Page 6      Diablo Blue    August, 2002
DVPC Board Meeting Minutes certainly not by Tom Krauss, DVPC

Your Board of Directors did not hold their meeting on July 17 as scheduled. It seemed everyone was either traveling (Charlie was probably in Alaska, again… what is it about Alaska that draws Charlie like a magnet??), had family obligations, wanted to watch something on TV (do we suspect that some of Board members were watching Big Brother? Nooo, they are much too sophisticated for a TV show like Big Brother… aren’t they??), were tied up at the office (the rumor that most of the Board members have to be tied up in order for their employers to actually get some productive work out of them is a crass libel!!), were asleep, or wanted to be asleep.

Regardless of the reasons (or lack thereof) on the part of the Board members, there was no Board meeting. A highly complex and detailed computer program that processes the Board of Directors inputs (or lack thereof) and creates an output that can be acted upon to direct the generation of this very column, is as follows:

          100       if boardmeeting = “no” then

          110       move “no” to boardmeetingminutes

          120       else

          130       move “yes” to boardmeetingminutes

          140       end-if.

If you’re not quite up on your Cobol programming, you could dust off those old Cobol books and delve into Cobol syntax. Or you could take my word for it — the key here is lines 100 and 110. What these lines mean is that, since there was no Board meeting (if boardmeeting = “no”) then there are no DVPC Board Meeting minutes (move “no” to boardmeetingminutes).

Since there are no DVPC Board Meeting Minutes this month, there is no DVPC Board Meeting Minutes column this month either. So why are you reading this? It must be a puerile interest in the happenings of the Board and its meetings. Or a perverted interest in the sordid lives of the individual and collective members of the Board of Directors. Or, since Big Brother isn’t on TV tonight, maybe it’s because you don’t have anything better to do.

Regardless of your reasons (or lack thereof), there truly isn’t any valid, explainable or justifiable reason to be reading this column. To reiterate: because there was no Board of Directors meeting, which directly resulted in no Board of Directors meeting minutes, the further and penultimate result is and must be that there is no DVPC Board of Directors Meeting Minutes column. As a direct corollary to the preceding proof (the definition of “proof” being: The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true), you can’t possibly be reading this column because it, by definition and by the preceding clear, concise, and thorough explanations, couldn’t possibly exist. It’s a figment of your imagination. It’s a figment of my imagination. To paraphrase the famous Monty Python’s Flying Circus “Dead Parrot” episode (©1968, 1970 Python (Monty) Pictures Limited, marketed and distributed in the U.S. by New Video Group, distributed in continuity by Time-Life Video, DVD video disc catalog #V835-01):

“This column is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. It’s a late column. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. This is an ex-column.”

So turn the page. Look somewhere else. Read another article. I’m confident that there are many articles of consummate interest on the many other pages of this magnificent publication. Read on, live well, and prosper!