How to Give Directions

Wow! MapQuest! When was the last time you heard that name? Before MapQuest I used a program called Microsoft Streets and Trips. It was a CD-ROM. You’d print out the directions and bring the sheaf of paper with you to consult as you drove.  It was not terribly accurate, and would get me lost more often than not, but at least it got me lost near my intended destination, which was better than I usually did on my own.

Note from Missy: This comic made me wonder if Thomas Guides were still around. Which led me to learn from Wikipedia that they were primarily a west coast thing, while I’d always assumed they were nationwide. Also, in the Wikipedia, “The neutrality of this article is disputed.” I guess even a bunch of books full of street-level maps can raise people’s ire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Guide

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How to Give Directions

Wow! MapQuest! When was the last time you heard that name? Before MapQuest I used a program called Microsoft Streets and Trips. It was a CD-ROM. You’d print out the directions and bring the sheaf of paper with you to consult as you drove.  It was not terribly accurate, and would get me lost more often than not, but at least it got me lost near my intended destination, which was better than I usually did on my own.

Note from Missy: This comic made me wonder if Thomas Guides were still around. Which led me to learn from Wikipedia that they were primarily a west coast thing, while I’d always assumed they were nationwide. Also, in the Wikipedia, “The neutrality of this article is disputed.” I guess even a bunch of books full of street-level maps can raise people’s ire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Guide

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Act Casual

Yes, I know that beatniks are a terribly outdated reference. I still use it for three reasons.

1.       Beatnik is a funny word.

2.       The nearest non-dated equivalent, hipster, is a moving target. What constitutes a hipster changes every year. If you had told someone from ten years ago that hipsters today would wear plaid shirts and have handlebar moustaches, they wouldn’t believe you.

3.       I can make fun of beatniks without fear of offending beatniks because the very few of them who are still around are not reading web comics, unless there’s a comic about bongo drums that I’m unaware of.

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How to Act Casual

Yes, I know that beatniks are a terribly outdated reference. I still use it for three reasons.

1.       Beatnik is a funny word.

2.       The nearest non-dated equivalent, hipster, is a moving target. What constitutes a hipster changes every year. If you had told someone from ten years ago that hipsters today would wear plaid shirts and have handlebar moustaches, they wouldn’t believe you.

3.       I can make fun of beatniks without fear of offending beatniks because the very few of them who are still around are not reading web comics, unless there’s a comic about bongo drums that I’m unaware of.

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How to Calm a Friend Down

The first square comic! We’re slowly zeroing in on the comic’s final form. This is also the first place I used the idea of freaking “all the way out,” which is an idiom I still use in conversation to this day. 

Also, this is another comic that was obviously written about Rick, even though I was still too squeamish to attribute it to him in the comic. If memory serves, he read this one and knew it was about him. That’s one of my favorite things about the guy. He has no illusions as to his place in the universe.

Note from Missy: Here we enter 2007, and at the time, we were probably both freaking all the way out. After receiving a job offer, we had one month (January) to quit our Seattle jobs, pack up our lives, find an apartment in Florida, and get us and the cats and a car and our stuff moved out there. It was definitely a time of stress.

Also! I know that in the last few years, Scott tried his hardest to get the narration to never go over two lines per panel. I’m interested to watch these progress and see if that tightening-up happens suddenly, or over a long period of time. :)

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How to Calm a Friend Down

The first square comic! We’re slowly zeroing in on the comic’s final form. This is also the first place I used the idea of freaking “all the way out,” which is an idiom I still use in conversation to this day. 

Also, this is another comic that was obviously written about Rick, even though I was still too squeamish to attribute it to him in the comic. If memory serves, he read this one and knew it was about him. That’s one of my favorite things about the guy. He has no illusions as to his place in the universe.

Note from Missy: Here we enter 2007, and at the time, we were probably both freaking all the way out. After receiving a job offer, we had one month (January) to quit our Seattle jobs, pack up our lives, find an apartment in Florida, and get us and the cats and a car and our stuff moved out there. It was definitely a time of stress.

Also! I know that in the last few years, Scott tried his hardest to get the narration to never go over two lines per panel. I’m interested to watch these progress and see if that tightening-up happens suddenly, or over a long period of time. :)

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Show 'em Who's Boss

The first and fourth panels of this comic are representative enough of my life at the time that they almost count as journalism.

My job title at the time was “Office Manager,” but I usually refed to myself as the “Office Monkey.” My coworkers would laugh when I said this, but none of them argued.

My favorite game at the time was an Xbox game called Mercenaries. It was great, and if someone made a remastered version or an Android port it’d be an instant purchase for me. (The closest thing that exists right now is Just Cause 3.) But one night I realized that the game consisted entirely of having other people pay you to do their dirty work, which was pretty much what I was trying to unwind from in the first place. 

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How to Show 'em Who's Boss

The first and fourth panels of this comic are representative enough of my life at the time that they almost count as journalism.

My job title at the time was “Office Manager,” but I usually refed to myself as the “Office Monkey.” My coworkers would laugh when I said this, but none of them argued.

My favorite game at the time was an Xbox game called Mercenaries. It was great, and if someone made a remastered version or an Android port it’d be an instant purchase for me. (The closest thing that exists right now is Just Cause 3.) But one night I realized that the game consisted entirely of having other people pay you to do their dirty work, which was pretty much what I was trying to unwind from in the first place. 

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Avoid sounding Condescending

A few years back, the Microsoft Store had some extremely limited Christmas season door buster deals that required shoppers to line up before the store opened. I actually turned up for one, an insanely low price for a Windows tablet. I had two notable interactions with strangers in that line.

The first was when another guy and I arrived at the same moment and found that there were 29 people already in line to buy the thirty available tablets. We decided to play “Pick a number” to see who’d get the last spot.  The 29^th guy in line picked a number between 1 and 100. My opponent guessed first, and chose 76. I, understanding how odds work, chose 75. I won.

Later, another person got in line behind me hoping someone before us would leave for some reason before the store opened in twenty minutes. As it became more and more obvious that this would not happen she tried to talk me into leaving. I tried to be gracious, but in both of these situation I found it nearly impossible to make any comment without sounding either condescending or smug. It was deeply uncomfortable.

That’s not what this comic is about though. The comic’s about a coworker who declared a power point projector broken, and had not turned it on.

Note from Missy: I feel like it’s also about those people, those infuriating people, who will take every single thing you say and try to turn it around in a way that is designed to make you feel bad. Because if they make you feel small, that makes them feel big. 

You can comment on this comic on Facebook.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Avoid sounding Condescending

A few years back, the Microsoft Store had some extremely limited Christmas season door buster deals that required shoppers to line up before the store opened. I actually turned up for one, an insanely low price for a Windows tablet. I had two notable interactions with strangers in that line.

The first was when another guy and I arrived at the same moment and found that there were 29 people already in line to buy the thirty available tablets. We decided to play “Pick a number” to see who’d get the last spot.  The 29^th guy in line picked a number between 1 and 100. My opponent guessed first, and chose 76. I, understanding how odds work, chose 75. I won.

Later, another person got in line behind me hoping someone before us would leave for some reason before the store opened in twenty minutes. As it became more and more obvious that this would not happen she tried to talk me into leaving. I tried to be gracious, but in both of these situation I found it nearly impossible to make any comment without sounding either condescending or smug. It was deeply uncomfortable.

That’s not what this comic is about though. The comic’s about a coworker who declared a power point projector broken, and had not turned it on.

Note from Missy: I feel like it’s also about those people, those infuriating people, who will take every single thing you say and try to turn it around in a way that is designed to make you feel bad. Because if they make you feel small, that makes them feel big. 

You can comment on this comic on Facebook.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).