Posts by Dr. Boli

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Posted by Dr. Boli on July 22, 2022. No comments.

Quack psychological theories you subscribe to reveal your personality! Astonishingly simple program reveals & treats common personality disorders in 9 out of 10 subjects, and the tenth is seldom worth saving anyway. The Quack Psychology Practice of Dr. Emil Wolfspitz, Ph.D. (fake).

MUSH MARLOW, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.

Posted by Dr. Boli on July 21, 2022. One comment.

Announcer: And now Business Records Consulting Services LLC, the new service that takes your business records where you’ll never have to see them again, presents…

[Music: Theme, in and under for…]

Announcer: The Adventures of Mush Marlow, Private Investigator!

[Music: In full, then under for…]

Announcer: Tonight we find Mush busy at his desk when his secretary Betty opens the door.

[Music: Fade. Sound: Door opening.]

Mush: This better be important, Betty. I’m reading Proust here.

Betty: There’s a lady here to see you.

Mush: I don’t know whether I have time to see any ladies. I was just getting to the exciting part.

Betty: Well, I think you’ll want to see her. She’s a knockout.

Mush: Oh, a boxer, huh?

Betty: No, I mean “knockout” as in the slang term for an unusually attractive woman. You know, the word you never use when you’re talking about me, for some reason.

Mush: Oh, you mean the kind with legs up to her hips?

Betty: And arms up to her shoulders.

Mush: What’s she look like, anyway?

Betty: Well, she has titian hair—

Mush: Titian? Isn’t that just a fancy word for “brown”?

Betty: Well, I think it means more russet. Cupreous. Auburn, maybe.

Mush: Isn’t that a city in upstate New York?

Betty: Yes, but it’s also a hair color.

Mush: They named a hair color after a city on Owasco Lake?

Betty: I don’t think the hair color was named for—

Mush: My uncle lived in Auburn. He used to go sailing on Owasco Lake, but he had grey hair. Almost white. Why didn’t they call that auburn hair, huh? It’s disrespectful to my uncle, that’s what it is.

Betty: Let’s just say her hair is reddish-brown. Do you think you can deal with reddish-brown?

Mush: Well, fine, so she’s got brown hair. Lots of women have brown hair. Why should I interrupt my Proust for brown hair?

Betty: She’s also got blue eyes.

Mush: Now we’re getting somewhere. And how’s she dressed?

Betty: She’s got on a violet taffeta gown, like she’s—

Mush: What’s “taffeta,” anyway? You women say these words when you talk about clothes, and I have no idea what they mean. I think you just make them up.

Betty: Okay, it’s silky. It’s silky and violet.

Mush: Is it violet like at the blue end of violet or violet like at the purple end of violet?

Betty: It’s violet. Why do you care what kind of violet it is?

Mush: I have to know whether it’s worth interrupting Proust for.

Betty: It’s a very expensive gown. I can tell you that much. She looks like she’s dressed for going to the opera, not for walking up two flights of stairs to a cheap detective’s office.

Mush: Maybe I won’t be cheap if she’s got that kind of money. Send her in.

Betty: Okay, boss.

[Sound: Footsteps in high heels, door opens and closes.]

Mush: Hate to interrupt my book, but I guess there’ll be time to find out what happens with those madeleines later.

[Sound: Door opens.]

Betty: Sorry, boss, but she left already.

Mush: Aha! So it’s a missing-persons case now! Call Lieutenant Baxter at the city police and tell him we’ve got a missing-persons case. Tell him to get over here right away so he can threaten to have my license if I don’t spill the beans, and I can play coy with him so he knows he’s being misled. Then put out my flask and my rubber-soled shoes. We’re on the case.

[Music: Theme, in and under for…]

Announcer: And so once again Mush Marlow finds himself hip-deep in titian-haired trouble. Tune in next week for more of the hard-boiled adventures of Mush Marlow, Private Investigator!

Now here’s a message for the busy executives in the audience. Are your business records piling up all over the office—on desks, on windowsills, in the bathroom, under the pool table? That’s when you know you need to call Business Records Consulting Services LLC. Business Records Consulting Services will take your business records away to an undisclosed location, and you’ll never have to look at them again. Then when some board member or government inspector or something asks you whether the legally mandated records for your business are being kept, you can confidently say, “Yes! As far as we know!” Call Business Records Consulting Services—so you can get back to business!

[Music: In full, then out.]

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

Posted by Dr. Boli on July 20, 2022. One comment.

On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the surface of the moon, and Michael Collins did not. For about thirty years after that momentous event, it was common for Americans to say, “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t…” Eventually, however, we came to the rather sheepish realization that we did not in fact have the political will to put a man on the moon anymore, so we stopped saying it.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

Posted by Dr. Boli on July 19, 2022. 2 comments.

Sir: I had just finished explaining the city loitering ordinance to a panhandler (by beating him with his own pan, which is the kind of mnemonic device we trained law-enforcement officers are qualified to employ, so don’t try it yourselves, citizens), when I passed a store with a big sign in the window:

We Demand an End to Police Brutality NOW.

And I thought to myself, yes, in theory an end to police brutality would be a good idea, but the timetable expressed by the sign is completely unrealistic.

First of all, the annual Police and Law Enforcement Convention is being held in our fair city this year. Thousands of officers from all kinds of jurisdictions are looking forward to this event. Would you rip the joy out of the hearts of thousands of good men and women just for the sake of some utopian ideal? Of course you wouldn’t. Those officers have to have something to look forward to when they come here. So I think we can all agree that we cannot reasonably end police brutality before August 12, when the convention is over.

But then, of course, it will still be summer, and summer is probably not the right time to be thinking of ending police brutality. People tend to be out on the street quite a bit during the summer, and a lot of those people are up to no good, and even the ones who aren’t can frankly get on an officer’s nerves a lot of the time. So it would probably be better to wait until fall to think about ending police brutality.

But this fall we’re having an important election, and I know for a fact that some people in my own neighborhood are planning on voting wrong, so obviously we’re going to have to postpone any attempt to end police brutality until after the election. And then the Christmas season will be here, and I don’t have to tell you what that means. And you certainly can’t tell me that Washington’s Birthday is a good time to be ending police brutality. And as I look through my calendar, I notice a few other things coming up here and there.

So it seems to me that we’re looking at 2025 or 2026 before we can really start thinking about ending police brutality. Of course, a complete end can’t happen all at once. There are a lot of things we would have to do, changes we’d have to put in place, people we’d have to beat to a pulp if it was going to be our last chance. But I think we can reasonably talk about the beginning of a phased reduction in police brutality by fall of 2025, or maybe spring of 2026. So to that store owner I say, be patient. It’s not realistic to expect an end to police brutality right now, but my fellow officers and I hear what you’re telling us, and we are definitely considering the possibility of thinking about what you suggest.

Sincerely,
Matthias L. Brassknuckle,
General Secretary,
Loyal Order of Police and Law-Enforcement Officers,
McKees Rocks.

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Posted by Dr. Boli on July 18, 2022. One comment.

Any cheese converted into a more expensive cheese by patented all-natural process. We make use of biologically active ingredients to add natural veining and distinctive sharper flavor. Allow up to eighteen months for conversion. The Mount Oliver Cheese Conversion Company, Mount Oliver.