OK, that’s an overstatement.
It’s more accurate to say that, only moments after it began accepting ticket requests, the website was no longer fully operational.
Nor, apparently, was my mind.
Because, on Wednesday, shortly after being reminded of the news, I went Lucasoid — that is, I began to think like George Lucas.
At the time, I was at the Community Blood Center’s Springfield location in the pre-stick phase.
I’d just told the screening nurse it was OK if she took my blood pressure and pulse, so long as she gave it back, and was reviewing the list of prescription medicines donors aren’t supposed to take when it struck me.
Every drug on the list could have a place in a Star Wars episode.
Avodart, for instance, seemed to be the ideal name for a poison-tipped weapon an Imperial assassin might use to kill a Rebel ambassador carrying on sensitive and secret negotiations.
Nor did there seem to be a better place for the assassination to take place than the moon Absorica, another drug on the list.
In my addled brain, Amnesteem became a planet on which Rebel prisoners were sent to do hard labor in the false hope that, after a time, they would be granted amnesty and full citizenship in the Empire.
Zenatane Sotret, two different drugs, morphed into the first and last names of new emperor’s chief political adviser and the architect of the Amensteem Project.
By this time, my face had pretty much taken on the look Han Solo took into the carbon freeze. But I felt the Force was strong in me and firmly believed Isotretinoin was the rare ore the prisoners on Amnesteem mined for processing into Clexane, a fuel a new generation of Imperial Cruisers.
Feldene became the surname of Martin Feldene, co-executive producer of a future, if financially disappointing episode: The Phantom Profit.
The flop would be forever associated with the Ticlid, one of those tiny creatures that was designed to be charming but was, in the end, annoying to Star Wars fans and the subject of a protracted lawsuit when Feldene’s former partners accused him of stealing it from them and taking it to Lucas.
In the future, I can see Star Wars geeks will be coming up with their own recipes for Prasugrel when it makes an appearance as the stew-like meal with pungent fragrance enjoyed at the court of Agrylin, the lovely queen consort and romantic interest of Jean-Luc Skywalker, fifth generation Jedi master.
After a rebellious adolescence in which she betrays the freedom movement for influence in the empire, their daughter, Brilinta, will become a force for good under the influence of the Rebel leader Fragmin.
The Ticagrelor will become part of the Star Wars animal kingdom. Domesticated on the planet Lixiana, it will prove valuable for colonists on seismically unstable planets for its ability to predict earthquakes.
The beast will thus play a crucial part in a pivotal plot twist when the high tech Imperial seismic equipment is disabled and the Persantines, a mysterious religious tribe, are able to use the chaos caused by an earthquake they know is coming to escape the clutches of the evil Zenatane Sotret.
Gotta go, my wife’s calling me to supper — and I know she’s she’s going to just love my new list of possible names for as yet conceived grandchildren.
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