How to Develop a Personal Alternative to Waving

All greetings are weird, if you think about ’em.

Let me clarify that statement. It’s not that greetings are inherently weird, it’s that they all become weird if you give them the slightest thought. You want your greeting to come off as natural and effortless. That sense of effortlessness will be destroyed by even the slightest doubt in your mind, the kind of doubt that comes from briefly thinking should I wave and say “hi,” or just wave? Or just say “hi”?

Once you’ve given your greeting any thought whatsoever, whatever you do will come off as weird and forced.

Now that I’ve pointed this out, the next time you greet someone, this will happen to you. Feel free to curse me under your breath. That’ll make it even more awkward.

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How to Plan Your Retirement

I’m shocked that nobody has made a movie about an old man who commits some crime in an attempt to use prison as a nursing home, and that Robert DeNiro hasn’t starred in it.

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How to Beat the Heat

As I’ve said a great many times, I do not deal well with heat. However, I’d rather live in a town with warm winters and unbearably hot summers than in a town with warm-ish summers and unbearably cold winters.  

Either way, you end up not wanting to go outside for half of the year. In a town with the unbearably hot summers, the winters are warm, and during the summer, at least the roads are clear.

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How to Tell What Kind of Monster You Are Dating: Vol. 3

The spaceship in the first panel is from the 1953 film version of War of the Worlds. The ship is called the “Martian War Machine.” There’s a guy I know, the guy I drew as the fly in panel three, as a matter of fact, who thought that Martian War Machine would be a great name for a band.

Many of the guys I know have at least one idea for a band name floating around in their heads, even if (like me) they do not play an instrument.

My band name is Foxtrot 101. It’s a Disney cast member thing.

Ric has often said that if he ever starts a jazz quartet, it will be called The New Savage Beatdowns.

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How to Tell What Kind of Monster You Are Dating: Vol. 2

A lot of people don’t know that they made three Creature from the Black Lagoon movies. There was the original Creature from the Black Lagoon, where they come to his lagoon and try to kill him. Next, there was The Revenge of the Creature, where they capture him and take him to a sort of 1950s SeaWorld, which he escapes, causing them to try to kill him. Finally, they made The Creature Walks Among Us, in which they capture the creature and “fix” him by removing his gills so that he can breathe air. They make him wear clothes and keep him in a pen out back. He escapes, and they try to kill him.

I remind you the creature was considered the villain in these movies. The ’50s were an interesting time.

Note from Missy: I think the Graham-blob is one of the cutest things to ever appear in Basic Instructions. I just wanna give him a squeeze.

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How to Tell What Kind of Monster You Are Dating: Vol. 1

This was the first in an experimental series of comics expanding on the same theme. I started doing a comic about what clods we men can be, and found I had far more material than would fit in one comic.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know how or why women put up with us.

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How to Gloat Over Your Captured Enemy

 I could have done a full comic on the concept of a stun ray set to kill.

“If it kills them, it’s a kill ray.”

“No, it stuns them to death.”

“But it still kills them!”

“Yes! that’s the point of the kill setting.”

Looking at the comic, something struck me as odd about it. It took a while before I realized that the Emperor doesn’t get the snot beat out of him in this one! I think, given his record, we have to classify that as a “win.”

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How to Tell a Riveting Story

Mullet Boss’s dialog in panel one is, sadly, the actual climax of an actual story a coworker told me. As in the comic, he was doing this to save a smaller, relatively defenseless dog, but still, I think he could tell from the look on my face that I didn’t think the actions he described were quite as heroic as he did.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad he saved the smaller dog. I was just uncomfortable with the glee he took in describing his assault on the Doberman, at length, while acting it out, and imitating the sounds it made.

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How to Help Someone Improve Their Plan

After this comic ran, I received the following tweet from Grant Imahara:

“Hey, @binstructions great comic! How did you know?? ;)”

I thought that was tremendously classy of him, considering I had pretty much accused him of humping a machine.

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How to Create a Spinoff

Why has no toy company put out an infant/toddler activity center based on Darth Vader’s chest-mounted control panel? Have each button and switch trigger a different sound or light effect. You’d hang it over the side of their playpen. It’s a terrible idea, but it would sell.

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