Why does it list him as “ABANDONED” on the trademark site?
Dear Dead Cecil,
So, what’s the straight dope on the Afterlife?
Uh, sorry to have to tell you this, chaps…
Looks like ol’ Cece has been Fighting Decomposition Since 1989[sup]TM[/sup] (It’s… well, taken longer than we thought).
So he has been fighting ignorance in the afterlife since 1989? 
Still, he might find a lot of it to fight, I suppose.
If you read the bottom of the page you will see that “The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams” is a registered trademark of the Chicago Reader.
guffaw
snerk
chortle
sputter and spew
wanders off looking for paper towels
Will we Dopers be one day viewed as cultists?
Cecil, Happy New Year!
Abandoned? Say it ain’t so! I hope those bastards didn’t abandon him in some frozen wasteland, like Alaska or Siberia. Maybe we could all chip in a few bucks for a plane ticket to get him back to civilization.
Hmm. The plot thickens.
:dubious:
I’ll say what I said in the Jan 2003 thread titled “How old is Ceciil?”
Cecil was cloned many times over the years, so all the above answers are correct for certain additions
(I found my quote because I remembered Cecil posted immediately after me in that thread. He also showed is his wisdom, by completing ignoring my post.)
Er, didn’t that rocket get smashed in a zillion pieces when it hit the ocean? :eek:
A zillion? I doubt it. 17,541 at most.
Rats, Colophon. Maybe we ought to take a closer look at those asteroid impact calculations.
I suppose we could always worship Cecil as a deity, making our leader wear a funny hat, laying siege to Jerusalem (Chicago, your choice), and generally studying Cecil’s writings as if we were Talmudic scholars. But that’s soooooo been done. And besides, Mel Gibson might want to make a movie about it, another disincentive.
I propose that, should Cecil’s fateful day come, we pester Congress until they make Cecil’s birthday a national holiday. Endless years of schoolchildren will be required to learn some sort of vague generalization about Cecil’s life. With any luck, we’ll be able to create an entire mythology around his life. (Ummm, not that your reputation requires embellishing, Unca’ Cecil…bow, bow, scrape, scrape.)
Then we’ll go on cable TV and start telling people how the whole country’s been going to H-E-double-hockey-sticks since Cecil died, and how Cecil would have wanted us to live our lives. If we play our cards right, we could milk that gig for a long, long time. And I think that’s what Cecil would have wanted.
Len
Does anyone know when The Great One’s birthday is, anyways?
Probably the same day as Betty Crocker’s, Ronald McDonald’s, Speedy Alkaseltzer’s, or Bugs Bunny’s. 
Well…
Cecil ain’t even old enough to drink!! But wait - he died at the age of two anyway
Or did he?
Cecil was Fighting Ignorance[sup]TM[/sup] more than 13 years before he was born! Now there’s dedication for you.
Not only is “he” dead, but:
<gasp!>
It’s taken us 21 years to figure this out? It does take longer than orignally thought!
Obviously a conspiracy to make us think Cecil doesn’t exist. I take it no one has to be reminded that the government makes or covers up a convenient “fact” now and again to suit their own ends. Present administrations excluded, of course.
“All right, everybody, time to eat of the semen trees…”
Not regular pan fried semen?