In case you’ve
been living under a rock or camping under Spanish moss or living in a field of
poppies (I like to give people options), Microsoft PowerPoint©™®F*CKUGOOGLE
is the world’s most popular slideshow presentation program. It is used by “engineers”, corporate robber
barons, financial advisors (rich people who advise themselves, under the guise
of advising you), “scientists,” and self-help experts. Since I belong to a profession whose name
lives inside snigger quotes, I am of course a PowerPoint expert. We call ourselves PowerPoint Rangers.
Here is a whirlwind guide on how to put together a
PowerPoint. A PowerPoint slide consists
of four parts:
2. Photon torpedo bullets;
3. Pretty pictures that exceed the thousand word limit;
4. “Take-aways”, or “bumper stickers” that tell the reader what to think.
I will draw for you an example that everyone can
relate to. Suppose Matthew had available
to him the Holy PowerPoint when he wrote his Gospel of Jesus? Unlike Mark, who is a delicious read and makes
Jesus exciting, Matthew is a horrible writer, and I would rather put an arrow
in one ear and out the other than to have to read him again. Dull, dull, dull, except in his renderings of
the sayings of Jesus, which he evidently copied from the elusive Q-source. But I digress.
It could all be different if Matthew had
PowerPoint. I’ll show you. The following example is the first chapter of
Matthew, in which our inept Gospel-ateer establishes that the prophecy of Isaiah has
been fulfilled.
True, the Tree of Jesse did not exist in Matthew’s
time, but surely he could have come up with some eye candy. You might also object that the graphic is
unreadable. Inadmissible! The gist of it will come across to the
audience in what we PowerPoint Rangers call “the audio.” The presenter will hit the highlights such as David and Abraham and Solomon and the patriarchy of the Second Temple and all
that good stuff. No problemo.
Note how the title generates excitement and is
positively titillating. The bullets are
concise, hard-hitting, and cling to the major points. Matthew’s shtick is that Jesus should be
accepted by the Jews as the messiah of prophecy, as all the requirements have
been fulfilled, because, well, he says so.
Finally, the bumper sticker burns it in. Jesus was born to a virgin, he is the
messiah, he is King of the Jews. Isn’t
that better?
Of course, what counts are the sayings of
Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount occupies
Chapters 5 through 7. Let’s try our hand
at Chapter 5.
The beguiling Jesus starts by seducing his audience
with the sayings that later came to be known as the beatitudes, here neatly
summarized in the language of PowerPoint. The rationale given by the Master, of course, goes in ‘the audio.’ Then “Matthew” (that is, we on his behalf)
neatly summarizes the main points in power bullets. Matthew wouldn’t have had recourse to a Renaissance
painting of the Sermon, but if we are the tiniest bit lucky, Matthew might have
been a better sketch artist than he was a writer. Now, admittedly, a PowerPoint slide could
never do justice to the lovely rhetoric of Jesus himself. The presentation could be accompanied by
pamphlet handout capturing the full text of Jesus’s remarks. That would be a handier reference than a 1400
page Bible, which is almost as long as a Russian novel.
I will leave it to you to fill in the remaining 26
chapters and complete the literary salvation of Matthew.
Of course, we have adduced this New Testament
exercise merely as an example of mastering PowerPoint. The lessons herein equally apply to
convincing the Department of Defense to waste billions of dollars on an
unfeasible weapon system; convincing the gullible to adopt a dietary fad that
will cause their livers to wither away into pecans; or stealing billions from
seniors. So get with it! You too can be a PowerPoint Ranger!
