Why Scott Adams is such a funny man

Like Robin Williams and Spike Milligan and everybody.

Your Personal Ghosts
Scott Adams

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/your_personal_ghosts/

You lost, Bobby!

"In today's America, no child ever loses. There are no losers anymore. Everyone's a winner. No matter what the game or sport or competition, everybody wins. Everybody wins, everybody gets a trophy, no one is a loser. No child these days ever gets to hear those all-important, character building words: "You lost, Bobby!"

"You lost, you're a loser, Bobby!" They miss out on that. You know what they tell a kid who lost these days? "You were the last winner." A lot of these kids never get to hear the truth about themselves until they're in their twenties. When their boss calls them in and says "Bobby, clean the shit out of your desk and get the fuck out of here, you're a loser."

George Carlin

Change must come from within :) :)

Zen Jokes:  http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Miscellaneous/Zen_Jokes.html

Be here now.
Be someplace else later.
Is that so complicated?

To Find the Buddha, look within.
Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.
Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.
Each blossom has ten thousand petals.
You might want to see a specialist.

Zen is not easy.
It takes effort to attain nothingness.
And then what do you have?
Bugger all.

A Zen master visiting New York City goes up to a hot dog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything."
The hot dog vendor fixes a hot dog and hands it to the Zen master, who pays with a $20 bill.
The vendor puts the bill in the cash box and closes it. "Excuse me, but where’s my change?" asks the Zen master.
The vendor responds, "Change must come from within."

Running :)

"Running. You should, of course, wear a specially designed $200 Running Garment made from a synthetic material that has a name like the leader of a hostile reptilian alien invasion force in a space movie, such as "Gore-Tex". The beauty of these materials is that they actually "breathe". Really. At night, if you listen carefully to your closet, you'll hear your garment in there, breathing and occasionally chuckling softly at some synthetic joke it heard from your dress slacks."

Chapter: Running. 'Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead', Dave Barry

There’s no duck behind this couch

Spike Milligan: Goon, Loon, Manic Depressive Comic Genius

"His comic influences were Jacques Tati, WC Fields ("the voice of insincerity") and the Marx brothers.

"An example. Groucho was singing a love song to Margaret Dupont. She was a very tall woman. ‘I love you my dear I always will.’ Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. She says: ‘Duck behind the couch.’ So he went behind the couch and the husband came in, and Groucho stood up and said: ‘There’s no duck behind this couch.’

http://alternativestovalium.blogspot.in/2006/02/spike-milligan-goon-loon-manic.html

What's all this stuff about motivation?

"What's all this stuff about motivation? I say, if you need motivation, you probably need more than motivation. You probably need chemical intervention or brain surgery. Actually, if you ask me, this country could do with a little less motivation. The people who are causing all the trouble seem highly motivated to me."

'Brain Droppings', George Carlin

14 Degrees Centipede :)

From "Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need":

"Another well-known Paris landmark is the Arc de Triomphe, a moving monument to the many brave men and women who have died trying to visit it, which we do not recommend because it's located in the middle of La Place de La Traffic Coming from All Directions at 114 Miles Per Hour."

"Finland is also home to the sauna, which is a wooden box in which you subject your body to extreme heat, which causes you to become very relaxed, unless of course the door gets stuck, in which case it causes you to become lasagna."

"Modern-day Denmark is a tourism wonderland, boasting a year-round average temperature of 14 degrees Centipede (108 degrees Richter)."

"Although it is now covered with agriculture, Kansas was at one time very historic. It was the on-scene location of the "Wild West", where "longhorns" riding "six-shooters" used to "rustle up" some "varmints". This era eventually ended due to a shortage of quotation marks."

"Louisiana was discovered by the Cajuns, a dynamic group of people who came down from Canada and decided to stay after they forgot where they had parked."

Marvin. And Zaphod

"It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level." Marvin
 
Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.
‘Hey this is terrific!” he said. ‘Someone down there is trying to kill us!’
‘Terrific’, said Arthur.
‘But don’t you see what this means?’
‘Yes. We’re going to die.’
‘Yes, but apart from that.’
‘Apart from that?’
‘It means we must be on to something!’
‘How soon can we get off it?’
'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

Verse gets worse on Fridays

I must go down to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and the sky,
I left my vest and socks there,
I wonder if they're dry ?

Spike Milligan

But this takes the cake - let me know if you can find anything worse than this! Worthy of being part of the Vogon arsenal, for their death-by-poetry sessions. Don't forget the audio.

The Loch Ness Monster's Song: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1683

To think that Edwin Morgan, who wrote “Strawberries”, also wrote this! There is hope for us all.

Classic Adams :) :)

So Zaphod and Trillian are stuck on the spaceship 'Heart of Gold', floating around for days in some remote area of the Galaxy, and Zaphod is going a little out of his mind - and he's drinking.

"That he had thought about what his position actually was and the renewed shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first down and check if it was all right.

'Freedom.' he said aloud.

Trillian came on the bridge at that point and said several things on the subject of freedom.

'I can't cope with it,' he said darkly, and sent a third drink down to see why the second hadn't yet reported on the condition of the first. He looked uncertainly at both of her and preferred the one on the right.

He poured a drink down his other throat with the plan that it would head the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would get the second to pull itself together. Then all three would go off in search of the first, give it a good talking to, and maybe a bit of a sing as well.

He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that, so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully, and a sixth for moral support.

'You're drinking too much,'  said Trillian.

His heads collided trying to sort out the four of her he could now see into a single person...............

He boggled at her. He had never seen anyone sit on their own lap before.

'Wow,' he said. He had another drink.

Page 356, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe',  Part 2, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

A problem of Grammar :)

"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with...

The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's 'Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations'. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it.

The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father."

Page 216, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

Didn't you hear I come in six-packs? :)

"Well, if you'd let me explain, sir,' said the insect tapping the most petulant of all the tentacles at his disposal, 'I'm afraid that isn't possible right now as Mr.Zarniwoop is on an intergalactic cruise.'
Hell, thought Zaphod.
'When's he going to be back?' he said.
'Back, sir? He's in his office.'
Zaphod paused whilst he tried to sort this particular thought in his mind. He didn't succeed.

'The cat's on an intergalactic cruise....in his office?' He leaned forward and gripped the tapping tentacle.
'Listen, three eyes,' he said, 'don't try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.'

'Well, just who do you think you are, honey?' flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, 'Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?'
'Count the heads,' said Zaphod in a low rasp.
The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.
'You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?' it squeaked.
'Yeah', said Zaphod, 'but don't shout it out or they'll all want one.'
'The Zaphod Beeblebrox?'
'No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six-packs?'

The insect rattled its tentacles together in agitation.
'But, sir,' it squealed, 'I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead........'
'Yeah, that's right,' said Zaphod, 'I just haven't stopped moving yet.'

Page 178, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', Douglas Adams

Would it save you a lot of time? :)

Therapy, at all times. Thank you, Adams.

'Are you trying to tell me,' said Arthur, slowly and with control, 'that you originally.....made the earth?'
'Oh yes,' said Slartibartfast. 'Did you ever go to a place...I think it was called Norway?'
'No,' said Arthur, 'no, I didn't.'
'Pity,' said Slartibartfast, 'that was one of mine. Won an award you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear of its destruction.'
'You were upset!'
'Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered so much. It was a quite shocking cock-up.'
'Huh?' said Arthur.
'The mice were furious.'
'The mice were furious?'
'Oh yes,' said the old man mildly.
'Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but...'
'Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?'

'Look, said Arthur, 'would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?'

Page 117, 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Trilogy in Four Parts', Douglas Adams

Adams

"It's the birthday of science fiction writer Douglas Adams born in Cambridge, England (1952-2001). He was unemployed, depressed, living in his mother's house, when he remembered a night from years before. He was a teenager traveling around Europe with his guidebook The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe, and that night he was lying in a field in Innsbruck, drunk, looking up at the stars, and he thought somebody should write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well. And so years later, he wrote the radio play The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, chronicling the adventures of the kindly and boring Arthur Dent, who is still wearing his dressing gown when he is whisked away from his suburban English home just in time to escape Earth being demolished by an interstellar highway."

Thank you, Adams. It is only your insanity that keeps me sane on some days.

"Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ...
"You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."

Suicide

"Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living."

Terry Pratchett

Let us prepare!

Can one possibly go wrong listening to Douglas Adams? :) :)  My motto for 2012:

"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."

Douglas Adams

This morning's theme music, read obsessive repeat: Diversity, in here: http://soundcloud.com/dreimalbla

The Return of Odysseus

When Odysseus finally does get home
he is understandably upset about the suitors,
who have been mooching off his wife for twenty years,
drinking his wine, eating his mutton, etc.

In a similar situation today he would seek legal counsel.
But those were different times. With the help
of his son Telemachus he slaughters roughly
one hundred and ten suitors
and quite a number of young ladies,
although in view of their behavior
I use the term loosely. Rivers of blood
course across the palace floor.

I too have come home in a bad mood.
Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting,
when I ended up losing my choice parking spot
behind the library to the new provost.

I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag
in this particular way I have perfected over the years
that lets my wife understand
the contempt I have for my enemies,
which is prodigious. And then with great skill
she built a gin and tonic
that would have pleased the very gods,
and with epic patience she listened
as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do
to so-and-so, and also to what's-his-name.

And then there was another gin and tonic
and presently my wrath abated and was forgotten,
and peace came to reign once more
in the great halls and courtyards of my house.

by George Bilgere

How to Act While Going Through Security :)

This is one of Barry's best!  'Dave Barry's only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need':
..................................................................................................

Security personnel are on the lookout for people who fit the Profile of Suspected Terrorists, which is as follows:

Profile of Suspected Terrorists

Sex: Male
Age: 15 through 74
Looks Suspicious?: Yes
 
As a smart traveller who wishes to avoid the inconvenience of being taken into a small airless interrogation room and having electrical wiring attached to your various genitals, you should make every effort to avoid fitting this profile. This mean that if you are, for example, a male, you should try to deflect the security personnel's attention away from this fact via such techniques as:

• Wearing a dress.
• Periodically remarking out loud to nobody in particular: "I certainly have a lot of body hair, for a woman!"

Page 42.

Barry Time Again :)

"Everybody should have a pet. Pets give you all the love and devotion of close relatives, but you can lock them in the basement for hours at a time if they get loud or boring. The pets, I mean. 

Have you ever wondered why people have pets? Neither have I.  I suspect it's because pets are easy to talk to. I spend hours talking to my dog explaining my views on world affairs. She always listens very attentively although I'm not sure she understands me. If I could hear what she's thinking, it would probably go like this: 

ME: The situation in the Middle East certainly looks serious.
MY DOG: I wonder if he's going to give me some food.

ME: It is unfortunate that an area so vital to the economic well-being of the world is so politically unstable.
MY DOG: Maybe he'll give me some food now.

ME: The Russians certainly are making it difficult for our government to achieve a lasting Mideast peace.MY DOG: Any minute now he might go into the kitchen and get me some food.

" Page 16, 'Bad Habits' by Dave Barry

A story-telling

So three-year-old niece digs up a box full of kiddy books from the big tub full of playthings. Says something akin to "Let's go read these". You are so happy, there's nothing you love more than reading to someone, of any age. You are in your element here. So she waddles to the sofa where we settle down for the reading. When you reach out for the books, she grabs them from you. And opens a book from the last page, and starts telling you the story.

Yes, apparently the plan was for her to "read" to you, you got it all wrong. And so you get read to, in a gibberish language you cannot understand a word of, though there is much throwing around of arms and rolling of eyes and raising of eyebrows, while pages are turned at random, and we move from book to book really fast. And you thought you were a super-fast reader.

Her elder sister sees your bewilderment and translates for you. Apparently you have been listening to the story of the three little bears intertwined with stories from her everyday life. The fact that she cannot yet pronounce the sounds r, p, and ch and has to use other random sounds as substitutes, does not in any way slow down the machine-gun pace of the story-telling.

Kill them all with your tales, baby, kill them all. Your aunt strongly approves.