How to Harken Back to Simpler Times

This strip is slightly exaggerated, but not as much as the Sunnyside, Washington chamber of commerce might hope.

I’ve been pretty mean to my home town, and I intend to continue. But it’s not really so bad, as small towns go. It’s just . . . I have this theory that there are two kinds of people who are born in small towns. Some reach their teenage years, look around, and say “Yeah, this is good. I think I’ll stay here.” Others reach that same age, look around, and say “I need to get as far away from here as possible, as fast as I can.”

My older brother still lives in the Yakima Valley, only a town or two away from Sunnyside, and seems quite happy there. I live in Phoenix, Arizona – a huge, sprawling metroplex. I like it, even though I live in a scrub-infested desert with regular sandstorms and, inexplicably, there are feed lots and corn fields within a five-minute drive of my house, things I complain about in this comic.

Oh, and we did build a fort out of tumbleweeds when we were kids. It was scratchy.

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How to Get a Conversation Back on Track

Jenkins’ point in panel four is that a non-defeatist cantaloupe would be called a canaloupe. It’s the rare joke that’s funnier if you don’t tell the punchline.

Of course, what we Americans call a cantaloupe is not a real cantaloupe. What we call cantaloupes here, technically, are called “musk melons.” It’s not hard to see why grocers decided to call them something else.

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How to Give Someone Advice About a Major Purchase

They only made one iPhone model at the time I wrote this. It might have been two, now that I think about it, but the point is, there wasn’t a lot of choice. It looks like now they make four models, so that’s twice as many options!

Of course, there are hundreds of different Android phones on the market from many different manufacturers, so there is no shortage of options. If you have specific tastes and preferences in a phone, odds are there’s a manufacturer who caters to your needs. For example, for a while last year, I had The Essential Phone. It was the perfect device for someone who wanted their phone to be small, beautiful, fast, and incapable of receiving a signal almost anywhere.

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How to Decide Whether or Not to Change the Format of Your Comic

I’m told many people ignore the “Instructions” when reading Basic Instructions and just concentrate on the dialog. I understand that. I have referred to my cartooning-style as “the wall-of-text method.” I don’t recommend reading it that way, though. Often the instructions enhance the joke in the dialog.

I don’t know what Basic Instructions would have been like without the instructions part, or even if I could have done it. Often, I’d come up with one panel and the topic would give me a framework that led me to the other three jokes. Trying to come up with all four panels without the topic as a guide would have been much more difficult.

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How to Ask Someone "What's up" with One of Their Body Parts

The drawing of Mullet Boss I used in panels one, two, and four were originally drawn for use as closeups, so they are drawn with a thinner line, and have more detail. The drawing in panel three was meant to be used in more distant shots, so the lines tend to be thicker, and the drawing shows less detail. Creating the strip the way I did, choosing drawing for their pose, not their line weight, I often ended up with drawings meant for distance shots being used for close ups, which can be jarring.

I say this was an unfortunate result of my chosen style at the time.

Others would say it was an unfortunate result of the cartoonist being too lazy to draw new images.

Neither of these positions are wrong.

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How to React When you Learn You've Been Doing Something Wrong for Years

In a recent commentary, while discussing season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery, I brought up the character Sybok, Spock’s half-brother who was never mentioned before he showed up in the fifth movie, or mentioned again after the fifth film ended.

At first I said that the name of the fifth movie was Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. That was an error. The fifth movie was Star Trek: The Final Frontier. The Undiscovered Country was the sixth film. You would be surprised how embarrassing I found the error.

The fact that a week later I’m forced to write a commentary for a comic that specifically mentions the fifth and sixth Star Trek movies is just fate rubbing my face in it.

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How to Listen to a Friend's Problems

I don’t have much to say about this comic. I’m sort of running out of things to say about me heaping abuse on Rick.

I will say that when we took the pictures I based these drawings on, I had no idea how often I’d use that exaggerated cringe pose in panel four. That and the slightly irritated look in panel one make up half of that character’s personality.

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How to Help Someone Plan a Visit

My family and friends from Washington came to see me when I lived in Orlando and had unfettered access to Walt Disney World, more often than they do now that I live in Phoenix, and have unfettered access to extreme heat.

I do not blame them for this, just as they don’t blame me for rarely coming back to my home town, where they have unfettered access to tumbleweeds.

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How to Articulate Your Vision

A kart racing game starring elderly people on mobility scooters is one of my better ideas. It’s not nearly good enough to pursue, mind you, but it’s still one of the better ones I’ve had.

NOTE: I have been made aware of the game Coffin Dodgers. Thank you.

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How to Avoid Misunderstandings

I like this one. Oddly, I have no memory of writing it at all.

I’m a huge fan of the show The Venture Brothers. Every time a season of it comes out on video, I watch every episode again, because the two guys who write the show, Jackson Public and Doc Hammer, do the best commentary tracks I’ve ever heard. They were part of the inspiration for me to start writing these commentaries on my comics.

Anyway, the Venture brothers are twins. In one episode, one of the brothers, Hank, says to his twin, Dean, “Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

Dean replies, “You’re five minutes older than me.”

Hank say, “Then maybe, in five minutes, you’ll understand.”

In the commentary for that episode, Jackson admits that he wrote that joke, and isn’t proud of it. Doc tells him that he thinks it’s a great joke, and that he should be proud of it. Jackson says that he thinks it’s kinda hokey.

Doc told him, “No, it’s good old-fashioned joking!”

I bring this up, because panel one of this comic also strikes me as an example of good old-fashioned joking.

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