My idea is a post comparing ‘Cecil Adams’ with Santa Claus, a ‘Yes Straight Dope Message Board there is a Cecil Adams’, but I don’t have what it takes to make it a great post. Here’s the text of that classic editorial, and I’ve already given you the concept for the post- a parody of the editorial, replacing Santa with Cecil, etc. etc. Do something good with it. Then other posters can reply with messages of I BELIEVE IN YOU CECIL!, etc. Aim for a spot in Threadspotting.
The concept of Cecil has of course come under more fire now because of the fact that Cecil Adams was discovered to be a trademarked name- but it’s not like we didn’t already know it was a pen name. Anyway, let me know if this has been done before, and if you want to do it.
samclem
December 12, 2005, 1:31am
2
It’s been done.
tomndebb:
NotNow, your little poster is wrong. He has been affected by the credulism of a credulous age. He does not accept except what he sees on Oprah. He thinks that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by his little mind. All minds, NotNow, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, NotNow, there is a Cecil Adams.
He exists as certainly as investigation and research and analysis exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Cecil Adams! It would be as dreary as if there were no NotNow. There would be no ornery skepticism then, no doubting, no analysis to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood’s demands for truth fill the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Cecil Adams! You might as well not believe in the OED, the Encyclopædia Britannica or Google™. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the Chicago Reader offices on Monday morning to catch Cecil Adams, but even if you did not see Cecil Adams enter the building, what would that prove? Nobody sees Cecil Adams, but that is no sign that there is no Cecil Adams. The most real things in the world are those that have not been debunked by Cecil or Jan Harold Brunvand or Barbara Mikkelson . Did you ever see Zhou Enlai? Of course not, he used to live in China and he’s dead now, but that does not mean he was not real. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the masters there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the agoraphobic world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only cash, therapy, cash, (perhaps threats), can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, NotNow, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Cecil Adams? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, NotNow, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of students of knowledge.
Tom~
From http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=294458&page=1&pp=50&highlight=cecil
samclem:
It’s been done.
I hope I’m not the only one who heard this in the voice of General Disarray.
Simpsons did it!
I just e-mailed tomdeb asking if it was alright with him if I quoted it. I said it should be an “ornament” we bring out every year to decorate the board.