The Dilbert Blog

Urge to Simplify

No matter what I’m doing, I can’t help wondering if there is a better way. For example, I noticed yesterday in Las Vegas that many of the casinos have ATMs amongst thousands of slot machines. The casinos hopes you will take your money out of one machine, carry it several feet, and put it in another. There’s something about the change of ownership in your money that is considered entertainment.  And judging from the crowds, people can’t get enough of it.

In the old days, when Vegas was less popular, the slot machines sometimes gave a little of your money back, at least temporarily. But these days all the nice hotels are at full occupancy. I’ve been here three days and haven’t seen anyone win a jackpot. If you think that removing the “maybe you can win” part from the equation would dampen peoples’ enthusiasm, you have vastly overestimated the intelligence of the general public. After Las Vegas trained people to lose 98% of the time, it was a simple matter to nudge it to 100%.

Now the casinos have people trained, like chickens hoping for pellets, to take money from one machine (the ATM), carry it across a room and deposit in another machine (the slot machine). I believe B.F. Skinner would agree with me that there is room for even more efficiency: The ATM and the slot machine need to be the same machine.

The casinos lose a lot of money waiting for the portly gamblers with respiratory issues to waddle from the ATM to the slot machines. A better solution would be for the losers, euphemistically called “players,” to stand at the ATM and watch their funds be transferred to the hotel, while hoping to somehow “win.” The ATM could be redesigned to blink and make exciting sounds, so it seems less like robbery.

I’m sure this is in the five-year plan. Longer term, people will be trained to set up automatic transfers from their banks to the casinos. People will just fly to Vegas, wander around on the tarmac while the casino drains their bank accounts, then board the plane and fly home. The airlines are already in on this concept, and stopped feeding you sandwiches a while ago.

Lucky in Vegas

When I woke up yesterday morning, I had no idea that it would be the day I experienced the best lunch ever. Let me tell you, I have had many lunches. Some of them were darned good. But there can be only one Best Lunch Ever, and I’m sure I already had it. Allow me to set the stage.

I had just completed my speech to 2,000 technology professionals, and I had several hours to kill before my wife’s flight arrived. I decided to take a long walk and stop somewhere for a quick bite. After about 45 minutes of walking, I decided that my hunger and energy curves had crossed, and it was time to pick a pleasant eatery. As luck would have it, I was standing in front of a well-lit, new place that promised to have the variety of food a vegetarian requires. Lucky!

I walked up to the hostess stand and noticed an unusually large number of employees. There must have been thirty servers and only a handful of customers. Vegas was packed with people, yet I could sit wherever I wanted. Lucky!

One of the four hostesses acknowledged my presence, and I said in my most confident, non-loserish voice, “One for lunch.” But she balked, for reasons that were unclear. She looked to the taller hostess for guidance.  The tall one seemed to be some sort of manager. She said, “We’re a new restaurant, and not open to the general public yet. We’re just training the staff today. But if you want, you can eat here. The only catch is that it’s all free.” Lucky!

One of the smaller hostesses showed me to a seat at the bar. I noticed that no one was smoking in this restaurant – a rarity in Vegas. Lucky!

There were about eight bartenders for only four practice customers. The service was terrific. Lucky!

The menu was an abbreviated version, presumably for training reasons, but it had some excellent vegetarian choices. They were delicious. Lucky! And free. Lucky!

There you have it. That was the best lunch I ever had.

Oh, wait, I forgot one thing. The restaurant is the new Hawaiian Tropics restaurant. And all thirty of the servers looked like supermodels, wore bikinis, and acted extra nice to me because their managers were watching. That part was okay too.

What Happens in Vegas

I’m in Las Vegas this morning, to give a speech a to a few thousand technology workers. Last night, I did an AV check and tried to get back to my room without losing all the money in my wallet. I started optimistically, but it was all downhill after that.

The path to my room was cleverly littered with attractive slot machines. I don’t enjoy gambling, but I feel obligated to rationalize my decision to not be a Quaker. So I stuffed a twenty in a Wheel of Fortune slot machine and tapped a lighted button ten times while watching the 20 to turn into a 0. It took less than half a minute. I did a quick mental check, and no endorphins had kicked in, so I decided to call it a night.

By the time I got to my room, I was thirsty, and a nearby Coke machine beckoned. A Diet Coke would set me back $2.75. Somehow that seemed like a bargain. I couldn’t afford to go back to the casino and get free drinks. I stuffed a five into the slot and hit the button for Diet Coke. Jackpot!

When the machine pooped out that Diet Coke, I felt like a winner for the first time in Las Vegas. Granted, I was purchasing twelve cents worth of plastic and sugar water for $2.75, but I tried to not see it that way. Best yet, my change clanged down a chute like a cash payout.

But here’s the evil genius part. Instead of a cup-like receptacle for my change, the dispenser was designed more like a launcher. The coins hit the bottom and shot up and out of the machine. A quarter hit the ground and rolled under the Coke machine. That bastard! My Diet Coke just went to $3.00. Another coin, a shiny dollar featuring some Native American chick named Sasquatch, if I recall my history, hit the carpet and made a run down the hallway. That’s when I noticed that the carpet design was a bunch of round spots exactly the size and color of a Sasquatch coin. And suddenly my Diet Coke cost $4.00. Never have I seen such a well-conceived marriage of carpet and soda dispenser. Next year I’m bringing my metal detector.

I ordered room service because I couldn’t trust myself outside the room again.

Sleeping Skill

I can take a nap almost anywhere. When I travel, I’m often asleep before the flight takes off. I can even fall asleep in the dentist’s chair waiting for the Novacaine to kick in. At night, I’m asleep in about five minutes.

I wasn’t always that way. Falling asleep is a skill. I’ll tell you my method.

I always start by creating a simple story in my head where something good, and highly unlikely, happens to me. The trick is to focus on something that is more fascinating than your real life. Maybe you are winning a prestigious award, inventing something that changes the world, or being the first person on the scene of an accident involving the Cirque de Soleil and a tanker of chemicals that turn out to be a powerful aphrodisiac. The images should be more attractive than whatever bothersome thoughts would float into your head if you weren’t so busy fantasizing.

After a minute or two of that, I release all controlled thoughts and simply watch what floats by. When my eyes are closed, the part of my brain that interprets vision is apparently still active, because I can see all sorts of random objects drifting by, as if a mall exploded in space. I try to identify and name them as I see them.

Toaster…car…pencil…couch…snow blower, mitten, etc.

The next thing I know, I wake up.

That’s my method. What do you think about when you are trying to sleep?

Going Forward

I’ve decided to blog less. I posted daily (mostly) for two years, with the theory that my efforts would be compensated in four ways.

1. Advertising dollars
2. Compiling the best posts into a book.
3. Growing the audience for Dilbert
4. Artistic satisfaction.

Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but at about the same rate people figure out how to use RSS feeds to get the content without the ads. So there’s no longer a correlation between how hard I work and the ad income I earn. It topped out at “trivial,” even while the audience grew to substantial.

My book based on the blog posts, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! got great reviews for content, but angry reactions in people who feel that other people, who didn’t read the content on the Internet, and never will, should not buy the book, to protect the rights of the people who already read it on the Internet, and might want to read it again for free sometime. You win.

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger. Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably “I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post.” Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it. And a startling number of readers couldn’t tell when I was serious or kidding, so most of the negative reactions were based on misperceptions.

Lastly, the blog has been a source of tremendous artistic satisfaction. I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That’s why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially. I’ll just do it less often, especially over the holidays. It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.

Try www.reader.google.com to see blog posts without the ads.

Compulsive Gambler

Suppose you lived in a place with an unusually high population of compulsive gamblers, the type who will keep gambling until they are poor. And suppose you had the resources to open a casino. Would it be ethical to do so?

All the gamblers have a choice of resisting, assuming you subscribe to the superstition of free will. So you’re not hurting anyone by making it easier for them to go broke. You’re giving them new choices. And some of them might even win big jackpots.

This seems analogous to attending a concert for a struggling musician. The musician knows he will probably end up poor. He’s making his choice, and his addiction to the musician lifestyle is similar to a gambler’s addiction to gambling. By attending the live performance, you feed the musician's habit and make it less likely he will get a higher paying job as an insurance actuary.

You bastard.

Hey, it’s a holiday weekend, and I am not working too hard on these posts.

Results From Yesterday’s Post

Based on the highly unscientific sample of responses to yesterday’s post, free downloads of music appear to have a huge impact on creating an audience for unknown musicians.

The next logical question is how much money are those unknown musicians making? That’s not rhetorical. I wonder if they are making more or less than a typical cubicle job. I assume they play smaller venues, and don’t perform live as often as they want.

If I owned a venue for live music, and suddenly I had access to more musicians that could fill the smallish house, thanks to exposure on the Internet, I would pay them less than if only a few bands could bring in a crowd. It’s basic supply and demand.

In yesterday’s comments I saw the names of lots of bands I never heard of. Can anyone point to a link that would tell me whether or not they are making a decent living? Obviously they make enough to eat, but do they make more than a cubicle job with health benefits and a retirement plan?

It seems to me that economic forces would eventually drive the value of musicians – even good ones – down to a very low level, as long as lots of good musicians prefer playing live music to being in cubicles.

Are you doing a musician a favor by attending a live performance and postponing the day he will be inspired to get a real job with a health plan and start saving for his retirement?

Copyright Revisited

The emerging wisdom on file sharing of music is that successful musical artists don’t gain anything in terms of publicity, since they are already well known, and they lose in terms of album sales. While many citizens will happily pay a dollar to download a song, plenty will prefer free.

The benefit of file sharing to society, so it is argued, is that it allows unknown artists to become known without the backing of big corporate money. The musicians can then leverage that fame into lucrative live performances.

That’s the theory. How’s it working out?

What live musical performance have you attended in the past year because you heard the band’s music for free on the Internet?

How many musical performances have you attended in the past year that featured musicians who got famous the old-fashioned way?

What If?

On the local news last night there was a report on some research with marijuana and cancer. It turns out that the active ingredient in marijuana might stop cancer. The story seems to be an update to this one:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm

Add that information to a 2006 report that showed no connection between heavy marijuana smoking and lung cancer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729_pf.html

Before I continue, let’s join hands and repeat “Medical stories in the media are always wrong…medical stories in the media are always wrong.” So this blog post is more of a “what if” sort of thing.

What if it turns out that smoking marijuana doesn’t cause cancer, and actually inhibits it better than anything you can buy in a baggie from a guy who has a suspicious rash?

I know, I know, the cancer-fighting component of marijuana probably needs to be administered in some concentrated form to be effective against cancer. So smoking marijuana, or eating it, probably wouldn’t work. But this is a “what if” post.

Now take a look at the “Fact Sheet” produced by a division of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse folks.

http://www.well.com/user/woa/fspot.htm

If the science around marijuana curing cancer were to become indisputable, and if smoking marijuana delivered the medicine, would they ever mention that in the fact sheet?

In other words, might the “fact sheet” ever be balanced for both the good and the bad?

Updated Marijuana Fact Sheet

1. Marijuana cures cancer.
2. Marijuana reduces stress.
3. Marijuana helps digestion.
4. Marijuana improves your sex life.
5. Marijuana is expensive, thanks to your government.
6. Marijuana is illegal, thanks to your government.
7. Marijuana will make kids lazier and stupider than usual.
8. Marijuana causes psychological dependence, similar to jogging.
9. Marijuana is expensive, similar to an iPhone.
10. Marijuana reduces the number of highway accidents.

That last one is just a guess based on the weasel-wording used by government groups to describe marijuana use and driving. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of an accident caused by marijuana use alone. But I’ve heard of several accidents caused by people who WEREN’T gripping the steering wheel with both hands, focusing intently on the road, and driving 5 miles per hour under the speed limit.

NOTE TO KIDS: Don’t use marijuana. There are good reasons you aren’t allowed to do adult things such as vote, fornicate, or sign legal documents. Your brain isn’t developed enough to understand those reasons.

If science someday proves marijuana promotes good health and safety, would the government ever recommend it for adults?

Winners of the Book Blurb Contest!

Last month I ran a contest on this blog, to see who could write the most humorous book blurb for my new book, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! The winners are in.

First, I give you the Amazon.com link to the book, in case you would like to do your holiday gift buying without the hassle of getting out of your chair and walking around. In the unlikely event that you read this blog AND you are a high achiever, AND you have a friend, AND you sometimes buy holiday gifts, you can also find the book at any local book store.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591841852?ie=UTF8&tag=dilbertcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1591841852

Many people were disqualified, usually because they didn’t leave their full name or e-mail address, or because they live outside the United States. I list some of the better disqualified entries at the end because they have entertainment value.

Congratulations to the winners (two of you had two winning entries apiece), and thanks for playing! Your prizes will arrive in about two week.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

(Wins a framed original Dilbert strip)

"'What a perfect companion for my afternoon milk bath," I thought while picking up this little gem on my way home from work. Within the hour I had laughed myself into a neck-deep tomb of butter. My wife came in, sipping her eggnog, and topped me with meringue."

Nicolas Feia

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The next 25 winners get a signed copy of STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN!

1. (First runner up)
Like a diligent little dung beetle, Adams slogs through the online jungle searching for fresh nuggets of news to polish into his daily blog entries. Some people say you can’t polish a turd, but after reading this book, I’d say they’re just not rubbing hard enough.

Matt Nelson

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2. As a smokin' hot woman, I found this book hilariously funny and I'd seriously consider making out with any guy I saw reading it.

Diana Wales

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3. I HAVE to buy this book! My kidnappers had a copy but my dad foolishly paid the ransom an hour too soon.

Richard Factor

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4. "This book was so good, I showed it to my wife and said, 'This is how sex is supposed to feel like."

Richard Yee

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5. If my dog could read, this is definitely the one book that I would want her to read to me!

Vincent Bernatowicz

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6. I was so upset when Grandad passed away from a Viagra overdose...It took us two weeks to nail the lid down on the coffin. I thought I'd never laugh again, until I read "STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN". Scott Adams cures the jaded.

John Robinson

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7. Everything my children are learning in school is wrong. I used to think. Now I know. Kids, your new textbook is here! Welcome to home school.

Nicolas Feia

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8. This book immediately grabbed me by my cookies. Can't wait to have them dunked in the sequel.

Jonathan Germann

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9. I squeezed my eyes so hard when I laughed that it corrected the shape of my corneas and now I read better when I take my glasses off! Really! This book saved me a ton of money on laser eye surgery.

Joanne Powers

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10. I read every other page with my good eye closed. Now I can see music.

Billy Hart

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11. I used to be a nobody, and now i have a comment on the back of a book!

Chitrak Bandyopadhyay

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12. Man oh man, this is the kind of book my Pappy used to read to me before I went to sleep each night. Scott Adams, are you my Pappy?

Vincent Bernatowicz

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13. Even though this book killed my father, broke my brother’s legs, sold my mother into a life of prostitution, burnt our home to ashes, and left me an orphan on the street, jitter-bugging for pennies, I can not stay mad at it…it is just too funny.

Kevin Allen

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14. I started reading Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey-Brain to my unborn child and it burst from my womb like that thing in Alien, grabbed the book and went back in. Damn baby, now I have to buy another copy.

Michael Rauma

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15. The reason that upper management restricted internet usage, now in convenient book form.

Rob Davis

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16. A delightful read...it has everything; humor, words, dangling participles, and did I detect a hint of nutmeg?

Chris Bachman

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17. This book was so funny my horse cried.

Jarrod Lancaster

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18. "Dear heirs, when I die please bury me with this book and Mr. Sniffles (the cat, not the butler)."

Carlos Gonzalez-Najera

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19. Scott Adams does it again. He does it hard, fast, and for money, just the way we like it. Life may go on if you don’t buy this book, but you’ll always wonder “What if?”

Erik Guttormsen

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20. I was reading this to my mother when she died. She refused to enter the light until I had finished.

Geoff Bonvallet

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21. A book so overflowing with brilliance and wit, it actually improves the quality of nearby books! Resellers: please stock a few copies of this book in your Garfield and Left Behind sections.

Paul Roub

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22. Like peanut butter for the soul.

John Coleman

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23. Finally, the answer to the question “What would Jesus read?”

Jim White

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24. "Learn Scott Adams' money-making real estate secrets in his runaway bestseller "STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN!"

Bill Malloy

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25. Scott Adams brings it! That’s just the way he rolls, Dog. Word!!!

Vincent Bernatowicz

Disqualified But Worthy
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A snake made me read this book and it made me aware of my own nudity! Totally worth it!

Michael Collett (disqualified)

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Ernest Hemingway meets Ayn Rand...but then after the initial "hellos" there's this awkward silence, until he says something inappropriate like "nice tits" and she's all like "Say what!?", and they get into a slap fight.

SJC (disqualified)

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I don't want to say that this is the best book ever written, but as I slid it into my bookshelf a chorus of angels began to sing and my other novels were engulfed in holy flame. I guess that's a little ambiguous, though.

Ryan (disqualified)

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From the monkeys who typed Shakespeare comes the stunning sequel!

Okgenuine (disqualified)

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"Ask yourself, what would Jesus buy?"

simon (disqualified)

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"All the brilliance and wit of a blog, but in book form for old people like you!"

David (disqualified)

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Imagine if your mom was on fire. That's what this book is like.

JVC Headphones (disqualified)

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Hey, other reviewers! If you like this book so much, why don't you marry it?

ErinP (disqualified)

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I've imagined a book like this for years! To avoid disappointment I won't be reading it, but you definitely should! I hear it's GREAT!

$8 (disqualified)

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Before I found this, I was a pathetic, depressed, underappreciated, overworked, sexually impotent, joyless shell of a man. Now, I'm all those things with a funny book.

Kevin (disqualified)

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I haven't felt this moist in years!

Chosti (disqualified)

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This book is so good, I'm buying two so that each eye can have its own copy.

Eric (disqualified)