CAPITALIZE BERFROIS!
Or: An Experiment in Behavior Modification.
There is an old saying in Camden Town:
If you give BERFROIS fish and chips, it’ll eat fish and chips and read the paper it came wrapped in. But if you teach BERFROIS to fish and chips, it’ll eat fish and chips and read and write a lot of things and then publish a damn good paper to wrap more fish and chips in for a lifetime.
Nowadays, with the demise of print journalism, it’s really hard to find a wrapper to put our actual fish and chips in, let alone to find a suitable metaphorical wrapper to use to deliver metaphorical fish and chips to BERFROIS so it might find have even one meal’s worth of artistic and intellectual nourishment.
But no worries. Merely by capitalizing BERFROIS with a donation, each of us can be a part of teaching BERFROIS to fish and chips.
Here’s how it works. Each of us makes a generous donation to BERFROIS. When our donations are credited, a special button in the Cloud will be switched on, allowing each of us to capitalize BERFROIS as we type on our very own keyboards, and thus to make ourselves known to the world as supporters of BERFROIS’ continuing education.
And every time one of us capitalizes BERFROIS (it’s like the bells for angels getting wings in Capra’s film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,”) BERFROIS will have a metaphorical chance to make a new trial batch of metaphorical fish and chips. And by the time BERFROIS’ 2014 funding drive has reached its goal (I understand it’s a very quick study!), BERFROIS will have learned how to fish and chips — if not for a lifetime, at least for the duration of the coming fiscal year! And we’ll know it’s learned how to fish and chips because it’ll keep wrapping up, in the advertising-free pages of BERFROIS, and in the manner we’ve come to expect, but somehow with even more panache, all manner of tasty fish and chips, which he’ll deliver to us every day!
So capitalize BERFROIS, dear reader, and then capitalize BERFROIS! Do it for BERFROIS, for yourself, for Camden Town, and for arts and letters! Metaphorical fish! Metaphorical chips! Ad infinitum and ad-free! No greasy fingers! No piscatorial olfactory events! And a virtual wrapper to read and re-read!
Cheers,
Daniel Bosch
