Posts by Dr. Boli

LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

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Dear Sir: I should like to take the opportunity of this forum to ask your readers to consider how unkind a single thoughtless joke can be when it is at the expense of an innocent toiler in the public interest. I know that social media are full of jokes and memes about registrars of deeds, but have you ever stopped to consider how the men and women who perform that function, so vital to civilized life in civilization, are affected by the constant barrage of mockery at their expense? I walk down the street, and I hear the suppressed snickers. I know everyone I pass knows that I am a registrar of deeds, and I see them leaning over to whisper the latest registrar-of-deeds joke in the ears of their friends. When I drive down the road, I see the buses full of laughing children, and I know what they are laughing about. I see the smirks on every face as I walk through the supermarket. I hear the broccoli laughing at me behind my back. I know the whole canned-soup aisle is just waiting for me to pass so they can jump on Instagram and share pictures of the back of my head with mocking captions added. I won’t even go into the toiletries section after what the shampoo said about me. I challenged the pumpernickel to a duel once, but the coward gave me no response. So anyway, couldn’t you people have a little consideration? That’s all I want. That and for the Greek yogurt to keep its smart mouth shut. —Sincerely, Lancelot Fribble, Yohogania County Registrar of Deeds.

MRS. CHESWICK’S EDUCATIONAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN

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No. 348.—The Speke’s Pectinator.

Once upon a time there was a Speke’s Pectinator who lived near the town of Holhol in Djibouti. Now, you’ve probably heard all kinds of stories about Speke’s Pectinators before, because you’re just the kind of boys and girls who like to trip up a poor old lady who’s just trying to make a few extra bucks on the Internet by telling educational stories, and you’re going to write in the comments about all the things I got wrong about Speke’s Pectinators, but I don’t think so, not this time, because I looked them up in Wikipedia. So this Speke’s Pectinator was wandering through the shrubby shrublands of Djibouti when he met a Pelzeln’s Gazelle. And the Pelzeln’s Gazelle said to him, “Oh, please, could you pectinate for me? Because I’ve never seen anybody pectinate before, and it would just about make my day.” But the Speke’s Pectinator said, “No can do, because I don’t pectinate for just anybody, you know.” And the Speke’s Pectinator continued on his way, and he met a Grevy’s Zebra. And the Grevy’s Zebra said to him, “Say, would you pectinate for me? I’ve heard a lot about it, but I’ve never actually witnessed a live performance, so to speak, and it’s my birthday next week.” But the Speke’s Pectinator said, “Not this time, buster, because I don’t pectinate for just anybody.” And the Speke’s Pectinator kept walking, and he came to a Ferruginous Duck. And the Ferruginous Duck said, “Hey, you must be a Speke’s Pectinator, and I could use some pectin for my guava jelly. Would you pectinate for me?” But the Speke’s Pectinator said, “Amscray, bird, I’m tired of everybody asking me that.” And I could go on like this, but I think you all get the point, and it turns out the Speke’s Pectinator never did pectinate at all. Now, isn’t that a shame? But it just goes to show you. This story teaches us a good lesson, which is that you can’t make assumptions based on people’s appearance. Like everybody thought my uncle Stu looked like a fireman, but the one time our house caught fire Uncle Stu was the first one out and he didn’t come back until Aunt Emma went down to Krzrnski’s Cafe and dragged him off the barstool and made him call the insurance company. And that’s the lesson we learn. Next time we’ll hear the story of the Patagonian Mara who lived in Duluth, and I’ll bet I get comments about that one. Till then this is your old friend Mrs. Cheswick saying clean up your room, and that should make people stop saying I’m a bad influence on kids, shouldn’t it?

COMMERCIAL BEAUTY.

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La Récompense de Constance

An illustration from a 1921 advertisement for Djer-Kiss face powders, talcs, soaps, etc.

Before you came to this blissful refuge, where advertisements stay in one place and are not allowed to dance around your screen and cover up what you intended to read, you were probably subjected to a visual cacophony of moving pictures. That sort of animated clutter is not allowed here. Out of our unbounded faith in the virtues of capitalism, we do allow certain commercial enterprises occasional space in our Magazine; but they must abide by certain strict rules. In particular, Dr. Boli never allows a display advertisement to use type he has not designed himself. There are standards to be upheld.

You will find but few other places in the World Wide Web where such standards prevail. If there is advertising at all, it is usually either unpardonably annoying or ignorably bland.

Imagine yourself living in a world, then, where this could be written and taken seriously:

At present, the bulk of professional drawing in this country goes to advertise our wares—a state of things which cynics enjoy. The offset is that while we are undoubtedly cheapening art by putting it to “base uses,” we are at the same time giving an almost compensating charm to our commercialism, and are making sure that artists can live—at least on a par with other professions. An exhibit of advertising “originals,” without their propaganda for this or that talcum or talking machine, is a really excellent art collection. The worker has his own standards of excellence, not altogether for sale; and meantime, the good by-product of better advertising is a training of the public taste in art. (“Drawing” in Book I, Education, of The Volume Library, 1931.)

Yes, it was possible to say that in 1931 and neither laugh nor be laughed at.

Now think of our advertising here in the middle 2020s, and ask this one probing question: Does it work?

Undoubtedly some of it does. But to limit ourselves to the Internet for the moment, what is the most usual reaction to an advertisement? When a panel advertising Malt-O-Cod suddenly pops up over the thing you were reading, do you give it your undivided attention? Do you think, “Ho, good, here comes something beautiful and well-executed by an artist whose work will improve my taste if I devote some serious study to it”? No; you do what it takes to make it disappear, often without even knowing what it was advertising.

But suppose it began to be well known that most, or at least many, of these advertisements were works of art by artists who deserved our praise and attention. What would be the result? We would look forward to the advertisements. We would see them coming and rejoice. We would give them our attention and even notice what they advertised. We would buy Malt-O-Cod.

This seems to have been the theory of the advertisers of the first half of the twentieth century. To a large extent, furthermore, it seems to have been correct. People did remember those advertisements and the products they advertised.

So what can we do? Nothing individually, but together we can do everything. Pledge yourself now to make your buying decisions on the basis of one question: which of the companies I am considering supports beauty?

Marketers themselves may be immune to beauty. They may consider the artistic sense an unfortunate curse and take drugs to suppress it. But they are mesmerised by numbers. If we show them that beauty sells, then they will give us beauty, because beauty will cause large numbers to dance in their spreadsheets and activate the reward centers of their brains. It is easy to make the pledge, because it seldom deprives us of anything worthwhile: when we are choosing between two detergents or toothpastes, it is usually true that they both work perfectly well. We can make our choice as whimsically as we like. Start making your choices on the basis of beauty, and see how quickly the marketers start shoveling great steaming heaps of beauty in our direction.