Posts by Dr. Boli
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir:
I take pen in hand to protest the bill currently before the city council, no. 4241984 if I recall correctly, which would ban the use of electric carving knives while operating a motor vehicle. No doubt the members of city council all come from the leisure classes, but many of us work for a living. The pressures of business occupy ever more of our precious time, leaving us ever fewer hours to devote to cultivating that family life which is the foundation of a prosperous republic. Yet the sacred institution of the family dinner is now under attack. Are we not social creatures? Are we not bound together by shared experiences and shared meals? If those bonds are loosed, will not society as a whole pay the price? The half-hour I spend commuting is the only time I have alone to carve the roast for my family. Is my family to starve because a few ill-educated drivers are not responsible enough to handle a carving knife while navigating the Boulevard of the Allies? Surely the answer lies in proper education for those who require it, rather than in depriving responsible carving-knife users of their constitutional rights. And it is no good telling me to use public transit, as the Port Authority was even more unreasonable about my using an electric carving knife on the East Busway. Let the members of city council seriously consider their votes, and reject this unwarranted intrusion on individual rights.
Sincerely,
Wilhelm O’Donnell Stravinsky,
Penn Hills
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OUR VALUED CORRESPONDENTS.
FROM TIME TO time Dr. Boli receives comments that deserve a fuller and more public answer than would be appropriate for the comments section. Two such correspondents he is delighted to be able to answer here.
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The entry in the Comprehensive Herbal dealing with the Jack-in-the-Pulpit attracted the attention of an herbalist named “gcman,” who very politely took exception to the evolutionary theory contained in the article:
Evolution? I just think that all things in this world is not a product of evolution. I believe that everything is exist on it’s form from the beginning.
Sorry! no offense.
Doubtless, sir, you are correct, at least in a Platonic sense. It seems unreasonable to suppose that mere random forces could have directed the development of living creatures to the summit of perfection—viz., Dr. Boli—had not the form or εἶδος of that perfection been already present in the mind of the Creator. Only a cavilling spoilsport would venture to suggest that the ultimate outcome of evolution could have been something other than Dr. Boli.
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The story of the Little Dutch Boy Who Saved Holland has achieved a gratifying success, and continues to be a favorite among Dr. Boli’s esteemed readers—especially those who light on it all unsuspecting from various search engines and seem not to know quite what to make of it. Tyla Jazmin asks (in three separate comments):
yooooh dat is laka awe he is a famouse little boy.. bt wat hes name?? hw old was he? n hw old nw? wat was the day date n month u mst pt mre info>>>>!!!1
hw old was he n nw wat name n ay date n month it happend
year
If Dr. Boli understands correctly, his correspondent is asking for more specific information about the time, place, and circumstances of the story. He is delighted to have this excuse to give his readers an update. The little Dutch boy, whose name is Hans Christian Anderson (note the spelling), is still there, having grown a good bit older and larger, but still gallantly holding back the North Sea. He has become a popular tourist attraction, and is now surrounded by souvenir booths selling postcards and bronze miniatures of the boy. A refreshment stand sells pastries, which visitors enjoy hand-feeding to the boy, who always accepts them with gratitude. The only complaint he has voiced is that his shoes are growing uncomfortably tight.
DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.
Imperial Roman Edition.
Augustus. Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble, but he died before he could realize his ultimate ambition of remaking it into a city of vinyl siding.
Constantine. In addition to his military and administrative talents, Constantine was quite a literary figure in his own time, having written all four canonical Gospels, all the letters of Paul except the one to Philemon, the Revelation, the Nicene Creed, the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Summa Theologica, and the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Domitian. After he declared himself a god, Domitian took to tossing water balloons at any senators who displeased him, having been encouraged by his flattering courtiers to believe that he was hurling thunderbolts.
Galba. The emperor Galba could not hear the word “Falernian” without being seized with a ghastly terror, the source of which was never discovered.
Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is best remembered for his dabbling in philosophy, but in his own time he was probably even better known for making the best quiche in Rome, the recipe for which he took with him to the grave.
Romulus Augustulus. After he resigned the empire, Romulus Augustulus remained unemployed for nearly five years, until he finally found a job as a door-to-door siding salesman, thus completing the cycle of Western emperors in a striking and ironical way.
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DR. BOLI’S ALLEGORICAL BESTIARY.
No. 21.—The Pigeon.
THE PIGEON IS a remarkably intelligent but absentminded bird whose singular dedication to the task before him tends to blind him to everything else in the world around him. In most cases the task at hand is annoying pedestrians, to which the pigeon tirelessly devotes himself.
Annoying pedestrians is just about the only thing a pigeon can remember to do without his tiny appointment book. Occasionally you will see a pigeon with what appears to be a small bit of folded paper attached to his leg. That paper is the pigeon’s appointment book, which he must consult frequently to remind him of the day’s tasks. Of course, the great majority of pigeons you see do not have their appointment books strapped to their legs: these are the pigeons who have forgotten their appointment books and must wander the city in a kind of daze, able to remember only that they were supposed to be annoying pedestrians at some point during the day.
The mating ritual of the pigeon is rather curious. On the day marked in his appointment book as mating day, the male pigeon pursues the female at a slow walking pace, the female keeping always three steps ahead of him. This pursuit continues on and off for hours or days, after which a number of eggs are produced by parthenogenesis.
There are in this great and wondrous world people called “pigeon-fanciers” who attempt to keep and even breed pigeons as domestic fowl. In 34 of the 50 states, the law considers pigeon-fancying prima facie evidence of insanity.
Allegorically, the pigeon represents the occipital lobe.
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CELEBRITY THANKSGIVING MESSAGES.
WE ASKED SEVERAL well-known public figures to tell us what they were especially thankful for this year. These were their responses.
Bozar the Clown is thankful for the many surviving works of Daniel Burnham.
Nergal-Sharezer the Rabmag is thankful for his long and fruitful business relationship with the planet Saturn, the details of which will not be fully revealed until his posthumous autobiography, It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know.
Miss Una Corda, the notoriously shy concert pianist, is thankful for dark glasses, unlisted telephone numbers, and John Cage’s 4′33″.
H. Albertus Boli is grateful for Yunnan Tippy FOP Special tea, to which he attributes his longevity.
Miss Diana Smoulder, the ravishing heartthrob of the hurdy-gurdy, is thankful for the literally dozens of messages of support she has received from her fans, but she is not particularly thankful for the imperialist stooges and fascist tools of oppression who banned her from the Lemming Aid concerts.
The Great Blando is thankful for daily recreation periods.
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TEN QUESTIONS ABOUT OPUS DEI.
IF YOU MEET an Opus Dei member, ask him these probing questions about this secret pagan cabalistic fascist masonic atheist allopathic pantheist rabelaisian communist society:
1. Is it merely coincidence that the letters in “Opus Dei” can be rearranged to spell “DIE SOUP”?
2. Why does Opus Dei maintain a public Web site at an easily remembered address? What are they hiding?
3. Was Josemaria Escriva’s name originally spelled “Sir Mortimer Wallaby-Plankfodder”?
4. Was it members of Opus Dei who proposed Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Moe Howard for canonization?
5. If Opus Dei is not a secret society, how come there are so many books and articles about it?
6. Are Opus Dei supernumeraries actually alien zombie warriors ready to be activated by the secret word “meringue”?
7. Did Josemaria Escriva know calculus? Huh? Did he?
8. Why do Opus Dei members look like ordinary Homo sapiens sapiens? Is it so that we won’t suspect?
9. Did Josemaria Escriva paint Da Vinci’s Last Supper?
10. Why has no official Opus Dei publication ever listed H. Rider Haggard as a member of the organization?
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Are you properly misinformed about politics, history, and the natural world around you? Dr. Boli’s Encyclopedia of Misinformation will keep you unimpeachably ignorant on every subject in the known universe.