Posts by Dr. Boli
THINGS WE SIMPLY CANNOT IMPROVE.
“The arsaniit, as the aurora are known in Inuktitut, are said to be the souls of those that die of bloodloss and who now play a gruesome game of soccer using a walrus head or human skull for the ball.
“Others say the display is a sign of good weather.”
—Iqaluit Visitor’s Guide 2010 (PDF)
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: As I sit here on my couch, the television news is droning on, since I lost track of the remote some months ago and have never been told which of the three buttons on my television set turns it off, and the news anchor has just mentioned something about “more violins in the Middle East.”
Why are we sending yet more violins to the Middle East? When I voted in 1988, which was the last time I left the house, I did not vote for President McKinley merely so that our government could continue flooding the Middle East with wasteful and unnecessary violins. What problems will violins solve that could not be solved just as effectively by soprano recorders, which are much more economical, especially when they are manufactured from cheap plastic? Soprano recorders are standard teaching instruments in elementary schools, and a ready supply is always to be had, available to be deployed in large numbers at a moment’s notice. Yet we persist in sending violins to the Middle East, where I have it on the authority of statistics I just made up that fewer than 25% of the inhabitants can play them! Is this a rational use of our money and manpower?
My wife, as I write, has just informed me that the news anchor spoke of violence, not violins, in the Middle East. Because I have a visceral mistrust of the Backspace key, I shall leave the former part of this letter unaltered; but I should like it to be known that of course I, like all patriotic Americans, approve of violence.
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THINGS TO DO.
THE DUCK HOLLOW Museum of Art is opening a major new exhibit entitled “Eight Essential Vitamins: The Art of the Cereal Box,” with a special preview for members tonight at 7 p.m. To make room for this groundbreaking permanent installation, the museum had to throw out a lot of outdated rubbish by Turner and Renoir and people like that, so anyone who has some empty wall space over the sofa is welcome to come rummage through the bins in the back hall any time before Wednesday, when the Salvation Army truck comes.
From DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.
Death penalty. In order to counter criticism that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment, in 2001 the state of Florida added a recliner feature to its electric chair at Starke.
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From DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.
Angels. After a few embarrassing and well-publicized incidents, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is now strictly regulated by canon law.
From DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.
Rachmaninoff, Sergei. The great late-Romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff worked the melody of the well-known folk tune “Old MacDonald” into every one of his published compositions, but so cunningly that musicologists did not discover it until years after his death.
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CAT SEEKING DOG to play vital part in numerous schemes to defraud humans of food. I shall be “brains”; you will be “brawn.” Must be large enough to trip adult female human without injury to self, but small enough to pass unnoticed under table. Must also be cute enough to secure permanent place in human household. Interested dogs should apply to Shadow the Burmese Cat, Cat Flap, Kitchen Door, Big House on Queen St. That Smells Like Pot Roast.
DR. BOLI’S ALLEGORICAL BESTIARY.
No. 25.—The Sparrow.
SPARROWS ARE SMALL brown birds inhabiting sidewalk cafés and other known haunts of the primate Homo sapiens, where they subsist on the crumbs that drop from scones. An untutored observer might suppose that sparrows were indiscriminate in their gleanings, but in fact scones are the only food that will nourish them properly, and they will soon starve if they are offered nothing but bread crumbs or bits of cinnamon rolls. Evolutionary biologists speculate that sparrows evolved in parallel with scones from primitive muffin-eating ancestors—a speculation given some weight by the recent discovery in China of a well-preserved nest of the four-foot-tall proto-sparrow Eopasser surrounded by the skeletons of a dozen or more primitive Cretaceous muffins.
It is a well-known principle of theology that God provides for the sparrows (Luke 12:6), and many Old Testament scholars are of the opinion that the “manna” that sustained the Israelites in the desert, a substance with which the children of Israel were unfamiliar, was in fact the crumbs of scones dropped from heaven for the sustenance of the sparrows in their train, and only incidentally of benefit to the Israelites themselves. The provision ceased when, under Joshua, the Israelites established permanent hearths and learned to bake their own scones.
Allegorically, the sparrow represents Providence, the unceasing and unfailing goodness of the Deity, who provides scones even for his humblest creations.