Posts by Dr. Boli

THIS POPUP AD CANNOT POSSIBLY BE A SCAM.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 12, 2024. No comments.

Reproduced for the purpose of commentary and mocking, and let’s see them try to claim copyright on the word “Continue.”

Advertisement.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 11, 2024. No comments.

Imagine this in the hands of a child!
This is a pencil.
Do you know how dangerous it is?
Armed with a pencil, anyone of even the slightest muscular development can make marks on paper—with no intermediate network or device.
Yes, even a child can wield the power of unlimited verbal or pictorial expression—expression that cannot be monitored or controlled. A child can write stories or poems or philosophical essays. A child can draw mocking pic-tures of the spokesman for a charitable foundation that show him as a big-headed goofball with a bulbous nose. And no algorithm can prevent it! Once a pencil is in the hands of a child, order and decency are dead, and chaos prevails.
Don’t wait! If you suspect your children may be in possession of pencils, ransack their rooms until you find and destroy the cursed things. Then give them something productive and educational to play with, like a pocket knife or a blowtorch. The Pencil Awareness Foundation, Sharpsburg.

ASK DR. BOLI.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 10, 2024. 2 comments.

Dear Dr. Boli: Every once in a while I hear people talk about the “seven arts.” But they never say which seven they mean. Can you provide a canonical list of the seven arts, or will I have to go to Reddit and take my chances? —Sincerely, M. R. Jackson, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts.

Dear Madam: The canonical list of the seven arts is updated periodically by the competent authorities, so it is important to keep up to date, which you can easily do by paying a small annual subscription fee to Competent Authorities LLC. For example, the list promulgated in August of 1971 specified the seven arts as tie-dye, macramé, protest songs, macaroni painting, carpet bombing, free verse, and laugh tracks. If you mistook that for a current list, you would be accused of wallowing in nostalgia. Here is the most recent list of the seven arts as it was announced in April of this year:

Graffiti
AI prompting
Tattoo removal
Auto-Tune
Telephone scams
Article-spinning
Tragic backstories

WHAT THE ALCOA CORPORATE CENTER NEEDS.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 9, 2024. 3 comments.

Our friend Father Pitt published some pictures of the Alcoa Corporate Center on the North Shore in Pittsburgh. It is a striking building that makes a good advertisement for aluminum as a building material, but to Dr. Boli’s eyes it seemed to be missing something. It took a while to decide exactly what it needed, but at last it came to him in a flash.

This building needs appropriately scaled Lionel trains.

COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 8, 2024. 2 comments.

Pola Negri in The Tragedy of Little Bo-Peep by William Shakespeare.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 7, 2024. No comments.

On this day in 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed, dividing all newly discovered lands between Spain to the west of a certain meridian and Portugal to the east of it. This treaty established an important principle of international law: that if you are a band of thugs intending to muscle in and take over already-inhabited countries, it is proper form first to make a gentlemanly agreement with any other thugs who might have their own plans for conquest and massacre in the same territories.

IN ENTERTAINMENT NEWS.

Posted by Dr. Boli on June 6, 2024. 2 comments.

Pantocrator Pictures Corp. confirmed today that classically trained Shakespearean actor Theodore Naphtha, best known for his role as Irv in the 2006 comedy Herb and Irv Hit Themselves on the Head with Hammers, has signed on to play the title role in the new darker reboot of the Book of Job. Director and screenwriter Monty McCarrion promises “a world-class spectacle” in the climactic battle with the supervillain Elihu. The project earlier generated some controversy among fans when McCarrion revealed that this updated take on the venerable franchise would not include the character of God, a cult favorite in some corners of fandom. Most fans seem to agree, however, that giving the Job character superpowers has obviated the need for the God character.