| Latest revision |
Your text |
| Line 10: |
Line 10: |
| | | | |
| | ==Explanation== | | ==Explanation== |
| − | In this comic, [[Beret Guy]] has discovered how to add public labels to locations on {{w|Google Maps}}. He has used the tool to label his house as a physician's office, and then proceeded to put on a white lab coat and impersonate a physician, making this another comic with one of his special [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|businesses]]. | + | {{incomplete|Created by a NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
| | + | In this comic, [[Beret Guy]] has discovered how to add public labels to locations on {{w|Google Maps}}. He has used the tool to label his house as a physician's office, and then proceeded to impersonate a physician, making this another comic with one of his special [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|businesses]]. |
| | | | |
| − | As Cueball arrives for a medical consultation, Beret Guy proceeds to do what he does best -- try to sound like a professional through absurdist, oddball dialogue:
| + | It seems that Cueball has seen and trusted the label, and has arrived for a medical consultation. He apparently is a walk-in (that is, he does not have appointment), an unheard-of situation for a physician's office in contemporary United States of America that is not an urgent-care facility (for which Beret Guy makes no claim). Thus, Cueball has bought into Beret Guy's bizarre vision, as is typical for Beret Guy comics. |
| | | | |
| − | {|class = "wikitable"
| + | It is soon apparent that Beret Guy has no medical credentials. His "librarian for bones and blood" line in the first panel is nonsensical. The terms he uses while taking Cueball's temperature (second panel) are simplistic. The "little snacks that make you colder" are presumably a medicine to reduce fever, described farcically. In the third panel, he hands Cueball what's supposed to be a medical consent form, but is in fact a ''New York Times'' crossword puzzle. The ''New York Times'' crosswords are designed to get progressively more challenging over the course of each week, starts afresh each Monday. Beret Guy's claim on this subject, at least, is accurate. |
| − | ! Beret Guy !! Normal Phrasing !! Notes
| |
| − | |-
| |
| − | | "Welcome to the doctor!" || "Welcome to my clinic." || Most real outpatient clinics in the US have desk staff that welcome patients, not the physicians themselves. Doctors don't sit behind a desk waiting for patients to arrive. The phrase "the doctor" is often used in English as {{w|synecdoche}} for a doctor's office, commonly in the expression "to go to the doctor," but sounds unnatural in this context, especially when spoken by the doctor himself.
| |
| − | |-
| |
| − | | "We're like librarians, but for your bones and blood." || A real doctor wouldn't proactively define their profession to a new patient. If they did so, they might say: "We are trained medical professionals who diagnose and treat illness, provide healthcare advice, and help maintain overall health in our patients." || "Bones and blood" is just one focus of medical education, covering topics like their anatomy and physiology, pathology of related diseases, principles of hematology and orthopedics, clinical diagnosis, and treatment strategies. "Librarian" is not an apt analogy for this knowledge.
| |
| − | |-
| |
| − | | "Uh-oh! This beeper says you're too hot." || "It seems your temperature is elevated according to this thermometer."
| |
| − | |-
| |
| − | | "You should eat some of these little snacks that make you colder." || "I recommend you take some of these fever-reducing medications." || Beret Guy has the medicine already in his hand, suggesting he has only one remedy for whatever condition the patient presents with. Also, in US outpatient care settings it's usually nurses who administer medicine, not doctors, and in either case an order would usually have to be written first. This depends on the medication; in some cases the doctor will have been provided with free samples by the manufacturer, for example.
| |
| − | |-
| |
| − | | "We can make holes in you, but you have to fill out this form first." || "We need to perform a procedure that requires an incision, or use a syringe and needle to either give you an injection or take a blood sample. But before we proceed, you'll need to provide consent by filling out this form." || An incision for a febrile (high temp) patient is not unheard of; it might be needed to address conditions such as abscess drainage, acute appendicitis, an infected wound or gallbladder, or other infections requiring surgical intervention. Injections of antibiotics might also be appropriate to treat a bacterial infection causing a fever, and an injection of an anti-inflammatory could relieve a fever. Taking a blood sample to investigate the cause of an illness is common. However, it would be unusual and clinically suspect to proceed immediately to any of these based solely on a high temperature reading, without any further diagnostics -- even such simple diagnostics as talking with the patient.
| |
| − | |-
| |
| − | |}
| |
| | | | |
| − | In the third panel, Beret Guy then hands Cueball what's supposed to be a medical consent form, but is in fact a ''New York Times'' crossword puzzle for a Monday on a clipboard. Monday NYT crosswords are the easiest of the week; ''New York Times'' crosswords get more challenging over the week, with Saturday being hardest (Sunday's grid is larger, but has about the same difficulty as Thursday). Beret Guy amusingly misinterprets Cueball's hesitance as being about the difficulty of the crossword. | + | In the fourth panel, Cueball finally questions whether Beret Guy's claim is accurate, and the facts of the situation are revealed - while Beret Guy wheels in a (section of a) {{w|Magnetic resonance imaging}} (MRI) device (usually a feature of a hospital or medical laboratory, not an individual physician's office, and, assembled, far larger/heavier than one person can manage on a dolly) and wonders aloud what it is for. He also comments that he bets it is loud, implying that he does not yet know and that this will be the first time he uses it. It should indeed be loud. Typically many loud noises are made, by both the actuators and from the hardware that controls and produces the magnetic fields, especially from the perspective of one laid inside the device. |
| | | | |
| − | In the fourth panel, Cueball finally questions whether Beret Guy's claim is accurate, and the facts of the situation are revealed - while Beret Guy wheels in a device labeled "MRI" (for "{{w|magnetic resonance imaging}}"). He wonders aloud what the MRI is for and excitedly predicts that it is loud. | + | In the title text, the police cite Beret Guy for impersonating a physician, but Beret Guy returns to Google Maps and relabels his house "Police Headquarters", thus (by implication) making himself Chief of Police to whose authority the officers must submit - by withdrawing the "impersonating a physician" charge. If this works as claimed, it's another of the [[:Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy|strange powers of Beret Guy]], and a substantial one. However, we have only Beret Guy's word that it does. Declaring oneself a physician, in an office of one, is different from declaring oneself the appointed/elected leader of an armed force. If it does work, maybe Beret Guy's next house label is the White House. The implications are nontrivial. |
| | | | |
| − | * Most MRI machines are huge and cannot be wheeled in by one person on a dolly. They're typically housed within dedicated rooms and require specialized infrastructure to support their weight, shield their powerful magnetic fields, and maintain their functionality. So either:
| + | Beret Guy's comment that "It's a Monday, so [the crossword]'s not too hard" refers to the observation that |
| − | ** this is just one piece of an MRI machine
| + | {{w|New York Times crossword puzzles}} increase in difficulty through the week, with the easiest on Monday and hardest on Saturday (there's also a larger Sunday puzzle, but it's in {{w|The New York Times Magazine}} rather than the newspaper, and is designed to be about as hard as a Thursday puzzle). |
| − | ** it's mislabeled
| |
| − | ** it's a small MRI of the kind used to scan only one part of the body at a time, e.g. an ankle or knee; this is called a "bedside low-field MRI" and has a weak magnetic field
| |
| − | ** "MRI" stands for something else in this case.
| |
| − | ** Beret Guy is [[Starlight|exercising]] [[Subduction License|one]] [[Tuesdays|of]] [[Job Interview|his]] [[:Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy|strange powers]].
| |
| − | * And MRI machines are indeed very loud, known for producing banging sounds and other noises, often reaching up to 100 decibels, due to the rapid switching of their magnetic field gradients during scans. To protect their hearing and reduce discomfort, patients are typically provided with earplugs or headphones.
| |
| | | | |
| − | In the '''title text''', Beret Guy acknowledges that the police ''repeatedly'' turn up to look into his 'clinic', but each time he heads off their investigations by returning to Google Maps and relabelling his house "Police Headquarters", thus (by implication) making himself Chief of Police to whose authority the officers must submit - which he may also believe removes evidence for any charges of "impersonating a physician". If this works as claimed, it's another of the [[:Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy|strange powers of Beret Guy]]. But this strategy is unlikely to work in real life; suggesting a Google Maps edit can can take several days to be approved by Google Maps editors, and "Police Headquarters" is not a category selection open to everyday users.
| + | A physician imposter was also featured in [[699: Trimester]], while possibly authentic physicians behaving badly appear in [[938: T-Cells]], [[1471: Gut Fauna]], and [[1839: Doctor Visit]]. One can only hope that [[Randall]] doesn't have real-life models for these situations. |
| − | | |
| − | A physician imposter was also featured in [[699: Trimester]], while possibly authentic physicians behaving badly appear in [[938: T-Cells]], [[1471: Gut Fauna]], and [[1839: Doctor Visit]]. | |
| | | | |
| | ==Transcript== | | ==Transcript== |
