How to Destroy a Conversation

Back when I had my office job, we used to have these little hour-long socials at the end of every Thursday. During one of them I was talking to a couple of my geekier coworkers about the casting news coming out of the film they were making at the time of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I mentioned that they got Alan Rickman to do the voice of Marvin, which I thought was brilliant. A coworker standing all the way across the room, talking to someone else, shouted over at me, interrupting my conversation and calling all of the attention in the room to our exchange. Here’s what everyone heard us say to eachother.

Him: Who’d they get?

Me: Alan Rickman.

Him: Who’s he playing?

Me: Marvin.

Him: What’s this in?

Me: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Him: What’s that?

Me: Man, why do I even talk to you?!

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How to Build Upon an existing Concept

I lived in Orlando for many years, and never went to Medieval Times. It seems strange, given how much time I’ve spent writing about a highly fictionalized Medieval England. It’s just that if beer, roasted chicken, macho posturing, and the smell of horse poop had appealed to me I probably would have never left farm country.

That said, when we first moved to Orlando, there was a lower-cost non-name-brand alternative to Medieval Times that went out of business. Its former building, an extremely fake-looking faux castle, just sat there gathering dust for years. Missy and I talked more than once what kind of crazy home could have been made inside that shell.

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How to Understand Someone's Seemingly Irrational Behavior

I based this comic on a coworker. I noticed myself tensing up and being defensive whenever I had to interact with him. I looked around and saw that everybody else did the same thing, and as such, every person that coworker ever dealt with at work was tense and defensive. To him, it must have seemed like the whole world was tense and defensive.

I made an effort to be looser and more friendly the next time I talked to him. Not surprisingly, he made me regret it.

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How to Share a Meaningful Insight

I had the goatee long before I started losing my hair. I grew it because of Blackadder II. I figured if facial hair could make Rowan Atkinson look dashing, it was worth a shot.

Before

After

Both photos copyright of the BBC.

The first time many of my relatives saw me with the beard was at my paternal grandmother’s funeral, in something like 1993. At the gathering after the service one of my cousins gave me a hard time about it. I proclaimed that my facial hair was the future, and that eventually, many of his friends would have the same facial hair. I am proud to say that I was right.

If that seems like an inappropriate conversation for me to get embroiled in at my grandmother’s post-funeral gathering, you should know it was catered with the contents of her fridge and freezer, and my aunts and uncles were all around my cousin and I, divvying up grandmother’s stuff, arguing over picture frames, and pulling up chunks of her carpet.

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How to Figure Out What It Means

This was not a political comic when I wrote it.

On a related note, it appears “exonerated” means the exact opposite of what I thought it did.

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How to Appraise an Antique or Collectible

Before anyone writes to criticize my spelling of “Collectable,” I’ll point you to my good friends, Merriam and Webster.

Yeah, I know. My spelling here is a less common variant. This spelling makes more sense to me, as a collectable is something one is able to collect.

Also, you have no idea what a pain it is to correct the spelling in a single-layer image file.

Here’s an interesting fact. There are no shot glasses for sale in any of the gift shops at Walt Disney World.

It’s true. Selling shot glasses would be unwholesome.

Some of you who have been to Walt Disney World are probably wondering if I’ve lost my mind. I have not. No shot glasses are available for sale in any of the parks. There are, however many places where you can purchase a souvenir glass “toothpick holder” that can hold exactly 1.5 ounces of toothpicks.

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How to Apply New Insights to an Existing Problem

I loved the idea of trained attack bees so much I ended up using it in my novel The Authorities, available . . . well, it used to be that a book plug like this would end with the phrase “Available anyplace books are sold.” Times have changed, I’m afraid. The Authorities is not available anyplace books are sold, but it is available in the one place where the vast majority of books are sold.

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How to Maximize Your Investment

I prefer to buy the bucket of litter over the smaller jug and the giant bag. It’s a good balance point between carrying very little while wasting money and saving a buck but destroying my back. But, if I’m being honest, I just like the idea that I get a free bucket out of the deal. A bucket’s one of those things that is instantly recognized as useful.

Nobody has ever asked anyone, “Why do you own a bucket?”

That said, after so many years of cat ownership, I’ve come to realize that the used litter buckets aren’t so much useful items that I got essentially for free by being clever, and are more empty packaging that I can’t bring myself to throw away, even though I have a huge stack of them.

People never ask anyone why the own a bucket, but they often feel compelled to ask, “Why do you own twenty-three buckets?”

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How to Break In New Shoes

When I was a bachelor, I would cook a frozen pizza directly on the middle rack of my oven. While it cooked, I would cut the box along the sides then flop the top of the box over so that I had a clean brown cardboard square. When the pizza was done, I’d slide it onto the cardboard with just one edge of the pizza hanging off of the edge where it could be easily bitten off. I’d sit on the couch, watching the Simpsons, and sliding the pizza forward, off of the box, and eating the exposed part until it was all gone.

I was full, it tasted good, and I dirtied no dishes at all. It was the perfect meal, except for the fact that it had almost no nutritional value.

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How to Keep Learning

I get that, at the time, Lucas and Spielberg thought of Indiana Jones as a sort of American James Bond, and having a different beautiful woman in every film was just part of that formula. But even as a kid, I was disappointed that Marion wasn’t in the second and third movies. Willie and Elsa weren’t half as good in my opinion.

There are rumors that Disney will try to reboot the Indiana Jones movies. If that happens, I hope they Keep Marion around. Or, failing that, if they made a series of films for their streaming service of Marion’s adventures on her own before or after Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’d watch them. An American woman in the 1930s doesn’t end up owning a bar in Nepal without there being a good story attached.

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