Scott Adams is Insane

I worked at the hospital today, kind of a split shift.  It's a holiday and we didn't have to work, but I thought I would work from middle-morning to middle-afternoon.  You get extra hours if you work on a holiday and I had nothing to do anyway, so..

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It was very, very quiet.  We didn't even have any babies born.  The gift shop was closed.  Very few patients came through the front door.  The only notable guy at the information desk asked me where billing was and I told him.  He started off down the hall and a nurse asked him to "take those off because they are spreading water on the floor."  Since I only see from about mid-chest up at the desk, I didn't know what she was talking about, so I snuck a look while he walked down the hall and he was walking barefoot.  It turned out he had been wearing plastic bags with ice on his feet!  I don't have a clue why.

Most of the medical offices were closed, so there weren't even many people coming into the cafeteria at lunch time and I don't think they actually cooked a hot meal.  The gift shop was also closed.

With it being so quiet, I had lots of time to read and I finished my book, "Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brains," by Scott Adams, the cartoonist who creates Dilbert.  This is a book of over 150 pieces, I think from his Blog. Reviews on the back cover compare him to Dave Barry and say he is almost as funny. I have read Dave Barry and he's OK, but I've never found him laugh out loud funny, which I did with Adams' book, many times in the 150+ pieces, on everything from lunar real estate to serial killers, not to mention politics, religion, dating, underwear, alien life, and the menace of car singing.

One that had me actually chortling out loud today was in a chapter called "My History Learning."  I'm going to quote a long section here and assume that it is not copyright violation, since I am giving all credit to Adams and the title of his book and, heck, maybe this will encourage you to buy a book, in which case I should be given credit, not opprobrium.

It should be pointed out that Adams is an atheist so the blasphemy some will shout can be understood.

The older the story, the less likely it's accurate.  That's why it's understandable that there is a lot of controversy about the historical accuracy of the Bible.  To me, it comes down to one question:  Where are all the petrified Jesus turds?

It is my understanding that Jesus ate and drank just like regular people. Ipso facto, there must have been about nine thousand Jesus turds produced during his Earth phase.  You can't tell me that his followers wouldn't follow him behind a rock every time he squeezed out a streamer and put it in a little box to save.  Best of all, his shit wouldn't stink!  If you made a hat out of it you'd probably be instantly cured of diseases.  I'm not much of a collector, and I don't care for knickknacks, but even I would keep the son of God's turd in a glass container on the mantel,  it would be a great conversation piece "This one was right after the Sermon on the Mount.  You an still see some bits of fig.

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You might argue that turds would decay over time.  But you're thinking of regular turds, not holy shit.,,,I can see how historians might have lost track of Jesus' robe.  There was only one of those.  But how do you misplace nine thousand turds?

He also had a great comment on voting, which is scarily true:

We're judging how a candidate will handle a nuclear crisis by how well his staff creates campaign ads.  It's a completely nonsensical process.

I also loved a quote on one of the 4 pages of short quotes in the back of the book.

In case you ever consider getting off caffeine yourself, let me explain the process.  you begin by sitting motionless in a desk chair.  Then you just keep doing that forever because life has no meaning.

He frequently gives political commentary, without taking sides, like "either Christianity or Islam is completely and utterly wrong. The beliefs are mutually exclusive. Muslims believe all Christians will burn in Hell. Christians believe that the Koran is fiction. They both can't be right. (They could obviously both be wrong if the Heaven's Gate guys turn out to have it right.)"

If you are a Dave Barry fan, I guarantee you will love Scott Adams.  I'm gong to have to hope someone else brings in one more of his books to Logos some time! 

When I left Sutter at 2:30, all five of the security guards were sitting around the lobby shooting the breeze because there was nothing else to do.

I drove down to Fairfield to get my mother a birthday present.  You can't buy her anything these days, but she does love candy and See's was always our favorite.  There is a See's store in Fairfield and I expected it to be quick trip down, forgetting that it is the end of a 3 days weekend, and I got caught in horrendous traffic.  

But I did buy a one pound box of assorted chocolates and driving home in the other direction wasn't bad at all (nobody wants to spend a holiday weekend in San Francisco, when they could go to Lake Tahoe, or somewhere else in the mountains.  Now tomorrow I'll see if I can pick up a small cake and on Wednesday we will celebrate her 97th birthday, whether she does or not.