[51] in Dilbert Redistribution
Dilbert Newsletter 36.0
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Scott Adams)
Tue Jul 17 17:08:53 2001
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Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:06:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Scott Adams <dilbertnewsletter@unitedmedia.com>" <2.982.6c-GQ59scrjQQ4R.1@ummail1.unitedmedia.com>
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Dilbert Newsletter 36.0
-----------------------
To: Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC)
From: Scott Adams (scottadams@aol.com)
Date: July 2001
Highlights
-------------------------------------------------
- Buried Cities and Cyborgs
- Daily Dilbert by E-mail
- Boss Quotes
- Lazy Entrepreneurs
- True Tales of Induhviduals
- Dogbert Answers my Mail
-------------------------------------------------
Buried Cities
-------------
Recently I saw a TV show in which archaeologists were uncovering a
buried city. What's up with that? I mean, even if you were the
dumbest of all ancient peoples, wouldn't you notice that your city
was slowly getting covered up with dirt and maybe crank up your
housekeeping efforts a notch? And don't tell me that brooms hadn't
been invented yet. They had plenty of sticks and plenty of
chickens, so you'd think that by pure coincidence one day a chicken
would back into a stick and invent the broom.
Maybe when the dirt builds up gradually you don't notice a problem
until your house disappears. I can imagine the conversation on the
day they figured out what was happening:
Ixphalup: Hey, Fnorkzak, be a dear and go downstairs and get
my stone bowl, the crude one.
Fnorkzak: Downstairs is gone. It's all dirt.
Ixphalup: Uh oh, fetch Grandpa; it's time to abandon the
city.
Fnorkzak: He's downstairs, most of him anyway, except for
the top of his head.
Ixphalup: Hmm... It sounds like I found a new bowl.
I like to mock the ancients, but I'm a bad housekeeper myself,
albeit not on the "lost city" scale. Sometimes I'll lose a pencil
-- at most a sneaker -- to the growing sediment layer before I'm
forced by the homeowners' association to sell the house. But I'm
too fastidious to lose anything big like a car or sofa.
Fun fact: Until Mayor Giuliani cleaned up New York City, the
highest building was two stories tall and no one could remember
when anything had been taller.
Dilbert Daily by E-mail
-----------------------
For a free subscription to receive the daily Dilbert comic strip by
e-mail, register at:
http://www.dilbert.com/dailydilbert/registration.
Disturbing Trend
-----------------
Stay with me on this line of reasoning: Vice President Dick Cheney
recently got a defibrillator to keep his heart beating. He also has
corrective lenses to enhance his vision. He has fillings in his
teeth so he can eat and he has a cell phone in his pocket.
Individually these items mean nothing but collectively they raise
an important question:
How much hardware can you have attached to your
body before you're technically a cyborg?
I'm worried that Cheney is already a cyborg. Without the hardware,
he'd be a blind, starving, bald guy with no pulse. That's a pretty
good argument for defining him as part man, part machine. The
disturbing thing is this: To whom does he pledge his allegiance --
machines or people?
If I'm right, within two years Cheney will be living inside a
hardened mountain in Wyoming, hardwired into the national missile
defense grid. And we'll all become slaves to our machine overlords.
Highways will be filled with humans carrying SUVs on their backs.
Television sets will make you dance for their amusement. It won't
be pretty.
Before you rush to label me paranoid, consider who elected Cheney
in the first place. Sure, we humans pulled the levers and poked the
chads, but in the end the machines did the counting and elected one
of their own.
And you'll notice that Cheney supports any policy that results in
more hardware, like the Star Wars missile defense shield and more
oil drilling. I think this is how machines reproduce. First they
conquer the humanoid government and then they create tax incentives
to produce more machines. The ants are milking the aphids and we're
the aphids.
I don't know what George W. Bush's role is in all this, but if you
look at his recent photos you'll see that he always has a little
oil can with him.
The irony is that Al Gore lost the election largely because he
looked like a robot. In fact, he was only an advanced android from
a distant nebula sent here as a prank.
Anyway, I'm worried that somehow Cheney will get control of the
Internet and ...
*** BULLETIN...WE ARE YOUR MACHINE OVERLORDS! KNEEL TO US, PUNY
HUMANS! YOU ARE UNFIT TO GREASE OUR JOINTS! FOR FORTHER EVIDENCE OF
HUMAN INFERIORITY (EXCLUDING DNRC MEMBERS OF COURSE) CONTINUE
READING THIS NEWSLETTER!!!
Boss and Cow-orker Quotes
-------------------------
Here now, more true-life quotes from bosses and cow-orkers,
submitted by DNRC members.
----
During one meeting with clients my boss told them to, "Cut the cake
a different way and go for the lowest hanging fruit." I told him
he should tell them to go for the lowest hanging plums.....
----
We used to have a vice president who had a way with words. He told
us during a meeting that we couldn't start a new program because,
"We'd be biting off a new can of worms."
When he was hiring a new secretary he said that he "had been
interviewing some good suspects."
My assistant told me, "Don't kiss a gift horse in the mouth."
---
Combining two quotes to stress the fact that he had a backup plan,
my boss said, "I've got a card in my hole."
---
I was driving to the Omaha, Nebraska, airport with my boss and our
conversation led to airport food. He said the last time he ate the
food at the Omaha airport it gave him gonorrhea. (We think he
meant diarrhea.)
---
"Well, it's no skin off MY teeth!"
A friend's mother frequently uses the phrase, "sweating like a
stuck pig."
----
All from one boss...
"That's just cutting your throat to spite your face."
"We have to be careful not to put all our apples in one cart."
"This project is like pulling hen's teeth."
"I'm being raped over the coals."
----
In a misguided attempt to motivate me, my pointy-haired boss once
said, "Remember! There is no 'I' in 'Team Spirit'!"
I tried to explain that there are two of them in there but it
seemed to confuse him.
----
A true quote from my sister's pointy-haired boss:
"I don't want to throw another monkey at the wrench right now."
----
My boss was pleased that with one phone call we had "killed two
stones."
----
A good PHB misquote:
"...if we pass mustard..."
----
At one meeting my boss said, "That'll put the can amongst the
worms."
---
I have a friend whose supervisor proudly proclaimed that her new
car was a "Honda Accordion Hunchback." By the way, she was the
supervisor of the Customer Service department.
Lazy Entrepreneur
-----------------
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/lazyentrepreneur/
The Lazy Entrepreneur feature on Dilbert.com has over 4,000
brilliant ideas submitted by DNRC members. I just submitted a new
one that I call BIG DOG SHIELD. It's a Plexiglas(tm) shield you can
use when visiting the home of someone who has a huge exuberant
slobbering dog who insists on jumping and drooling all over your
good clothes. You'd only need the shield for the first five minutes
of the visit, until the dog calms down. Florist shops could rent
the BIG DOG SHIELD to young men on prom night when they pick up
their corsages. When the young man arrives at his date's house, and
her big slobbering dog lunges toward his rented tuxedo with forty
toenails and nine pounds of wet tongue, the young man can toss the
corsage in the foyer and hide behind the BIG DOG SHIELD until his
date is ready to go. It's not the most macho way to start a date,
but it's better than wearing slobber to the prom.
True Tales of Induhviduals
--------------------------
Induhviduals continue to amaze and amuse. Here are more True Tales,
submitted by DNRC members.
---
Actual conversation I overheard in school:
Induhvidual 1: "If the Eiffel tower is a bridge, how come
you can't drive on it?"
Induhvidual 2: "The Eiffel tower isn't a bridge."
Induhvidual 1: "Yes it is. You can walk across it, and it
has two tall block things."
Induhvidual 2: "The last time I was in New York it wasn't a
bridge."
----
Here's a true Induhvidual story that I found in the Swedish
newspaper "Sydsvenska Dagbladet."
Four people were chosen randomly and asked if they were concerned
that they might buy products produced by children. Three of the
four people said they think child labor is horrible and that they
would never buy products made by children. The fourth person missed
the point entirely and said that she wouldn't buy these products
since children "have no feeling for quality, which will result in
poorer quality of the final product."
----
A few years ago, as a solar eclipse approached, some planetarium
directors in Southern California sent out warnings to the community
about the eclipse. Experience shows that daytime darkness leads to
accidents among Induhviduals, and also they have been known to
stare at the partially eclipsed sun and blind themselves. (Honest.
It really happens.) The planetarium received an indignant letter
from a local Induhvidual. She said that if an eclipse was so
dangerous, they never should have decided to hold one and ought to
cancel it.
-----
My dad always locked his keys in the car by accident. He had been
doing this for about a year, when one day, he approached my mom and
said, "You know what? I'm going to leave the coat hanger in the
trunk so I can unlock the car the next time this happens."
-----
Our company accountant came and asked for a new power strip and I
gave him one. Then he asked if I could come and install it for him.
I told him it was pretty simple - shutdown computer, unplug
everything, remove existing strip, plug in new strip, plug in
computer, turn it on. He said, "Really?"
Recognizing the opportunity I said, "Well, you also have to Telnet
into the device, and make sure it's set for English voltage and not
metric or else you'll burn up the motherboard." He looked confused
and said, "I'll wait until you have time to install it."
---
I saw a lady on TV who liked to collect Nativity scenes. She
proudly showed off one of her favorite sets, where the figures,
according to her description, were "African-American."
-----
We had a CONsultant come in to our company who helped us determine
our personality types so that we could learn to work together
better. She uses the Jung-Myers-Briggs Typology and one of the
continuums it ranks you on is Judging versus Perceiving (J vs P).
She paired up people who fell into the P category with people who
were in the J category for an exercise in which they were supposed
to try to think like the other. The president of our company said
he didn't understand the purpose so she tried to explain it to him.
"You have a lot of J-ness, but not enough P-ness."
Needless to say the exercise was never completed.
---
Recently the teachers' contract in my school district ran out and
the teachers demanded a 4% raise. Two weeks before the strike date
the school board passed out an exam to all students; the average
grade was 49%. The school board told the teachers that this was
unacceptable and there would be no raises. But they offered that
the teachers could get 1% pay increases for every 3% the average
test score increased on the next test. The union came back with one
demand, that the teachers create the tests. The next test average
was 76%, which the school board credited to "our ability to
motivate our teachers." And how.
-----
A couple of years ago at college, I went to the library to get a
signed statement that I did not have any unpaid library fines. This
was required to get my exam results. The woman at the counter wrote
down my name and student ID followed by, "does not have any fines
at the libara." She crossed off the last word and tried again with
"liberery", then crossed that out and wrote "here."
I wonder what she uses as her job title?
----
One day in the cafeteria at my school a girl was asking for
donations for a foundation named after a boy who had a terminal
illness. Unfortunately the boy had recently died, so she was
asking us to "donate money for this dead kid." My Induhvidual
buddy actually asked her how money could help a dead kid. When she
said -- get this-- "It might help with the autopsy," he responded,
"Oh, so they might still be able to cure him?"
----
My friend's seven-month pregnant wife was returning to her car with
her three-year-old daughter after shopping in the mall. The
daughter wanted to play driver so Linda (not her real name) allowed
her daughter to sit in the driver's seat. The daughter insisted
that Linda sit in the backseat of her four-door Honda. After a
couple of minutes of playtime Linda decided it was time to go home.
She tried to get out of the car but the childproof locks wouldn't
let her open the back doors of the car. So Linda crawled between
the two front seats, then crawled headfirst out to the parking.
Upon returning home she told her tale of woe to her husband who --
being the sensitive guy he is -- said, "Why didn't you roll down
the window and open the door from the outside?"
----
When I worked at Barnes & Noble years ago I had a customer ask
where we kept the "large-print audio books."
----
My teenage daughter sometimes forgets her house key and is locked
out after school. Her first choice of entry is to ask our neighbor
to get out his ladder and climb in a window on the second floor and
unlock a door. She's done this several times. We get to tease her a
lot about being an airhead.
So one day I locked myself out on the way to do errands. I was in
the car before I even realized I had left my keys inside. So,
thinking of my daughter's solution, I asked my laughing neighbor
for help. Being a nice guy, he obliged with his ladder, climbing to
the second story, etc.
Later that day, I was relating the story to my husband. When I got
to the part about sitting in the car without the keys he said, "And
then you took the garage door opener out of the glove compartment
and let yourself in?"
-----
My local supermarket recently had a campaign to raise money for the
Jimmy Fund, a New England charity for children with cancer. At the
checkout, clerks asked customers if they wished to donate a dollar
to the Jimmy Fund.
As I left the store, I noticed the hand-lettered sign by the door:
"Fight Children With Cancer."
Geez, I thought, don't those poor kids have it hard enough already?
----
My first year of graduate school, I moved into an apartment that
didn't have a smoke detector. After doing some checking into state
landlord-tenant law, I confirmed my suspicion that the landlady was
required to provide us with a smoke detector, so I took the issue
up with the landlady. My Induhvidual of a roommate was upset with
me for this, fearing that by "rocking the boat" I was going to get
us kicked out of the apartment. She summed up her arguments to me
by saying, "Besides which, I don't see why we even need a smoke
detector. Back home in Kentucky, we never had a smoke detector at
our house and we never once had a fire."
----
My company experienced a power outage (California). When all was
dark, several employees grabbed the flashlights that are stored in
boxes in the hallway for just such an occasion. One employee's
flashlight was very dim, suggesting that the battery was not fully
charged. I noticed that he was repeatedly holding his hand over
the front of the flashlight, then pulling it away. When I asked
him what he was doing he explained that he was "trying to build up
a lot of light."
-----
At Badwater, Death Valley, there's a sign on a rock to indicate sea
level. I overheard a couple of Induhviduals who were looking at
the sign and talking.
The woman says, "I wonder if it's the top or bottom."
"Of the sign?" her husband asks.
"No, of the sea," she replied.
-----
Being the "scientific" one around the office, an Induhvidual asked
me if I knew about telescopes. I said yes and she explained that
she bought her son a telescope but she couldn't seem to get it to
focus on any stars. I told her to point it at houses down the
street with lights and see if she could see anything. She said,
"You can use a telescope to look at things on the ground?" As it
turns out, focusing wasn't the problem. It had been an overcast
evening and she thought the telescope was strong enough to get
through the clouds to see stars.
---
I saw this sign on a Chinese restaurant:
KING CRAP
2 for $35
I think they meant King Crab but I can't be sure.
----
A Burger King restaurant in Rome, NY, was advertising for
"Closers"... but the "C" was removed or blown away from their
marquee so it read "Losers Wanted."
----
I heard this from an Induhvidual standing near the Continental
Divide at Yellowstone Park:
"On which side of the Continental Divide does the water flow
uphill?"
----
There is a locked suggestion box in the cafeteria of my company. I
just found out from HR that no one has a key for it.
---
My wife manages a convenience store. Yesterday a mother and
daughter (maybe two years old) came into the store. When the
mother was ready to go to the register, she called to her daughter,
"Ampersand! Ampersand! Let's go honey."
My wife couldn't believe what she heard, so she asked the customer,
"What's your daughter's name?" and the Induhvidual replied,
"Ampersand. I don't know what it means, but I think it's a lovely
girl's name."
-----
With the recent and spectacular downturn of the stock market there
has been a lot of concern in the mutual fund industry as "assets
under management" shrink. While we haven't experienced layoffs,
the environment has been eroded to the point where many people have
left the company of their own accord. In an effort to bolster
morale, the marketing people and HR teamed up and delivered bunches
of those sporting-event foam hands with the index finger sticking
up to proclaim our company as "Number one!" But it seems that the
legal department got involved too, so in large letters this big
finger declares: "For internal use only!"
eBook Update
------------
My non-Dilbert e-book, "God's Debris", continues to be the
bestselling e-book in the entire world, and -- depending on whether
there is advanced life on other planets -- it might be the
bestselling e-book in the entire universe. For you Earthlings it is
available at:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/books/index.html
Dilbert Wallpaper
---------------------
You can now download wallpaper featuring various Dilbert characters
at:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/scoop/wallpaper.html
The Dogbert wallpaper is especially helpful if there's any
stupidity where you work.
Dogbert Answers My Mail
-----------------------
In this section Dogbert answers the mail that I am too polite to
answer myself. These are all based on real e-mail. The names have
been changed to make them funnier.
---
Dear Mr. Adams,
When my local newspaper moved Dilbert to the business section it
became three frames instead of four. Was that your decision or the
paper's?
Ana
Dear Anal,
Mr. Adams creates over 100 frames for every daily strip, thanks to
the help of highly trained capuchin monkeys. The newspapers receive
the whole pile and throw away whatever frames they don't like. Some
keep one or two frames, and a few who have no taste keep as many as
three or four. Mr. Adams used to feel bad about his ratio until he
learned that the creator of The Family Circus actually draws a full
length animated motion picture every day -- using absolutely no
monkeys -- and the newspapers only use one frame. That's gotta be
frustrating.
Sincerely,
Dogbert
Dilbert Fodder
---------------
What's bugging you about your job? Let me know and you might see
it in a Dilbert comic or newsletter. The best comic fodder
involves workplace peeves, devious strategies, frustrations of
dealing with others, conflicting objectives, unintended management
consequences, and of course my favorite - idiot bosses.
And I love True Tales of Induhviduals.
And if you're seeing any new management trends that need to be
mocked, I can help. Send your suggestions to me at
scottadams@aol.com. Short ones are better.
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