. If you run PowerPoint 97-2003, the title slide (slide 3) will only partially animate.
- RIGHT CLICK on ALL 3 of the following links and select Save Target As to download the music files into the same file folder. Intro I Intro II Main
- Open the presentation in edit mode and move to slide 2 entitled WARNING. From the Insert menu, select Sound. When prompted for the file, find and open the new file folder, and select autobiog002.mp3. Select Automatically when prompted. A speaker icon will appear in the middle of the slide.
- Click on the new speaker icon to bring up the picture and sound tools. Select Sound Tools. Click on the drop down arrow on Play Sound and select Play Across Slides. Click on Hide During Show.
- From the Animations menu, select Custom Animation. When the custom animation window opens, click on the mp3 file, then click on the drop down arrow and select Effect Options. A new window will open up. Change Stop Playing to After 3 Slides and click OK.
- Move onto slide 5 entitled "The Deepest Lent Possible." From the Insert menu, select Sound, choose autobiog001.mp3, and select Automatically when prompted. The speaker icon will appear in the middle of the slide.
- Repeat step 6 for this slide. In the Custom Animation window, the mp3 file will appear at the bottom of the list. Click on it and use the up arrow to move it to the top. Click on its drop down arrow and select Effect Options. When the new window opens, change Stop Playing to After 2 Slides and click OK.
- Move onto slide 7 entitled "I Can Now Hear the Silent Scream of an Anesthetized Patient Named George Lucas." From the Insert menu, select Sound, select 06 Symphony No. 6 in B Minor Op. 74 'Pathetique', Op.74-Finale, Adagio lamentoso.mp3, and select Automatically. Repeat step 6 for this slide. Click on Loop Until Stopped. In the Custom Animation window, the mp3 file will appear at the bottom of the list. Click on the mp3 file and use the up arrow to move it to the top of the list.
- Close the Custom Animation window and SAVE the work. If prompted, click Continue.
- Do NOT change anything else in the presentation, because that would constitute copyright infringement.
- Run the presentation. Slides will change automatically and if the music links were added correctly, the Tchaikovsky will play on all slides except slide 1. The show will end on its own and will exit promptly.
- In edit mode, select Notes Page from the View menu to read the footnotes. Alternately, the footnotes appear in blue italics on the Word 97-2003 document recommended for dial-up connections.
- Click here to read the postscript from summer of '09 (Word 97-2003).
TIP: if the postscript looks funny, or the text box covers part of the main body, try downloading it to removable media so it can be edited. Try changing the font of the main body to Times New Roman and moving the text box and picture so that all of the main body is visible, then SAVE the changes.
FROM SILENCE TO STORY: The formal sociological name of a patient's story is
autobiopathography, or
biopathography if it's told by the parent or guardian of a child or intellectually disabled adult. Here is a full article in
Pediatrics which is actually available to the public online on this subject. Its author's South Asian background is abundantly evident in its obvious spirituality, highly unusual for an MD. An obvious take-home lesson from the paper is that the doctor should directly ask the child questions, including open-ended ones, using toys, communication boards, and crayons for very small children with little or no verbal skills.
Click here to read (PDF). NEW: RIGHT MOVIE, WRONG "CAUSE":
Click here to read. After doing so, read the response below.
"In the Gospel it is written that the overclass understood that he had spoken this parable against them."
At this historical moment, a benefit for anything other than Gulf Coast relief or relief to the poor is a major league faux pas. I have lived in Memphis, the location of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, for 11 years. Since the advent of St. Jude, Memphis has become the unhealthiest city in the entire country, bar none. And North Memphis, where the hospital is located, went from a decent neighborhood to the worst slum in Tennessee. Even the local media have run stories on this all-too-common phenomenon. Corporations and sports franchises wanting to play "goody two-shoes" have given millions to St. Jude while education and the endless sea of poor in this city get the shaft. With Harrison Ford on record as being pro-environment, there is no way that Lucasfilm would've chosen to support a predatory hospital in a ghetto 2000 miles away while the Gulf of Mexico is hemmorhaging oil. No, this "benefit" is an attempt by the overclass, the neocons, the allopaths, and the Vatican to co-opt a movie they have utterly failed to suppress. First, they tried to give it bad reviews, e.g. the Washington Post and the New York Times, which Steve Kangas, in his article "Origins of the Overclass" featured on the Articles page, has identified as paid shills for the CIA and the Vatican. Then they tried to claim that the
Star Wars cycle was about the Cold War, but the modern rock outfit Rage against the Machine decisively discredited that disinformation. Then they ghostwrote and micromanaged the production of
Return of the Jedi, which is widely regarded at best as inferior and often as gawdawful. Then they tried deification of the obscenely misogynist
Blade Runner, but, ironically, the Bu$h-Cheney cabal's behavior rendered it dated and irrelevant. (Women should be alerted as to what these ultrarich sociopaths want to do to them.) So now they're trying to co-opt a movie that they won't admit that they hate for political reasons, using the constant threat of double assassination to get what they want. Make no mistake: this overclass micromanagement of Lucasfilm and constant threat of assassination is why there hasn't been a decent
Star Wars film since 1980.
http://www.aintitcool.com/talkback_display/45211?q=node/45211
This is the
Empire Strikes Back 30th anniversary observance on an entertainment blogger's site, which I found from a link on Facebook. The guy's writing sucks, but it's good to know that I'm not alone in my love for this cinematic monument. I registered and posted my own comment, including my own URL.
http://movies.ign.com/articles/109/1092034p1.html
This is IGN's nice observance of the 30th anniversary of
The Empire Strikes Back, which I found from a link from Facebook, which includes several articles, including a lot of trivia and some nice stills, a few outtakes, and a rare poster. I downloaded the rare poster and put it on my desktop wallpaper with some anesthesia reform captions! ;-) The site included a prompt to write one's own review, and, true to form, I wrote a high-end one with a link to the PowerPoint page! Since 1980 was at the height of my potato-eating days, had I known that one of the asteroids was a potato, I would've ripped it right out of the screen, baked it, loaded it, and eaten it!
