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The perfect niche for Dild — er, Dilbert, a combination of white supremicism, porn, and masculine insecurity!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Eons ago, a friend of mine worked for a broadsheet industry magazine. His boss/editor was an ancient and cloistered man whose experience and exposure to the real world ended some time in 1960.

So one fine afternoon, Bill is busily retyping press releases when he comes across one about an executive at some company getting promoted. The executive had the unfortunate last name of "Dilda," so Bill slugs a dummy headline on the piece: "Dilda Thrust into Top Slot."

He about fell off his chair when the page proofs came around later in the week and his boss had kept that headline.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Part of my remit in the old gig involved me in editing (and in some cases drastically rewriting) a series of illustrated histories, intended for in-house consumption, of my employer’s far-flung operations on the West Coast. These I then laid out (in PageMaker, to give you an idea of how long ago this was) for low-volume press runs.

My then-boss was a benign character who regarded me with a kind of genial suspicion as a subversive character. I cherished him for this, since it was consistent with my own self-image, particularly since by that point most of my colleagues had come to regard me not as a dangerous young renegade, but a harmless middle-aged crank.* The boss accordingly reviewed my stuff, blue-pencilling phrases like “that cornucopia of ordnance,” referring to the largesse this country has historically bestowed upon its hemispheric neighbors, and I accordingly took to composing “red meat” passages deliberately intended to draw that pencil away from my 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 seditious content.

In this instance it didn’t work, which is why “cornucopia of ordnance” does not appear in the work, while a nearby photo caption describing the ramshackle condition of one Southern California facility in the XIX century includes the words “premise envy.”

*𝘉𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 2017—“𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨,” 𝘢𝘴 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘣𝘺 𝘢𝘴 𝘐 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘺 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳—𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘧 “𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘦𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤.”

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

That is a great exit line. Congrats on leaving in such style. I'll have to remember it, and update it to the Nineties -- but already the kids have no idea, the things I've seen... My first office job was literally at the phone book. How to explain THAT? Never mind the processes to build it...

(Honestly, I just spent 15 minutes trying to google up any evidence that things I did every day actually happened, and came up empty. Does anyone remember what it was called when you composed a headline and shot it onto photo paper, then trimmed that and cemented it into the page layout? Or what the photonegatives were called, of book pages, that you'd proofread at the last stage before printing? I can't remember any of these names.)

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I have seen attack ads burning off the shoulder of Obama, C++ glittering in the dark over fused logic gates. Soon all of this will be gone, like tears in the rain.

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In the future everyone will cry all the time because it will never stop raining.

Except out west.

Don't cry for me Albuquerque.

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author

I remember paste-up. And blues. But I was never directly involved in photo offset.

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When I first started working as a journalist, we had Compugraphic typesetting computers. They were very memory limited, so you had to save/commit your work every 300 characters. When you got done, you handed a stack of 7.5-inch disks to the art department, who would then set your story as galleys. These would be printed out as stripper of paper the width of columns as printed in the magazine.

After you approved or corrected the copy, it would be printed out again on layout paper, cut into strips, then run through a hot-wax machine. The art department would manually place these on gridded cardboard. They made adjustments by cutting individual words with X-acto knives.

When everything was done, all the boards would be boxed up and shipped to our printer.

Ah! The good old days!

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Yes! And the minutes you spent figuring out a good word that was the same size as the wrong word, so you would not have to mess with the rest of the paragraph...

X-acto knives everywhere, all over the building... now practically gone the way of the slide-rule...

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PHOTO OFFSET. Thank you. I read the whole wikipedia page on the history of printing and this term does not appear once, I felt insane,

Blues. Oh boy. Let me tell you about the time it was a nice sunny day so I took the blues outside to work. No one told me that paper was photosensitive...

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Back in the '80s, my wife was looking for a new career, and she thought about applying to do sales for the Yellow Pages. She had worked for a bank and had been really good at selling bank products (she made the bank tons of money, for no commission, of course, although she dod win a trip to Vegas one year that was kind of fun). "I mean, how hard could that be?" she wondered. "You've got to be in the Book if you want people to find out about you."

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Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023

She woulda mailed her stuff to my department. Two rows of desks where workers processed the contracts, two smaller rows where I sat, reading the salesforce notes about what the clients wanted their ads to look like. If she sold them a one-column-wide square ad, say, I set the client name, phone number, all the business description and art the client requested into a square or rectangle of the correct size (as described by the salesperson, and they were not all equally good or thorough describers). I affixed all logos and line art that had been mailed with the contract, as well as photos though we advised against sending us photos, because they didn't all convert to halftones well. Sent each day's paste-ups in a giant envelope to another building, which picked fonts and shot each ad to velox, then sent the stack of veloxes back to me to QC a day or two later. Then I sent the approved slicks in a giant envelope up to the printers, a union shop. All ink-stained apron-wearing guys of age 55+ who played the ponies and put whiskey in their coffee and gossiped like crazy about company politics. They set the ads into the pages, then sent a photonegative of each page back to my department for last QC. I gotta say, the union guys were aces, but the team that shot the veloxes were total fuckups. You could write the note "use boldest font" and they would print USE BOLDEST FONT in the ad. In a lightweight font! Just absolute chimpanzees. That said, I did fuck up the one time I got put on photonegative approval duty, and a phone book ran with two page 162s instead of a 162 and a 163. My boss did NOT have a sense of humor about it because there was a quarter-page ad on 163, sold by your wife I am sure, and as make-good she had to promise that client a free quarter-page the following year. The shit I caught for botching one ad that cost us maybe $400, after I'd nailed maybe six thousand ads? You would have thought I torched the Hindenburg, right there in the phone book offices.

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I love all of this, and only wish is was available in the form of a Phone Company Training Film on Periscope.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Elon Musk is already calling newspapers' dropping of the comic "biased." I think Elon can correct this massive injustice by paying for more Dilbert strips and then forcing them into everyone's twitter feed. Together, they can strike a real blow for freedom of speech. Adams can draw strips crammed full of racist stuff--including having the title character join the Klan and just calling the token Black character the n-word--and Elon gets to exercise his power by forcing every twitter user to see the strips.

Oh! How the lib would be so owned by that!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Plot twist: Dilbert is hired by Elon Musk and works in a cubicle at Twitter. Meet the new boss...

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Adams actually knows how to code! (Okay, it's completely denigrated ISDN code, but still . . .)

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Twist to the plot twist: the new Twitter coded by Adams will look like Craigslist

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

and all his stuff will end up in the tiny 'best of craigslist' folder way down at the bottom...

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Ha. You said "denigrated."

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

This will come as a pleasant surprise to his honorary aquarium parents, Ralph Bunche and Ida Lupino.

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Firesign always gets an upvote!

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Well, Adams is a white supremacist

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Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm trying to imagine the amount of cognitive dissonance required for Scott Adams to admire Elon Musk, the exact personification of his idiot pointy-haired boss character. "Um... um... when Elon does it it's GOOD!"

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I know the GOP hasn’t had a party platform in ages, but conservatives’ unofficial platform is like cognitive dissonance 101: “when we do the thing it’s good, when you do the same thing it’s bad.”

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Elon, having just purchased Twitter, visits one of its server farms where he accidentally/on purpose unplugs a rack of servers, then claims he was "testing the system." The guy who made a 30-year-long career out of mocking stupid bosses (in the tech industry!) pretends not to notice.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

When he eventually shuffles off this mortal coil, the inscription on Musk's headstone should read "Here lies Elon Musk. He meant to do that."

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

'S Ok; if there's only one lib left who cares?

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Can’t Feline Musk just buy a bulk order of the latest Dilbert book and give away free copies as convention swag, bonus gifts for joining the Proud Boys, etc? You know, the way conservative authors usually get their “best sellers” published and distributed before heading to the remainder bin.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Remainder bin? I always assumed they went direct to the recyclers, which is what I did with a booklike object bearing Michelle Malkin’s name (remember her?) which I found polluting one of those “free library” kiosks in the neighborhood the other year.

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Cancelled! Or maybe you were simply making the world a slightly better place for sentience.

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See, I'm a believer in Free Speech, so I would have taken that book home "so I can read it later", and then put it in a box in the basement "just to make sure I don't lose it before I read it later".

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Put it in my basement? Have you any idea of the paperwork involved in getting EPA certification for a “Superfund” site?

(Actually, I have in the basement an old, formerly illuminated “EXIT” sign I picked up somewhere long ago, which I later learned 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 require special disposal protocols, since its power source was a radioactive isotope. My basement, however, is like the refrigerator in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘛𝘦𝘢-𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭.)

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The shareholders might be peeved, unless they got free copies too.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

What is so weird about the Dilbert strip: it is only one joke – working as a cubicle peon sucks – and it’s just told over and over again. I mean, you read the Dilbert strip for a week and you’ve read every Dilbert strip that ever was. While a lot of comics are that way, few are *quite* so literal about the “one joke and one joke only” theme. I can’t believe it’s going to be missed very much.

It all makes me wonder if Adams knew the strip had more than run its course and would no longer be picked up, and simply wanted to go out in a blaze of infamy. But I guess that would require some self-awareness, and I see no evidence he has any.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Take my cubicle...PLEASE!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Sting: ba dum tss!

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There was just a slight whiff of satire there, but Adams is too much of a follower to do much with it & when he was famous enough to quit, he no longer had direct access to any material.

Now let's talk about a strip that's not one joke -- Funky Winkerbean!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Pass. Hard pass.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Marmaduke! How do they keep that material fresh?

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Cryogenics.

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he no longer had direct access to any material

Many of his readers sent him ideas from their workplaces

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Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I remember being a big fan back in the early 90's, I was in grad school working for a professor who was kind of a jerk and also liked to pretend he knew more than he really did. Pretty sure I even have a Dilbert book somewhere, in a box in a storage locker with my other grad-school-era books, probably buried underneath Gradshteyn and Ryzhik Comprehensive Table of Integrals, Series, and Products. Tough call on which one would be more unreadable today.

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Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Correct about the total lack of self-awareness. I'm sure that Adams, right up to the very end, was sure that every single strip he wrote totally killed. "Yep, knocked it out of the park again today! How do I do it? Genius, just pure genius..."

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"I know my artwork is getting better"

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He be incorrect, tho I should add I feel (not think) his artwork was pretty fit for purpose and coulda been worse...

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

To be fair, there is one strip I think about 20 years later. Pointy-haired boss says "Our new corporate initiative is called Quality!" Then another character enters and says "Boss, the new keyboards we're shipping today have a minor flaw, there is no Q." And in the last panel the boss says that's fine, what would you use a Q for anyway, and Dilbert says "Certainly not Uality."

Ah well. All of the episodes outlined in today's post are equally as memorable, a poor ratio for Scott Adams.

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He famously once had a sockpuppet account ("plannedchaos") that would go around extolling the genius of Scott Adams, so yeah...

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

The Family Circus vs Dilbert mashup:

POINTY-HAIRED MOMMY BOSS: Who’s going to miss working in a cubicle?

BILLY DILBERT: Not me!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

"Who did a racism on the living room carpet?"

"I Dunno!"

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author

I always found Dilbert funny for just that reason. Like Garfield: He sure hates Mondays! https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/8228c2bf-c087-4f8d-bd3b-ff6511bec1af

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Now I’m missing the old Mad Magazine cartoon parodies that included “Cries and Whispers” by Jim Davis. Garfield with Swedish dialog, suddenly confronted by Death (“Det er Døden!”), which turns out to be Odie in a grim reaper costume.

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See also alt.Watterson:

Calvin and Muad'dib

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It definitely has the smell of Bari Weiss self-cancelling from a prime gig at the Paper of Record, and then going on to make bank spewing phony stories on her Substack. Although Adams already has made his millions, so not sure how he could top that. Maybe he just got bored doing the damn strip.

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This makes a lot of sense. I know Adams isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but if I got bored with Dilbert after a week how must he feel about it after 30 odd years?

Now he can claim the status of a bona fide and bloodied combatant in the culture wars -- although I've never seen a wound that was more obviously self-inflicted in my life -- and go on Tucker and Hannity when the mood moves him.

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I remember one series in Dilbert where he played soccer and got a girlfriend

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Position? Left out.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

For extra credit, work “Bret Stephens and his ex-wife” into every comic strip, starting with “Cathy.”

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

ACK!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

and 2 marks for ACK!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

(At least Cathy Guisewite had the self awareness to know when to stop drawing *her* strip.)

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

In points of draughtsmanship she was almost as lazy as Adams.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

2 marks for "Cathy"

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

But PLEASE not "Love is..." Don't think I could handle seeing his belly button.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Mary Worth and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife

Alley Oop and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife

The Wizard of Id and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife

Andy Capp and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife

Beetle Bailey and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife

The Born Loser and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife (but I repeat myself)

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

The Boondocks and Brett Stephens and His Ex-Wife

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Lil’ Abner, Bret Stephens, his Ex-wife and JD Vance, the Phony Hillbilly.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

JD Vance, Phony Hillbilly and Instant Expert on the freight rail system.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

The Cook, the Thief, Bret Stephens and His Ex-Wife for the pivot-to-video

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Can't say these were all better than the real thing, but there were more funny ones here than in a year of the real strip.

And apropos today's gaffs, this from the Pulitzer Prize winning Ruben Bolling:

https://boingboing.net/2023/02/27/magabert.html

And one of Roy's Substack comrades laid out the case why we may be repelled by repellant people as we used to have a right to before the cancel culture fascists said conservatives are, like, a protected species or something:

https://armoxon.substack.com/p/the-case-for-shunning

In Adams defense, he had the good fortune -- or used his fortune well -- to marry a very hot much younger wife who recently had reached her fill with him so, you know, I'm sure it was, like, a final crushing blow or something. Of course, if he wasn't a cancel culture protectee, I could say Fuck his feelings.

BTW, hasn't gone on long enough that today we're going ignore the free market and businesses making a business decision because people like Adams has a right to a platform? Isn't that today's scandal?

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

"like, a protected species or something"

This is one of those rare cases wherein I, a determined lumper, come down on the side of the splitters: subspecies, Shirley.

Oh sure, maybe in the long term we'll ID a moment when they fully (d)evolve to a point they can no longer successfully reproduce outside their own subset, but we're a long ways from there yet.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Adding here that armoxon snagged me in the first sentence, with that footnote.

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Devolution is real!

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

That's some good Substackin' there, this AR Moxon fellow Substacks well, thanks for the link.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

TBH, didn’t read the piece because I know as a lib, I have a right to find Adams thoroughly repugnant and of zero importance to moi. Don’t need anyone’s permission because it’s a right and I have the freedom to exercise it.

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thank you for bringing armoxon to my attention.

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Happy to be of service.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

As gross as these are, they’re all funnier than anything in “ Dilbert.”

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Straight from Adams' secret file drawer...

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Scott Adams After Dark (when he sits by the fire and polishes the guns.)

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This is Fantastic - FAF.

Best thing I've read about jt.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Oh so many bits to copy/paste here in slavish devotion!

Ah, hell – just take the 2 marks and kick Dogbert for me on yer way out!

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Even Adams' recent bullshit might not have been enough to get him dropped from "some" papers if he had not been in a 30-year skid of less & less funny comic strips. When did that fucking shit peak, like 1995?

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

If he'd gone out on top (eg Bill Watterson) he'd be Grand Vizier (that's it, isn't it?) by now...or elder statesnazi, at least.

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God, Watterson & Breathed were gods of the Sunday funnies to me. I didn't mind Doonesbury either -- obsessively reading the back collections from the 1970s taught me a lot about the politics of the time

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

One Walt Kelly to Rule Them All !!!!!!!!!

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I hear that & have never read enough Pogo to speak articulately about it.

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Start with "10 Everlovin' Blue-Eyed Years with POGO". The hits, with comment from the master.

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Seconded, and thirded. The story about the CBS loyalty oath alone is more than worth the price.

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What strip did God write?

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He'd be The Kleagle

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This could not be a better followup to yesterday's entry on Tár.

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If ya don't wanna get feathered, stay away from the Tár!

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If ONE number in the crosstabs of a Rasmussen poll is enough to send you into full-on Race War, I'm gonna bet you were already 99.9% of the way to full-on Race War before you ever saw the number.

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"Rasmussen: By Race Warriors, For Race Warriors"

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I'll say this for Adams: For him, none of that "It is with great reluctance..." or "It is more in sorrow than in anger..." bullshit. Nah, just "Yippee! Ima get the race war I wanted!"

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And it was only 47% not "agreeing" with the white power slogan, split between "disagree" and "not sure" (and only 18% "strongly disagreed", which was enough for Adams to start typing "RAHOWA!" over and over again).

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My stubborn refusal to agree with the inoffensive statement "Where We Go One We Go All" just shows how unsociable I am. Get the hell away from me, Scott!

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Yet another asshole with a fuckton of money for no discernable reason.

I get that asshole Scott Adams'mixed up with that asshole

Scott Perry.

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Just don't get him mixed up with Douglas Adams and you'll be fine.

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So long, and thanks for all the fash.

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MST3K: The Cartuner! https://youtu.be/qqKTtmybwYo

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"We mixed Dilbert and Mallard Fillmore and got a strip so unfunny it tore a hole in reality. We shall not be doing this again."

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Many years ago Dilbert for a short while included a lower-level manager who was so inept he grew a goatee - on the side of his forehead! I thought it was genuinely funny and relatable. Adams was on a radio interview and said he dropped this character because readers complained that they didn't understand it.

Due to his drawing style I'm sure many readers could not figure out what the thing was on the side of the head, and his continuity is so weak that a concept this sophisticated couldn't crawl into the following days' panels. But, sure Scott, the readers were too dumb.

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Lol. I never read the comic so I'm a bit lost in this reverie but it was still entertaining.

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Adams has been a jackass for decades, ever since he started blogging in the early oughts, and began revealing his misogynistic, racist, and anti-semitic bonafides (with a dose of climate change skepticism thrown in for good measure). The "Scott Adams is a certified genius" sockpuppetry was just choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/mjynto/newspaper_comics_the_time_the_creator_of_dilbert/

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The Rational Wiki page on Adams has more, if you're inclined for a deeper dive.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

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