Today’s Dilbert has the pointy-headed boss talking to Dilbert about listening to his gut instincts:
The covert punch line is prefigured in the first panel, with the word analysis. Then in the third panel, Dilbert (recognizing that his boss’s gut instinct can’t literally be telling him anything, since it can’t literally speak) slyly suggests, via his question, that his boss’s gut is figuratively speaking through an orifice closer than his mouth, namely his anus — that is, that the boss is, as we say in vulgar slang, talking out of his ass.
The vulgar slang talk out of one’s ass has two related senses, both referring to non-veracious speech short of outright lying or dissembling, roughly ‘say foolish things, talk nonsense’ and ‘exaggerate one’s achievements or knowledge of a subject; bluff, boast’ — both akin to the verb bullshit (also with anal associations).
