How to Plan Your Halloween Costume

Apparently, during the filming of Dune, the men who wore the stillsuits put them on as often as they could and kept them on for as long as possible. It turns out the stillsuits were really flattering, and made the men wearing them feel great about themselves. They’d stand around in the middle of the desert wearing what amounted to a black wetsuit, and they didn’t want to take them off because they looked so studly.

There’s a word I haven’t used in a long time. “Studly.” I think there may be nothing less studly than using the word studly.

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How to Have Nice Things

Our home used to be mostly carpet with a little tile. It was not a surprise that the cats usually threw up on the carpet.

Now our home is about 50/50 tile and carpet. The cats still mostly throw up on the carpet.

I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something about carpet that makes cats sick.

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How to Make a Crass Generalization

I’m not exaggerating about the Kingdome. It was a brutalist wart on the face of Seattle. (And please note, I am using the term brutalist properly.) The men’s rooms were exactly as described in this comic, and the only thing that kept 50% of the people who came in from guessing wrong as to which trough they should start with was the fact that there was always a long line of dead-eyed men cycling through, demonstrating which trough was being used for what that day.

At that point in history, the Seattle teams that played in the Kingdome didn’t give their fans a lot of reason for joy or hope.

I don’t know what the ladies’ rooms were like.

Actually, I’m not sure there were any.

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How to Handle a Deadline

In a weird way, I used to view making the comic—and still see writing my novels—as a video game, or at least an excuse to “play” with my computer. It’s less action packed than video games, but this way I have something I can point to that I made when I’m done.

When I was a kid, I had a toy typewriter and a toy safe. I used to put the safe on top of the typewriter and pretend it was a computer.

. . .

Is that normal? A toy typewriter and a toy safe? Were my parents trying to prepare me for life as a Notary Public or something? Come to think of it, I had rubber stamps too.

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How to Develop an Idea

I would never advocate the plan I lay out in panel four, but it does have a certain logic to it. Over time, we would eliminate our least competent young people, and our angriest and most delusional elderly. You can’t tell me that doesn’t sound good.

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How to Explain Your Marginal Beliefs

Ric is not what you’d call smooth, in that he has a talent for saying the exact wrong thing. One example I’ve given before is the time we were in a room with his daughter and I saw a big spider near him. I tapped Ric on the shoulder, and pointed to the spider, hoping he could “deal with it” before she saw it.

Instead of “dealing with” the spider, Ric said, in a loud, clear voice, “Don’t let her see it. She’s terrified of spiders.”

I also, am not smooth, in that I am literally covered with hair. I firmly believe that physically I am a step or two closer to our simian ancestors than most people.

My lack of smoothness and Ric’s collided several years ago, when I was working at Walt Disney World. He brought his daughter to Florida to hang out and enjoy the parks. She wanted to go to one of the Disney water parks. I went along.

At one point, it became clear that I would have to take off my shirt in front of people, including Ric and his daughter. I turned my back on them, as I always do, because stunned silence is easier to deal with than a look of shock and revulsion. I took off my shirt, the customary stunned silence ensued, but this time the silence was broken by Ric saying, “Yes. I know.”

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How to Discuss Video Games

I love the Nintendo Switch.

One rule about the Switch is that you should avoid ever touching another person’s Switch. It’s not that it’s rude, or some sort of violation. It’s just that someone’s Switch is the one item other than their phone you know they’ve used in the bathroom.

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How to Ask for Help

“The Details are Unimportant” is probably the running joke from the comics I get quoted back to me the most. That strikes me as odd, because it didn’t actually appear in that many comics. I think gripping the RJ-17 form firmly turned up more often.

Yet another example of my compulsion to take the things that seem to be working and avoid doing them.

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How to Participate in "Group Learning"

Blurring the background both adds an illusion of depth to an image and allows you to highlight the specific characters you want the viewer to pay attention to. It’s a great trick. I tried not to overuse it.

It strikes me as odd now that, when making the comic, if I found something that worked really well, I would deliberately avoid doing it too often.

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How to Correct a Mistake That May Lead to the Ruin of All Mankind

I used to play the Assassin’s Creed games, but I had to stop eventually. My assassin always seemed to be suicidal. He’d be running from eight angry guards and decide to leap up on a fence post and perch there like a bird, waiting for the guards to come bludgeon him. Other times, he’d have a perfectly clear path, one I was steering him toward, then for no reason he’d lurch to the left and fling himself off of a roof.

I’m currently playing Hitman 2. I love most of the Hitman games. I get a great deal of enjoyment from slowly and methodically working through a level. Also, over the years, I’ve come to enjoy the protagonist, Agent 47, as a character. The fact that he’s bald has nothing to do with it.

It occurred to me the other day that thanks to Hitman’s disguise mechanic (you can put on the clothes of any man you knock out or kill) 47 is, essentially, a dress-up doll for dudes. I have seen non-player-characters walking around levels wearing something interesting and thought, Ooh. I wanna see 47 in that! It turns out all you have to do to make fashion palatable to men is to have them physically assault someone to get it.

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