{"id":7958,"date":"2010-12-03T13:19:54","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T18:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7958"},"modified":"2010-12-03T13:19:54","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T18:19:54","slug":"another-looney-tunes-stereotype-bites-the-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/another-looney-tunes-stereotype-bites-the-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Looney Tunes Stereotype Bites the Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I just got back from having this test done. It wasn’t a big deal but it held a certain academic interest for me: it was an echocardiogram<\/em>. Not electro-. Echo<\/em>-.<\/p>\n

Say what?<\/p>\n

As the, um, echocardiogrammatical technician (or whatever her title is) led me to the room where the test would be performed, I asked, “So is this like an MRI or something? Or an EKG?”<\/p>\n

She didn’t answer that question directly; she just told me what it was. “It’s an ultrasound. Like pregnant women and babies?”<\/p>\n

But I wasn’t, uh—<\/p>\n

“No.” She smiled. “You’re not pregnant. This is an ultrasound of the four chambers of your heart and a couple of blood vessels in your neck.”<\/p>\n

In the examining room, she had me take off my shirt and lie flat on the bed\/examining table\/whatever they call that thing. She did the gel thing which you see them on TV doing (yes) to pregnant women’s swollen bellies, only to my chest and neck, and then she rolled me on my side and held a wand to the gelled spots, one at a time, for a few minutes each.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t see the monitor of the machine from where I lay, so I don’t know if it showed an image of what lay inside. But I do know it had a speaker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You know how in old Tex Avery (and other) cartoons, when a guy (I think often a wolf, literally) sees a woman he thinks is hot stuff, and his eyes bulge out of his head, and he howls and sometimes says something like Hubba-hubba!<\/em>, and this heart-shaped protrusion pushes rhythmically in and out of his chest? You know the sound? Right: ba-BOOM… ba-BOOM… ba-BOOM…<\/em><\/p>\n

For real? What the human heart actually sounds like is, well, say you got a tiny microphone, and you inserted it into a convenient orifice or cavity in the surface of a live snail, and you put the snail on the ground with a wire leading to a powerful stereo speaker, and you touched the snail — gently, repeatedly — with the sole of your foot. That’s<\/em> what the human heart sounds like:<\/p>\n

squ-WISH… SQUOORT… squ-WISH… SQUOORT…<\/em><\/p>\n

Just in case any of you were wondering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I just got back from having this test done. It wasn’t a big deal but it held a certain academic interest for me: it was an echocardiogram. Not electro-. Echo-. Say what? As the, um, echocardiogrammatical technician (or whatever her title is) led me to the room where the test would be performed, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,95,342],"tags":[2091,2092,2093,2094],"class_list":{"0":"post-7958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-science-medicine","8":"category-looney-tunes","9":"tag-echocardiogram","10":"tag-ultrasound","11":"tag-mysteries-of-the-human-body","12":"tag-sound-effects","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-24m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7959,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7958\/revisions\/7959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}