Posts by Dr. Boli
Advertisement.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boil: Is there anything written that is beyond parody? If there is, how would you know that it’s not just in poor taste? If it is beyond parody, what can you do to recover from your exposure? —Sincerely, Stumped in Steubenville.
Dear Sir or Madam: It goes without saying that parody is beyond parody, unless it is very bad parody, in which case the single joke in the metaparody will be that the parody is not funny, and that sort of joke wears thin quickly. Indeed, most kinds of humor or comedy are immune to parody for the same reason.
Parody thrives on the serious, the well-intentioned, and the self-important. Whenever a piece of writing shows that the writer had a higher opinion of it than readers do, it cries out for parody. And that is almost always the case: few indeed are the works of literature whose authors have not had a higher opinion of them than their readers had.
Of serious works, then, there are few that are beyond parody. But such works do exist, and they are invariably the works that are their own best parodies. The works of Amanda McKittrick Ros are beyond parody, for example, because no parody could ever hope to equal the sheer unlikeliness of the original.
But what other works of serious writing are beyond parody? Surely Dr. Boli’s readers will have some opinions, and together we can compile a useful list. Readers should be warned, however, not to include Dan Brown on the list. It has been conclusively proved that Dan Brown is not beyond parody.
As for the rest of your question, taste that is merely poor is always subject to parody. It is only the egregiously awful that places itself beyond parody, and the best way to recover from exposure to it is to eat chocolate.
Advertisement.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
Advertisement.
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF.
From Dr. Boli’s Fables for Children Who Are Too Old to Believe in Fables.
—
Once there was a boy who had a keen pair of eyes and a particularly loud and piercing voice, so he was employed by a syndicate of sheep-owners to watch over their flock. “And if you see a wolf among the sheep,” the leader of the syndicate told him, “you shout ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ at the top of your lungs.”
The boy solemnly swore that he would keep a careful eye out and warn everyone the moment he saw a wolf, and he went to work watching the sheep with unflagging vigilance.
He had been watching most of the afternoon with nothing to report, when suddenly a wolf sprang out of the underbrush and, to his horror, began devouring one of the sheep.
“Wolf! Wolf!” the boy cried at the top of his lungs.
Immediately the leader of the syndicate came running.
“Look here, boy,” he said sternly, as the wolf continued his meal, “what are you trying to do? Do you want the whole village to think we don’t know how to take care of our sheep?”
“But the wolf is eating them!”
“That’s no excuse for such an unseemly ruckus. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” And the leader of the syndicate turned and walked away, leaving the wolf to eat mutton until he was satisfied.
The next day the boy was in position again, and once again the wolf leaped out of the brush and began tearing a sheep to pieces.
“Wolf! Wolf!” the boy cried in his piercing soprano.
The leader of the syndicate came running even faster than he had the previous day.
“Now, what did I tell you?” he demanded angrily. “You’re making the whole village think there are wolves about! Do you think that makes them feel secure?”
“But the wolf is right there,” the boy explained.
“I don’t want to be bothered with details! Now, not another peep from you, or there will be serious consequences.” And he turned and stomped away angrily, once again leaving the wolf to eat sheep until he could eat no more.
The next day, the boy was in his place, and once again the wolf leaped out of the shrubbery and began gobbling up sheep.
The boy was not at all certain what to do. He seriously considered just letting the wolf go about his business unmolested. But in the end he remembered that he had sworn a solemn oath to watch over the sheep, and he did what he knew was his duty.
“Wolf! Wolf!” the boy cried.
This time the leader of the syndicate simply called the police and had the boy arrested, and he is now serving six years in juvenile detention for disturbing the peace.
The wolf, meanwhile, ate all the sheep at his leisure; but the members of the syndicate decided that they had never liked sheep very much and were better off without them.
Moral: A comfortable lie beats immoderate truth any old day.
DEALING WITH TELEPHONE SCAMMERS.
A man with a heavy foreign accent calls and tells you, “Our equipment has detected serious anomalies coming from your computer.”
What do you do?
1. Ask for clarification.
“What kind of anomalies?”
This throws him off script. “Serious ones.” Then he gets back on script. “So if you could just go to your computer and…”
2. Now count how many times you can get him to say the word “anomalies.”
“You’ll have to be more specific. What did you receive from my computer?”
“Anomalies.”
“Can you describe what kind of anomalies?”
“Serious anomalies.”
“Yes, but what data came to you from my computer?”
“Ah-NOM-uh-lees.”
“But what was in the data?”
Result: Nine uses of the word “anomalies” in under a minute. Can you do better?
3. String him along.
“So you want me to be at my computer?”
“Yes, sir, if you could just go to your computer, I will tell you where to find the anomalies.”
4. Sit down at your computer. Or just tell him you’re doing it.
“Okay, I’m at my computer.”
“All right, sir. Now do you see down at the lower left of your screen, there’s a ‘Start’ button?”
5. Destroy his universe:
“Oh, no, I don’t see a ‘Start’ button, because I’m running Linux.”
6. Contemplate the sound of silence.
SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER.
Well, J. M., it was a great idea to buy the rights to Le Sang d’un poete, cause everybody knows it’s a total classic. I mean, who doesn’t want to see a remake of that one? And we think we’ve got a swell idea for turning it into a summer blockbuster that’ll just blow everything else out of the water. We’ll call it Talk to the Hand.
All we had to do was update the story a little bit for the twenty-first century. Like, instead of a painter, we make the hero a comic-book artist. So it’s about this guy who draws comic books, right? Cause everyone likes comic books. And he has a crush on this cute girl, but he can never speak to her, because he’s a shy artist type. She’d really like to go out with him, but he doesn’t know it. That’s romance, see? You gotta have romance.
So one day he draws a mouth on a close-up of one of his superhero characters, and he doesn’t like it, right? So he rubs off the mouth with his hand. And now the mouth is on his hand, and it starts talking! Just like in the original movie. But fans will love how we’ve updated it, cause now we’ll do it with CGI. And here’s where you have to hold on to your hat, cause this is where it just blows you away: see, the mouth talks in jive talk, right? You know, like colored people do. We can get Eddie Murphy for the voice. Can you imagine how the kids will love that? It’ll be colossal! The mouth will be the big breakout character in the movie, see.
So the mouth is always mouthing off—get it?—and the guy doesn’t know what to do, cause the mouth on his hand is always saying the darnedest things. And he can’t let anyone know it’s there, cause it’s like there’s this mouth. On his hand. I mean, that makes him a freak, right? So, like, whenever the mouth says something outrageous, he has to pretend that he said it, except he has to pretend he was trying to say something else. It’s hilarious! The jokes just write themselves.
And the mouth sees—well, knows, anyway, cause it isn’t an eye, it’s a mouth—that the artist guy wants to get together with the cute girl, so the mouth starts doing everything to make him get together with her, and it’s just hilarious. And think of all the jokes about where the mouth is when he puts his hand here or there! We’re going to have this totally hilarious hand-washing scene in the kitchen.
But meanwhile the FBI is after the artist guy, because they know about the mouth and they think the guy is an alien or a mutant or something. We haven’t worked that part out yet. The main thing is that he’s being chased by the FBI for some reason, so there’s conflict. And if he gets chased, then we can blow stuff up, cause kids need things to blow up in a movie.
And the girl gets involved too, cause he has to go to her apartment to hide, or maybe the FBI thinks she’s his girlfriend and goes after her, or something. Anyway, they go on the lam together, and she finds out about the mouth, and she and the mouth are like buddies, and there’s a happy ending, but he’s still got the mouth on his hand, so we can do the sequel in 2017.
So that’s it, J. M. It’s the movie Cocteau would have made if he’d had a hundred fifty million dollars to work with. Totally brilliant idea to buy the rights. You’re a genius, J. M. You know that, right? Course you do.
DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS.
No. 9.—Pasquino of Rome: Seven Books of Useful Improvements.
WE KNOW OF Pasquino’s work from the transcripts of his trial, in which a number of the “improvements” he published were described in some detail. It is often said that Pasquino was an inventor far ahead of his time, and indeed the list of his inventions justifies that popular opinion of him. A few of his more notable ideas are given here in summary form, as we have taken them from the trial reports:
A kind of drinking vessel made of paper, which may be used once and then discarded.
A method of bending a certain length of wire in a prescribed pattern, so that it may be made to hold a small number of sheets of paper or parchment together with perfect security until such time as it becomes necessary to separate them.
A kind of food which may be chewed indefinitely without swallowing, and which also provides indescribable delight by producing a kind of bladder or bubble when inflated with the mouth.
A device for measuring the time during which a carriage is left at a particular location, said device also exacting a set fee for every quarter-hour during which the carriage is left there.
A kind of chitarra or vihuela which, by the application of the remarkable properties of certain electrical substances, may be increased in volume of sound so much that an entire neighborhood may be entertained with its playing.
A paper container or package for private letters, which may conveniently be sealed by an adhesive applied in advance to the package, and moistened with the tongue when it is required to seal the letter.
A type of handkerchief made of very thin and fine paper, which may be used once and discarded, and which may be stored in large quantities in paperboard boxes designed for the purpose, in such a way that, when one handkerchief is plucked out, another handkerchief presents itself as ready for the plucking.
Having heard detailed testimony on many of Pasquino’s “improvements,” and having seen a number of demonstrations, the court of the Inquisition agreed that they were indeed works of the devil, powered by a supernatural alliance with demons. All copies of the book were burned, and Pasquino himself, as his agreed-upon penance, spent the rest of his life writing commentaries on the extensive works of St. Stolidus, and indeed died at his desk many years later, having completed more than six thousand pages of commentary. This latter manuscript is preserved in the Vatican library, but the card in the front cover reveals that no one has ever checked it out.
Advertisement.
