Maybe they’ll just have a daily column he did say they haven’t decided anything … although a q does that mean the new owner of the reader didn’t want the dope?
*Regards,
Cecil Adams*?
You don’t think - - naaahhh, couldn’t be.
It really couldn’t, could it?
My my my, how the time has flown.
Where else am I ever gonna learn the proper method of construction for a goat cannon?
Isn’t that great? He’ll get to run around and sketch all day with all the other happy artists! My mom told me that.
I got mine at a used book store in Tokyo sometime in either 1992 or 1993. The rest of my experience was the same as yours. Except, of coure, I’m sending this from a laptop.
I doubt it, but it would be absolutely EPIC
Thanks for everything, Ed! Good luck on the next book.
A source of amusement and knowledge that became the seed for this great little community — tracing also where we looked for new and different things, from the free weeklies to the Web. These decades of Straigt Dope were an achievement to look back on proudly, and it had been a delight to have read and to have contributed to the column.
Good work, Ed. For sure would be picking up an eventual Complete Works of Cecil Adams.
JRD, citizen of the Dope.
45 years is a damn good run - thanks, I still re-read the treebooks, and I’m glad to know this forum will remain.
Great run and I’ll definitely miss the new columns. I’m extremely happy that the SDMB will live on, though.
Now that the run is done, can we get a definitive answer to the question of Cecil’s singular existence? Ed and Cecil are different users on this board, and it’s already known that Ed wasn’t around at the beginning of the column. Plus, they had different columns on the website for a while. And, they have very different writing styles (IMO).
So, Ed, Cecil, mods, someone – has Cecil Adams been the same person (left-handed Catholic, right?) from the beginning? And, please, I’m not interested in any speculation, no evidence one way or the other. As Joe Friday said, just the facts, ma’am.
I’m doing my Sad Dance.
Uncovering the first Cecil Adams
Grrr. I can’t see that where I am. What does it say?
You’ve been a mod for a while – who have you met?
It’s an interview with Mike Lenehan, the first Cecil, relating how he was asked by his boss to start a Q&A column along the lines of one in a Phoenix paper called Owen’s Need to Know.
I’m not ECG, God knows, but I’ll chime in. I’ve had dinner with Ed one-on-one a few years ago. Never met Cecil, though.
I’ve met many Dopers, including a few mods. An interesting bunch.
A second for almost every post above. This is one of those days when my life changes; the question becomes for the good or bad. Forty-five years from now contact a spiritualist and ask me. 
As for me?
Got the book from my mom in 1987. Read it through and through and enjoyed reading columns to my college friends. Kept up with the column through the Washington City Paper while I lived there.
Found the site in 1999 and read things endlessly while at work. Registered in April 2000, just a few weeks before my first child was born. I recall seeing JillGat and Esprix - the first Dopers I truly noticed - and saying to myself, “They’ve got like 600 posts. How do they ever find the time?”
I’ve hosted epic Dopefest parties and attended others. Put out the call a few times when travelling for business and had dopers answer the call to go to dinner. Just last summer I hosted a few for an eclipse party.
Community. It’s what sustains us.
I knew Cecil Adams was secretly a justice of the Supreme Court.
The ignorant have won.
When I asked Dexter a while back if there would be any more books, this wasn’t what I had in mind.
Do you know how many copies of these books I’ve worn out? No, really, I’m asking, my memory’s failing.