Posts by Dr. Boli
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
Advertisement.
MR. MAGUNDI MOVES.
Having given up on the free server that used to host his site, our friend Mr. Magundi has moved his opinions to WordPress.com, where his readers will find every word from the other site. In moving he relinquishes control over some elements of the design of the page, but the most legible design in the world is of no use to anyone if it never appears on screen. Follow Mr. Magundi here:
TONIGHT AT EIGHT.
Dumont Network: Harsh Words (crime drama). The hit Dumont drama that pairs a by-the-book cop with a cold but beautiful forensic etymologist. Tonight: When Dr. Skeat is called in to investigate a serial killer who leaves taunting notes in Yinzer dialect, she is forced to confront her own repressed memories of her third-grade English teacher.
Wolf Broadcasting Corporation: Optimized (crime drama). A new fall drama that pairs a by-the-book cop with a business-school graduate hired to reorganize the department. Tonight: Buddy wants to stop a serial killer terrorizing Uptown, but Staines insists that writing parking tickets is more cost-effective.
Northern Broadcasting System: Giggles and Sins (crime drama). The hit drama that pairs a by-the-book cop with an architectural-historian clown, now revived on NBS. Tonight: When two billionaire executives are found drowned in their cornflakes within hours of each other, Bozar suspects a cereal killer may be on the loose.
Red Network: Blue and Gray (crime drama). The new Red Network drama that pairs a by-the-book cop with a serial killer. Tonight: When Krantz runs out of leads, Gray goes after the city’s biggest jaywalking syndicate his own way.
Metromedia: Midtown Beat (crime drama). The hit Metromedia drama that pairs a by-the-book cop with a public-relations expert. Tonight: When several popular soap-opera stars are murdered, Lucas struggles to come up with a catchy nickname for the killer.
UNDO-EUROPEAN? DOMINO-EUROPEAN?
Some spelling-checkers are surprisingly ill-informed in certain fields. Perhaps the UKIP could be described as “Undo-European,” so the spelling-checker may accidentally have added a useful word to our vocabulary.
SPLENDID ACTION SHOTS.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: There are several unpleasant names that have slowly been polluting our conversations which really irritate me. Some examples are coworker (instead of colleague), staycation (also known as free-time), advertainment (which seems to indicate that people like advertisements instead of avoiding them). There are many others. I’m hoping you will make them stop. Thank you! —Sincerely, Disgusted in Duquesne.
Dear Sir or Madam: You seem to credit Dr. Boli with a power that he does not possess. He has not even been able to force television reporters to give up that revolting nasal whine they all affect, and fashions in vocabulary are as far beyond his reach as fashions in neckties (which have been similarly deplorable for the past few decades).
What, then, shall we do? Perhaps a bit of what popular advice columnists call “reverse psychology” is in order. The next time you hear one of the ungainly hybrid words that irritate you so much, you must be absolutely stunned by its cleverness. “Did you say ‘staycation’? What’s that? —Oh, wait, don’t tell me: I’ve figured it out! It’s like ‘stay’ plus ‘vacation,’ isn’t it? How brilliantly à propos it is! You take a vacation from work, but you stay where you are! My goodness, what a vocabulary you must have.”
Dr. Boli does not warrant that this approach will stop the people with whom you were talking from using those words; but, if repeated often enough, it will stop them from talking to you, which solves the problem as far as you are concerned.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: Why is it that establishments where cheerful and polite customer service is normally a point of pride will nevertheless post a vulgar notice on the front door that says “NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE”? It is not that I object to the dress code—I myself seldom go shopping in less than full morning dress. But I do not like to be spoken to in that tone of voice. —Sincerely, Albert van Vaughan Andover-Ewart, Schenley Heights.
Dear Sir: People will forget themselves and their breeding if they feel they have come up with a very clever put-down. Even the well-intentioned and well-bred find the vulgar cleverness of the slogan “NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE” irresistible. The only way it could be rendered more clever is by adding rhyme, which would make it positively mesmerizing to the middlebrow mind:
IF YOU DON’T WEAR A SHIRT
YOU’RE GONNA GET HURT
or
WHAT, NO SHOES, SIR?
YOU’RE A LOSER!
In fact, even as Dr. Boli makes these facetious suggestions, he suspects that someone somewhere will find them, fall under their thrall, and post them in a store window. The only way to break the upward spiral of vulgarity is for county health codes, in addition to specifying the minimum clothing required in commercial establishments, to specify the wording of the posted notice as well, which should be something like this:
SHIRT AND SHOES REQUIRED
BY ORDER OF DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Once that is accomplished, we can work on the question of whether anything else should be required, or whether we shall continue to raise no objection to sans-culottes shopping in our stores.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
On this day in 1928, France, Germany, and the United States signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact making war illegal. They were soon followed by most of the other nations of the globe, and humanity lived happily ever after.