How to Curse with Flair

You shouldn’t let your cursing become repetitive.

My father has done more than his share of cursing, but when I was a child he’d often start his tirades with the same opening salvo of six specific words in the same order, delivered in the exact same tone and volume every time. Eventually, my brothers and I started laughing (or desperately trying not to laugh) whenever we heard it, which didn’t make him curse less.

Note from Missy: You can’t leave it at that, Scott. We need to know the six words.

Note from Scott: Since you asked, they were “Jesus Christ, son of a bitch!”

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How to Defend Your Musical Tastes

Actually, I like Duran Duran. They aren’t my favorite, but they made several songs I quite like. One of their songs has a lyric that I think is one of the best character descriptions I’ve ever seen.

“Going down to the disco where she's gonna star in some fiasco”

It contains no physical description, but you can picture the woman they’re talking about and you know exactly who she is.

Note from Missy: (pushes glasses up nose, clears throat) This lyric is from “Pretty Ones,” an unreleased demo from the Astronaut sessions.  I will also point out that my knowledge of Duran-lore meant I was laughing out loud to things in The Venture Brothers episode “Maybe No Go” that baffled Scott, which was kind of a nice feeling—for a brief time, I was the pop culture master!

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How to Run a Joke into the Ground

Magnum P.I. is back. The pilot/first episode of the reboot hasn’t aired as of this writing, but was directed by Justin Lin, who directed several of the Fast and Furious movies. Looking at the commercials, it seems like he looked at the original show and thought that what it lacked was more high-speed chases, big stunt sequences, and cars blowing up. This isn’t a huge surprise. This is the same guy who directed the only Star Trek movie in which the captain jumps a motorcycle.

Note: I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond, but having the solution to the crew’s predicament be letting Kirk skid around on a dirt bike for twenty minutes did sort of take me out of the story.

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How to Be a Good husband During "Ladytimes"

I have a theory.

Since I was a child, I’ve been told that women become irritable when they are menstruating, and that this is because their hormones make them irrational. I suspect that their irritability is entirely rational, and that rather than hormones, it is caused by having half of the people they deal with not understand that they are having to continue functioning despite the fact that they are in terrible pain.

I have another theory.

Since I was a child, I have heard that men don’t like to buy feminine hygiene products for the women in their lives, and that this is because the men in question are insecure. I suspect, however, that if the lady in your life mentions that she’s going to the store, and asks if you need anything, they would hesitate to buy whatever you ask for, even if it’s something totally innocuous, like Diet Pepsi, or a scrub brush, if you specify that it’s “For my nards.” This effect would only be magnified if strangers were able to look at that item in her basket and know, “She’s buying that for some dude’s nards.”

Also, I should point out that my disguise in this comic is sunglasses and a hoodie. I was apparently disguised as “Most other guys.”

Note from Missy: My brain read “for my nards” the same way one would shout “FOR THE HORDE!”

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How to See the Patterns

The show How It’s Made is built on the principle that people will sit through something they don’t find all that interesting or entertaining as long as it is short, and there’s a reasonable hope that the next thing will be better. It’s the same idea that drove MTV in the old days, and all comic strips, if you think about it.

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How to Give Constructive Criticism

A shed full of rusty tools.

A nondescript white van.

A quiet, private demeanor, but occasional flashes of inappropriate anger.

These are all stereotypical characteristics of serial killers, and of my father in the ’80s. He eventually got rid of the van, but he kept the shed and the anger.

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How to Guess

When I made this comic, I needed to keep the narration in the second panel down to two lines to make room for the dialog, and the phrase “the person who is asking you questions” was taking up nearly an entire line on its own. I knew there had to be a way to cut it down to one word.

“Questioner,” “Interviewer,” and “Interrogator” all set the entirely wrong mood, so I chose “querent.” Of course, it’s not a word that’s in common usage, so I ended up having to add two full lines of text to explain the word, but those lines were in a different place, so I was fine with it.

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How to Explore Your Emotions

This is a situation where pretty much taking notes on a conversation with the real Ric gave me the final two panels. All I had to do was figure out what to put in the first two panels to set them up.

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How to Fully Enjoy Popular Fiction

I read the first three Lisbeth Salander books, but I haven’t tried the 4th one. It kind of looks like they’ve turned her into some sort of superhero, which would be an unfortunate, but I’m sure very profitable, turn of events.

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How to Wish Your Friend a Happy 50th Birthday

When I was in my twenties I figured that by the time I was in my forties I’d feel, mentally, like I was in my forties. I don’t. In many ways, I feel like my twenty-something brain has been transplanted into the body of one of my crusty old uncles.

Also, when I was in my twenties, I would have thought that feeling like I was in my twenties when I was in my forties would be a good thing, but you don’t keep the parts of the twenty-something mindset that feel good: the arrogance, the invincibility, the knowledge that you are the future. You lose those on your 30th birthday. You hold on to the insecurity, the confusion, and the fear that you will make a mistake that will haunt you for the rest of your life, only “the rest of your life,” is a much shorter period of time, and much, much closer.

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