The Dilbert Blog

Powerball

When I saw the headline “Oklahoma couple claims $105.8M Powerball prize” I wondered about the age and profession of the husband. I also wondered if he would keep his job. And by “wondered” I mean I already knew it would be an older guy in a blue collar job who plans to keep working. Isn’t it always?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11669215/

I don’t want to accuse the Powerball people of fixing these lotteries. But I notice that the people who win are coincidentally the people who would be best for marketing future Powerball lotteries. You know what story you will never hear about a lottery winner? It’s this one:

“Wealthy bachelor neurosurgeon, age 30, wins $300 million in the lottery. The lucky winner, Winston Arbuckle III, says he plans to “Buy another yacht, smoke more weed, and float around the Mediterranean until I die from the clap.” Asked about his neurosurgery practice, Arbuckle quipped, “I never liked sick people.”

No, you will only hear stories about the modest couple with the hard-working husband, usually in his late fifties or early sixties. They will be “thinking about” getting a nicer house. In this latest lottery story, the husband is a long-haul trucker whose truck has recently crapped out. He plans to buy a new (used) truck and keep working. He says there’s only so much time you can spend fishing.

That’s his story. And I believe it. But I can’t help wondering if he had any thoughts along these lines:

“Holy shit. I don’t want to spend more time with my wife. What am I going to do? I know, I’ll say I’m going to keep working. That will make me look like a great guy. But I’ll hire a chauffeur to drive the truck for me. I’ll trick out the trailer part with a beer tap, big screen TV and a sofa. And I’ll only pretend to be transporting air conditioners. I’ll just tell Jeeves to drive me around the country while I sit in the back eating onion rings and farting into the couch. We’ll only stop to refuel and pick up prostitutes. YEE-HAAA!!!”

Did I just accidentally write a script for the next Adam Sandler movie?

Terrorism or Stupidity?

Terrorism is a good strategy in some situations, such as getting rid of foreign occupiers. I suppose it could work whenever the objective is clear and the enemy is capable of making the change desired. In those cases, terrorism is a rational, albeit horrible, strategy.

But how could terrorism wipe out Israel?

The citizens of Israel don’t consider themselves visitors. They can’t “go home.” So how can terrorism ever succeed in that particular case?

Imagine a worst case scenario where terror weapons become so effective that Hamas and Hezbollah can literally make Israel uninhabitable. The residents of Israel pack up and become refugees. The Palestinians go skipping into Israel and settle into their new homes that were, in some cases, their old homes. What happens next?

If you guessed radical ex-Israelis would start using terrorism on the residents of New Palestine, you would be right. It’s a certainty, especially if the tools of terrorism are so good that they are capable of depopulating a country. It wouldn’t require many angry ex-Israelis to once again depopulate the entire country through terror.

Surely any form of terror that is effective enough to cause all Jews to leave Israel would be good enough to cause any future residents to move too. You have to wonder if Hamas has thought it through.

I think Israel’s best strategy would be to label their current conflict a “War on Stupid.” It wouldn’t be a racist thing, because it only applies to the people who think Israel can be wiped out by terror and replaced by Palestinians who would live in peace. By any objective measure, that’s stupid.

Sometimes labels change reality because they change how we think of things. Imagine if the captured terrorists in Israeli prisons were forced to wear dunce caps and write essays on their theory of how terrorism could “wipe out Israel.” After they write the essay, assuming they directly answer the assignment question, they are released without serving any further time. Israel could publish the essays so everyone can get a good chuckle out of them. I think it would make terrorism less glamorous.

Iran

There are two ways the United States can overthrow the government of Iran:

1. Massive military attack
2. Withdraw from Iraq

Inflation in Iran is running at 17%. Lately, Iran is experiencing civil unrest because they don’t have enough refinery capacity to produce gasoline.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19457357/

If America withdraws from Iraq, it will force Iran to spend massive amounts of money to stabilize and influence their dangerous neighbor. I doubt the Iranian economy is strong enough to handle the burden of Iraq. Before long, either the Iranian government will fall or it will have to be nice to the rest of the world to get help. And that means opening the Iranian nuclear facilities to full inspections and dropping support for Hezbollah.

The current Iranian government is unlikely to make those compromises. That’s why the citizens will demand a new one. Iran isn’t a democracy, but it’s the second closest thing in the region, after Israel. The population of Iran is highly skewed toward young people. That alone spells change. I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran ended up staggering toward a more fully democratic process. The systems for democracy in Iran are already in place. All they need to do is remove the Mullah’s control over which candidates can run.

A violent revolution might be unnecessary. If enough people go to the streets, the Mullah’s in charge could decide it’s in their best interest to be more liberal about allowing who runs for office, and not overruling the politicians after they are elected. The people who get elected might find it in their best interest to get along with the United States and Europe. In a hundred years, I could imagine the Mullahs becoming more like the monarchy in Great Britain, with more moral authority than legal authority.

None of this is likely, because I don’t believe the United States will withdraw enough troops from Iraq to make any geopolitical difference to Iran. It’s just interesting to think about unintended consequences, since those seem to be the only kind of consequences we ever see.

Irony Storm

In yesterday’s post I dared to say Paris Hilton entertains me, and I confessed I liked her because she works when she doesn’t need to, she has a sense of humor, and I’ve never heard of her being mean. This caused a Category 5 irony storm in the comments.

My favorite comments came from people who believe Paris Hilton’s television show on E!, The Simple Life, is a reality show about two stupid rich girls who do mean things. I hate to be a spoiler, but it’s a show produced by smart people, starring two rich girls who pretend to be mean and stupid. Their target audience is people who aren’t bright enough to know the show is staged.

And people wonder how I can be entertained by Paris Hilton. Good lord, the woman gives and she gives. This is performance art, and you’re part of the show, even if all you’re doing is strenuously denying its entertainment value and causing me to write this post that you are now reading.

My other favorite comments came from people who angrily point out how wrong it is to be entertained by something as trivial and unimportant as Paris Hilton’s life. This raises an interesting question: What the hell are you doing that’s so important? You’re not only reading The Dilbert Blog, but you’re leaving a frickin’ comment. How can you afford to take time out from your primary activity of performing free heart surgery on poor African babies?

My third favorite comments came from the people who say Paris is a racist. (This might come as a surprise to Lionel Richie.) Yes, I know she used the N-word on tape. I’ll bet she has also called people motherf*ckers without believing they actually have sex with their mothers. Sometimes you pick the most shocking word because it’s the most shocking word. I don’t know what’s in Paris’ heart, but I’m positive you don’t either.

I was also wondering how much economic value Paris has contributed to the world. If you put a price on the advertising budgets that support the media coverage she generates, plus her TV show, her movie roles, her magazine covers, I’ll bet the dollar value of her contribution to the world is in the billions. Those billions generate taxes that go to important social services such as feeding the poor and protecting our soldiers. And don’t get me started about the tens of millions of masturbators who appreciate her. You can’t put a price on that.

Clearly Paris has made some bad judgment calls. When cameras are rolling, you really ought to be more careful about what comes out of your mouth, and what goes into it. But I have to wonder how many of her critics could survive continuous video surveillance and be mistaken for Gandhi. I couldn’t. I don’t like your odds either.

In summary, if you enjoy opera more than you enjoy stories about Paris Hilton, you might believe you are superior. That’s the second clue there’s something seriously wrong with you.

Can’t…Resist…

Well, by now he’s in Paris. I’m referring to Paris Hilton’s boyfriend. Unless you live in a pineapple under the sea, you know that Paris just got out of jail. She’s got some catching up to do.

Paris’s legal problems started last year when she was arrested for driving drunk. In the following months she got stopped twice by officers for driving with a suspended license. The second stop resulted in jail time. My question is why, after leaving jail today, she didn’t do a few shots of tequila in front of reporters, use her prison skills to hotwire a car, and try to swerve home on her own. What was suddenly stopping her?

Instead, Paris let her parents pick her up at the prison in an SUV. I assume their chauffeur was liquored up so Paris would feel at home. Otherwise she’d be sitting in the back seat screaming, “Why is this car moving in a straight line?!! What’s wrong?!!!”

Paris has stated that she will no longer “act dumb,” because that’s “not who I am.” She says she’s worried about all the young girls who view her as a role model.

Speaking of jail, if your daughter is using Paris Hilton as a role model, you probably belong in one.

Tonight, Paris will appear on Larry King, presumably not acting dumb. If you think you can keep me from watching that train wreck, you are mistaken. I’m clearing the calendar. I can’t wait to watch Larry – who is more than 300 years old – ask Paris if she got any girl-on-girl action in the joint. They have the whole hour together and he’s going to run out of innocent questions soon after “Did you enjoy jail?”

If you want to enhance your viewing pleasure, just imagine that Larry is furiously pleasuring himself under the desk as he interviews Paris. It will make the questions sound naughtier:

“So….Did you take showers with the other women?”

I kid, but I have to confess I like Paris. I’ve never heard a report of her being mean. She works when she doesn’t need to. She has a sense of humor. And she knows how to enjoy herself. That’s more than most people have to offer the world. And we’ve all done our share of boneheaded things. If you think about it objectively, her career depends on being fascinating to millions of people. She probably does that better than whatever-the-hell you’re doing and calling a career. I’m glad she’s out of jail so she can go back to the important work of entertaining me.

Champagne Moments

I remember the day I got a call from United Media telling me they wanted to offer me a contract to be a syndicated cartoonist. Yay!

But hold the champagne, I thought. The contract was for what they call a “development deal.” That means you work together for six months, and at the end they decide whether or not to sell your comic to newspapers. About four months into my development deal, United Media informed me they planned to launch Dilbert. Yay!

But hold the champagne. There’s no guarantee that enough newspapers will buy the comic to make it successful. As it turned out, only a few dozen smaller papers picked up Dilbert. You need sales in major markets to really get things rolling. One day, after a few years of limping along toward oblivion, the Boston Globe decided to run Dilbert. Yay!

But hold the champagne. That doesn’t mean the readers of the Boston Globe will like the comic. It got off to a rocky start, but eventually it found an audience and stayed. Yay!

But hold the champagne. One major newspaper isn’t enough. I needed lots more. The new newspaper clients trickled in at nearly the same rate as existing clients cancelled. It was five steps forward and four steps back. My editor at United Media suggested that maybe a publisher would be interested in a Dilbert book, and if successful, perhaps that could get newspapers more interested. Andrews McMeel Publishing agreed to publish my business-themed book, “Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies.” Yay!

But hold the champagne. It takes a long time to write a book and get it published. About 18 months later, the book hit the market. It was a modest success, but didn’t set the world on fire. The book helped newspaper sales a little, and the publisher asked for another book. Yay!

The second book didn’t do as well as the first, although it made money. But at least new sales to newspapers were exceeding cancellations by a better margin. Yay!

And so it went, in ant-sized steps forward. Every pat on the back came with a kick in the nuts. I worked for ten years without a day off. During one particularly busy year, I held a full-time job at the phone company, wrote and drew Dilbert, and wrote a book called “The Dilbert Principle.” I didn’t sleep much that year. It was my first hard cover book. Yay!

The Dilbert Principle found the bottom of the best seller list fairly quickly. Each week it climbed until it hit a wall at #2. Dennis Rodman’s tell-all book held the top spot and refused to let go. You would think that having the #2 best selling non-fiction book would be a good reason to crack open the champagne. But I waited. I hoped. And each week I got the call from my publisher, “You’re number two again.” I was happy about my book’s success, of course, but something was missing.

Finally, I got the call. “You’re number one.” I can’t describe what that felt like. If you’re thinking it feels a lot like being number two, only slightly better, you missed it by a light year. I was home alone when I got the news, and I cried for about two hours. Life changed. Newspapers started snapping up Dilbert. Someone released the media hounds. Dilbert was showing up on the major magazine covers. I was booked on the morning shows. It was several years before I could come up for air.

I still haven’t popped the champagne. I just raise the bar for what would be the right moment, and tell myself how tasty it will be if I ever accomplish something special in my work. Apparently the thing inside me that makes me work so hard is the same thing that keeps me unsatisfied. It’s a package deal. The best you can hope for is a family that understands.

Creative Question

A few years ago I was invited down to DreamWorks to see if there was any potential for collaborating on something non-Dilbert. Nothing ever came of that meeting, but in the process I learned something fascinating that I’ve been puzzling about ever since. Maybe you can help me figure out something.

The problem with creating a G-rated CGI blockbuster, like Shrek, or Cars, is that all the obvious categories have been taken. Kids are interested in only a few things in their movies:

1. Other kids
2. Creatures of any kind
3. Princesses
4. Magic and super powers

Shrek III, for example, has all of those elements. It’s no surprise it’s a huge hit. So here’s your creative question for the day: What subject and setting hasn’t yet been done as a kid-oriented CGI movie?

Here are some that HAVE been done:

Bugs
Monsters
Super heroes
Cars
African animals
Suburban animals
Robots
Toys
Fairy Tale creatures
Fish
Dinosaurs
Ghosts

Pixar has a new movie coming out about a rat that works in a kitchen. I’m sure it’s a fine film and will do well, as all other Pixar movies have. But honestly, my first reaction on seeing the rat in the kitchen trailer was “they ran out of creatures.” It’s no one’s fault. There are only so many types of creatures in the universe.

I’ll get the ball rolling with a few types of creatures that haven’t been in recent kid-oriented CGI blockbusters as far as I know:

Aliens
Birds
Angels

Now it’s your turn. What creatures are left for the next movie?

[Update: Okay, okay. Penguins and Chicken Little and Valiant were birds. See how hard it is to come up with something new?]

Good Stories

It has come to my attention that most people have no good stories. If you ask people to tell their best stories, you get blank stares and then something along the lines of “Well, once I lost my wallet.”

This has long puzzled me because I’m full of stories. How could I have so many, and other people have so few?

My brother made the same observation recently. Like me, he has plenty of stories that would make your jaw drop. And he noticed that other people seem to have none. One theory for this apparent discrepancy is that everyone’s life includes plenty of fascinating events but few people organize them in their memories as stories.

I have the same facility for jokes, which are essentially little stories. If I hear a joke once, I own it forever. Usually I’ll remember some seed of the joke – a key word or concept, and I can reproduce the rest of it by understanding how jokes are constructed. Apparently I have a story-oriented brain.

Now I suppose I owe you a story. Fair enough. I’ll pull one from the bag.

Several years ago, I thought of a patentable idea. It might be my best idea ever. The idea combines electronic calendars, such at Outlook, with advertising. So if, for example, you scheduled on your calendar “paint house,” that information would be sent anonymously to a service where house painters could offer themselves. The vendors – painters in this example – wouldn’t know who you are. All they would know is that someone in your zip code plans to have his house painted on a particular date.

Painters would respond through the system with rates and other information about their service. Most important, they would only respond if they were available to do the work on that day. None of their advertisements would appear on your computer until you clicked to view them. It’s the ultimate form of advertisement: It applies to you specifically, and you don’t need to see it unless you want to.

The system would check your calendar for all sorts of key words, from “vacation” to “birthday” to “graduation,” and match them with vendors that might be of interest. And of course you would have to check a box to “publish” your calendar entry. Nothing personal would be sent to the system.

My idea would have been a “process patent,” involving the system that keeps users anonymous and negotiates which vendors get through the filter. I imagined that vendors would pay to be part of the service.

Anyway, I hired a patent lawyer, searched to make sure no one already had the patent, and submitted my idea. I looked forward to selling the patent to Microsoft for a billion dollars.

A few days later, I went to the gym. I was working out on the resistance machines and noticed that some guy kept staring at me. Eventually he introduced himself. He recognized me as “the Dilbert guy” and wondered if I would be interested in doing something to benefit his start-up company. I asked what his company’s future product would be. A few sentences into his description, I interrupted him. “Hold on,” I said. “I have to stop you there because the service you’re describing – and you won’t believe this – I just submitted for a patent.”

“What?” he asked.

Somehow, in the most ridiculous coincidence of my entire life, we were both working on the same idea at the same time, and ended up talking about it at a gym in San Ramon.  When I described my patent application, he confirmed that it was essentially the same idea as his. Sadly for me, his patent application was in the mail a month or so before mine. Talk about your “oh shit” moments.

A few years later, I got my response from the patent office. They found an existing patent, about five years old, that they thought covered my idea. In my view, the existing patent had no resemblance to my idea, and didn’t explain the service that my patent was designed to accommodate. But the existing patent was so broad it could be construed that way. So I didn’t get my patent, and, I assume, neither did the guy I met at the gym.

Life is 10% effort and 90% lucky timing.

Who Will Kill all the Senior Citizens?

Recently I became immortal. It started a few months ago when I was doing some research on the Internet. And by research, I mean I clicked on a link that led me to another, then another, until I was reading something written by a stranger with no credibility. That’s how I learn.

Anyway, the stranger with no credibility was writing about some research done by another stranger with no credibility who was giving some chemicals to mice and dogs who themselves have no credibility. The chemical was resveratrol, an ingredient found in red wine. Apparently you don’t get enough of it by being a wino. You have to get it in concentrated form. I forget the details, but I think the first mouse that got the concentrated resveratrol lived 30% longer and started having an affair with Maria Shriver. One of the dogs with resveratrol got a bone and dug a hole so far into the earth he now lives with a family in Sumatra. And he’s so strong he can lick any balls he wants. No one dares stop him.

The reporter with no credibility asked the researcher who has no credibility if humans should take resveratrol. He said no. He wasn’t worried that it would cause harm, but there are no studies showing it would work in humans, and there was some doubt about delivering the chemical in pill form before it broke down and became ineffective. Then the reporter with no credibility asked the researcher with no credibility if he takes it himself. He said yes.

About thirty seconds later I found a web site that sells that shit and bought several pallets of it. I bought a brand called Longevinex because some other sources with no credibility said they might have solved the problem of keeping it from breaking down in pill form.

I’ve been taking the resveratrol for a few months. I don’t know if it’s working, but I got rid of my car. Now I go places by taking huge hops. And when people ask me questions I can’t answer, I kill them by squeezing their heads. Most important, I’ll add about thirty years to my life. Thirty years should bring me to the point where medical science can cure just about anything. If my arm falls off, I’ll inject some stem cells into the stump and grow a new one before dinner.

By then, there will be a lot of old people like me who refuse to die. They will also refuse to work. The immortal slackers will want to collect their pensions and Social Security until the sun turns into a cold dark thing about the size of a penny. No one foresaw immortality. Pension funds and Social Security are calculated on the hope that you will live an unhealthy lifestyle and take a dirt nap at 76. There simply won’t be enough money for all of the immortals.

So whose job will it be to kill all the senior citizens? Someone has to do it. You can bet that the people with jobs won’t want to hand over their paychecks to the lazy-ass immortals that do nothing but hop around town and talk about the squirrels on their lawn.

That’s why you should buy stock in life insurance companies. Those bastards will save a ton of money by never paying a claim. You can bet they’ll work some exclusion language into the policy that says something like “Does not include immortals that hop around town talking about squirrels until some guy working in a cubicle decides to take matters into his own hands.”

By the way, I remind you not to get your medical or financial advice from cartoonists.

Nostrildumbass Rides Again

In a previous post, I discussed the possibility of NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg running for president. One of the appealing things about him is his lack of blind party loyalty. He’s been a Democrat. He’s been a Republican. Recently he left the Republican Party. People speculate that it’s a first step toward running for president as an independent.

If he runs, here’s my prediction. I think you’ll see a web-oriented campaign, the likes of which you’ve never seen. I think it will redefine the campaign process. In particular, I predict his web site will do what no political web site has done before: Show both sides of the issues.

Politicians are advocates. They minimize the other side of the argument and exaggerate the wisdom of their own side. This is a fancy way of saying they are liars. That’s how politics works. The best liar wins. As long as our choices are limited to liars, we’ll keep electing them and wondering what went wrong.

Bloomberg strikes me as 80% businessman and 20% politician. A good businessman knows how to bring the opinions of his “customers” into the process. I don’t think he’ll minimize any side of an argument. As a businessman, he’ll highlight the pros and cons (via the website) and then tell you why he picked the side he picked. It will be rational and fact-based government.

Bloomberg could be the first presidential candidate immune from the idiocy of the “flip-flop” accusation. A normal brain is supposed to change opinions if the information or the situation changes. The first candidate to make that case to the voters will seem to be the only sane person running.

I don’t have enough faith in the voters to believe an independent can get elected president. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he finished a strong second to the tall guy with the good hair (Romney).

How to Make a Comic Strip

Here's a visual tour of my comic-making process. If you are not already a syndicated cartoonist, just copy these steps.

Please excuse the random formatting of this post. I don't have time to tweak the HTML.

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

This is me at 4:59 AM, just before my BlackBerry alarm goes off.

5:02 AM, I put on some clothes and head downstairs to eat a banana.

Mmmm...good banana.

Put the flip-flops on and begin my commute.

Usually it's dark when I go to work. And I'm not smiling so much. Clearly these photos are staged.

47 seconds later (I timed it), I reach my office. I wave to the guy delivering newspapers. At that time of day, it's just him and me.

Upstairs to the office.

I head to the office fridge for the first of many Diet Cokes. My office cat, Sarah, hears the refrigerator open from the next room and will be waiting for me in her designated spot.

Sarah demands quality time on the rug or she literally won't let me work. She'll scream and start ripping my stuff to shreds unless she gets her quota of petting. This part of my routine has not varied in 17 years.

I take Sarah with me to get additional petting while I check blog comments and e-mails. She looks uncomfortable but she's actually totally relaxed. It's her favorite petting position.

After I write my blog post, I start the comic-making phase. In step one, I look at a Word document where I saved a bunch of suggestions from readers. I peruse the suggestions to see what inspires me.

Once I have a general idea, I use Photoshop to call up a blank comic format, 600 dpi. I draw directly on the computer screen using a stylus. The monitor is a Wacom 21UX. This is the equpment I've used for the past two years or so. Before that, it was all on paper.

I draw the first panel (in rough form) and type in the words using a font I created of my own handwriting.

When you draw on the computer at a "natural" size, the limit of the technology is that your lines will be jagged. That's fine for the rough draft. (If this were paper, the rough version would be in pencil.)

To finish the art in clean form, I change the rough lines to a light gray, then adjust the viewing size to 200% and "ink" over the rough art. I get a smooth line when I work at that size.

In Photoshop lingo, the rough draft is a "layer." To turn that layer into a light gray, I adjust its opacity. The layers are the digital equivalent of tracing paper. You can see the layer below, but your drawing only touches your current layer.

This is the size I use for the final clean lines. Any imperfections disappear when the image is shrunk to publishing size.

Sunday strips are a somewhat different process because of the color. It starts the same, with a black line art version. Then I copy the file and create a second version with color. The color version is then stripped of its black. That leaves me with two files. One is only black lines, the other is all the colors except black. Both files go to the printer, who combines them during the printing process. I assume this kludgy process has something to do with the legacy equipment used by the newspapers. I just prep the file the way I'm instructed by United Media.

This is where I sit for most of my work day. There's a huge amount of paperwork with this job. My desk is normally covered with contracts, tax stuff, accounting things, and  various projects.

Here's the view from my chair. I have the TV on when I do the mindless step of adding the final art. While working, I usually watch recordings of The Daily Show, tennis, Real Time, or Battlestar Galactica.

I keep my original art table in a corner for historical and sentimental reasons. I refinished that little table in 1988. I'm not what you would call a "craftsman," so it's poorly done. My original chair, also shown, was created when I was a teenager, using parts from two separate chairs. Originally it had legs. I attached it to the base of an old office chair and my mother gave it some upholstery. It is also poorly constructed. I love it.

Here are the art supplies I used before moving completely to the computer. That's a daily strip, so you can see its size as an original. About half of all Dilbert strips were drawn with the mechanical pencil shown. The green thing on the art is what I used to keep the lettering on a straight line. The pen was for the final art.

If you plan to become a syndicated cartoonist, here is a summary of the equipment you will need:

1. Banana

2. Diet Coke

3. Cat

4. Computer with Wacom 21UX monitor

Good luck.

Fear of Fish

Did you hear about the gigantic flying fish in Florida? Huge sturgeons, up to 200 lbs, are leaping out of the water and attacking people in boats while making it look like accidents.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/17/wfish117.xml

It’s never a good idea for me to see this sort of story because I’m a worrier. Every time I see a plane pass overhead, I’m sure it’s going to double back and strafe me. And I assume anyone wearing baggy pants is planning to punch me. You might think this sort of thinking is silly, but you won’t be laughing so hard when you get punched and strafed.

Now I have to worry about huge, armor-plated fish jumping out of the water and killing me. I realize those sturgeons are in Florida, and I’m in California. But they are obviously determined. And the article doesn’t say how far they can jump. You’re probably thinking that common sense should tell me I’m safe. That’s what the guy in Florida was thinking right before a flying sturgeon broke his spine. Let’s agree that sturgeons are unpredictable.

Recently I went out on a friend’s boat. The only thing I wanted to know was my estimated survival time when I fell in the bay. Would it be faster or slower than Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic? Now I have to worry that some frickin’ fish thinks he’s a cruise missile. The next time I go on the bay, I’ll be wearing full body armor. I sure hope it floats.

I’m not a conspiracy nut, but you have to wonder if the sturgeons are acting alone. Do they have a sturgeon general orchestrating these attacks? It’s too coincidental that no sturgeons attack humans for thousands of years and suddenly we need an air traffic controller to track all their flights.

Bin Laden likes to plan impressive attacks that top whatever he did last. But how do you top jets flying into skyscrapers? Answer: flying suicide fish. I think he’s training the sturgeons in the mountain streams of Waziristan. He’s probably showing them propaganda films about Americans eating sturgeon babies (we call it caviar), and promising the fish 72 virgin sturgeons in the afterlife. You might think no sturgeon could be that gullible, but fish are not much smarter than people.

Muslims believe that Mohammed went to heaven on a flying horse. Personally, I find that hard to believe. But if I were a flying sturgeon, I’d think a flying horse isn’t much of a stretch. My point is that you should stay away from water or there’s a good chance a fish will kill you.

My Best Story

My best story is someone else’s best story too. Actually, his might be better.

It was about ten years ago. My first hardcover book, The Dilbert Principle, had just hit number one on the New York Times best seller list. I was already getting a lot of media attention because of Dilbert. That was nothing compared to the attention I got when my book hit the top of the charts. I sometimes did five interviews a day.

Luckily, cartoonists are invisible in public. No matter how many times my face got published, or I did TV interviews, I was almost never recognized in public. I counted on that.

So there I was, flying from California to Florida, to give a paid speech. The client paid for a first class ticket. I was in an aisle seat, reading a magazine. The fellow on my left pulls out a book to read: The Dilbert Principle. The back cover features a photo of me holding a huge pencil. “Uh oh,” I think. If this guy makes the connection, it’s going to be a long flight.

The guy starts reading. He laughs. Phew. I’m glad he likes the book. He laughs some more. He’s really getting into it now. I look to my right. The fellow directly across the aisle pulls out a book to read: The Dilbert Principle. Now I have them on both sides, and the plane hasn’t crossed Arizona yet. Damn. There’s no way one of them won’t recognize me from the book jacket.

Now the guy on my left is convulsing. He’s wiping tears from his eyes. He’s having the time of his life. But he realizes his laughter is disturbing me. So he turns to me and says, “I’m sorry. It’s this book. Have you read it?”

I’m staring at my own book, sitting next to a fellow who might be my biggest fan ever, and I don’t want to spend the next five hours talking about “where I get my ideas.” So I smile and say, “Yes. I’ve read it a few times.” Well, it was true.

The man goes back to reading. Now he’s totally losing control. He’s embarrassed at his laughing and tries to make conversation so he doesn’t feel so foolish. He turns to me again and says, “My boss bought fifteen copies of this book: one for everyone in the department.” That was my tipping point.

As much as I wanted to fly to Florida in peace, I know a good story when I see one. And this guy was on the edge of a doozy. I couldn’t let it pass without violating some cosmic law of storytelling. I asked the man a question that puzzled him, “Would you mind giving your boss a note from me?”

It was an odd request from a stranger on a plane. But what could he say? “Um, okay,” he answered, evidently confused. I took out a piece of note paper and drew Dogbert. Beneath it I wrote “Thanks for buying my book for your department,” and I signed it. I handed the note to the fellow on my left.

He looked at the note.

He looked at me.

He looked at the note again.

He looked at me.

He turned over the book, remembering it had a photo on the back.

He looked at my photo.

He looked at me.

He looked at the note.

He looked at me.

Words can’t describe the look on his face as the coincidence sunk in. He asked me if it was true and I confessed that it was. Somehow the guy to my right overheard. We talked, naturally, and they were both nice guys. I didn’t get much reading done on that flight. That was okay. You only get one chance to have your best story ever. I think it was worth it.

Casting Dilbert

Suppose there was a Dilbert movie with live actors, not animation. Who would you
cast for the main characters?

I would pick Stephen Colbert for Dilbert. He has the perfect likeable nerd vibe.

If I wanted to go younger, I'd want Adam Brody, the actor from The OC.

In your picks, consider age. Danny Devito would have been the perfect boss
character years ago. but not now.

Go

The Day You Became A Better Writer

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

Minutia

One of the questions I get most often is "What is your day like?" There is no good answer to that question because it's always so different. Today I will log my work day, almost as it happens:

5:00 am, PST

Wake to BlackBerry alarm

Eat a banana

Check e-mail on BlackBerry. Schedule a conference call.

Walk to office, 47 seconds down the street, still wearing shorts I slept in

Take garbage cans out to street for pickup

Get Diet Coke from fridge. Take first swig.

Pet office cat Sarah

Approve blog comments

5:20 AM

Check Internet for headlines, just to see if any planes flew into any buildings last night

Begin this blog (normally takes 90 minutes to complete)

Cat is yelling at me for more attention. This will continue off and on all day

Open Photoshop. Call up blank comic strip form. Give it a date of 8/17, when it will run.

Open the comic already drawn for 8/16 to see if today I will draw a continuation of that thread or start a new one. I decide to start a new one.

Open Word file where I keep ideas sent to me via e-mail. Look for something interesting.

Notice a sticky note on my desk to check a web site for a potential business deal. I check it. I send an e-mail to United Media with my comments.

5:30 AM

Back to looking at the submitted ideas. Time to make a comic.

5:45 AM

I decide on an idea. It involves the conflicting goals of reducing overtime and also doing more work. This will involve Carol the secretary (the only hourly employee in the strip) and the pointy-haired boss. I start to draw them. I'll figure out what they say later.

[I draw directly to the computer using a Wacom 21SX computer screen that allows me to draw on it as if it were paper, using a stylus.]

5:52 AM

First panel drawn. Boss and Carol are in conference room. I need to write the boss's line. He will set the scene.

Too hungry to think. Grab a protein bar and another Diet Coke.

Approve blog comments while eating protein bar (Clif Builder's, 20g protein). I have to approve the first comments quickly so I don't get a thousand comments saying "first comment!"

Back to working on the comic.

Cat is literally screaming at me for attention and sitting on some Japanese tax forms I have on the floor to remind me to mail them. I decide to drug her with catnip.

It's working. Hmm, cat on drugs. Maybe my comic can use that today. The boss might hire a beaver on speed to help Carol get more work done in fewer hours.

Can't say "speed" in the comic. I use Google to find out what's in Sudafed. That stuff gets me cranking. It's pseudoephedrine, I learn. Can I say that in a comic?

6:10 AM

I decide to go with "beaver on decongestants."

6:18 AM

I draw the second panel, including the nervous-looking beaver. I love the beaver. I hate the word "decongestants." Readers won't make the connection to speed quickly enough. Caffeine is too obvious. Red Bull is a product, so I avoid those. Energy drink is too generic sounding.

6:22 AM

I check blog comments to see if people think this idea sucks. I approve some more comments. It helps to take my mind off the comic dialog every few minutes so when I look at it again I see it fresh. Back to the comic...

6:25 AM

I draw a coffee cup in the nervous beaver's paw. I write "coffee swilling beaver." I Google "swilling" to see if a better word comes up. I get "guzzling." Not sure that's an improvement. I'll draw the third panel and get back to it...

6:45 AM

Distracted by incoming e-mail about my restaurant business. I answer it. Back to the comic.

I rewrite the first panel so now it's about the boss noticing he is giving Carol way too much work. So he hires a coffee swilling beaver to show her how to work faster.

6:50 AM

The third panel is drawn. Carol is in her low-walled cube, the beaver behind her. One of them needs to say something. Thinking....

Using my 2-of-6 rule for humor,  I already have three elements. It's recognizable (being overworked and not supported by your boss) and it's bizarre (a coffee swilling beaver). And the beaver is cute. Something naughty or cruel or clever would round it out nicely.

Maybe the beaver says, "You can save a lot of time by not wearing pants." No...

7:00 AM

I decide to go with this for my third panel (I can't show you the whole comic because newspaper clients have a contractual first right)

It's a first draft. Some time in the future I will clean up the art and finish it. I do my rough work in the morning when my brain works best.

7:10 AM

Time to start my second comic.

First I check my blog hit count and stats to see if anyone is reading this entry. 12,000 hits so far today. And the stats tell me that a lot of hits are coming from reddit.com. That means someone submitted it to their list of interesting web sites to check. That drives a lot of traffic.

Back to the comic. Do I do another day with the beaver or go another direction? Thinking....

Approved some more blog comments. Noticed a few people saying today's Dilbert is extra funny. Checked dilbert.com to see which one that was. I'm always surprised at which ones capture people's amusement.

Enough stalling. Beaver or no beaver? Back to the comic...thinking...

Bathroom break

Beaver dialog forms in my head on way back to desk. Not sure where it came from.

7:30 AM

Interrupted by incoming e-mail from United Media confirming conference call for 10:30 AM to talk about the Dilbert movie negotiations.

Back to the comic...

I label the first panel "Coffee Swilling Beaver" to show it's a continuation strip.

I draw Dilbert at his desk. It doesn't matter who the beaver will be talking to, and people like to see Dilbert more often than the other characters.

First line from beaver, "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it..."

7:40 AM

Second panel, beaver says, "I'd still chew the bejeezus out of it because I have no impulse control." The word "bejeezus" is funny, but will give the foreign translators an ulcer. I try not to do that too often.

I approve some blog comments while thinking what angle to draw the beaver and Dilbert in the second frame.

8:15 AM

I finished the third panel. Here it is in rough form.

Some people will complain that it's not "officey" enough and too random with a talking beaver. Sometimes it's good to break from the usual, as long as I don't do it for too many strips in a row.

8:20 AM

Reviewed a license proposal that arrived by fax, for a Dilbert themed Soduko book. I approve it without knowing the details. United Media already vetted it and we do a lot of work with this publisher. If they think someone will buy it, that's fine with me.

Faxed back my approval.

E-mail my restaurant partner to schedule a meeting for later today.

Get another Diet Coke

Take 1000 mg of magnesium supplement. (I read on some unreliable web site that people don't get enough. The day I took my first magnesium supplements it solved 10 years of continuous sore knee problems. Might be a coincidence, but magnesium is suggested to reduce swelling.  Don't take as much as I do. That's way over the recommended dose. Don't get medical advice from cartoonists.)

Answered e-mail from my real estate broker regarding some property I'm trying to sell.

Approved more blog comment. Noticed lots of people asking about the movie. Here's the scoop...

We agreed on a movie deal with Warner Brothers over a year ago. Since then we have been trying to penetrate the bureaucracy at the studio to finalize the contract details. In an ironic Dilbert twist, the lawyers at Warner who are authorized to speak with us are apparently not willing or able to speak with anyone in their own company who can make the kind of decisions needed to finalize the contract. Our current projected timeline for penetrating their bureaucracy is infinity. I don't expect the deal to be completed.

9:15 AM

Answered an e-mail about my book, God's Debris, and some interest in a movie deal for it. Movie deals are always long shots, but worth looking into.

Answered e-mail about designing a new Dilbert logo. We need a catch phrase. I suggested one.

Pet cat

Took Longvinex capsule, a wine extract that will make me nearly immortal if it works. Google it. I know it's unproven. But the expected value calculation makes it attractive if you can afford it. Is it a 1% chance of living for another 50 years and feeling great the whole time? Who knows? Worth a shot.

Took a work break

10:00 AM

Working on writing jokes for my restaurant menu. Each item includes a witticism about the dish. We're adding some items.

Interrupted by more e-mail about God's Debris and movie or mini series options

10:30 AM

Phone call with president of United Media about Dilbert movie contract situation.

Still writing jokes for the menu. Can't think of anything for rib eye steak.

Nailed the rib eye joke. Sent off the menu.

Heading back to the house for a shower. Then lunch.

Then meeting at the restaurant.

Tennis at 2 pm if it gets confirmed. My opponent is eleven. I figure I have one more year before he kicks my ass. (His dad is a pro.)

Signing off until later...

3:30 PM

Home from tennis. Had a snack and another Diet Coke.

Shower

Waiting to go next door for a barbecue

5:15 PM

I'll end here, telling you in advance I'll be having a good time with fun neighbors and friends and getting to bed around 11 PM.

Thanks for reading this far.

The End

Why Cartoonists Can’t Be Archaeologists

In the news, archaeologists with nothing better to do have been digging up graves of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Europe. They say there’s evidence that human sacrifice was common back then. But I looked at the picture they provided and all I saw was evidence that the skeleton on the left was giving the skeleton in the middle a “happy ending.”

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/study-points-to-human-sacrifice-in/20070611165609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Is it my imagination, or is the guy in the middle enjoying having his bone touched? I didn’t realize a skeleton could look so happy. Anyway, the guy on the left, who I call Bruce, is the one I have the most questions about. Was he always gay, or did he just figure there was no harm in experimenting since he was going to be ritually slain in half a minute anyway.

Bruce: Hey, Larry. Can I ask you something?

Larry: Yes, Bruce?

Bruce: Do you mind if I grab your junk right before they kill us?

Larry: Whatever.

The skeleton on the right appears to be a woman who died from some sort of camel toe problem. But that’s another story. I apologize for making you go back and look at that same picture three times. I think you’ll agree it was worth it.

This is another example of why cartoonists are not allowed to practice archaeology. We’re too easily tempted to arrange Upper Paleolithic skeletons in sexual poses and claim we found them that way. Some might call that sort of thing desecration. To them I say, “Too soon?” Because unlike those skeletons, that joke never gets old.

It’s a bit unnerving to know that 27,000 years after I die, some goober can dig me up and start guessing what my life was like. That’s why I want to be buried with a kangaroo, a piano, and a bottle of mustard. I don’t want it to be too easy.

And come to think of it, throw Bruce’s bones in there with me too. He seems like fun.

How I Solved the Energy Problem

As regular readers of this blog know all too well, I like to solve world problems via a process I call “sitting and thinking about stuff.” Today I will describe my solution to the energy problem.

I think everyone is looking in the wrong place for additional energy. We’re scratching around in the ground for stuff we can burn, redesigning cars, putting solar cells on the roof. The real solution is in my left front pocket.

It’s my phone.

Imagine a few years in the future, when almost every phone has GPS, high speed internet, and a few other goodies. Hold that thought.

Now look out your window and see how many cars have exactly one passenger. It’s most of them. If you can get two or three people in a car, the world is a happier place, energy-wise, pollution-wise, and traffic-wise. The problem is that ride sharing is inconvenient. Hold that thought too.

Now imagine a future where a large company, say Google, sets up a service that lets you find a ride to share in less than a minute, from anywhere to anywhere. You walk out your front door, take out your phone, fire up Google Maps, point to your destination on the map, and wait for the service to negotiate a ride for you.

With GPS, the system knows where you are. Drivers who are already on your road, and have pre-registered their final destination, get an alert on their phones saying someone on the route needs a ride. The first person who responds to the phone alert by pressing a few keys, and who passes a filter (described later) gets the assignment. At that point, both the driver and the intended rider can track each other’s location by GPS on their phone’s screens. And they can call to speak with each other immediately without needing each other’s phone numbers. The system would connect their calls without showing caller ID, for privacy reasons, as often as they need. That way they can negotiate the fine details, such as “I’m the guy in the green sweater standing by the oak tree.”

Drivers would get credits for all rides provided, based on distance, which they can redeem by getting free rides themselves. Or they can resell their credits to others in some sort of open Internet market. Both the driver and the rider have a financial incentive. And like the peer pressure of recycling, it could soon become socially unacceptable to do much driving alone.

All users of the system would have to pass some basic screening, such as credit worthiness, driving record, and criminal record. Beyond that, every rider could specify what sorts of people they would accept rides from, and vice versa for the driver. An ex-marine might accept a ride from anyone. Grandma might only accept rides from married females in newer cars. Over time, drivers earn a ranking from their passengers, so you can choose to accept only four-star drivers if you prefer. Before you get in a car, you can match the driver’s photo on your phone to his face, and the license plate too, to make sure everything is legit.

Your phone could include an emergency panic button, in case a serial killer gets through the filter. Your phone’s location would be immediately available to both law enforcement and other registered drivers on your road. Perhaps your phone would require a password indicating you are safely at your destination in the estimated time. Any other password would trigger a silent alarm while appearing to the kidnapper to be the “all okay” password.

Imagine walking out of Home Depot with a cart full of building materials, firing up your phone, and finding someone with a truck who is heading toward your neighborhood. It beats trying to fit lumber in your Prius.

And if you plan to have a few drinks, there’s no longer any incentive to drive. Part of the reason that people drive while drunk is that getting a cab takes forever in some places and costs more than you want it to.

In this vision of the future, most people still have cars. They just use them less. And you probably wouldn’t allow minors to be in the system, except perhaps as part of a parent-approved circle of known friends and neighbors.

You can find plenty of problems with this system if you try. But you can also imagine that the types of problems you foresee could be solved with a bit more cleverness than I described here.

Okay, to recap: My idea will solve the energy crisis, reduce global warming, put a cap on terrorism, reduce pollution, eliminate traffic congestion, and virtually eliminate drunk driving.

But I’m sure you did something useful today too. Good for you.

[Update: Would the people who are saying "it won't work" please talk to the people saying "it's already being done." Work it out and get back to me. I want to know if I am a crackpot or an idea stealer.]

F.U.T.B.

I’ll never forget the day: June 1st, 2007. I was playing tennis with my friend Peter, at ClubSport in Pleasanton. I had just opened a new can of Dunlop balls. We were hitting ground strokes to warm up. I bent down to pick up one of the balls. And there it was. . . a fucked up tennis ball.

I have been playing tennis since I was eleven. I have seen a lot of tennis balls. But I have never seen this.  It’s the one on the right.

My first reaction was “This is a lucky omen.” Sure enough, I won. I have never lost a set using my lucky fucked up tennis ball. I retired it undefeated.

My second thought was “I wonder if this is worth anything.” There’s no point in having something special if you can’t sell it to a stranger. But how do you put a value on something like this? I became curious, and nothing good can come from that.

If this were a stamp, or a dollar bill, I imagine it would be worth a lot, and people would be eager to own it. I’m not so sure there’s a ready market for fucked up tennis balls. Maybe it needs a little extra. For example, I could autograph one of the other balls, and that would add another dollar to the value. I could take the third ball, rub it against my own balls, and include a signed statement to that effect, just to increase its conversational value. I’ll even throw in the container for free. It’s good for storing things, such as tennis balls.

You can almost imagine the conversational value once you have the three balls mounted on some sort of display rack in your living room:

You: Have you seen my special tennis balls?

Friend: What’s so special about tennis balls?

You: Well, for one thing, look at the label on this one on the right.

Friend: Wow. That’s fucked up.

You: The original owner of these balls never lost a set. They are undefeated.

Friend: They must be lucky or something.

You: The original owner was the guy who does that Dilbert comic strip. He signed this other ball, see?

Friend: Well, I’ll be darned.

You: This third ball is the most special of all.

Friend: How so?

You: The Dilbert guy rubbed his own balls on it.

Friend: You magnificent bastard.

You: That’s nothing. I got the container for free. I keep my coins in it.

Friend: I. . . I’m speechless.

You: By the way, your wife had her hand on my leg all through dinner.

As you can see from that hypothetical conversation, you would be able to win almost any conversation involving these tennis balls.

I could put these tennis balls on eBay, but first let’s see what value you, my blog-reading savants, can collectively come up with for them. What is an honest price that you, or someone you have talked to personally about them, would pay?

I assume the answer for most people is “zero.” But maybe there’s a collector out there who will surprise us.

For the Love of Soap

I remember when my bar of soap in the shower was fresh and large and satisfying. I like the way a new bar of soap feels in my hand, all heavy and bursting with potential. It makes you want to shout to the world, “I HAVE PLENTY OF SOAP!” When soap is abundant, I’ll wash parts of my body that aren’t even dirty, just because I can.

Ah, those were the days.

About a week ago, that bar of soap had shrunken to the size of a small dog’s ear. It was still functional, but no longer the joy it had been. I can afford to replace soap before it surrenders its last bubble, but that would be wasteful. So I snugged the dog ear into the palm of my hand and lathered up. The tiny soap got me clean, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

Ah, those were the days.

More recently, I was in the shower, all wetted down, and reached for what I figured would be, by then, a Chiclet-sized bar of soap, only to find no soap at all. I wiped the fog off the glass shower wall and squinted to the bathtub area. There it was. My wife had moved it. Damn her love of baths! Now I had a tough decision.

1. Abort shower, dry off, fetch Chiclet, fetch dry towel, restart the process.
2. Walk wet across the bathroom wet, fetch Chiclet. Slip on the wet floor and die.
3. Use shampoo on my entire body and tell myself it’s “the same as soap”

I shampooed my body. It’s the same as soap, right?

Ah, those were the days.

I soon learned that my wife had moved the Chiclet because we had no other bars of soap in the house. I probably should have made myself a note right then and there to add it to the shopping list. Soon, the soap was the size of a Tic Tac. Then a grain of rice. Then. . . I dropped it.

I don’t know if you have ever tried to pick up a tiny piece of soap after it hits the shower floor. It’s difficult, even if you aren’t in prison. It suctions itself to the tile floor and starts to melt almost immediately. I tried to pry up some of its little soap body, but I was too late. My soap had failed me, or perhaps I had failed it. In the end, I was wet, and dirty, and still a soap waster.

If you have not tried to wash your entire body with the soap you have under one fingernail, it’s harder than you think. Once again, I reached for the shampoo. That was empty too. I considered the other sources of soap in the house. There was the dishwasher soap, but that seemed like it might hurt for some reason that wasn’t entirely clear to me.

We had liquid hand soap at all the sinks, but I couldn’t see myself toweling off and bringing a nice soap dispenser in the shower. And given my soap-dropping propensities, the dispenser would either break my foot or burst into sharp pieces and unleash a Walt Disneyesque tsunami of bubbles that would fill the shower and eventually the entire house.

I ended up taking a water-only shower, but only because I didn’t think of the toothpaste until I wrote this.

No Sunday Post Today

There will be no post for this Sunday. TypePad hiccuped and was hiding the new posts after the old ones for the past few days. That has been resolved and I will resume blogging Monday morning.

The "Great Debate" post about what worldview is most dangerous got deleted by me in the process of trying to fix the problem last week. All the comments get lost when a post is deleted, so I didn't bother reposting it because the value was in the comments.

Best Entrepreneur Ever

I was reading a story about Iraqi insurgents, and how they often wear ski masks to avoid identification. This made me wonder, who was the genius entrepreneur who decided to sell ski masks in the desert? Man, talk about your “outside the box” thinking. Be honest, how many of you, at the start of the Iraq war, thought “They’re going to need a lot of ski gear”?

Any time there’s some huge disaster, my first thought is “How could I make a fortune off of this?” It’s more of a thought-hobby than a financial strategy. I just like thinking about it.

[At this point, about 30% of my readers are considering leaving a comment about buying land 100 miles inland and waiting for global warming to turn it into beachfront property. I’m saying it first so you don’t have to.]

I’d love to see a web site that tells you what companies to invest in depending on what events you believe will happen in the future. The web site would provide an ever-growing list of potential future happenings matched with companies that would prosper in those events. I’d enjoy watching the news a lot more if I had money riding on every sort of outcome.

For example, I’d like to know which companies will prosper when Mitt Romney becomes president. We usually elect the tall guy with the best hair regardless of his experience or policies. No one ever went broke underestimating the thoughtfulness of the American public. I’d like to put some money on that.

I also think the Iraqi civil war will be resolved relatively quickly once America pulls its forces back to protected bases. I make this prediction because the common wisdom is exactly the opposite. When was the last time the majority of Americans predicted world events correctly?

If you ask me whether the stock price of some particular company will increase faster than the S&P 500, my answer is always “Uh. . . beats the shit out of me.” But if you ask me whether my fellow Americans will make uninformed and irrational decisions, I’m willing to put some money behind that.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I turned 50. It’s an odd thing. I sure don’t feel 50. I’m in perfect health. Apparently that mumbo jumbo about good diet and exercise actually works.

Today the radio and newspapers will report my age as if it is news. Throughout the weekend, strangers will see me from a distance, mouth “happy birthday” and smile. I’ll enjoy it every time.

When I was 20, I wondered what it would be like to be 50. None of my guesses were close. I assumed that “aging” was automatically bad, so I didn’t look forward to it. No one told me that having more friends and fewer zits would feel like a good tradeoff. And if you told me I could have my twenty-year old body again, but I had to take my twenty-year old brain with it, I’d pass.

My cat Sarah is sitting near my feet, as she has every day for the past eighteen years of my cartooning career. She spends the first ten minutes of my day yelling at me to pet her before I do anything productive. I hate the distraction, but not as much as I love it. Today she’ll get a little extra petting.

I love my wife. I love my family. I love my job. I love my life. And I love you too, even when you’re grumpy. And I love being 50.

Here’s what I want you to do for my birthday. Send someone an e-mail and tell them how much you appreciate them, or love them. Do it right now. Then tell me about it in the comments. That’s what I want. It’s my birthday so you have to do it.

Go.

Frequently Disappointed By Mice

Mice keep yanking my chain. Today was a perfect example. The headline said scientists produced mouse stem cells from mouse skin cells. This could be a huge breakthrough, both ethically and medically. The only problem is that the method used on the mice would cause cancer in humans. Fuck you, mice. Give me something I can use!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19067616/

My disappointment could have been worse. It’s not clear I’ll ever need that particular medical breakthrough anyway. The stories that really chafe my nuggets are the ones that sound like this:

“Researchers announced a breakthrough in gene therapy. This new technique gave mice an IQ of 700, grew hair in bald patches, doubled the size of their peckers, and made them immortal. The mice also showed signs of telekinesis, unlimited male orgasms, and x-ray vision. In lab tests, the mice beat leopards in paw-to-paw combat.”

This makes me all excited because I think “I could use a few of those things.” Then I read the rest of the story and it says something like “The researchers cautioned that this sort of gene therapy in humans would make their eyes turn into vaginas.”

It’s bad enough that I live in a country that ranks 37th in health care. The thing that really pisses me off is that I have worse health care than mice. If I were a mouse, I would start smoking, drinking, overeating and having unsafe sex, because those tiny bastards can be cured of anything with a goddamned aspirin and a shot of their own skin cells.

It makes me wonder if mice are easily cured because of the placebo effect. Mice don’t know anything about science, so they think whatever the scientist is doing must be helping. For example, if a lab mouse sees the janitor beating off in a test tube, the mouse thinks “Hey, my tumor is shrinking!” And then it does. You can’t underestimate the power of positive mouse thinking.

Just once I would like to see a headline that said, “SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A CURE FOR HUMAN DIABETES,” followed by details that say, “Scientists caution that this treatment in mice would give them inverted erections and make them hump themselves to death.”

Well, I can dream.

How Rational Are Terrorists?

Successful groups, whether they are Al-Qaeda or the Founding Fathers of the United States, tend to start out with brilliant people who have clear objectives. Those brilliant people attract other smart people by the power of their arguments.

But as an organization grows, you rapidly run out of bright people. The average IQ of any organization starts dropping, and before long, the power of identifying with a group overwhelms the power of reason.

Take Republicans and Democrats for example. Most members vote along party lines no matter who the candidate is or what that candidate does while in office. While there are plenty of bright, independent thinkers in both groups, the majority would vote for a sea monkey if it got the party nomination.

Consider religion. I’ve made this point many times, but it is necessary context for this discussion. At most, only one religion can be “right” because religions are mutually exclusive. It can’t be true that a Christian goes to heaven while at the same time he burns in Hell (according to Muslims). It can’t be true that we only have this life, as Jews believe, if it’s true that people reincarnate. There can’t be new prophets such as Joseph Smith if Mohammed was, as Muslims believe, the last prophet. So no matter who is right about the “big picture,” if indeed anyone is right, we can all agree that at least 75% of the world would serve their souls just as well as in their current schemes if they started praying to Sponge Bob Square Pants.

As soon as you tell me “Carl joined a group,” I can tell you Carl is no longer as rational as he used to be. His judgment will start to conform to the group’s judgment, and the group’s judgment will be based on some ever-drifting sense of values that lost its rational connecting tissue long ago.

This gets us to the question of whether changing the foreign policy of the United States (or Israel) would end terrorism. If Al-Qaeda is like every other organization on Earth, it is irrational. That means it is relatively immune to reason, just like Republicans and Democrats and Methodists and Jews. If the U.S. stopped support for Israel and withdrew all troops from the Middle East, would it be good enough for Al-Qaeda? No. America would still support the Saudi government by buying their oil. Private citizens would still send financial support to Israel. Our intelligence services would still share intelligence with Israel. There is no practical way for the U.S. to get off the target list simply by changing its foreign policy.

The government of the United States is the quintessential example of an irrational organization. No matter what your political leanings, you can find mounds of examples where the government was – in your own irrational opinion – being irrational and working against its own best interests. If you think Al-Qaeda can act rationally, you are holding it to a higher standard than the U.S. government.

So what makes us think terrorists are more rational than any other organization? I believe Al-Qaeda is adrift, their ranks filling with an ever-growing influx of irrational bearded guys who like to blow shit up. If you believe they would take the U.S. off the target list because Al-Qaeda achieved 75% of its goals (say we stopped supporting Israel so much and withdrew our military from the region) then you have no understanding of how groups “think.”

I knew a guy who worked privately as “muscle” to get rid of stalkers for women who could afford his services. He was an expert on stalker mentality. His view, based on years of experience, is that you can’t make a stalker give up stalking. The best you can do is encourage him to stalk someone new. His job was to make it so dangerous to stalk his client that the stalker would move on to a new and more accessible victim.

We have the same stalker mentality situation with Al-Qaeda. Our best bet is to divert their focus to more accessible targets, just as the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan shifted their focus to us. Ironically, the civil war in Iraq might have accidentally accomplished through irrational means what good foreign policy could not. Al-Qaeda is using far more resources fighting other Muslims than fighting the U.S.

I don’t buy into the bumper sticker thinking that we’re fighting them over there so they won’t follow us home. But it’s entirely possible that a civil war in Iraq is the best way to divert the stalker, even at the expense of recruiting new terrorists. Over time, Al-Qaeda’s mission will drift to become whatever it is that most of its people are spending most of their time doing. And that could be fighting other Muslims.

Good foreign policy is overrated.

Rational Evil

If you love it when I admit I was wrong, you’ll enjoy this post.

I used to think America needed to change its foreign policy if it had any hope of ending terrorism. That sort of opinion is never better than a reasonable guess about what is most likely. But it seemed to me that even terrorists have specific objectives, and if they achieve those objectives, they stop terrorizing.

My thinking was that the terrorists were asking for things we’d be better off giving them anyway, for our own selfish reasons. For example, Israel is strong enough and wealthy enough to no longer need our support. And it’s unclear that our heavy footprint in the Middle East is guaranteeing us more oil and less terrorism. It seemed like a win-win scenario to give the terrorists what they were asking for, since the only impact on us is saving some money. Or at least it would save me from transferring my wealth to the pockets of U.S. military industries.

Recently I changed my opinion. While I think there was a period in the past when a different foreign policy would have brought us to a different point, we don’t have a time machine. We are where we are. And where we are is totally fucked.

The problem is with the loose cell structure of Al-Qaeda, and the fact it has become a lifestyle for its members. If we remove all the original reasons for Al-Qaeda’s existence, I believe they would find new ones. It is unlikely the members of terror cells would decide to quit and become insurance salesmen.

While the cell structure of Al-Qaeda is an excellent way to wage war, it’s a bad way to stop a war. If all the existing cells around the world made lists of their reasons for being terrorists, and compared those lists, I think they’d look very different except for the parts about hating Israel and the United States. If the leadership of Al-Qaeda told its cells to disarm, half of the cells would just splinter off and keep on terrorizing. It’s permawar.

One of the problems is that there is a complete disconnect between reality and what terrorists believe. They think God gave them specific real estate, that a horse can fly, there are virgins waiting for them in heaven, and Jews orchestrated the 9-11 attacks. There’s no reason to believe that reality intrudes on their decisions. Tweaking reality would be a waste of time.

(To be fair, the same can be said of America’s government. Just replace “flying horse” with “a guy who walks on water,” and “virgins in heaven” with “the rapture.”)

This leads me to Israel. I used to think Israel was making a mistake to occupy disputed land and give their enemies more reasons to attack and fewer reasons to make peace. Again, perhaps if we had a time machine there was a period in history where that was true. But we’re long past that. Now I believe there is sufficient perpetual hatred against Israel that it would be irrational for them to offer any concessions. It makes more sense to grab as much land and water as they can get their hands on. And it makes sense to keep the Palestinians in a permanent state of wretchedness and powerlessness as Israel consolidates its hold on those resources. In five hundred years, they’ll be glad they have more land and water.

I don’t think there’s much chance of Israel getting nuked. Even the craziest Muslims wouldn’t irradiate their own holy lands while standing downwind and hoping for the best.

While I think Israel’s policies are a dark grey form of evil, I support them because at this point they are being entirely rational. It would be hypocritical to deny any other nation the right to pursue their self-interest.

If the Palestinians ever display an ability to offer a credible peace, I’m willing to revise my opinion. If not, the best advice I can give them is to say goodbye to their shit.

Meanwhile I’m going to invest in Halliburton and see if I can get back some of my money.

Golden Happiness Ratio

I have a theory that you can predict how happy people are – and perhaps how successful – by their ability to tolerate imperfection. The Golden Happiness Ratio is about 4/5ths right, also known as “good enough.”

Once you achieve about 80% rightness, any extra effort is rarely worth the effort. People who can’t stop until they get to 100% are usually stressed to the point where they can barely function. And don’t expect them to do much multitasking.

People who are happy with results much below 80% right are usually serial losers. Those are the people who show up for work when it “feels right.” They generally have money problems, which lead to social problems.

I consider myself the master of the 80% rule. Everything I do is shoddy by most people’s standards. For some reason this does not bother me as much as you might think. I have a high tolerance for imperfection. I consider it a key to my success.

For example, it might surprise you to know I’m a better artist than my comic strip indicates – about 20% better. But to reach that level consistently would double my workload and give me little in return. The art in Dilbert is, roughly speaking, “good enough.” And the lack of complexity arguably adds something in the “x-factor” category.

When I started this blog, I announced that I wasn’t going to put any real effort into my grammar, spelling or factual accuracy. For every person bothered by those imperfections, there’s another who appreciates the rawness of it. I could double my effort to get that extra 20% of quality, but it wouldn’t buy me anything.

Today is another perfect example. This blog entry is about 80% of where I think it could be. I could work for another hour to get it up to 85%, but it’s Sunday morning and my family has awakened. They beckon.

I declare this Sunday blog post “good enough.”

Petting

What do you think about when you pet a dog or cat? There are three typical categories:

1. You imagine how it feels for the animal so you can maximize its pleasure.

2. You think about how it feels to you and your hand.

3. You think about whatever you were going to think about anyway.

If you imagine what it’s like to be the animal, you are probably a generous and giving person who gets shit upon by everyone who has your cell phone number.

If you think about how you and your hand feel, you are probably a selfish, egotistical douche bag.

If you think about whatever you were going to think about anyway, you’re either a sociopath or too busy to enjoy life.

Lately I’ve been trying a new cat-petting method. I keep reading about how pets make people healthier. So I try to visualize the health benefits I’m getting from petting the cat. As I pet, I imagine my blood pressure and cholesterol dropping while my white blood cell count is rising. I tell myself this symbiotic relationship is healthy for the cat too. It’s a win-win scenario. Eventually my mind drifts off to whatever topic I plan to write for my blog.

I realize my petting method makes me a selfish, egotistical, sociopath, douche bag. I figure that’s a small price to pay to live long enough to be an old coot and a burden on society.

It’s important to have goals when you pet. Otherwise you’re just rubbing another mammal for no reason.

My Newest Impractical Peace Plan

I’m so jealous of Switzerland. Those neutral bastards found the perfect scam to avoid being attacked. Terrorists and dictators don’t even consider attacking Switzerland because that country is famous for being, well, the country you don’t consider attacking. That’s what I call good homeland defense.

It’s too late for America to try the neutrality scam. And no one in their right mind would believe it if we tried. We need our own scam to avoid being attacked. I think I have an idea.

Obviously we’d have to stop attacking other countries, no matter how tempting it seems at the time. And we’d need to cut back on the “all options are on the table” talk. That sort of thing makes other countries jumpy. Presumably we only do those sorts of things for tortured reasons of self-defense, but a country with a good Switzerland-like concept doesn’t need so much self-defense.

First, some background to explain where my idea comes from. I might have the history wrong, since I’m working partly from memory, but I think it goes like this. In the late eighties, President Reagan was starting to get chummy with Gorbachev, the head of the Soviet Union, our Cold War ne