Posts by Dr. Boli
ADMIRAL HORNSWOGGLE’S NAUTICAL ADVENTURES.
No. 16.—Becalmed in the Doldrums, Part 1.
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ALTHOUGH THE LAND-BOUND often imagine that a tempest must be the most terrifying thing a sailor can face, in fact the most terrifying thing a sailor in Her Majesty’s navy ever has to face is the No. 4 Standard Naval Salt Biscuit. Tempests are actually sixteenth on the list of things that terrify sailors, just below maiden aunts.
Second on the list is a tropical calm. Any sailor will tell you that he had rather endure a dozen cyclones laid end to end than one dead calm in the tropics.
It was therefore not without some trepidation that I approached the equator, under strict instructions from the Admiralty to claim it for Her Majesty before the Spanish, with whom we were still at war, could make a prior claim. Not to try your patience with excessive prefatory matter, I shall simply say that my worst fears were realized. The wind died down to a complete calm, and our sails fell lifeless against the masts. We were becalmed in the doldrums. The crew blew and blew into the sails until they hyperventilated themselves, but to no avail, as I could have told them, having tried the same experiment on numerous occasions myself. I did not tell them, however, since their efforts kept the men entertained for several hours, and thus kept them out of the sort of mischief into which a bored crew can easily fall.
Any good sea captain knows that, in a dead calm, the most important thing is to keep the crew occupied. I therefore issued each member of my crew a box of sanitary cotton swabs and set them to work swabbing the deck, which gave them several days of good, wholesome fun. Eventually, however, the cotton swabs ran out, and every corner and crevice of the deck was polished to a crystalline sparkle. Since there was little useful labor to be performed, I divided the crew arbitrarily into several teams and set them to playing charades, which occupied them for several more days while the ship slowly drifted on the lazy, aimless currents.
By the third day, there was some grumbling among the crew, and I was forced to resort to stern naval discipline in order to keep the charades going. Loud indeed were the groans of the men who were sent to bed without supper, but such extreme measures were necessary to save the lives of all the crew, who in such a calm can be preserved only by rigorous obedience.
But the near-mutiny of my crew was not more worrisome than a discovery we made on the morning of our ninth day. Our lookout, who spent nearly every moment of the day scanning the horizon with his spyglass because such employment exempted him from the onerous charade duty to which the other crew members were subject, descried a sail in the distance.
At once he came and reported his discovery to me privately, and I myself confirmed the sighting with my keen eye (which is the left one).
“You will say nothing of this to the rest of the crew,” I told him. “But you will keep your spyglass trained on that sail, even at the cost of missing your turn at charades.”
“It’s all right, cap’n,” replied the honest old salt. “Charades is a young man’s game anyhow.”
He departed for the crow’s nest, which he had agreed to tend to while the mother crow was on a fishing expedition, and resumed his careful watch.
The rest of the crew, whom I saw no point in disturbing for the moment, continued their wholesome games, and toward noon I joined them, as was my wont. But my heart was not in it; cruel care had taken up residence in my mind and would not be evicted. For I had not only seen a sail on the horizon, but I had also made out, with my keen eye (which is the left one), the Spanish colors dangling limp from the mast.
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ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: In the hall of the building where I work is a glass case, and inside the case is an axe. On the glass are white letters that spell out, “IN CASE OF FIRE BREAK GLASS.” I don’t understand any of it. What does the axe do? How is it related to fire? —Sincerely, A Befuddled Office Worker.
Dear Sir or Madam: Like other supernatural phenomena, fire is most effectually dealt with by dealing with the spirits that cause it—in this case, the fire demons. Emergency fire stations such as the one you describe are required by fire codes in many cities. If there is a fire in your building, you simply lift the glass panel, remove the axe, and use it to smash the glass. If you do it forcefully enough, the resulting loud crash will frighten the fire demons out of your building altogether.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
ON THIS DAY in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on the moon. The lunar inhabitants are still trying to sweep up all the messy footprints our astronauts left all over their nice clean moon, and they finally closed the moon to visitors in 1972.
HONORARY SENATOR.
THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF FOLLY is pleased to welcome Mr. Jonathan May-Bowles, alias Jonnie Marbles, as an Honorary Member of the Supreme and Illustrious Senate, with all the privileges thereunto appertaining; and furthermore encourages all members to take up his humanitarian mission, along with his rallying cry, “You naughty, naughty billionaire!” Although under normal circumstances the first of the month is Pie Day, today, as a mark of respect and a sign of solidarity, custard pies with mounds of whipped cream are being made available to any member who feels the need to display a little initiative.
NOW IN PRESS.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
ON THIS DAY in 1870, the First Vatican Council declared the pope infallible when “he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church.” The original wording specified “faith, morals, or architecture,” but it was amended at the last moment, a decision that would come to haunt the Catholic Church in the 1960s and 1970s.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr Boli: I am a little confused about the concept of “brand identity”. What strategy do the no-names employ? I have never seen a targeted marketing campaign get off the drawing board against the brand market leaders.
They sit on the shelves and look uber cool, Actually the packaging is quite striking and gives off a complex air of simplicty. Look there you go, it sells itself.
They seem to market themselves via the very absence of marketing,
Yours miserably,
Sp. Bog. Master of Puppets (Honest)
Dear Sir or Madam: Absence of marketing is itself a triumph of marketing. The uninitiated have no idea how difficult it is, in our era of universal capitalism, to keep something from being marketed. One never sees Mount Everest marketed as a climbing destination, for example, and doubtless that is part of its attractive mystique. Yet it had a narrow escape. After the formation of the Everest Marketing Board, only a lucky accident (namely the capture of all six members by Maoist guerrillas) prevented a massive magazine and newspaper saturation-marketing campaign featuring a color photograph of the mountain and the words “Because it’s there” in bold white Helvetica type. Highly paid marketers are always hard at work developing brand identities for airlines or athletic shoes, but the marketers who earn the truly princely sums are the ones who know how to prevent marketing from happening when an identity is already well established. Only their tireless efforts prevent the establishment of a logo for the North Pole or an official type font for the Mississippi River.
OVERTHROWING THE ESTABLISHMENT.
A series of helpful suggestions for actions you can take that will bring the downfall of the establishment a little bit closer.
No. 2. Blogging. Do you wonder why it takes so long to overthrow the establishment? Lack of information is the answer. It is a shameful fact that most of the oppressed masses have no idea how oppressed they are. Uneducated and uninformed, many of them persist in the absurd delusion that they are reasonably happy with their lives.
But now, through the power of the Internet, you can help awaken the sleeping power of the masses. A weblog or “blog” can reach literally dozens of readers, shaking the vulgus from its complacency with a few well-placed lines of explosive prose. Conclusive and unanswerable arguments will be your weapons against the oppressors.
Don’t forget to call your Internet provider and upgrade your connection to the premium high-speed service, and make sure to subscribe to all the extra options your hosting provider offers, like video storage (video blogging is essential) and custom CSS (because you can’t reach the miserable masses without your own brand identity).
Don’t worry about the cost of these extras. If your blog is successful, you will soon be carrying advertising from major oil companies and other deep-pocketed enterprises that want to reach your carefully targeted demographic. And you can sell merchandise that will both bring in extra cash and strengthen your brand identity. Publishing houses may wish to turn your observations into a book; or, alternatively, major media outlets may contract to carry your observations in their printed pages.
In short, a well-thought-out blog is worth any number of dynamite outrages in bringing the establishment to its knees.
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