Back in May I wrote about a disturbing cartoon that I noticed at the bottom of the MS TechNet Flash newsletter called "Scripting Guy".  It featured a hapless white-jacketed, bespectacled and be-beakered "guy" who for some reason was being asked questions about how to automate some task using script - often by what looks like some of the Village People.

 

I was disturbed in a Haley Joel Osment "I see dead people" way about the strip which for some reason ended with "Scripting Guy" getting a dimensional flattening because he works with idiots.  I think we can all relate to that in some way.

 

But I digress;  my horror at the cartoon was because of how God-awful it was - I believe I called it the love-child of Ziggy and Dilbert.  It was that bad.

 

Well, it seems that in this month's issue (Vol. 9, #16) the creators of "Scripting Guy" have finally conceded defeat and admitted that much like Hollywood, they're completely out of fresh ideas:

 

Astute observers will note that panels #2 and #3 are the same in every cartoon, with the slight modification that occurs to "Scripting Guy" which serves as the "punchline" where we all have a chortle about how sad his life is and how, for some continued inexplicable reason, he is forced from his real calling as an Evil Mad Chemical Engineer to respond to inane questions about how to script lookups for AD accounts or versions for DLLs.  By field hockeystick-wielding madmen.  Who embed their hockey balls in his forehead.

 

With this edition, however, I am heartened to finally get some indication from the strip's creators that yes, they really are getting desperate.

 

My advice:  Let Scripting Guy die with some shred of dignity, such as he may have - it could be anything:  A bizarre scripting accident, another hockey ball to the head, or maybe he loses it, climbs a clock tower with a high-powered rifle and starts taking out all those idiots who keep asking him inane scripting questions before injuring him in some awful physical way.

 

I remain ever-hopeful and vigilant for you hard-working consultants, developers and agilists out there against this kind of cartoon heresy!

So, I check my HotMail account today (yes, still have one - it's where the junk mail goes...) and I see that I've received my latest edition of Microsoft's TechNet Flash Newsletter.

 

For those at home who aren't familiar - the TechNet Flash Newsletter is an emailed publication that's targeted at IT Professionals (not just developers) and is usually localized to your home country - mine originates in Mississauga, for example.  It serves the purpose of providing we in the biz with a bit of marketing wrapped up with some technical "glitz".

 

Today's edition, however, disturbed me in a way that I haven't been disturbed since I used to read the cheesy newsletters that my community centre used to churn out when I was a kid.  You know - the mimeographed, stapled things that featured a "Kid's Corner" on the back page with a lame crossword puzzle or cartoon?

 

Witness what was at the bottom of Vol. 9, Issue 9:

 

 

Words fail me.  This is just, so... awful.  It's like Ziggy and Dilbert had a love child.  I mean, am I supposed to find that last panel amusing?  Uh-oh!  Pressed the wrong button and now Scripting Guy is doing his best pancake impersonation!  And what the hell is he doing with a bubbling test tube?  He works with code - script code - that has nothing to do with being the next Bill Nye.

 

No, no dear cartoon creator - I do not want to know any more about this aberration and I most certainly will not be visiting the URL you have provided.

 

I will, however, blog about your disturbing attempts to provide levity in your newsletter to warn my peers to avert their eyes lest they be blinded.