The Dr. Boli Blog

Via Touchstone, I found Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine. It's a comic blog devoted to fake advertisements (see below), ridiculously misinformative dictionary entries, advice columns with very bad advice, and so forth. You have to see it to understand what I mean.

Here's a sample advertisement that reminds me of many of the snacks available at one's local grocery store:



The supposed biography of Dr. Boli gives a pretty good flavor of what the blog is like:

Henricus Albertus Boli was born in 1783 in York, Penna., the son of a local physician and typefounder. He showed an early aptitude for literary studies, and at the age of eight astonished his Latin master by successfully declining three nouns previous­ly regarded as indeclinable. About a year later, he published his first volume of verse, an epic poem in twenty-four books de­scribing a journey from York to Hanover, Penna.

Having established his reputation, Dr. Boli continued his literary pursuits. Shortly after graduating from the Central Penn­sylvania School for Unusual Boys, he invented the letter M, the income from which was enough to relieve him from the necessity of remunerative labor. He therefore turned his at­ten­tion to works of charity. Saddened by the plight of Portuguese refugees, he organized and supervised the construction of Portu­gal, where at last they might have a home of their own. Meanwhile he diverted himself by writing a number of popular novels under the pen name “Anthony Trollope.” At about the same time he founded his celebrated Magazine, whose flattering success continues to the present.

Today, at the age of 223, Dr. Boli still edits the maga­zine personally, at a time of life when other men might be con­sidering an honorable retirement. As a concession, however, to his advancing years, he no longer writes every word of the magazine himself. At present he writes every other word, the intervening words being supplied by a well-known agency.

This too:

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.