Posts by Dr. Boli
DR. BOLI’S CELEBRATED I.Q. TEST.
IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of his celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some favorite articles and advertisements from the past five years.
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DR. BOLI’S I.Q. is 462. Are you smarter than Dr.Boli? Try this simple questionnaire to measure your own I.Q.
1. What is the next number in this series?
827, 827, 827, 827, 827, ___
a. 827.
b. 12,374,349,0354,498.58.
c. DCCCXXVII, just for variety’s sake.
d. Not enough information to care.
2. Napoleon attempted to conquer Russia and failed. What should he have done instead?
a. Attempted to conquer China.
b. Taken up some harmless hobby, like building empires in a bottle.
c. Invited the Russians over for tea. Russians love tea.
d. Not enough information to care.
3. How many Frenchmen can’t be wrong?
a. 50,000,000.
b. Green.
c. The Battle of Lepanto.
d. Not enough information to care.
4. Mrs. Vihuela has two pineapples and wants to feed 11.83 friends with them. How should she divide the pineapples so that everyone gets an equal share?
a. She should dice them.
b. She should puree them.
c. She should give her friends aronia berries instead.
d. Not enough information to care.
5. Solve this traditional charade:
My first is a pill that just will not go down;
My second, the heel of a rodeo clown;
My third, an opossum who drove into town:
Together, we make Thomas Jefferson frown.
What am I?
a. A 1935 De Soto Airflow with a large dent in the left front fender.
b. The transcendental unity of apperception.
c. Three empty pie crusts in the back of the freezer.
d. Not enough information to care.
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Scoring.
Each answer is assigned to a particular letter. Assign to these letters numerical values, as follows:
a = 9
b = 17
c = 31
d = 43
Now add up the numbers corresponding to your answers. This is your I.Q., and you are not smarter than Dr. Boli.
Advertisement.
IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of his celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some favorite articles and advertisements from the past five years.
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RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME permanently cured with one simple operation. The Amputation Practice of Dr. Eli Hickory, D.A., Duquesne Heights.
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OLD GARTERS WANTED for the garterless children of Indonesia. Millions of socks will fall down without your help. The H. C. Frick Sartorial Foundation, Point Breeze.
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HOURS OF FUN for the whole family with the Junior Wizard Particle Accelerator. Learn quantum physics at home in your spare time. Great for school projects! Pretorius Scientific Novelties, Inc., Hazelwood.
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MILLIONS ARE WAITING to hear you sing! All it takes is a recording contract and a little bit of chutzpah, which we supply. The Allegheny Chutzpah Company, Sharpsburg.
THE LITTLE DUTCH BOY WHO SAVED HOLLAND.
From Dr. Boli’s Fables for Children Who Are Too Old to Believe in Fables.
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IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of his celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some favorite articles and advertisements from the past five years. This particular little story, rather sneakily, has become the most popular article Dr. Boli has ever published, largely by popping up in search engines when people are searching for another similar story and (apparently) failing to find it.
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ONCE THERE WAS a little Dutch boy who discovered a leak in the dike.
What should he do? From a single leak, a terrible breach might grow. The whole country could be flooded, and everyone he knew would drown.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He stuck his finger in the dike, and the leak stopped.
Of course, now he was stuck. He couldn’t move, because as soon as he did, the leak would start again.
So he stood there for quite some time. He was rather tired, and his finger felt a bit numb from the effort of holding back the North Sea, but he knew he was doing his duty.
At last the Burgomaster happened to pass by.
“Young man,” he said with a certain amount of sternness, “why are you poking your finger in the dike?”
“I am stopping a leak,” the boy explained. “I saw the dike leaking, so I stuck my finger in the hole.”
“Heroic boy!” the Burgomaster exclaimed. “You shall be rewarded! Meanwhile, keep your finger there while I call the Burghers together.”
So the Burgomaster called a meeting of the Burghers, and they agreed that the boy had heroically saved Holland.
“And now,” the Burgomaster asked, “what shall we do about the leak?”
“It seems to me,” one of the Burghers replied, “that private enterprise has already found an admirable solution to the problem. The boy has stuck his finger in the dike, and the leak has stopped. You might describe it as voluntary self-regulation. There is no need for expensive government action.”
So the Burghers voted to award the boy a Certificate of Good Citizenship, which the Burgomaster was delighted to be able to present to him the next day.
“Thank you,” the boy said politely, “but I still have my finger in this dike.”
“And we appreciate that,” the Burgomaster replied. “I may confidently speak for the whole Council of Burghers in saying that your heroic action is universally admired.”
So the boy stood there with his finger in the dike for a few more days.
It was not long, however, before another leak sprang in the dike, a little bit farther down the way.
“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Burghers. “There is another leak.”
“As private enterprise has so admirably solved the previous problem,” one of the Burghers responded, “the solution to this new leak is obvious. We need only persuade another heroic boy to stick his finger in it.”
So they went into the local school and found another boy who, after much persuasion, was willing to stick his finger in the dike.
It was, however, only a few days later that two more leaks appeared. This time it was much harder to persuade boys to stick their fingers in the holes; and when, a week later, half a dozen more leaks appeared, no volunteers were to be found.
“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Council. “Private enterprise seems no longer to be adequate. We may have to repair the dike itself this time.”
“Nonsense,” said one of the Burghers. “The solution that worked before will work again. We must simply force private enterprise into action.”
So the Council visited the school and dragged a number of young boys by the ears to the dike, where they were forced to plug the leaks with their fingers.
But the dike, which was old and poorly maintained, continued to spring new leaks here and there, so that it was all the Burghers could do to find more boys to plug up the leaks with their fingers. At last the Burghers compelled every little boy in the Low Countries to stick his finger in a hole. All economic activity came to a halt, as it is well known that young boys are the leading consumers of skates and cheese, on which the economy of Holland depended at that time.
“What shall we do?” the Burgomaster asked the Council. “We have run out of heroic little boys. At this rate, we may have to plug the leaks with our own fingers.”
“That would be moderately inconvenient,” one of the Burghers remarked.
So the Council voted to remove the North Sea by digging a new seabed somewhere in Germany; and they voted themselves a number of solid gold spades, befitting their dignity, for the purpose. And if you go to suburban Wilhelmshaven right now, and look into the field to your right as you drive westward on the Friedenstrasse, you will see a number of Dutch burghers very busy with their spades, trying to dig a new bed for the North Sea. It is lucky for them that the people of Wilhelmshaven have mistaken the burghers for a party of archaeologists looking for ancient Saxon remains, which has allowed them to continue the work uninterrupted.
Advertisement.
IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of his celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some favorite articles and advertisements from the past five years.
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DAFT OLD LADY seeking same for risky investment scheme. Must be Presbyterian.
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NO-FAULT IMPRIMATURS, nihil obstats, &c. Our staff of trained & fully qualified bishops is at your service 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. The Canon Law Practice of Rufinus & Rufinus, Troy Hill.
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FORK COLLECTORS! VISIT our handsome new state-of-the-art facility on Beaver St. and admire the third-largest selection of collector forks on the North American continent. New merchandise comes in constantly from around the globe. Just arrived: a fabulous shipment of traditional wooden venison forks from Moldova. Herb’s Collectible Forks, Sewickley.
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HAVE YOU EVER eaten too much of a delicious but unhealthy snack food? You may be entitled to compensation. Class-action lawsuit seeks to hold manufacturers responsible for the deliciousness of their snacks. Share your story with Lentill & Porridge, Attorneys at Law, Sheraden.
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NEW PYRO-MATE Wonder Midget Home and Office Fire Extinguisher uses homeopathic technology to attack the causes of fire rather than merely addressing the symptoms. Send for free illustrated brochure, “Nature’s Way to a Fire-Free Home or Office.” Pyro-Mate Corporation, Swissvale.
Advertisement.
VOCATIONAL TRAINING COURSES. Insure your future in one of our fast-growing fields. Learn carriage building, typewriter repair, phonograph service, adding-machine maintenance, kinetoscope operation, telegraphy, steam engineering, periwig grooming, typesetting, phrenology, daguerreotyping. Always be in demand! Modern Vocational Institute, Dravosburg.
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ARE YOU SHY? So are we. Chances are you’ll never get up the courage to contact us, and we’re certainly too bashful to get in touch with you. Pathetic, isn’t it? League of Timid Persons, address withheld.
THE SINGULAR ASPECT.
IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of the migration of his celebrated Magazine to the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli reprints the first story he ever published in electrical form.
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A MAN WALKED into Abelard’s office the other day and announced that he had a singular case. Our morning had begun with tea, as usual, but I had hardly poured the first cup when the office door opened and the man with the singular case walked in.
It is well known by now that Magnus Abelard deals only with singular cases, so everyone who walks through the door announces that he has a singular case. Nevertheless, the door is, by Abelard’s explicit command, never locked; and this case really did turn out to be singular. I have taken the trouble, therefore, to record it among Abelard’s most remarkable achievements, in the hope that the record will serve as an imperishable monument to Abelard’s genius.
We began with the usual formalities. I informed our visitor that he would have ten minutes to convince Abelard of the singularity of his case. I also explained the payment schedule in the unlikely event that Abelard did pronounce his case singular. Abelard did not speak during the proceedings; he never does speak until some singular aspect of the case has caught his attention.
“Mine is a singular case,” the visitor began as I took notes. “Indeed, it is so singular that I have not spoken with anyone about it until now. I have lived for ten years in fear for my life—a fear all the worse for being secret. I have not dared reveal it to anyone, and yet it eats at me, day after day, hour after hour, like a kind of parasitic creature that gnaws but cannot consume.”
“You have nine and a half minutes,” I reminded him.
“Ten years ago, my wife, to whom I had been married only a month, announced that she had a few purchases to make, and declared her intention to walk to the drug store on Murray Avenue. She would be gone for about an hour, she said. I bid her farewell; she walked out the door; and that, Mr. Abelard, was the last time I ever saw her.
“I shall not weary you with the details of my inquiries. Over the years, I have found opportunities to interrogate our neighbors and the clerks at the drug store. From their statements, I have discovered that my wife did indeed reach the drug store; that she left and turned right on Murray Avenue; that she was last seen walking on Phillips, the very street on which we lived, in the direction of our house. But she never arrived.”
Here the visitor stopped; and, as Abelard was still silent, I knew the narration had not interested him enough for him to take the case. It was therefore incumbent upon me to disappoint our visitor.
“Disappearances such as the one you describe,” I told him, “while exceedingly regrettable, are not extraordinarily uncommon. Perhaps the city police, or a less specialized private agency, might be able to render you some assistance.”
Our visitor sat back in his chair and sighed. “I have not yet revealed to you,” he said slowly and quietly, “the singular aspect of the case.”
Abelard leaned forward. This statement had at least caught his attention.
The visitor took a deep breath, appeared to think for a moment, and then continued, picking his words with care and deliberation.
“About an hour after my wife left, a woman entered my house by the front door. She entered boldly—as if she owned the place, you might say. Now here is the singular and remarkable thing: in every particular, this woman was the exact image of my missing wife. Even her clothes were the same as the ones my wife had been wearing when she left. She proceeded to make herself quite at home; she treated me as though she were actually my wife.”
Here the visitor leaned forward and lowered his voice about a fifth. “For ten years, Mr. Abelard, that woman has inhabited my house, living in every respect as though she were my wife. For ten long years, I have lived in fear, utterly convinced that this woman in my house is somehow deeply involved in the mystery, and afraid even to sleep at night—afraid I might fall prey to the same sinister forces that took my beloved wife from me. The fear is tearing at my soul, sir, and I have at last resolved that, whatever the cost to myself, I must unravel this mystery.”
A moment of silence followed; then Abelard spoke for the first time.
“And how exactly was it that you knew this woman was not really your wife, returned from her shopping trip?”
The visitor started forward; then he sank slowly back in his chair, staring straight ahead.
“Good lord,” he whispered hoarsely.
Abelard observed him closely.
“Good lord,” the visitor said again, somewhat louder this time. “I never thought of that.”
He sat upright in his chair with a new air of confidence. “Well, sir, you certainly have earned your reputation. I never would have imagined that a mystery of such devilish complexity could be unraveled in such a short time. I shall certainly be recommending your agency. You may expect a check from me in the morning, although you must be aware that no remuneration could ever express my profound gratitude. I bid you good day, and once again I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Abelard watched him walk out of the office with a jaunty confidence that had been completely foreign to him only minutes before.
For some time after, Abelard was silent, as though lost in thought. At last he turned to address me.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we ought to reconsider the idea of locking the door.”
Advertisement.
IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of his celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some favorite articles and advertisements from the past five years.
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DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS, NO. 5.
IN HONOR OF the fifth anniversary of his celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some favorite articles and advertisements from the past five years.
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Caprodorus: Scythian Tale
ALTHOUGH ONLY SCATTERED fragments remain today, Caprodorus’ Scythian Tale was one of the most popular Greek prose romances of the third century. From the many summaries, criticisms, pictorial representations, and character trading cards that have come down to us from antiquity, we can reconstruct the plot with surprising accuracy.
Theodore, a shepherd of Scythia, and Theodora, a shepherdess of the same address, declare their love for each other in frequent outbursts of song. But the flow of dactylic endearments is interrupted when a band of pirates, temporarily abandoning their maritime depredations to rustle a few sheep, invade the pasture and abduct Theodora, apparently misidentifying her cries for help as bleating. They leave Theodore for dead and depart for the high seas with their woolly cargo.
Theodore, however, is not dead, having merely stepped aside to answer a call of nature, or (according to the reading of Schleusegatter et al., 1931) the telephone. Informed by his remaining sheep of Theodora’s abduction, he vows to become a pirate himself and join the pirate band that abducted Theodora, seeking the earliest opportunity to effect her rescue. This is apparently the best plan he can come up with.
The pirates having meanwhile discovered that Theodora is more woman than sheep, Theodora evades their advances by pretending to be Ethiopian and also mad. This ruse puzzles the pirates, and before they have time to resolve their confusion, their ship is ambushed by a band of forest bandits, who have temporarily set aside their life of sheep-rustling to try their hands at piracy. Taken by surprise, the pirates have no choice but to surrender their ship and cargo to the forest bandits, who then become pirates themselves, leaving the former pirates to become maritime forest bandits.
Theodora attempts to elude the new pirates with the same ruse that proved so successful with the former group; but she is foiled when she discovers that the pirates, formerly forest bandits, are all Ethiopian themselves, and most of them are quite mad.
Theodore, meanwhile, has come to the island of Rhodes, where he had been told he had the best chance of finding a pirate band willing to take on a new member with no previous references. Here he immediately falls among witches, who propose to turn him into a hedgehog. When he pleads for his life, however, the witches spare him, on the condition that he will present them with his head in a sack in exactly a year’s time. Theodore readily agrees, being honest but not too bright. Upon his swearing a solemn oath, the witches put him in a small boat and give it a hard shove eastward.
Scarcely has Theodore departed when the pirate ship carrying Theodora, piloted as it is by former forest bandits with no experience on the high seas, smashes on the rocks off the shore of Rhodes. All the pirates are drowned, but Theodora, who knows how to wade, makes it to shore and immediately falls among the same witches who had threatened to turn Theodore into a hedgehog. The witches decide to try the same experiment on Theodora, but she makes the same agreement that Theodore made; and the witches place her in a similar small boat, giving it a hard shove to the west this time.
After many more adventures which it would be, and in fact was, tedious to relate, both Theodore and Theodora return to the island of Rhodes at the same time to fulfill their bargains. They fail to recognize each other, however, because they have both cut off their own heads and are carrying them in sacks to present to the witches. In a piece of droll comedy that was much talked about in Caprodorus’ time, Theodore stumbles and Theodora trips over him, both dropping their heads on the ground. When they pick themselves up and dust themselves off, each picks up the wrong head and presents it to the witches. Furious, the witches restore their heads to their bodies and tell them to do it all over again and get it right this time.
But just as they are about to cut off their heads again, Theodore and Theodora recognize each other, and their moving reunion so affects the head witch that she sobbingly reveals that she is in fact Theodora’s long-lost mother, who was abducted by pirates before Theodora was born. At that very moment comes a sudden attack by forest bandits, and you can imagine everyone’s surprise when the bandits turn out to be none other than the original pirates who had abducted Theodora. Recognizing Theodora’s mother the witch, the captain of the forest bandits reveals that he was the pirate who had abducted her all those years ago. A happy reunion is effected, and Theodora’s mother and the bandit captain decide to open a souvenir shop on the beach. No one is quite sure what happens to Theodore and Theodora.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir:
The advertisement you carried yesterday for the Dumont Network’s new program, Ineffable or Unspeakable?, was a slap in the faces of the sizable minority of good and ordinary American citizens who, through no fault of their own, have glowing yellow hoops floating over their heads. It is bad enough that we have to endure the jeers and innuendos of the lowest ranks of society every time we walk down the street, without having a prominent broadcasting network reinforcing the ridiculous stereotypes we persons with hoopheadedness have spent so long trying to erase from the public consciousness. How would you like it if everywhere you went people asked if you were a saint or an angel, and you had to deny it a dozen times every day? It is bruising to the ego, to say the least. The Dumont Network should be ashamed of itself for approving this advertisement, and I would seriously consider boycotting their stupid game show if there were anything else worth watching in that time slot.
Sincerely,
Gabriel St. John Raphael,
Schenley Farms
THE CASE OF THE SPURIOUS QUOTATION.
WITH EVERY NEW article posted, the automatic machinery at wordpress.com spits out one of several quotations on the subject of writing, doubtless meant to be inspirational to the writer who, having just finished an article, is presumably past the point of needing inspiration. One of the quotations in the rotation is this:
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dr. Boli would like to pose a simple question to anyone who has ever read Hawthorne (and, merciful heavens, is there anyone in the United States of America who has not read Hawthorne, either willingly or under compulsion?): Does this sound like something Nathaniel Hawthorne would say?
Dr. Boli did not think so himself. A bit of research finds that this quotation is attributed to Hawthorne all over the Internet, but the source, if it is cited, is always some Internet collection of inspiring quotations. Fortunately, the editors of Hawthorne’s Wikiquote page have looked into the matter and provided this information (which is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike License):
Also attributed to Ernest Hemingway and others; the earliest definite occurrence of this yet found in research for Wikiquote is by Maya Angelou, who stated it in Conversations With Maya Angelou (1989) edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot:
I think it’s Alexander Pope who says, “Easy writing is damn hard reading,” and vice versa, easy reading is damn hard writing
The statement she referred to is most probably:
You write with ease, to show your breeding,
But easy writing’s curst hard reading—Clio’s Protest, or the Picture Varnished (written 1771, published 1819) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Let us therefore hear no more of this spurious Hawthorne quotation (although the Sheridan couplet deserves wider exposure). Dr. Boli would like to close with another quotation from a more reliable source:
“Never trust the attribution of a quotation you find on the Internet until you find the original source in Google Books.”
—Jesus Christ.