Posts by Dr. Boli
THE FREE MAN.
From Dr. Boli’s Fables for Children Who Are Too Old to Believe in Fables.
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ONCE A LITTLE girl was walking along in the cheerful summer forest when she came across a man who was tied to a tree by every sort of chain and shackle.
“Oh, you poor prisoner!” the little girl exclaimed. “I’ll run and get help for you immediately!”
“No, no, you misunderstand,” said the man, who was bound but not gagged, so that at least he could say anything he liked. “I am a completely free man.”
“You don’t look free to me,” said the little girl. “For one thing, you’re chained to the tree by that thing around your waist.”
“Oh, I put that chain there,” the man explained. “I wanted to be safe from falling down, so I chained myself to this tree, which as you can see is quite sturdy. This way I’ll never fall down and bump my head. No price is too high for security, you know.”
“But your legs are shackled together,” the little girl remarked.
“You’re very observant,” the man answered. “If my legs could move freely, they might slide apart, and I would start to slip down the tree, which would be very uncomfortable. So you see, since I’ve chained myself to the tree, it’s much more comfortable to have my legs shackled.”
“But your right arm is chained to this big branch with a bronze chain,” the little girl said.
“It’s gold,” the man replied.
“It looks like bronze to me,” the little girl said.
“I was assured that it was gold,” the man told her. “A very rich man came along with this beautiful gold chain and told me that, if I would let him chain my right arm with it, then I could admire his gold chain all the time, and I would never have to stop looking at it.”
“But your left hand is tied to the chain behind your back,” the little girl said.
“Yes,” the man agreed. “You see, I’m right-handed, so it’s not much use to me to have my left hand flailing about, is it?”
“I see,” the little girl said. “And you’re sure you don’t want me to go find someone to untie you?”
“Oh, no,” said the man. “I have chosen every one of my chains and shackles with absolute freedom. There is not a man on earth who is freer than I.”
So the little girl told the man that it had been pleasant talking with him, and the man wished her a very good day, and the little girl went on her way into the lovely green forest, thinking about what she had seen and heard.
“Well,” the little girl said to herself as she walked, “I suppose he seems happy enough. But still, I’m glad I’m not free. I don’t think I’d like it at all.”
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OUR VALUED CORRESPONDENTS.
THE RECENT FLURRY of correspondence has left Dr. Boli a little breathless, and before he falls so far behind that his correspondents may accuse him of negligence, he has decided to take care of all his outstanding obligations at once.
First a message from one “Billy the Kid”:
Dr Boli,
May I request the assistance of your “Amazonian Guard”. I was the victim of an ambush a couple of weeks ago by two Crow while at home around sun down. I swear one was a squaw.
I can only thank the Lord that my dear wife heavily pregnant was not home at the time. I managed to fight them off, but inflicted heavy injury. A similar incident happened last year and again I thank the Lord my wife was not at the ranch.
The Crow are ruthless and show no signs of humanity. I fear they are more animal than man and all attempts at communication fail.
I dare not mention such terror to the wife for fear stress and harm caused to the unborn. She is currently not well and is resting at WoodEast hospital.
It is only my trusty companion Buffalo Will and I guarding the fort. The journey to town and back twice a day is fraught with danger but is nothing we cannot handle.
However if the Amazonian Guard is head’n on down these parts Godspeed.
Billy the Kid.
Your problem, sir, seems to be avian in nature, and Dr. Boli would recommend engaging the services of a good scarecrow. The old straw man in a flannel shirt is largely ineffectual, as corvids are too intelligent to be influenced by straw-man arguments. Your best bet is to engage a literature professor who is proficient in deconstructionist theory, which is proven to repel crows more effectively than any other school of literary criticism. If, on the other hand, you find that you are still in need of an Amazonian Guard, Dr. Boli regrets to inform you that he has no such corps at his disposal. The good news, however, is that, according to our North African correspondents, the original may be coming up for sale at auction very soon.
Next we turn to one C. Simon, whose query is too long to be reprinted here, but may be read in full here. To summarize, our correspondent seems to find existing philosophical systems inadequate as means of avoiding pain. Dr. Boli agrees, and would suggest that two aspirin are worth a hundred pages of Plotinus. Indeed, aspirin may be regarded as the cure for Plotinus. The idea of a march on Washington is, however, to be deprecated. Some time ago, Dr. Boli spent four years in Washington throwing old cabbages at various members of the Buchanan administration, so he speaks from experience when he says that a giant march in that city is not a cure for pain but rather the cause of it. Washington, depending on the time of year, is either bitterly cold or too hot to endure, and the only place large enough to accommodate the crowds you contemplate is the Mall, which is the least shaded place on earth outside the Sahara Desert. On the whole, Dr. Boli would stick with the aspirin.
Finally, a reader calling herself “Whatsername” appends this comment to our history of the Confederate flag:
Well, this vile piece of dreck guarantees that I will never visit this blog again. I guess Dr. Boli must have thought that Khmer Rouge was a real gas.
Dr. Boli assures his correspondent that there is nothing funny about the Khmer Rouge. He does, however, believe in laughing at Jefferson Davis, whose characteristic sin was pride, which caused him to fall as lightning from heaven. Come to think of it, Dr. Boli may have confused Mr. Davis with another notorious figure of history, but the general observation still stands.
From DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.
Gaddafi, Muammar. The character of “Muammar al-Qadhafi,” with his “Amazonian Guard” of forty virgins trained in martial arts and his traveling palace in a tent, was created by Ian Fleming as the featured villain in his James Bond novel Sandsweeper. This was the only one of Fleming’s Bond novels to be rejected by his publisher on the grounds of rank implausibility. Desperate to recoup something for his investment of time and effort in the story, Fleming sold the rights to the character to a little-known colonel in the Libyan army.
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ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
ON THIS DAY exactly 150 years ago, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first and last president of the Confederate States of America. In honor of this important anniversary, Dr. Boli reprints two features that seem relevant to the occasion.
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Ask Dr. Boli.
Dear Dr. Boli: While examining an old painting of a Civil War battle, I saw a flag I didn’t recognize on the Confederate side. A historically-minded neighbor of mine informs me that it was the first Confederate national flag. I had no idea there were multiple Confederate flags. Can you sort out the history of the Confederate flag for me? —Sincerely, A Gentleman of Bristol, Virginia or Tennessee (not entirely sure which).
Dear Sir: The Confederate States of America, during its brief history, adopted a number of flags. The first Confederate national flag, the “Stars and Bars,” was adopted in March of 1861, but it was soon criticized as depending too much on the now-hated Union flag (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: First Confederate national flag, the "Stars and Bars."
In response to these criticisms, Confederate generals adopted a square battle flag (see Fig. 2), which, however, was open to the criticism that its colors were still broadly similar to those of the Union flag.
Fig. 2: Confederate battle flag.
The second Confederate national flag, the “Stainless Banner,” incorporated that square battle flag in its union, the rest of the flag being spotless white, in token of the purity of the cause of preserving liberty for slaveholders (see Fig. 3).
Fig. 3: Second Confederate national flag, the "Stainless Banner."
This flag was at least distinctive, but it was still open to the objection that it shared its colors with the Union flag. Thus it was only one more step, namely the removal of the union altogether, that led to the final Confederate national flag, known as the “Appomattox Banner” (see Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Final Confederate national flag.
The development of the Confederate flag did not end, however, with the defeat of the Confederate States of America. In tribute to the brave souls who fought for the honor of the Confederacy, the old square battle flag, elongated into a rectangle, has been universally adopted in international heraldry as the symbol for “trailer park.”
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ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: How can I maximize my federal return? —Sincerely, Mr. James Otis, Boston.
Dear Sir: Dr. Boli is delighted to hear from a wise investor. Millions of American families have fallen into the unfortunate habit of investing quite substantial sums in our federal government without ever inquiring what returns they may expect on that investment. These poor souls end up funding ridiculously unprofitable schemes like billion-dollar bombers or the Interstate Highway System. The savvy investor must ask himself, “How can I invest my money in the federal government so as to maximize the return on that investment?”
For this purpose Dr. Boli recommends the purchase of a congressional representative. Members of the House of Representatives may be bought for a surprisingly low initial outlay—often no more than a weekend in your ski lodge or a flight to the Bahamas in one of your private jets that was going there anyway. But the small investment can reap a substantial profit, since the House of Representatives is constitutionally responsible for the government’s purse, making it an assembly of 435 potential Judas Iscariots. Select your representative after a careful survey of his committee memberships. If you choose wisely, you may be able to secure not only a good deal of federal money for your favorite projects but also a substantial discount on government services.
—Dr. Boli’s secretary has just suggested that you might have been asking how to maximize your federal income-tax return. In that case, nothing could be simpler. If you are looking at it on your computer screen, there is a small “maximize” button near either the upper left of the window or the upper right, depending on your operating system. Click on that button, and the window will fill the screen. If you have the tax return on paper, you may copy it to a larger sheet of paper with a pantograph. Since this operation can be tedious, Dr. Boli would recommend having your children do it.
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CONFIDENTIAL to Mr. James G. Blaine: That depends. How much is it worth to you to have the letter burned?
TOMORROW ON DUMONT.
PARTLY CLOUDY. The rollicking new situation comedy based on the National Weather Service’s RSS feed. This week: Agnes wants to issue a winter storm warning, but Ivan insists that the most the predicted accumulation can justify is a winter weather advisory. Meanwhile, Floyd asks why the County Airport barometer has been reading the same atmospheric pressure since 1956, and discovers a hilariously elaborate Masonic conspiracy. Check local listings for station and time.
ADVICE FOR SCREENWRITERS.
No. 3.
IF YOU ARE writing a realistic drama of contemporary life, remember that, as a rule of thumb, all persons under the age of 35 are single, and all persons over the age of 35 are divorced.