Posts by Dr. Boli
MEMORANDUM.
TO: All Employees
FROM: Your President
RE: Lawyer Stuff
All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co., Inc., are dedicated above all else to the welfare of the Company. I know I am, anyway, at least since my wife left me and took the kids, because what else do I have to live for? So we all want to do what’s best for our Company, and I know that every one of you will be proud to help out.
In that context, you have doubtless heard of the class-action lawsuit in which certain predatory liability attorneys allege that our Pumpkin Creme Sandwich Wafers contained 4% lead, in spite of a large starburst on the label with the words “lead free.”
Now, to any unbiased reader, it is perfectly obvious what those labels meant: that we were not charging any extra for the lead content of the Wafers. As a result of what some malicious reporters called “cross-contamination,” but I prefer to describe as “synergy,” a certain amount of lead got into several batches of our Pumpkin Creme. Yet, though lead is a valuable mineral, we did not raise the price at all. Or, rather, we did, but we were probably going to do that anyway, so the price was exactly what it would have been if the lead had not got into the Pumpkin Creme. In other words, to the consumer, the lead was absolutely free.
Nevertheless, lawyers can twist anything, and in their court filings the attorneys bringing the suit allege that an ordinary educated consumer would take a different meaning from those labels. Yes, that is how predatory lawyers can be.
Under these circumstances, it is very important that none of our loyal employees discuss the case at all with lawyers who may be representing the plaintiffs in this egregiously frivolous lawsuit. They may try to trap you into describing conditions on our Creme & Bullets production line, and we should not like our competitors to be able to read how we have maximized our operational efficiency just by downloading some publicly available court filing.
It is also essential that you avoid talking to reporters. It is a well-known fact that the Daily Gazette is staffed by Communists whose fondest wish is to break the back of American industry, and they would seize on this story and distort it to their own ends.
Naturally, you must also avoid discussing anything to do with this case, or anything at all to do with our production methods and facilities, with your friends, family, and domestic animals. After all, there is no telling what secrets a motivated paralegal might pry out of them.
That is why it has been necessary to lock the doors of all manufacturing and office facilities in our Erie Boulevard campus, and all employees will be required to remain in the building in which they work for the duration of the lawsuit. Think of it as being something like jury duty, except that instead of making sacrifices for some nebulous abstract concept like “justice,” you are doing something nice for the Company we all love.
Also, if my wife calls, don’t answer the phone. She has lawyers, too.
With Warmest Regards,
J. Rutherford Pinkney,
President
From DR. BOLI’S UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY.
Eugenics (noun).—The science of breeding people named Eugene.
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DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS.
…bans [Thebans?] began the custom of placing pithy sayings on the rear surfaces of their carts, for the entertainment of travelers stuck behind them on the highways.
Cheese was first discovered in Bithynia, but it was fed to hogs.
The men of Hydissus are said to be the originators of dancing, and it was on account of the heat of the sand there that men first began to dance. And the men of Hydissus are also said to be the originators of sandals, which happened at a later time, and this is why there are presently no dancers in Hydissus.
The Psophidioi were the inventors of snapping the fingers, for which their city was destroyed by Hera.
The ancient king of Aegium having fallen on his hindward parts, the men of Aegium discovered laughter, which until that time was unknown.
The priests of Delphi first discovered that three chords were sufficient for any sacred hymn to the gods.
It is said that the Lacedemonians were the first to limit their literary effusions to sevenscore letters, and this was a law of Lycurgus to prevent the men of Sparta from becoming bookish and effeminate. But in time the number of letters was doubled, and this was said to be the cause of the city’s falling to Philip when…
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
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FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: As I’ve been walking around the city these last few weeks, I’ve certainly been noticing a lot of pink. Skyscrapers are lit up pink. Fountains are running pink. I thought at first I might have pinkeye, but my opthamolo— my optphomalo— my eye doctor says that’s not how pinkeye works. And she was wearing pink, too, and she had her office decorated in pink.
So clearly a lot of money has been spent this month on making things pink that are normally not pink. And that started me thinking: Suppose we all decided to make a little sacrifice to make the world a better place. Suppose we took all that money we spent on making skyscrapers and stadiums pink, and put it to some good use. Think of what we could accomplish! I was thinking, merely as a suggestion, that we could put it into research to find a cure for breast cancer. Maybe we could wear little pink ribbons to let the world know we’ve donated our pink money to breast cancer this year, and maybe we could put out pink yard signs and shine pink floodlights on our… No, wait, I think I’ve got stuck in a loop here. Forget everything back to the ribbons. But, yeah, research to end breast cancer—that would be a good way to use the money we’ve been spending on pinking things up. Or maybe research to find a cure for conjunctivitis. —Sincerely, Le Promeneur solitaire.
NOW IN PRESS.
The Lost Cymbal, by Irving Vanderblock-Wheedle.
Thus begins Irving Vanderblock-Wheedle’s latest globe-spanning suspense thriller, in which renowned Harvard cymbalogist Dirk Sizzle must evade the machinations of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the American Association of Retired People, and a dangerously unstable labradoodle named Cuthbert to track down a legendary cymbal cast in 1623 by Avedis Zildjian himself.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: I ordered a “French Dip” sandwich at the sub shop, and it said it came with “au juice for dipping.” That made me wonder: How do they juice an au? —Sincerely, Marine Le Pen.
Dear Madam: Very carefully.
That was a little joke, of course. In reality, once two separate words have been contracted into a single word of two letters, as à le into au, pretty much all the juice has been squeezed out of them. Technically, “au juice” is not strictly a juice at all, but rather a tisane, made by steeping the au in hot water until an au-flavored liquid is obtained.