Posts by Dr. Boli

CELEBRITY GOSSIP.

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Miss Augustina Flaxen, the blonde bombshell of Catholic broadcasting, has been fired from EWTN after her insensitive remarks about Dominicans yesterday. An EWTN spokeswoman said that Miss Flaxen had already been “skating on thin ice” after her use of the term “papists” in the annual Ash Wednesday Star-Studded Spectacular broadcast had provoked a few polite but disappointed emails from viewers. Miss Flaxen’s agent told a press conference that his client has already received some very attractive offers from the Mormons.

ALL THE GOOD TIMES.

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Mr. Alexander M. Plumwax, the noted folk-song collector, first discovered this song at a roadside souvenir stand just outside Luray, Virginia, where it was sung by a one-armed banjo player who said that he had learned it at the gas station down the street. Further research has revealed that the song is widespread throughout the Appalachian region in many slightly different versions. For example, Mr. Plumwax discovered that, in Bristol (Virginia or Tennessee, it hardly matters which), the song is known as “In Albion Wood Chimes Ring So Long,” and the usual accompaniment is a Galax-style dulcimer; outside Asheville, North Carolina, the song is called “The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis” and is usually banged out on trash-can lids; and near Clarksburg, West Virginia, the song is known as “Someone to Watch Over Me” and is sung to a tune by George Gershwin.

Chorus.
All the good times have gone bad.
All the sweet times have turned sour.
All the happy times are sad,
To the last depressing hour.

All the gold times have turned blue.
All the right times have gone wrong.
So there’s nothing left to do
But sing this whiny little song.

—

1. ’Cause fair was fair a century since,
And people weren’t so jaded.
If Serbians shot an Austrian prince,
Then Belgium got invaded.

(Chorus.)

2. They sure did have it good back then.
Their lives were so much merrier
When every swamp and marsh and fen
Was teeming with malarier.

(Chorus.)

3. And days in spring had bluer skies,
And summer was more summery.
If anyone says otherwise,
He’s full of idle flummery.

(Chorus.)

ASK DR. BOLI.

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world

Map of the Tri-State Area.

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Dear Dr. Boli: I am in a fierce debate with my pekingese, which you may perchance be able to settle. What, objectively speaking, is the tri-state area? —Yours cordially, D. Wright, Esq.

Dear Sir or Madam: The answer to your question has varied over the long history of tri-state areas. When Charlemagne died, his empire was divided among his three sons, and many historians regard this division as the original tri-state area. In modern times, the most important tri-state area is, of course, the one surrounding Cumberland (Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia), but New York (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut), Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio), Cincinnati (Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana), Chandigarh (Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh), and Murtho (South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria) are also centers of important tri-state areas. Geographers now estimate that approximately 89% of the earth’s habitable land surface may be counted as belonging to a “tri-state area,” with the rest made up of various curious anomalies such as the Four Corners region or Iceland.

The leading objection against granting statehood to the District of Columbia has always been that doing so would create yet another tri-state area, which, added to the 138 already existing tri-state areas in the United States alone, might cause unnecessary confusion.

WEIRD AND STRANGE FACTS OF SCIENCE.

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Radio telescopes monitoring the star HD 189733, about sixty light-years from earth, have detected broadcasts of Fibber McGee and Molly emanating from what appears to be an Earth-sized planet orbiting the star.

Only a small part of the spectrum of light is visible. The rest is made up of colors too ugly to look at now that the 1970s are over, like “Harvest Gold.”

The so-called “poison-dart frogs” (Dendrobates spp.) cannot actually shoot poison darts. As a natural defense, they usually sue predators into bankruptcy.

Hypothetically, if two twins were sitting at a table, and the second twin were suddenly whisked off on a round trip to a nearby star at nearly the speed of light, by the time he got back, his soup would be cold, and the first twin would have eaten all the rolls.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity posits that the speed of light is constant for all observers, except in Coosawhatchie, South Carolina, where everythin’ slows down considerable.