Advertisement.

DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.

Supplement No. 2.

Dime. A dime is actually worth $0.09974, but must businesses round the value up to $0.10 for the sake of convenience.

Flight. Humans can actually fly for considerable distances without any special appliances or training, but not horizontally.

Goldfinches. In spite of their brilliant coloring, goldfinches are not truly made of gold, but rather of pinchbeck, a cheap alloy.

Houseplants. Horticulturalists have not yet determined whether talking to houseplants improves their growth or simply makes them psychotic.

Mathematics. Mathematicians have spread the false rumor that it is impossible to divide by zero in order to keep to themselves the dangerous knowledge that 0=1.

Mushrooms. Every mushroom that grows in one hemisphere of the earth is counterbalanced by an equal and opposite mushroom in the opposite hemisphere.

Rorschach test. It is a little-known fact of psychological history that Rorschach consistently failed his own test.

 

Advertisement.

TONIGHT AT EIGHT.

Dumont Network: Ham ’n’ Eggs (comedy). The wacky adventures of best buddies Hamlet and Horatio, one of whom just happens to be Prince of Denmark. Tonight: Hamlet thinks he’s seeing ghosts—and Horatio thinks he’s flipped his lid. But there’s a wacky surprise in store for both of them!

The Brimstone Channel: The Jesus Show, with the Reverend Bob-Bob Lee (religion). Tonight: Rev. Bob-Bob explains how you can defeat the satanic conspiracy of the Illuminati, the Vatican, the Masons, the United Nations, the Libertarians, the Odd Fellows, James Earl Jones, King Albert II of Belgium, and the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain with just one simple phone call and a major credit card.

Northern Broadcasting System: Software Squad (crime drama). The exciting world of computer maintenance is the focus of this tense procedural. Tonight: An old enemy reappears with a serious new hack that threatens to compromise the Squad’s print server. Meanwhile, Gianna finally gets up the courage to tell Derek she loves him—but she can’t get her email through his spam filter. (Season finale.)

Metromedia: Al ’n’ Me (comedy). The wacky adventures of best buddies Alexander and Hephaestion as they look for new worlds to conquer. Tonight: Al decides to build a new capital city for Egypt—but what to name it? Hephaestion comes up with a brilliantly wacky idea.

Golf Network: The Golf Show (golf). Tonight: How to liven up the fifteenth hole with a small explosive charge.

Baldwin Borough Community TV: Baldwin Borough Council Meeting (public affairs). Tonight: Reading of the minutes from last week’s meeting; motion to allocate $50 for “MISSING” signs with the burgess’s picture, to be placed on telephone poles around the borough; motion to wipe that smirk off the council president’s face.

Wolf Broadcasting Corporation: Fries with That (reality). The hot new reality show that takes ten new college graduates, puts them in dead-end jobs, and leaves them there forever. Tonight: Which will give way first—Ashley’s new high-fiber diet or the Metro Mart’s bathroom-break policy?

Home Movie Channel: La physique a ses lois (drama, in French with subtitles). Director Rene Limburger’s introspective fantasy about the thoughts that pass through a man’s mind as he plummets from a backyard deck nearly three feet onto the ferns below.

Science Central: Things That Go Boom (documentary). Popular series studies the effect of really big explosions on various objects.

Advertisement.

NOW IN PRESS: Dr. Boli’s Complete Geography. Other elementary geography textbooks make various claims to comprehensiveness, but only Dr. Boli’s Complete Geography can truly be called complete, because only Dr. Boli’s Complete Geography includes imaginary lands and countries, omitted by all other standard texts, as well as the ordinary lands and countries to be found in inferior geography books. Henceforth any geography text other than Dr. Boli’s must be regarded as incomplete and not suitable for use in primary schools with any pretension to academic rigor.

DR. BOLI’S ALLEGORICAL BESTIARY.

No. 8.—Crickets.

A SINGLE CRICKET is a complete mobile weather station. From the frequency of its chirps, the ambient temperature may be calculated; from the length of its hops, the barometric pressure; from the angle of its antennae, the wind speed; from the width of its thorax, the mean annual rainfall in Bushnell, Fla. In the nineteenth century, when a class of professional meteorologists first arose, crickets were hunted almost to extinction; but, under protective legislation, their numbers have recovered satisfactorily. Crickets are associated with conscience in popular culture—an association that puzzles and amuses entomologists, who know that the crickets’ weakness to temptation makes them especially prone to crimes of embezzlement.

In traditional medieval allegory, the cricket represents Latitude.

Advertisement.

DR. BOLI’S COMPREHENSIVE HERBAL.

No. 3 in a Series of 253,486.

THYME (Thymus). Several related species of the genus Thymus have culinary uses, but the most common of them, as its specific name implies, is T. vulgaris, the common or garden thyme. It may be used fresh or dried, sometimes as whole sprigs and sometimes as leaves only with the stems discarded. Thyme is relatively easy to grow, and some varieties make excellent ornamental plantings as well as culinary herbs. Newtonian thyme (T. newtonii), for example, brings a calming sense of order to the herb garden. Care must be taken, however, in planting some of the more exotic varieties. Relativistic thyme (T. lorentzi) presents entirely different aspects to different observers, in extreme cases plunging a garden into confusion and chaos and causing endless arguments among one’s guests. Planck thyme (T. minimus), the smallest variety, is so tiny that standard horticultural theory tends to break down at this level; this species should be left to expert gardeners who are prepared to cope with its unusual demands. In folk wisdom it is said that “thyme waits for no man,” a property also attributed to the closely related herb thyde.

Advertisement.

From DR. BOLI’S ALPHABET OF OCCUPATIONS.

B is for the Baker,
The cake and pastry maker.
He calls himself an artist,
Which shows he’s not the smartest:
All great art is eternal,
The baker’s art diurnal.
As soon as he completes it,
Some other person eats it.