DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ

This email was sent to me recently, and while it does not specifically say that it is true, that is certainly the implication. So as I often do, I went to Snopes to learn what I could. That turned up -- nothing. So I Googled it, and found one site, “The Real Life Dilbert Manager's Quote Contest. Reality or Urban Legend?” (the second listing) of an individual, one Elana Centor, who was as leery as I. She, too, had googled “Dilbert Contest” and discovered that every site said “...a magazine...” without ever naming the magazine. Upon further research, Ms Centor discovered that the very same contest, with the same quotes happened in different years. Neat trick. She never did find anything that named a specific magazine, so she concluded that the contest was an urban legend.

Go ahead. Read these. They are funny. But the odds are very high that somebody made them up.

Dilbert Quotes
A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert Quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-type managers. Here are some of the submissions.


"As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks." (This was the winning entry, from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA)

"What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter." (Lykes Lines Shipping)
"E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business." (Accounting Mgr., Electric Boat Company)

"This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it." (Advertising/Mktg. Mgr., UPS)

"Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule." (R&D Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

Quote from the boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I' say." (Mktg. executive, Citrix Corporation)

My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping Executive, FTD Florists)

"We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (AT&T Long Lines Division)

"No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them." (R&D Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing /3M Corp.)

BEAUTIFUL SCENERY

I don't recall who sent me these, but my thanks to whomever. Beauty everywhere you look. No commentary from me necessary.

Enjoy!





























And in the humor department --

The customer ordering a floral arrangement was giving very specific guidelines. "Nothing fragrant," she instructed. "Nothing too tall or too wild. And no bright colors, please. My house is decorated in beige and cream. Here is a wallpaper sample." She handed me a plain square of tan-colored paper.
"Your name?" she was asked.
"Mrs. Bland," the woman replied.

CREEPY, CRAWLY NO MORE!

That’s right! My computer is back up to its speedy self. The last I’d heard from the Apple store was that the RAM chips were on back order. We’ll call you when they come in. I’d been hearing that for two weeks, and I was getting tired of it.. Then I was referred to an Apple authorized dealer that is nearby. I phoned, and explained my problem. The result? Friday I was told that they could order the chips, and they might be in by Monday. WOW!, if true. I wasn’t going to bet on Monday, but sure enough, around 10:30 that morning I had a phone call saying the chips were in. So Cliff and I dropped what we were doing, loaded the computer into the car, and drove to the authorized dealer.

I said I wanted to wait for it, and how long might it take? Thirty minutes, I was told. Fifteen minutes later it was all done. Can’t do better than that!

Humor out of real life --

Sunday Cliff and I went to the last of the three summer repertory plays. This one was Agatha Christie’s THE MOUSETRAP, one of her most famous convoluted stories. The play was well presented, but the best line, in my opinion, came after the last act. On Sunday afternoons the playhouse holds what they call a “talkback”, where the audience members can ask questions of the cast.


There were many youngsters in this audience, and they seemed to ask most of the questions. There is one point at the end of the first act where one of the female actors is found dead, stretched out on the floor, in a somewhat awkward position. One little girl asked the “dead” actress why she was in such a funny position, and the actor responded by explaining that when someone dies, they may fall down in an unnatural position. “Oh,” said the little girl, “I knew you weren’t really dead.”

NEW POSTAGE STAMP HONORS BILL MAULDIN

I was a young teenager during World War II, but I do remember the Bill Mauldin cartoons. What I did not know, until reading the following, was that he was an enlisted man, just like the soldiers he drew, not a correspondent.

This tribute, emailed to me today, is funny, sad, enlightening, encouraging, informative, and any other adjectives you'd like to add. I cannot tell who the first person writer is, but apparently someone who knew Bill. (Ordinarily I leave my Saturday posting up until Monday morning, as I don't post on Sunday. This one I will leave at the top through Tuesday morning.)



You might not be old enough to remember him but look through it anyway...he was really important in his time...

For all those who remember Bill Mauldin and his many cartoons and even those who never heard of him, this is a great salute to him!

This is one of the outstanding new stamps for 2010.

Makes ya proud to put this stamp on your envelopes.

Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts' hero.

The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.

And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify.

But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that happened last month: Bill Mauldin got his own postage stamp.

Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline.

He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.

Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were their gripes,
his laughs were their laughs, his heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them.
They loved him.

He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, his superior officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, and Patton informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons -- celebrating the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers -- to stop. Now.

The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.

Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe . Ike put out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants. Mauldin won. Patton lost.

If, in your line of work, you've ever considered yourself a young hotshot, or if you've ever known anyone who has felt that way about himself or herself, the story of Mauldin's young manhood will humble you. Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had accomplished:

He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine. His book "Up Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in the United States .

All of that at 23. Yet when he returned to civilian life and he grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, he never outgrew his excitement about doing his job, he never big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked every day.

I was lucky enough to be one of them; Mauldin roamed the hallways of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy. That impish look on his face remained.

He had achieved so much. He had won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won a third, for what may be the single greatest editorial cartoon in the history of the craft: his deadline rendering, on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its head cradled in its hands. But he never acted as if he was better than the people he met. He was still Mauldin the enlisted man.

During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California nursing home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind of it. They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he should know that he was still their hero.

Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern California for people in the area to send their best wishes to Mauldin; I joined Dillow in the effort, helping to spread the appeal nationally so that Bill would not feel so alone. Soon more than 10,000 letters and cards had arrived at Mauldin's bedside.

Even better than that, the old soldiers began to show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were there for him, as he, long ago, had been there for them. So many volunteered to visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd DePastino, in the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described it:

"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002 they came to Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach , California , to honor Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old garrison caps. Others arrived resplendent in uniforms over a half century old. Almost all of them wept as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected obligation."

One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important:
"You would have to be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us. You had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of his cartoons."

Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery . Last month, the kid cartoonist made it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an honor that most generals and admirals never receive.

What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who are keeping him company on that stamp. Take a look at it. There's Willie. There's Joe.


And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile, is Mauldin himself. With his buddies, right where he belongs. Forever.

I’VE HAD WORSE DAYS ...

...just not recently. It started with a trip to the dentist on Thursday. And that was the best part of it. It was only to have my teeth cleaned, but the dentist did find two cavities that need to be filled.

About a week ago I had an appointment with my eye doctor (I refuse to spell ‘opthamologist’), and sure enough, I need new lenses. He wrote out a prescription which I took to my occulist, and she told me she would phone when the new lenses were in. Sure enough, Wednesday evening I had a call that the lenses had arrived and if I would come in, they would grind them to fit my frames. So that was item two on the Thursday schedule. I waited while the grinding occurred, and then I heard the occulist cry out, “Oh, no!” Turns out out one of the lenses had a big fat crack in it, and they would have to order another.

The worst of it has to do with my computer. Back on July 5, I posted CREEPY, CRAWLY THING about my computer needing more RAM. And that my local Apple store didn’t have the necessary chips in stock. Call back next week. So I did. “ We’ll call you when the chips come in.” No calls. So today (this is now another week later) I tried once more around noon. Some gentleman said he would get back to me in 30 minutes. It is now nearly 7 p.m., and he hasn’t called yet. My patience is wearing thin.

Fun -

A poet should be of the old fashioned meaningless brand --
obscure, esoteric, symbolic -- the critics demand it.
So if there’s a poem of mine that you do understand,
I’ll gladly explains what it means ‘til you don’t understand it.

***
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant -- and let the air out of their tires.

LOGO TRIVIA

My thanks to my niece Brenda for forwarding these to me. I don't know that I've paid a lot of attention to logos in the past, but you may find these as interesting as I did. I could even see the items mentioned that occurred in white.

This logo doesn't seem to hide much at first sight, but it gives you a little insight in the philosophy behind the brand. First of all, the yellow swoosh looks like a smile: Amazon wants
to have the best customer satisfaction. The swoosh also connects the letters a and z,
meaning that this store has everything from a to z.

The old logo of Baskin Robbins had the number 31 with an arc above it. The new logo
took his idea to the next level. The pink parts of the BR still form the number 31,
a reference to the 31 flavors.

The Milwaukee Brewers is a professional baseball team from Milwaukee , Wisconsin .
Their logo is actually made up of the letters M (on top) and B (below the m). These two
letters also form a baseball glove.

Do you see any arrows on FedEx's logo? I saw it a few times at other site saying that there's an arrow hidden in the FedEx arrow, but I couldn't find it. I now know where it is, it's your turn to find. The clue is that the arrow is located in between the alphabet E and X, and the arrow

is white, acting as a background.

At first, this logo might not make much sense. But if you look closely, you'll see the number 1 in the negative space between the F and the red stripes. I also love how this logo communicates
a feeling of speed.

This simple looking logo actually carries a lot of information. First of all you can see the letters N and W, the first two letters of the brand name. But what most people don't see is the compass that points to the Northwest, another reference to the brand name.

Sony Vaio is a well known brand of laptops. But did you know that the name Vaio logo also had a hidden meaning? Well, the first two letters represent the basic analogue signal. The last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.

Toblerone is a chocolate-company from Bern , Switzerland . Bern is sometimes called 'The City Of Bears'. They have incorporated this idea in the Toblerone logo, because if you look closely, you'll see the silhouette of a bear.

If you look at the center of this logo, you can see two people enjoying a Tostito chip with a bowl of salsa. This logo conveys an idea of people connecting with each other.

ASK THE EXPERTS

On the other hand, don't.

Han van Meegeren was a 20th century forger, painting art in the style of 15th century artist Vermeer. One of the intriguing aspects about this forger is that he never claimed that his paintings were genuine Vermeer’s -- the so-called 20th century art experts made that decision. Oh, van Meegeren did forge Vermeer’s signature on the paintings, but that was not the basis on which these “experts” made their decisions.

The reason I mention this at all is that the “experts” are at it again. Well, they were, until proved wrong. Here is the story:

Many years ago an artist painted a very large mural that adorned a huge wall at the then only terminal at the San Jose Airport. Subsequently another terminal was built, and now a third one has just opened. It is now the intent to demolish the old terminal, and art lovers have been all up-in-arms about saving that mural. “Can’t be done,” said the experts. How about saving the entire wall? Far too expensive - over a million dollars - especially in these difficult financial times. Other possible solutions were suggested, but deemed impractical by the “experts”. The mural would be shredded, they said. The artist could not be consulted because he had passed away a few years ago.

Then the newspaper reported that an astonishingly easy solution had been accomplished. Well, reasonably easy, considering the foregoing. The artist’s son flew in to see what he might do, and upon examination of his father’s work, proceeded, with some help, to simply unroll the mural right off the wall! That’s right, he unrolled it. What the experts had failed to see was that the mural was painted on canvas, and then glued to the wall. Now all that remains is to find a wall big enough to put it back up.

Humor -

If They Wrote Computer Error Messages in Haiku:

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen
dies so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.