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Duh-Children Are Not Our Future
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Several DNRC savants suggested that instead of calling young Induhviduals juvenile duhlinquents they be called a-duh-lescents. I thought that was funny until I read the shocking story in Newsweek that said the average I.Q. of kids has risen from 100 to 120 over the past 50 years! (Seriously) I would like to have been a fly on the wall during the meeting when the experts talked about the possible causes of this brightening.
Expert 1: "Let's see, during the past 50 years the quality of public schools has declined, so we can rule out education as a cause of increased intelligence. What else was going on?"
Expert 2: "Drug use and teen pregnancies skyrocketed. Maybe those things make you smarter."
(long silence)
Expert 1: "Anyone else? Anything at all?"
Expert 3: "There was more pollution."
Expert 1: "C'MON! We can't say pollution makes you smarter!!!"
A young intern, probably a DNRC member, pipes in.
Intern: "We could say that watching television and playing video games stimulates kids' brains and makes them smarter. The media will think that's good for their businesses so they'll quote us and we'll be famous. We might even get dates."
(long silence, everyone glances at each other)
And so it was that MTV and video games and other vaguely defined "stimulation" were credited with making kids smarter. Dilbert comics weren't specifically mentioned as a cause but I think that's understood.
It's frightening to think that kids keep getting smarter. I plan to live to 140 and there's no telling how dumb I'll look to the youth of the future. I have this vision of myself in a rocking chair, body shrunken to the size of a newborn Chihuahua, gnawing on painkillers the size of cantaloupes, watching my Holotelevision and being very confused by anything said by people under the age of ninety.
But while I'm still smart enough to mock other people, I give you the Dilbert Newsletter...
Here are some more True Quotes from pointy-haired bosses, cow-orkers, and family members submitted by vigilant DNRC members:
"It's good to get a taste of someone else's moccasins!"
"It's a mute point."
"This is for your FYI..."
"We definitely don't want to nail ourselves into a corner."
"I'm not the brightest bean in the hole."
"I want quality, not quantity; but lots of it."
In one five-minute exchange, a co-worker who thinks he ought to be my boss said, "supposubly," "expecially," "irregardless," "that doesn't jive," and my personal favorite, "We have to start a brass roots movement." This was all in the context of explaining why he deserved more management authority.
I was once told by a co-worker, "Don't look for a gift in the horse's mouth." This was the same person who couldn't understand why a pot would call the "cattle" black.
Our boss was trying to give us some helpful advice by explaining that everyone has a monkey on the back and sometimes you just have to "spank your monkey."
My new eBook, "God's Debris," available through http://www.dilbert.com, is the #1 bestseller among eBooks in the entire world for May. I'm calling it a "must-look eBook" and you know it is because it rhymes.
By popular demand, I added printing rights to "God's Debris" so you can abuse the printer at your company or school to print off a personal copy to take with you or share with friends.
Many of you wrote to say you wanted to read a sample chapter before buying, so I made one available for preview. And yes, the chapter is thoroughly misleading as an example of the whole book. I call that "marketing."
So far, the readers' reviews are better for "God's Debris" than for any other book I've written. (No one is more surprised than I am.) I've posted some of the reviews on the storefront page so you can see what others think.
A reader (thanks, Lori) has set up a message board/list to discuss "God's Debris." Neither I nor United Media have control over the content of the messages. I'm just passing the link along.
Practice your Spanish by reading Dilbert translations at Dilbert.com (click "español on the home page or go to http://espanol.dilbert.com). You can read the Spanish strip first and then its English translation. Sometimes the Spanish versions are funnier because the translator makes up his own jokes when he thinks mine suck.
Elbonian Proliferation
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I keep hearing stories that the Dilbert-created country of Elbonia is crossing over into the real world. DNRC members have been quoting statistics about Elbonia to win debates; students have written geography reports about Elbonia; and now some joker at Gemstone included Elbonia in their software license agreement:
"Licensee warrants that it is not domiciled in, a citizen, national or resident of, and is not under the control of the government of Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Elbonia, nor any other country or any distributee to which the United States has prohibited export..."
Here are some more folk sayings submitted by DNRC members. Some of the sayings are original but most are recycled. I disguised the offensive words with asterisks so that you will never-in-a-million-years guess what they were.
You could give a headache to a Tylenol.
I'm busier than an armless feather-stacker in a windstorm.
He was so weak he couldn't pull a wet string out of a sick cat's ***.
He couldn't lead flies to a hog lot.
Well dip my ****s in sour cream and squat me in a room full of kittens.
Noisier than two skeletons ******* on a tin roof.
I'd be all over that like Randy White on Jerry Rice.
Your code has more patches than a Georgia quilt!
It's easier to get **** out of a rocking horse.
I'm busier than a one-toothed man in a corn-on-the-cob eating contest.
I'm as happy as a bunny with a pogo stick.
You chatter more than a dolphin by a fish bucket.
If you stuck his brain up a bird's butt it would fly backwards.
Teamwork
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Here's a touching story about teamwork from a DNRC member.
"I used to work for an aircraft parts manufacturer and our plant manager, who was a graduate of the infamous West Point Military Academy, thought we needed to learn the value of teamwork. His bright idea was to take us out for paintball, the popular sport of shooting one another with small gelatin balls filled with paint. He promptly took charge of the entire event, dividing up team members to be either on the red team or the blue team.
The lesson of teamwork was a success... sort of. Both the red team AND the blue team looked at one another, then looked at our overbearing, pompous plant manager, and as a team, all 200 members of red team AND blue team began to release their aggressions by pelting the plant manager with those little balls of paint. After his recovery from the welts and bruises from over a thousand paintballs, our manager failed to view our combined efforts as a demonstration of teamwork."
Induhviduals continue to amaze and amuse. Here are more True Tales, submitted by DNRC members.
True Tale 1
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A friend of mine accidentally locked her keys in the house. Luckily the bathroom window was open, so she climbed through.
She then found her keys and climbed back out the bathroom window to unlock the front door.
True Tale 2
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Someone taped a notice to the side of our new first-aid kit box:
"Staff are requested not to use the eye patches in this first-aid kit to impersonate 'pirates' or other characters. They are for medical use only."
True Tale 3
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I live in California and have experienced several power outages at work and at home. The other day one of the supervisors complained that his air conditioner wouldn't work during the blackout and he was going to buy an electric fan and use it during the next one.
True Tale 4
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Printed at the top of an invoice from a local car repair place:
XYZ Body Shop
Where you are not satisfied until we are
True Tale 5
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A certain Induhvidual who has the benefit of my friendship said, "It's terrible how they kill sheep for their ivory."
A few days later, he managed to top himself by saying, "You know, the cheetah on the front of that Jaguar (car) looks really cool."
True Tale 6
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An Induhvidual put this sign up at the local grocery store:
Perishable Employee Needed. Experience Required.
True Tale 7
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My girlfriend and I were at Disneyland while they were building their new park. We were looking at the artist rendition of the future park on a poster, and from behind us we heard, "How do they know how to draw it if it hasn't been built yet?"
True Tale 8
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In Ireland, our teachers are on strike, trying to get a larger wage. This means that we've been missing a lot of school. Some students who have important exams coming up are campaigning to get the teachers back in school. Recently, two of these students appeared on a news program, talking about the situation, and how it could be remedied. One girl had a bright idea -- that the teachers should go on strike during the summer, when there aren't any classes.
True Tale 9
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"Parity" is a big buzzword in our department. One of the managers sent out a memo that said we needed to "achieve parody" in meeting due dates.
I think we already achieved it.
True Tale 10
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At my school someone was asking for funding to pay for counselors for troubled children. His exact argument was this: "Even if we get the money it can be really hard to find someone qualified, and an unqualified counselor might do more harm than good, but that's better than nothing."
True Tale 11
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Recently, during a presentation to a large audience, a Ph.D. physiologist used the phrase "persons of color." He then wanted to say something about females, so, being obsessed with political correctness, he used the phrase "persons of gender."
True Tale 12
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I just received this announcement for an upcoming librarian meeting:
"Come be a part of the group and exercise the 3 "L's" of librarianship -- listen, share, & learn."
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,
I don't know whether you were trying to be funny in Newsletter 33 when you said Shakespeare was a fraud. What you don't understand is that Shakespeare was written in the old English and can't be evaluated by modern language standards.
Claude
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Dear Clod,
The Dilbert Newsletter is a serious scholarly work and not a vehicle for sarcastic humor. I agree with your point about Mr. Adams' unconscionable ignorance. He doesn't believe me when I tell him that the work of sixties pop star Tiny Tim is the finest music ever created, but only if you don't evaluate it by today's standards of music. You have to study it carefully and then mentally translate all of the rhythms and words and music into something that sounds good. But for serious students of music it's worth it.
Sincerely,
Dogbert
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Dear Mr. Adams,
I have a Far Side comic I can't decipher. Is there a resource that will help me unravel the mystery?
Meredith
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Dear Merd,
Yes. That resource is a moist grey blob located inside your skull.
Sincerely,
Dogbert
---
Dear Mr. Adams,
Yesterday in gym class some people were criticizing me for being half Mexican. As my own little way of proving how stupid they are, I told them that I was born in Elbonia and moved here when I was six months old. Everyone in the class believed it. I think the teacher even believed me, but I don't find that surprising considering the fact he graduated from this high school. Now I'm facing a major ethical decision. Should I let those idiots continue believing I was born in a country that doesn't exist, or should I tell them the truth and risk getting my ass kicked.
Max
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Dear Maximum,
The biggest downside of DNRC membership is the everpresent threat of getting your ass kicked for being clever. I recommend telling your classmates that your father is the Elbonian ambassador to this country and you have diplomatic immunity. With any luck, your Induhvidual classmates will think diplomatic immunity is a disease and they won't take the risk of getting your blood on them.
Sincerely,
Dogbert
---
Dear Mr. Adams,
In your last newsletter you used the phrase "koala bears" when in fact koalas are marsupials not bears.
Josh
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Dear Jockitch,
You need to get your facts straight before challenging the authority of the Dilbert Newsletter. There are many types of koalas, including koala nuts, Coca Koalas, koala bears, and, least important -- koala marsupials. To complicate matters, koala marsupials often try to pass themselves off as cute little bears so they can get work on TV commercials. Grizzly marsupials do the same thing. It's a scandal.
Sincerely,
Dogbert
Dilbert Fodder
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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.
Dilbert for Intranets
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By popular demand, Dilbert is now available for syndication on corporate intranets. For details, send an e-mail including your name, company, telephone number, and intranet size to intranets@unitedmedia.com.
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Dilbert © 2005, United Feature Syndicate, Inc.