How to Explain the Future to Your Past Self
January 15 was the 30th anniversary of Flood, by They Might Be Giants.
I’d love to say that my first exposure to the album was listening to it in its entirety, but that’s not the case. My first exposure was when a good friend who had heard the album before me was absentmindedly singing “Particle Man” to himself, and I thought he’d lost his mind.
Because time is a flat circle, I recently caught myself singing the chorus to this They Might Be Giants song while I was shopping. I’m pretty sure anyone who overheard me had questions about my mental state as well.
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How to Get Someone to Take One for the Team
In a former job, I had a coworker who liked and respected me much more than I liked and respected him. But I was pleasant and professional to him, so he didn’t realize the disparity in our attitudes. We had various managers who we reported to on different days. He had a specific problem with one of the managers, an African American woman I respected and liked. I defended her to my coworker more than once, but he was oblivious. Literally oblivious, like he couldn’t even hear my defense of her.
One day he asked me to read a letter he was sending to someone three rungs up the ladder from us, two up from the manager in question, explaining exactly why he didn’t think she should be employed by our company anymore. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought.
It was hand-written, in very large letters, and spoke specifically about how she dressed, what parts of her body her clothing accentuated, and what kind of impression her appearance gave, in his opinion. “Whore” was one of the nicer words involved.
He signed his name to this letter, by the way.
Strangely, I found myself torn. I didn’t want someone saying these things about the manager, but I knew that sending the letter would do tremendous damage to the career of the guy who sent it and, if anything, demonstrate to the higher-ups exactly what she had to put up with.
In the end I did what I thought was the decent thing and told him that he shouldn’t send the letter, because I didn’t agree with anything in it and that I thought it would reflect badly on him. To show you how oblivious he was, he came in the next day with a smug look on his face and told me he sent it.
I never saw any sign that the note caused any damage to the manager’s career, and while the letter writer wasn’t fired, he certainly never got promoted past the position he was in.
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How to Talk Someone out of Making a Wretched Mistake
I’ve driven across the entire country twice. Whenever someone tells me they’re thinking of doing the cross-country road-trip, I ask the same question. “Do you really need to?”
It’s a great question, because they can deduce what my final answer will be without them having to answer my question themselves.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beautiful, fascinating country. But man, there’s a lot of it. Like, a surprising amount. Especially Texas. We went a little crazy on the Texas, and that’s coming from someone who has driven all over Montana.
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How to Construct a Good Story
This is a true story, right down to the look on the nurse’s face when I started to ask about the pagers.
Here’s the sad thing. That clinic was in Florida. As wonky and disorganized as it could be, I’ve lived in Arizona for close to five years, and I’ve never found a clinic here I like even half as much.
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How to Find Your Motivation
I don’t really have much to say about this comic, so instead I’ll share this story from the CBS affiliate I grew up watching, about a recent event near my home town. This is for those who believe my descriptions of Eastern Washington have been exaggerated.
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How to React When You've Been Wrongly Accused of Murder
Really, any time anybody gets stabbed in the city where the Knifeketeer is active, the police would have to go at least check his alibis. Of course, Omnipresent Man and Mr. Everywhere would always be available to act as an alibis, but I get the impression they actively ignore him half the time, which would be extra frustrating.
“What do you mean you didn’t see if I didn’t do it? You were right there!”
“I wasn’t looking. I’m Mr. Everywhere, not Mr. Looks-at-everything.”
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How to Deal with Ideas That Make Your Uncomfortable
Oh, how I would LOVE to pitch this idea on Shark Tank.
“Sharks, almost everybody with disposable income in this country has lips and armpits. The potential market is huge!”
The old “potential market” argument gets them every time!
Of course, writing this comment reminded me of this scene from The Good Place.
Which reminded me of this scene from The IT Crowd.
Which reminded me of this scene from New Girl.
All of which leads inexorably to this video from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary’s own channel in which he suggests what he thinks are some great collector watches you should consider to start your collection. The clip starts right as he announces the price he paid for the first watch on his list of beginning collector’s watches. Really, you can stop it after hearing the price and you’ll have the gist of the whole video.
I would love for some cable channel to give him a show, sort of like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, only he’s the host, the rich, and the famous. Just a half hour each week of him telling us what he thinks we should think is good.
I would call the show Kevin O’Leary: Fancy, Fancy Man.
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How to Discuss Someone's Questionable Life Choices
Two things:
1. “Drunken Failure” is one of my favorite jokes I’ve ever written. Few things I’ve ever come up with make me smile as much.
2. When I was a teenager, I was convinced that Commander Riker was pretty much everything women wanted in a man. Later I talked to some women and found out that was not the case. Missy, specifically, is not impressed with him. Here’s the weird thing. No matter how many times or how emphatically women tell me they weren’t attracted to Riker, part of me always thinks they’re lying.
Note from Missy: Why would any woman go for Riker, when Picard was right there??
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How to Remove All of the Funny from a Story
If memory serves, this strip came about when Missy and I went out to dinner, and the server said they had “appetizers, salad, and soups, too.” I thought she said “soup-stew,” and after she left I asked Missy what “soup-stew” could possibly be. When Missy was done laughing at me I wrote this comic.
The great thing about Basic Instructions was that I could take any stupid thing I did, have a different character do it, and some good would come of my mistake. One downside is that to this day I get reminded of mistakes I’ve made that most people would have long forgotten by now.
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