This evening at Holy Republic Nondenominational Church in Cranberry, Dr. Orbin S. Thicke, Ph.D., fellow of the Institute for Noachian Studies, will confound the evolutionists with the one question they dare not answer, in a lecture entitled “What Did House Wrens Do Before There Were Houses?” The public is welcome, and godless atheists are particularly invited to attend, as long as they know how to dress appropriately. The lecture begins promptly at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a short performance featuring the Holy Republic Intelligent Design Handbell Choir.

Dear Dr. Boli: The bishop preached at our little church tonight, and I noticed he was carrying a staff with a hook in the top. It was too tall to be a cane, and anyway he walks without difficulty. So what’s the meaning of the crooked staff? —Sincerely, A Puzzled Lutheran.

Dear Sir or Madam: The bishop’s crook or crozier is an ancient symbol of episcopal authority, representing the bishop’s role as shepherd of his flock. A shepherd uses his crooked staff to retrieve straying sheep. In the same way, a bishop visiting a church, as soon as he notices any dangerous liturgical irregularity, can use the hook at the end of his staff to yank the celebrant away from the altar. At least that is how the thing is supposed to work, but Dr. Boli regrets to note that the vanity of some bishops, who have been seduced by the trappings of their exalted rank, has led them to fill the hook in the staff with intricate carved ornament, thus rendering it useless for its intended purpose.

Thanks to the generosity of the Vanderblock-Wheedle Charitable Trust, this week’s concert by the Duck Hollow Philharmonic will be attended by all the mobile patients from the Browns Hill Tuberculosis Sanatorium. The concert will include a special performance of John Cage’s 4’33”.

The Bland Street Merchants’ Association is sponsoring a “Taste of Blandville” event Saturday afternoon. Come in to enjoy all the varied flavors of our community, from the pretzels at Kalkbrenner’s bar to the Twinkies at the Pharm-Aid.

Contemporary worship services at St. Aquila Lutheran Church are discontinued as of next Sunday, because the last two parishioners who remember any of those songs both died of old age last week.

The Vietnam Veterans’ Foundation will be collecting in the neighborhood Wednesday morning. If you have any Vietnam veterans you are no longer using, please leave them out at the curb for pickup by 8 a.m. The Foundation has asked us to remind everyone to mark their donations “Vietnam Veterans’ Foundation,” so that we do not have another mixup with the trash crews like we had last year.

City police have asked citizens to be on the lookout for a white male, 56 years of age, about 5 feet 8 inches, 190 pounds, dark brown hair greying at the temples, last seen wearing a navy-blue suit with a yellow striped tie, and going by the name of Anthony P. Cavatelli. Mr. Cavatelli is the chairman of the city council’s Public Safety Committee, and police would like to speak to him about the benefits-reduction bill his committee recently sent on to the full council.

EVERY SO OFTEN Dr. Boli takes the time to respond to some of his correspondents whose comments he has not been able to publish in the usual way, for one reason or another.

The sledge sped on as lightly as a boat over the waves. When the breeze came skimming the earth the sledge seemed to be lifted off the ground by its sails. Mudge, who was Nike Mercurial SL at the rudder, kept in a straight line, and by a turn of his hand checked the lurches which the vehicle had a tendency to make.

As Napoleon once observed, from product placement in television dramas and motion pictures to product placement in nineteenth-century adventure novels there is only one step. That is the glory of our capitalist system.

I admired these audience and face frontwards to purchasing and registering the Holy Scripture. Thither nonentity from further oecumenical stake that conjuring up small fry! Commits Maine approximately minds because succeeding soundness computer programing.

Does Holy Scripture need to be registered before all its features are available? Has Dr. Boli been using it wrong all these years?

I’m identical bore on all but their ain acquires and departures, as to ante up and encounter graduated to clip, climate are more exact. Blogger affords America bright deterrent example, appears to comprise an disfavor of aerofoil, the crop are and so a good deal!

Aye, laddie, they’ve acquired a wee departure o’ their ain, but ye’re still the identical bore, d’ye ken?

I always avoid you, so I miss you, finally I lost you, that at the moment I miss you so much.

Here Dr. Boli might have said that, if the correspondent misses him, it is the correspondent’s fault for always avoiding him. Dr. Boli would not be entirely honest, however, without confessing that he would avoid this correspondent with equal assiduity.

Causes your internet site consume a contact lens paginate? Internet marketing birthing troubles location them only, I would  as if to broadcast you a netmail. I have aimed approximately passports because your web log you mightiness cost occupied inwards auditory modality. Either know-how, bully site and I depend forth to checking them meliorate extra time. Gobbler Daley

Dr. Boli believes that “inwards auditory modality” may be what is otherwise known as tinnitus; but he is not a doctor of medicine, and suggests that his correspondent consult a qualified specialist.

If your life span is 100 years, that I want to live to 100 years of age and the day before, because that my life have you every day.

With great regret Dr. Boli must refuse his correspondent’s flattering proposal, but he hopes that they may remain good friends.

Despite that warning, North Vietnam has increased its military aggression in all these areas, and particularly in louis vuitton online store. After full consultation with the National Security Council, Ambassador Bunker, General Abrams and my other advisors, louis vuitton belt have concluded that the actions of the enemy in the last 10 days clearly endanger the lives of Americans who are in Vietnam now and would constitute an unacceptable risk to lv store who will be there after withdrawal of another 150, 000. To protect our men who are in Vietnam, and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and lv online outlet, I have concluded that the time has come for action.

We have not put forth our cheap soccer cleats for kids on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. We have indicated that we’re willing to discuss the proposals that have been put forth by the other side. We have declared that cheap adidas soccer shoes is negotiable, except the right of the people of South Vietnam to determine their own future.

For some reason Mr. Richard Nixon has been leaving regular comments with Dr. Boli, attempting to sell him shoes and handbags the way he once sold us escalation in Vietnam. In fact he seems not to be able to distinguish the two issues. Dr. Boli wishes him greater success in his new career than he had in the former one.

We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with indoor soccer shoes; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with soccer shoes on sale in the scenes which they describe.

It takes a very sensitive nature to be able to empathize so intimately with athletic footwear. Having said that, Dr. Boli really does not know what else to say.

Your article is very emotional, simple style, see you are a very simple person, we are very optimistic about you.

For some reason this comment had Dr. Boli checking the street in front of the house for unmarked vans.

IT SEEMS TO me that you Englishmen have not yet for a long enough time tried practically universal suffrage to understand its necessary concomitants, as well as do Americans. This is shown, in one respect, by your insisting upon purity of elections and freedom from bribery of electors and of public officials, and the earnestness with which you pursue and punish violations of the same. No institution is necessarily good in itself, and to accomplish the maintenance of civilised society in which brains may secure its rewards, is the true end, the summum bonum of government. Now the Americans, from their long experience in meeting the problems of universal suffrage, have ascertained that the most dangerous persons to put in authority are honest fanatics. Dishonest men may line their own pockets, but are not likely to lean towards extreme measures of radical legislation; there is more money in it for them to sell out. Then, too, there is nothing which discourages reformers in the start like the knowledge that they have to deal with a venal and corrupt gang who under no circumstances will have any real interest in any public measure. A country can prosper and grow great under a corrupt government; witness England of the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries. It cannot prosper under doctrinaires; witness France of the Revolution.

 ——Spencer Jerome in The Idler, Vol. VII (1895).

Dear Dr. Boli: I visited Pittsburgh recently, and I miserably failed in trying to figure out the transit system there. It was not the map, which was explicit enough; it was the question of when to pay my fare. Why is such a simple thing so convoluted? Since I know that Pittsburgh is the capital of your celebrated publishing empire, I thought you might be able to explain it to me. —Sincerely, a puzzled Chicagoan.

Dear Sir or Madam: It is not so terribly convoluted if you remember the simple rules that govern the payment of fares on all Port Authority transit. Inbound, you pay when you get on; outbound, you pay when you get off; unless the route does not go downtown or it is after 7 p.m., in which case you pay when you get on, unless it is a trolley route, in which case you still follow the daytime rules; or unless you are going from one part of downtown to another, in which case you do not pay at all, unless it is after 7 p.m., in which case you pay when you get on a bus, but the subway is still free; and the subway is also free north of the Allegheny, but the buses are not; but the subway is not free south of the Monongahela; and on trolley routes you pay on the car at street-level stops, but at platform-level stations you pay at the fare booth during rush hour or when there is an attendant present, except at the Fallowfield station on the Red Line, which has no fare booth, but otherwise you pay on the car; and on the Duquesne Incline you pay at the bottom station, but on the Monongahela Incline you pay at the top. Just remember these simple rules, and you will never be confused by Pittsburgh transit again.

Dear Dr. Boli: I visited Pittsburgh recently, and I miserably failed in trying to figure out the transit system there. It was not the map, which was explicit enough; it was the question of when to pay my fare. Why is such a simple thing so convoluted? Since I know that Pittsburgh is the capital of your celebrated publishing empire, I thought you might be able to explain it to me. —Sincerely, a puzzled Chicagoan.

Dear Sir or Madam: It is not so terribly convoluted if you remember the simple rules that govern the payment of fares on all Port Authority transit. Inbound, you pay when you get on; outbound, you pay when you get off; unless the route does not go downtown or it is after 7 p.m., in which case you pay when you get on, unless it is a trolley route, in which case you still follow the daytime rules; or unless you are going from one part of downtown to another, in which case you do not pay at all, unless it is after 7 p.m., in which case you pay when you get on a bus, but the subway is still free; and the subway is also free north of the Allegheny, but the buses are not; but the subway is not free south of the Monongahela; and on the Duquesne Incline you pay at the bottom station, but on the Monongahela Incline you pay at the top. Just remember these simple rules, and you will never be confused by Pittsburgh transit again.

IT IS WITH great pleasure that Dr. Boli announces the addition of the magazine First Things to his celebrated Publishing Empire. Many regular readers of both publications will doubtless have questions about the new arrangement. Dr. Boli will attempt to answer these questions in the catechetical format that has become so popular in disseminating information on the World-Wide Web.

Q. How did I get here?

A. If you had been looking for Dr. Boli at his old address, you arrived by means of an HTML redirect. For anyone familiar with HTML, the thing holds no mystery; for other readers, the best way to explain it is that it works by means of sorcery. Nevertheless, you should update your bookmarks, since the demonic forces behind HTML redirects are notoriously unreliable.

Q. Will First Things change radically under the new regime?

A. No. The two magazines will be operated independently. Dr. Boli will continue to edit his own magazine, and the editors of First Things will continue to do whatever it is they do.

Q. Why First Things in particular?

A. Primarily because the price of Cabling Installation & Maintenance was set unrealistically high.

Q. Isn’t First Things sort of a reactionary magazine?

A. Quite so; and reactionaries are never happy unless they have something to react to. Dr. Boli takes great delight in making people happy.

Q. What are Dr. Boli’s politics exactly?

A. Dr. Boli is still registered as a Federalist, but he has never quite forgiven his own party for the Alien and Sedition Acts, though they were passed when he was still a small boy. Since he reached his majority, his primary criterion in bestowing his vote has been whimsy. This year he will probably give his vote to the Socialist Workers Party.

Q. I don’t approve of one of the advertisements in the margin.

A. Don’t you?

Q. I thought I was supposed to be asking the questions.

A. Were you? —In any case, if you disapprove of one of the advertisements, you should remember that clicking on that advertisement costs the advertiser money. Does that suggest a logical course of action?

Dear Dr. Boli: Why did built-in gutters go out of style? They are sturdier, more capacious, more attractive, and less likely to collapse while you hang onto them for dear life. Was it some insidious plot by Alcoa to get us all to hang flimsy aluminum boxes on our houses? Why, these structural abominations even require trips up an unstable ladder every few months for cleaning and can barely support the weight of a child, let alone a full-grown adult. Any wisdom which you could provide on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Also, can you recommend a good ambulance service in the vicinity of Pitcairn? I fear that I may soon require their services. —Sincerely, A Man Hanging From an Insubstantial Box Gutter in the Process of Pulling Out its Last Nail.

Dear Sir: Surely the business of teetering on a ladder is a matter best left to your servants. Dr. Boli himself has a reputation for being unusually indulgent to his staff, but there is such a thing as carrying indulgence too far. Your gardener or maintenance man or upstairs maid—the decision as to which one being, of course, best left to the butler—will soon become an expert at gutter-cleaning, if only you will not stubbornly insist on doing the thing yourself.

As for the ambulance, Dr. Boli would recommend dialing 9-1-1 and taking the first one that comes. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for comparison shopping, and there is a time not to be too fastidious.