Clive Cussler Disease

Dilbert is one of the most popular comic strips in the world today. The title character, an engineer of undefined specialty, and his colleagues get into all kinds of mischief working for Path-E-Tech Management, a high-tech company in Northern California. The phrase "pointy-haired boss" - a reference to Dilbert's totally clueless boss, has even entered the common vocabulary. I actually use the phrase myself. (If my boss is reading this, I never use it to refer to you.)

Scott Adams has been drawing Dilbert for more than 15 years, and apparently he is running out of good ideas. On January 2, 2006 he actually appeared in the strip himself, complaining about a lame strip concept that "a gazillion people" have suggested to him over the years. I thought this was a cute idea, although I hoped that Mr. Adams wouldn't do that kind of thing too often.

So you can imagine my chagrin when the January 3, 2006 strip found the artist trapped in his comic strip, unable to escape. Oh dear! Another tragic case of Clive Cussler Disease.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Clive Cussler is a very popular and successful author of techno-thriller novels. His books all star Dirk Pitt, Cussler's alter ego: a swashbuckling pilot, engineer, and marine scientist (imagine a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Han Solo). Mr. Cussler's books are extremely fun reads, and I enjoy them very much. But Mr. Cussler has developed a problem in recent years.

The last four or five Dirk Pitt novels have featured cameo appearances by a new character, Clive Cussler! The first time that happened, I thought it was charming. But I've grown increasingly tired of Mr. Cussler showing up in his own novels to dispense wisdom or save the neck of his super-hero grade protagonist.

I don't know what causes successful authors and artists to fall prey to this disease. I just hope that Mr. Cussler and Mr. Adams can both be cured. The long-term symptoms aren't nearly as pleasant for others to cope with as the victims may believe.

The good news is that the "Wizard of Oz" parody which developed in Dilbert this week now seems to be over. When last seen Mr. Adams was being hosting skyward by a giant hand while he chanted the magical incantation, "There's no place like my home office..." {RAH06}

Related Links:

Dilbert
National Underwater and Marine Agency - Clive Cussler's website.

Welcome to RAH 2006

Welcome to the latest iteration of Random Access Humor, which has been kicking around the online world in one form or another since September 1992.

Random Access Humor (RAH) was originally a text-based electronic magazine published on FidoNet bulletin board systems. The last issue of the original RAH was published in February 1995.

I spent the remainder of 1995 working with the late Rick Arnold on Dream Forge, a general purpose e-mag. I left the staff of Dream Forge in early 1996. I was burned out and needed a break from electronic publishing.

This didn't last long, and in June 1996 I began work on my first web-based magazine, Random Access Humor 96 (rah96.com). The title was supposed to be a parody of Windows 95, but apparently nobody got the joke. I was used to that by then.

Never one to learn from my mistakes, I've decided to entitle my first blog-format version of Random Access Humor with the all too predictable Random Access Humor 2006 (RAH 2006).

It will be updated on a sporadic basis, just like RAH has been for the past eight years or so. You can still find the best of the original RAH and RAH96 on the main RAH website, RandomAccessHumor.com.