New Quatloo blog.

We've slipped to at least the Seventh Circle of Winter: overnight temps are expected to on the wrong side of zero, maybe by as much as 10 degrees F. It's a marvel that anything gets done under such conditions, besides cowering in our hovels.

My cousin Jay writes: "I would love to hear 'bad managment' stories that you mentioned on your last entry. Don't worry about fatigue. Stay up all night if neccesary!
"Since I work for WorldCom (late of the 11 billion-dollar accounting 'error' and soon to be renamed MCI) these would be fun. No -- nothing like that ever happens here.
"My daughter, who is 16 years old, thinks that the comic strip Dilbert is fiction. I know better!"

Don't worry, they're still in the works, those bad management stories. As for Dilbert, it isn't the strip it once was, but no comic strip ever is. An old friend of mine, who's managed to spend almost all of his working life in academic or therapeutic settings, once told me that he didn't understand Dilbert. Lucky him, but I have to imagine that there's enough grist for management satire in those places. It would have a different tone, though.

My brother Jay corrects me: the actor on Green Acres was Eddie Albert, not Eddy Arnold. I must have been thinking of Arnold the Pig. The show came to mind because over the Christmas holidays, I discovered that the same UHF station that shows Three Stooges shorts on Saturdays shows Green Acres weekday mornings, and I was able to watch some of them. Little gems, they are.

Also from Jay: "You're talking about the New Quatloo, of course. Prior to the currency reforms on Star Date 66578.3 (Julian), it was eight zecks to the ferenc, and twelve ferencs to the quatloo. For many years, too, until the government of Triskelion allowed the currency to float freely, a quatloo, two minims, three zeck would get you one strip of gold-plated latinum."

It's strange that those glowing brains needed a currency at all.