The Ten Star Wars Fixes

It's Get Your Geek On Thursday.


Here are the ten things in the Star Wars movies that George Lucas screwed up and need fixing:

1. Ewoks.

2. Anakin's mom tells him not to look back, and he doesn't.

3. The annoying actor playing young Anakin.

4. The short, ho-hum death scene of Qui-Gon Jinn.

5. Young adult Anakin's whiny angst.

6. Young adult Anakin's build-up to choose the Dark Side.

7. Jar-Jar Binks.

8. Midi-chlorians.

9. The drama-anemic Jedi council.

10. The poorly choosen accents (Gungans, Neimoidians, etc.)


I want all the movies re-done and these things fixed, Mr. Lucas. You don't seem to have any problem tinkering with your movies anyway.

Now, goooooo.











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Your Teen Needs A Pill

Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S. governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a centralized federal authority as having an "excess of the passion for liberty" that "constituted a form of insanity." He labeled this illness "anarchia."

Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?

In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.

How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness











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Complimaints

"Room 32 wants to see the charge nurse."

Oh great, I think. I'm trying to deal with this patient here who's seriously into respiratory acidosis and someone wants me to come listen to their complaints about their water pitcher or some shit.

"Tell them I'll be there as soon as possible... but don't say it as sarcastically as I just did."

15 minutes later I make it down to Room 32 and find the patient and 4 family members. This won't be over quickly. I won't enjoy this.

One of the family members speaks, "We just wanted to compliment the aide you have tonight. She is an absolute joy! Hard working, courteous, pleasant! My mother's been in the hospital a lot lately, and we've had to put up with many people who were, shall we say, not very nice. So we just wanted to let you know. Maybe you can pass that on to whoever handles her evaluations."

Wow.

A few words about that aide: she has a thick accent that most of the nurses and patients often have trouble understanding, she runs around like the Tasmanian Devil doing anything and everything, and when a patient is in distress she in on the nurse nonstop until it's relieved.

She's a pain in the ass.

She's also the only aide you'd want if you were a patient.

Click, Wow!, Click, Wow!

Everyone Forever is a site to get lost in - full of art and architecture and, well... just tons of mind candy.

The Road

A blackness to hurt your ears with listening.


Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.




Sentences like these from Cormac McCarthy's The Road just stun.

It is a book that you can read more than once, and not only do the words and images not lose their punch, they hit harder.

I started reading it one morning and could not stop until done before lunch. I've not been engrossed like that in a novel for a long, long time.











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Honestly

This article in the Rocky Mountain News...

A sister of one of three people killed early Friday in Louisville said it "really isn't a shock to any of us" that her brother died in a high-speed crash.

"The thing that really makes me feel much better about this is they died doing what they loved to do — they were drinking, they were going fast and they were together," Lorie Flaherty said. "It gives me comfort, it does, to know those three things."

Read the rest of it. At first I thought it was a joke. It's just written so strange and the Redneck factor seems a little too high.

Rap Seizures

I recently read Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, a fascinating book about music and the brain. So it was interesting to read this article about a woman surgically cured of her musicogenic seizures (which were caused by a specific rap song):

Eighteen months ago, Ms. Gayle began to suspect that a song by reggae and hip-hop artist Sean Paul was triggering some of her seizures. She recalls being at a barbecue and collapsing when the Jamaican rapper's music started playing, and then remembered having a previous seizure when she heard that song.

from globeandmail.com


Found via the always good blog, Neurophilosophy.









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C Is For Cookie, Dammit!

Here is the warning at the beginning of the Sesame Street first season DVD's:

Welcome to Sesame Street Nostalgia. I am Bob, your host, and I want you to know that these early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups and may not meet the needs of today's pre-school child.

I've already written about how Sesame Street was killed.

The bug-fuck icing on this Soccer Mom bubble-wrapped nation of ours is this:

Cookie Monster Isn't Allowed To Eat Cookies Anymore.

Did you know that?

Cookie Monster Isn't Allowed To Eat Cookies Anymore!!









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Knuckle Head

The Packers' season was kind of a mish-mash anyway, so I don't feel so bad about their loss last night.

NOT!

Anyway, I'll just forget it and go on about something mundane (as is the theme of this blog): the knuckle press.

You know the knuckle press. It's the handshake of the new millennium where two people briefly press their fists against each other. It used to be street, but it was quickly adopted by everyone once Howie Mandel started using it on Deal Or No Deal while admitting he's a germ-o-phobe.

I've been using the knuckle press for years at the hospital. I am a definite germ-o-phobe, and with cause too, not just crazy like Howie. When I walk up to a door I can actually see the microbes baring their teeth at me on that handle or push plate. I knuckle press that thing open.

I knuckle press everything open (or closed). Hell, I even use my knuckles to press IV pump buttons!
...

I can't stand it. I've got to go back and talk about this.
I hate the Giants and the Patriots. They're both annoying teams. The Giants because Eli Manning is a poser of a quarterback and the Patriots because they're covered with slime.
OK?
The Superbowl will suck because the Patriots with obliterate the Giants. It won't even be an interesting game. It's just sad.

I'm very disenchanted here.

Very disenchanted!

I'm going to knuckle press something rather hard.







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Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer now has his own site.

Looks just like the Skeptic site.

There is a ton of interesting stuff on both.

Re Do's

On the List of Things America Needs to Re-Do:

a) Handicapped Parking Permits - how many people have you seen parking in handicapped parking really appear handicapped? Posers.

b) Elections - voting machines, the electoral college, attack ads... what's not to re-do?

c) Law suits - two words: loser pays.

d) Drug War - biggest waste of money since, well, forever!

e) Separation Of Church And State - from the beginning it was never really enforced.

d) Star Wars Prequels - different director please!

e) Bear Control - (that one's for Colbert)

f) Antibiotics - totally misused from the beginning.

g) Spare The Rod, Spoil The Child - rods should be in the mail right after birth.

h) Whitney Houston - come on, what the hell happened?

i) The War - obviously.


(I don't think this list has an end)










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Grow-A-Brain Chrysalis

Listen, my all-time favorite site, grow-a-brain, is going through a transformation (or maybe a mid-life crisis).
Hanan is asking for help in perhaps taking things in an exciting new direction.

Check it out and see if you're interested!

Give Me That Ol' Time Neurosurgery

Phisick has a great collection of antique medical and surgical instruments.

Also, it holds a motherload of links!

Rookie Help

There was something about Dr. Phil offering help to the trainwreck/freakshow of Britney Spears this past weekend. I don't know exactly what he was up to, but I can guess.

Dr. Phil is a total mental health rookie. You see these types in the mental health field all the time. Basically they think that by yelling at people they'll be able to change them. They think they will say something so profound, so insightful it will make a person burst into sanity and they'll be 'cured'.

It's a rookie mistake. It's a short-lived wave they ride and they get off way before the hard work needs to be done (which is the compassion - meaning essentially "suffering with/through"). The hard work of leading or helping someone through a crisis takes a lot of time and devotion.

Dr. Phil and his ilk exploit the initial superficial stage of denial where a person says "Aha! Thank You! I now see it!" when they really don't, aren't really interested, are agreeing in ignorance, and are full of bullshit.

It looks good on T.V. Here's a 'doctor' yelling at someone, giving them a clever metaphor to explain their whole problem, and the person appears to be raised up from their problem and zooming on their way to perfection. Break to commercial, scoot the saved off the stage and bring on another sucker. Hi, we're back!

It's the Dr. Laura calamity. Two minutes of berating someone into faux enlightenment or mashing their life problems into a lovely piece of analogy origami is fun! But it doesn't help that person one bit.

O.K., I take that back. Maybe it does get them to thinkin' about stuff, but human rationalization quickly takes care of that little problem and they fall right back into their rut. And Dr. Phil is nowhere to be found.







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