Posts by Dr. Boli
PLODLEIGH’S ANCIENT MYSTERIES.
Program 35: The Counter-Mound Builders.
WELCOME ONCE AGAIN to Plodleigh’s Ancient Mysteries. I’m Kenny Plodleigh, and tonight we explore the mysterious Mon Valley Culture, whose once-powerful empire stretched from present-day Munhall all the way up to present-day Monessen or thereabouts. When other North American cultures were building mounds, this extraordinary people were building inverse mounds, known to archaeologists as holes. In fact, current archaeological research indicates that the raw materials for the mounds in the Hopewell Culture may have come from the holes created by the sophisticated Mon Valley Culture, which is indeed an extraordinary example of intercultural cooperation. Now, I was going to take you on a tour of the most spectacular Mon Valley Culture site, the Duquesne Ditch, but the Duquesne city police, whose name is Harold, informed us that we needed a permit to film at the site. So we went to the next-most-famous Mon Valley Culture site, the West Elizabeth Hole-in-the-Ground, but someone had built a Uni-Mart on top of it. So I drew a diagram of one of these Mon Valley inverse mounds on this cocktail napkin I picked up at Motzsky’s in New Eagle. And as you can see, it starts out level like this, then goes down quite a bit, and then comes back up on the other side, and it’s level again over here. This extraordinary design is repeated over and over again in the various Mon Valley Culture inverse mounds. What is even more extraordinary is that these remarkable architects, whom we once thought of as primitive savages, had the technology to dig through solid asphalt or even concrete, to judge by the large number of inverse mounds found today in asphalt and concrete pavements throughout the Mon Valley area. Here’s another cocktail napkin showing how we think they did it. This figure here, with the happy face, is using a primitive jackhammer fashioned from flint and old shower-curtain rods, all bound together with dental floss. He has a happy face because he’s hammering right through the concrete, leaving a big inverse mound right in the middle of the pavement. This stick right here is his arm, because I can’t draw arms very well. He probably has two arms, but I only drew one of them. And this mean-looking thing over here with the fangs is Harold, the Duquesne cop, who’s saying in this talk balloon, “Do you have a permit for that?” Ha ha—it’s a sort of joke, you see. And that’s how we think the Mon Valley Culture made the many inverse mounds we see all over the Mon Valley today. Well, that’s all we have for this week, because I’m out of cocktail napkins, so until next week, this is Kenny Plodleigh wishing you all kinds of great adventures. Join us next week when we explore the mysterious parallel stripes that sometimes cover acres of asphalt around shopping centers in suburban Robinson Township.
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MEMORANDUM.
TO: All Employees
FROM: The President
SUBJECT: Quality Processes
My Fellow Employees:
All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co. are doing our best to ensure that our work proceeds according to a quality process that is measurable and accountable. Gone are the days when it was enough to turn out a good, reliable product that people wanted to buy—and good riddance, I say, to that benighted time. Today, in order to be competitive, we must manage our processes scientifically. We must measure, measure, measure at every step of the way, and only when our processes measure up to our numerical goals will we have achieved true quality. The important thing to remember is that the process is what we measure. It is not too much to say, in fact, that the product itself is irrelevant. I myself have no idea what we manufacture these days.
It goes without saying, however, that a quality process is only as good as the quality of the work put into it by quality team members. It may be true that some of our quality processes are mildly cumbersome, and that the maintenance of them consumes more than 50% of the average working day; but you may be assured that these processes have been established for good reasons, even if no one remembers what the reasons are.
In regard to these processes, therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the quality of the process is only as good as the quality of the form by which it is measured. It has come to my attention that some team members have been filling out their Quality Process Tracking Sheets with irregular times, measuring the exact time it took them to complete a given task instead of filling in quarter-hour increments as it is clearly indicated on the form. Those quarter-hour increments are there for a reason, though it will do you no good to ask me what the reason was because the consultant who designed the forms is now living in Albuquerque under an assumed name. I probably should not have told you that. At any rate, the principle to remember is that, whatever task you need to accomplish, it must be made to fit the quarter-hour time increments on your Quality Process Tracking Sheet. In particular, I expect to see one quarter hour set aside for reading this memorandum on every single Quality Process Tracking Sheet turned in today. Thank you very much for your prompt attention in this matter.
With Warmest Regards,
J. Rutherford Pinckney, President
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MONEY-SAVING TIPS.
SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS from every purchase you make. When you have accumulated a fair number of receipts, fold them into a kind of codex and write a novel on the blank sides.
Quit your job. The money you save on commuting could pay for a very nice vacation on the sunny shores of Lake Erie!
After paying the bill, linger at the end of the checkout line in the supermarket fiddling with your wallet or looking for your keys. The bagger may start putting someone else’s groceries in your bags.
Always drive in a straight line. Since a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, it is always the most fuel-efficient route. Beware of vertical deviations as well as horizontal ones.
This winter, instead of paying for natural gas or fuel oil, heat your house by setting the furniture on fire. In the spring you can replace it with more furniture from the thrift store at surprisingly reasonable prices.
Leave your monitor turned off when you use your computer. You’ll save up to 23% on your electric bill, and as a bonus you’ll be sharpening your memory skills.
Stop paying income taxes. Although it seems counterintuitive, if you stop paying federal income taxes, the federal government will actually step in and pay for your room and board!
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CELEBRITY GOSSIP.
AL KYDA, THE popular vocalist and bandleader, is legally changing his name “for personal reasons,” his publicist says. For years Mr. Kyda has received more than his share of good-natured ribbing about his name from audiences in such diverse venues as the Capitol Theatre, Wheeling, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Al has chosen the new name Al Shabob, after his memorable hit single “Sha-Boom, Sha-Bob.”
Miss Una Corda, the notoriously shy concert pianist, has been booked for a series of five recitals at Heptagon Gardens begining in October. Family and friends have asked the public to respect her privacy by not buying any tickets.
Flash! Was Judge Conyza Draper intoxicated when she sentenced a double-parking suspect to death by lethal injection on last night’s episode of Traffic Court? Producers aren’t telling, but friends and family of the condemned want to know.
Reality-TV breakout star Brandy Schnifter has announced her engagement to fellow contestant Dirk Frame. The wedding is scheduled for tomorrow at 11 a.m., with the divorce to follow at 11:43.
Rap-jazz fusion artist Felonious Thelonious was arrested at Memorial Hall last night and charged with violating numerous time signatures. His attorney, Martin Rufinus of the Theatrical Law Practice of Rufinus & Rufinus, was also arrested for applying the word “philistine” to a uniformed officer of the law.
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ONE SIMPLE RULE FOR GRADUATE STUDY IN LITERATURE.
A LOYAL READER who prefers to remain anonymous writes:
Since he himself has successfully attained his doctorate, I’ve long wished that Dr. Boli would set forth his rules for graduate study in literature.
Dr. Boli is always happy to oblige a reader. Although Dr. Boli earned his own doctorates by unconventional and probably more honest means, he has observed that there is one rule that will assure the student of success and even acclaim in graduate study of literature:
Any text, studied long enough and in sufficient depth, becomes pseudonymous.
Did Dickens really write A Tale of Two Cities? Superficially, the work seems to bear many of the marks of his authorship. But is it not striking that nowhere else in Dickens’ considerable oeuvre do we find a novel set during the French Revolution? Nor did Dickens ever begin any of his undoubted novels with a sentence that included the word best and the word worst in such near proximity; in fact, we can only describe the juxtaposition as entirely uncharacteristic, as a statistical analysis of Dickens’ vocabulary will doubtless prove, after we have spent a full academic year putting it together. Henceforth the attribution of the work to Dickens must be regarded as a pious fiction, by which a much-beloved work of unknown authorship was attributed to the great man by his most loyal followers many years into the post-Dickensian age. As to the true authorship of the work, that is a matter, at present, of mere speculation; although it is suggestive that Thomas Love Peacock, in a remarkable echo of our unknown author, began one of his unpublished letters with the word “It.” Until further work is done, we must refer to the author of A Tale of Two Cities as “Pseudo-Dickens.”
You see how easy it is to apply this rule to any arbitrary work of literature. Go forth now and earn your well-deserved doctorate by the traditional means, if you must. As an alternative, however, you may wish to keep the Boli Institute in mind.