Every now and then, during the publication of this blog, a reader comment catches the eye of one of our blogging editors. The following is one such response to the Ager Midwestern Update post of 27 Sept. 2007:
Damn you Ager!
Dr. Ingersoll IV, PHD MD here.
You are a gentleman of much ambition! I suspected this move in grievous anticipation, for I have been monitoring your organization’s activities since its relatively recent inception. You whipper snappers over at FSRI have no business coming to the great Middle World of Wisconsin. We will never yield our status to up-starts such as yourselves. Here in Wisconsin we have a proud heritage going back to 1748 to the founding of our great state of which many respected embellishment institutions of thought reside. These include the Albert Abrams School of Radionics (AASR), the John R. Brinkley Impudent-Impotence Alliance (JBIIA) and my own Buckminster J. Ingersoll Institute for the Advancement of Charlatans (BIAC). We are an old and venerable business going back to when the red men roamed the lands and snake oil fattened the cheeks of enamored wee babes. Today we have our people in the higher echelons of respected Midwest companies like Rayovac, Menards, Kohls department stores, and Madison Sanitation Services (MSS). We were the first organization to put our certified psychic palm readers in the Chicago and Milwaukee Police Departments (CPD and MPD respectively).
If you do decide to open an office of FSIHL here, as you know, we will consider this an act of war. Consider this cheese as all ready taken, this beer half drunk, and this Polish sausage already smoked! We will fight you until my last breath is drawn from my frail failing lungs.
Yours truly,
Dr. Buckminster J. Ingersoll IV, PHD MD
KWA Responds:
Dear Mr. Ingersoll IV, PHD MD,
First of all, I want to thank you on behalf of the FSRI Blogging Division for having added a comment to one of our posts. Secondly, it is without hesitation that I encourage you, or anyone for that matter, to comment on any and all of the content in this blog being it facilitates dialog on the very subject of this forum - namely, Faking Smart!
Regarding your concerns, Dr. Ingersoll, I speak on the behalf of everyone here at the division when I say that we acknowledge your disappointment with our drive for expansion into the Midwest - namely, Northern Wisconsin - and we are disheartened to hear that you harbor any objection to our future designs.
It has not been our intent, nor will it ever be, that you "yield" your "status", nor is is our wish that the FSIHL supplants any of your "respected embellishment institutions of thought." We do, however, hold a responsibility toward a power greater than any heretofore mentioned - that of society at large. The FSIHL's goals are noble in their simplicity ...to spread Faking Smart! around the globe, and by doing so raise the slightly unmotivated person to the rank of semi-respected corporate player (and when we say "player" we mean it in the most toned-down of interpretations).
Dr. Ingersoll, I will have you know that I am no stranger to your great stretch of Mid-country. Having spent some time ambling through the granite halls of the AASR (Albert Arahms School of Radionics) I am familiar with their achievements, and as for the JBIIA (John R. Brinkley Impudent-Impotence Alliance), I have no doubt their work will find permanence in the contemporary canon, ...but knowledge of your BIAC (Buckminster J. Ingersoll Institute for the Advancement of Charlatans) eludes me at present and I will be the first to admit that the advancement of charlatans is a movement beyond my ken. Each - and all - of us must bear at least one shortcoming.
I want to thank you for regarding me as a "gentleman", Dr. Ingersoll, and acting as such it would not be unwarranted to expect the same from you. To proclaim that you will "fight till the last breath is drawn from my frail failing lungs" is to enter through the door of extremism, and once through that door, it is hard to return. So I beseech you, dear sir, to moderate your reaction to our inevitable entry into your great tracts.
And with this, I wish to extend you an olive branch by granting you an official FSIHL Master's Degree (use code 87403A6H at any Wall Mart Pharmacy or Hallmark Card store to claim your degree). With this honorary degree you hold all the recognition a graduate from our four-week Master's Degree program holds. Please, be kind enough to accept this humble offering, and we hope this will allay any further animosity between our honorable and venerable camps.
Hey! ...and keep Faking Smart!
KWA
(FSRI Disclaimer: A degree from the FSIHL should in no way be considered an "official" degreee. Any person receiving a degree from the FSIHL may be subject to DHS investigation and may be designated a "person of interest" by the NSA.)
5 comments:
I have inside knowledge that this "Ingersall" fellow is an imposter, and is actually Brett Favre. No, I'm not sure... but I would investigate. In any case, I am afraid of him (whom ever he is).
Speedcat Hollydale from Minnesota / next to N. Wisconsin
Thank your for your good work, Mr. Hollydale. Keep your ear to the ground and alert me to any new intelligence, or lack thereof.
I am interested in being a person of interest. How does one acquire a FSIHL degree? I am short on time and dedication but I still have a couple of coupons for Cheddar World.
What do you say?
Salutations Mr. Ager,
Dr. Ingersoll IV, PHD MD here. Forgive me as I scratch out a few words on this stenograph-like device they put in front of me. In beginning, let me indulge your curiosity. Despite investing a small fortune in ointments and elixirs over the years, I have never been able to grow a scant of facial hair. As a direct consequence to this fact I have developed a keen “6th sense”, if you will, on how to read a man by how the mustache hangs from his face. You, I have surmised, are someone who is not afraid to take risks in building his Faking Smart! empire from blood sweat and tears. Your goal is nothing less than to tear down the corporate status quo. Veni, vidi, vici! Mr. Ager, you are indeed a shadowly reflection of me in my youthful days. I too once frolicked in the sunlight of guru status, bathed in the shiny silver dollars of corporate profits and suckled from the sweet pipe of luxury. I remember when Mr. Ford said that he would pay his minions $5 dollars a day. Immediately, I dispatched my best man at the time, James A. Biltmore, to infiltrate the company and see what was transpiring first hand. I soon discovered that it was a Marxist ploy worthy of Socrates himself! You, Mr. Ager, are no Mr. Ford! Or are you?
Now, let me tell you a little about the Buckminster J. Ingersoll Institute for the Advancement of Charlatans. It does not surprise me that you have not heard of us. We are a secret society that has no less the goal than to put those members of BIAC into positions of power in and round government, the corporate hierarchy, and medical establishments around the country. All knowledge of BIAC is strictly forbidden and denied at all costs to all outsiders. Our sacred rights include, oriental cricket fighting, bathing in a tub of German ale while humming The Blue Danube, and the swearing of allegiance to the great practitioner of all BIAC laws, my Great-Grandfather, the late Dr. Buckmister J. Ingersoll I PHD MD. By chance, have you ever heard of Tommy Thompson, the president’s chief advisor? Or perhaps you have heard of Joseph McCarthy and his grand-daughter Jenny McCarthy, both prominent senators? These are examples of current or former BIAC members.
Perhaps Mr. Ager, what you mistakenly call “extremism”, is in fact a passion that rivals the early patriots of the founding of this great nation? This passion wells up from the breasts of my forefathers and can not be quelled. BIAC has revealed through the rigors of scientific analytics that the Faking Smart! formula for success in regards to the inadequate “player” in today’s post-modern-fangled-doodad society is in fact our undoing. We have concluded that anyone who absorbs FSIHL wisdom will in turn run the fast track to corporate stardom and eventually, domination within any company. We here at BIAC are threatened by this. It demonstrates the antiquity of our ancient ideology, the lackluster approach to promoting forgeries in the workplace, and the foolishness of our own non-substance prattle.
I have sent my man-servant, Hendersen, to find this document you speak of, for I am bed ridden with gout and a hyperactive lymphatic system. Hendersen is a loyal Norseman with impeccable fortitude, constitution, and earnest guile. He is the one who tracked you to your notorious “Witch’s stew” hideout. Yes, Mr Ager, I know of its location!
Ah! Hendersen brings forth the gift to me as we speak. I will accept this most gracious gift as an olive branch. I will add it to my title. Thank you. I will also reframe from a declaration of war but I must send this ultimatum and set of conditions.
- Any major acquisitions in Mid-country by Faking Smart! must be provided in previous full disclosure to the BIAC proconsul, namely myself, Buckmister J. Ingersoll IV.
- That you hire Hendersen as the De Facto Midwest advisor at FSRI and accept him as one of your own. He will serve you well.
- That you allow Henderson and myself into the Faking Smart! Blogging Department as guest bloggers hence forth.
I am sure this alliance will find our Institutions in a much more beneficial place. I look forward to working with you and I await your response.
Yours truly,
Dr. Buckmister J. Ingersoll IV PHD MD FSIHL-MD
Dr. Ingersoll IV,
I agree to your conditions and have already put Henderson to work. (Did you know that he types 102 words per minute and can change the clutch on my 72 Pugeot?)
I wish you well, Dr. Ingersoll, and I hope your physical condition improves. In my life I've never fallen ill with any malady that can't be chased off by an old issue of Reader's Digest and a glass of cod liver oil. God speed.
BRENTD:
As for becoming a "person of interest", I must say that you already are! Obtaining a FSIHL degree, however, is a different matter. Currently, we are accepting applications for the November class of 2011, and my assistants are sending you the forms (48 pages) as I write.
Awarding Dr. Ingersoll a degree is highly unconventional for the FSIHL, but special circumstances lead to this action.
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