Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I watched Something the Lord Made, which I thought was going to be a Christian movie, but it's not. It's about doctors at Johns Hopkins. Some good acting by Alan Rickman and Mos Def and some decent dialogue. Nothing super memorable. For me, the most striking thing is how important it is to these doctors that they be referred to as "doctor".

When Mos Def is first talking to Alan Rickman he calls him "sir" a few times, and each time Alan Rickman says "call me Doctor." Mos Def couldn't be called Doctor because he hadn't gone to med school, and his honorary doctorate at the end of the movie was like the tear-jerker Rudy moment, because until then he could not be addressed as Doctor. Mos Def stuck out because that's how doctors talk to each other: "Hello Dr. _" "Dr. _, would you hand me that tool?" Never a first name. It's like a mutual ego-masturbation orgy when a bunch of doctors get together at the water cooler. "Hello Doctor!" "How are you, Doctor?" They kinda do the same thing in The Big Bang theory, where the PhDs all look down on Howard as not being a doctor. I get that it takes a lot of time and study to get a MD/PhD, but it seems very dumb to ascribe that much importance to your name.

I guess you can ascribe your sense of self-importance to anything you want. I know mine is entirely based on a combination of this full head of hair on my head and how good I am at Tekken. If all my hair falls out in the shower one day that will be exceptionally traumatizing. (I'd have to practice extra hard at Tekken to compensate.)

Puja said I could call her Doctor Puja if she ends up getting a phd. Funny, but I never will. I don't call anyone "Doctor" unless I'm talking about my doctor to other people, and it's because the function is more important than the name (in the context of the conversation at least), just liked I'd say "my boss" or "my mom" instead of giving out specific names. Nor do I call my coworkers "Examiner" though some of them are weirdos and insist on that when talking to attorneys. I've never been in the army, but they take their titles very seriously. I'm not sure how I'd handle that. There's a lot about the military culture I'd have problems with.

They should start making up titles for more things. People who have run a marathon should be granted a "Marathonus" title. And people who are better than me at Tekken should get a "King of the Iron Fist" title. (In the game story, the "king of the iron fist" is the belt you win when you beat the tournament.) King of the Iron Fist that will be the best title, obviously, because it takes good reflexes and a lot of years of practice to get this good at Tekken, and we could use the prefix "King" for short. -King Schell

(from Zombieland, caught this on tv today on Encore, which I didn't know was part of my cable tv package)
Tallahassee: I'm not great at farewells, so, uh, that'll do, pig.
Colombus: That's the worst goodbye I've ever heard, and you stole it from a movie.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

When is Alan Rickman not a good actor? I'd watch that dude in anything, even if it was on Lifetime.

Abrupt request because I can't find an email to ask you this: wanna trade links? Not to xkcd redone, but to the parent site.

joe said...

I don't think this page gets much traffic, just maybe a handful of friends and family. I really just treat it like my own personal homepage, and the links on the left are only there because they're pages that I frequently visit or they're pages of friends. I enjoyed the xkcd redone but I don't want to promise away any links on here, mostly because I like having complete freedom about what goes on here and what gets linked on the left.

Unknown said...

Yeah, no worries, it was just a crazy thought I had. I'll probably link to you anyway because you're cool, but don't take that as me trying to pressure you into anything :)