One Giant Leap For Comicsnerdkind

On Tuesday, May 27, 2008, a day that may very well live in some sort of minor shadow of a concept not entirely unlike infamy, Scott Adams managed to get words onto the comics page that I never thought would make it past an editor.

Dilbert described his co-workers as "a bunch of selfish tools." Given that editors and syndicates are normally extremely conservative in what they'll allow in the funnies (I remember Gary Larson writing that calling a character a "dork" stirred some controversy), I was quite surprised by this.

As long as the link works, you can read the strip in question by clicking here.

Oh, and if you want to read Dilbert on a daily basis, you should always go to www.dilbert.com/fast. The main Dilbert site has become a bloated, unwieldy mess. Adding the "/fast" at the end takes you to a page where you get exactly what you came for: the newest strip, no muss, no fuss. I don't know how long that site will archive them, but you've probably got at least a month or so before the link to the May 27 strip dies.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any discussion of this anywhere else yet. I'm sure that someone, somewhere, will argue that this is the downfall of civilization.

Whatever other fallout may come from this strip, it's pretty well guaranteed to help Dilbert's popularity in Canada. Far more than a love of hockey or Tim Horton's, the prime defining characteristic of Canadians is an abiding belief that it's funny to refer to people as tools.

(Yes, I enjoy the irony that the joke in the previous paragraph comes in the middle of a series of posts about prejudice and stereotypes!)


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my shirttail.