How to Scare Parents at the Mall

I picked up a new book last night and almost embarrassed myself at the local mall when I started reading it while the wife and daughter were shopping. I was sitting near the area where the kids are meeting Santa, all by myself, and laughing like I was nuts. Parents started moving their kids away from me.

The book: Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!, by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. It's not a Dilbert book per se, but a collection of Adams' writings over the years, some of which appeared on the Dilbert blog. In some of the short pieces he explains why the original version of a particular Dilbert comic didn't get published, or how it generated complaints. Very funny stuff.

The piece which got me laughing so hard at the mall was a short item about his fear of birds and getting bird flu. He talks about spending excessive time looking for parking spaces where there are no trees so that sick birds won't do things on his car. Then he goes into this riff involving one of my favorite subjects - global warming:

I've got my fingers crossed that global warming will kill all the birds before they start hurling on me. With any luck, someday the global warming will make those birds burst into flame in midflight. Problem solved.

But until that happy day, I'm thinking of moving to Florida. I'm no ornithologist/meteorologist, but I'm pretty sure birds don't like hurricanes.

The media always focuses on the negative aspects of hurricanes. They never mention how it helps clear out the birds for a while. Just once I would like to hear a news report with an upbeat take:

"Thanks to hurricane Wilma, nothing has crapped on our Eyewitness News van for hours. Back to you, Bob."

Buy this book, but don't read it in public unless you want to embarrass yourself and scare a lot of parents.