How to Complain About Your Personal Problems

Here’s a story I don’t think I’ve ever shared. When I started doing workplace humor, I needed a boss character. Because I drew from photos, I needed the boss to be based on me. I threw on jeans, a button down, and a blazer, erased my beard and drew on a mustache and a mullet. (Leaving out the job at Chik-fil-A [Ben Folds Five reference!])

A few months later, the office I worked at got a new boss. A very personable man who treated me well. He primarily wore jeans and button downs with a suit jacket over the top, and while he didn’t have a mustache or a mullet, he was born and raised in Arkansas.

A few months after that, when Basic Instructions started running in the Seattle Weekly, I was forced to show my comic to my coworkers, and I was entirely unable to convince him that Mullet Boss was not based on him. Luckily, I put in my 2 weeks’ notice that same day, so it made little difference.

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How to Sell the Unsellable

I’ve told the story before that I started being nicer to Rick in the comic and the real Ric called me and told me to stop it. He felt the comic was funniest when treating him the worst. Looking at this specific comic, I think he was right.

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How to Gain Insights From Current Trends

Men don’t know what women want and that makes men unhappy.

Women know exactly what men want and that makes women unhappy.

I give you the human condition.

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How to Help a Friend

I bet if I wrote a self-help book about unlocking the power of spite, it would sell. It is a totally renewable power source. Heck, I’d probably generate quite a bit of it in my readers as they read the book and reflect on how much it cost.

I also have a theory about improving your memory by taking things you wish to remember and re-framing them in your mind as slights and insults, because I at least never forget those.

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How to Make and Fulfill a Contract

I worked in a standard office environment for about three years, and got over a thousand comics’ worth of material. I take that to mean that either I was not cut out for office work, my office was particularly dysfunctional, or most likely, both.

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How to Face Your Doppelganger

In panel three, one of the Meyers is cringing left-handed. ROOKIE MISTAKE! That’s how you can tell the real Meyer from the impostor! Unless, of course, the perpetrators of this conspiracy have employed a complex scheme involving hypnotism, drugs, and an electrified apparatus used to condition the subject to favor his less dominant hand, as seen in the episode of The Prisoner titled “The Schizoid Man.”

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How to Get to Know a Business Associate

I’ve never given an enemy the “we are not so different” speech. Nor have I received it. Any time I’ve been confronted by someone I’d call an enemy, they’ve made it very clear that they thought we were very, very different.  Giving the “we’re not so different” speech is one of those things that TV led me to believe I would have done by this point in my life.

I’ve never given anyone the “we are not so different” speech.

I’ve never used my dive knife to pry my leg free from a giant clam.

I’ve never fought anyone with a trident and one of those tiny shields.

Maybe I should order a dive knife, a trident, and a tiny shield from Amazon, just to be prepared when an opportunity arises. When the delivery comes and Missy confronts me about it I can give her the “we are not so different” speech! She’ll disagree vehemently, but I’m used to that.

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How to Point Out a Design Error

Some tablet maker should create a feature where whenever a movie or game has a lot of black on the screen, it superimposes a dim reflection of Paul Rudd.

Question from Missy: Is this the only time you used that image of yourself in panel 4?

Reply from Scott: Yes. Hard as it is to believe, another occasion to use that particular unflattering image just never came up.

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How to Discuss Your Marital Problems

In the previous commentary I mentioned my love of Borderlands 3. As fate would have it, this comic was written about the game Borderlands 2, which had only recently come out when it originally ran.

Note from Missy: I remember back when I played the first Borderlands, I found a legendary gun in a dumpster. (I can even tell you where. Arid Hills, just after you get past the first sets of skags, behind the building full of dudes on the right.) I don’t know if my habit of checking every single box existed before that time, but it was definitely my M.O. afterward.

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How to Help Someone Face Their Disturbing Experiences

As I have mentioned before, I LOVE the Borderlands games. They are great addictive shooters, but my favorite part of the games is the dialog. (In every game from Borderlands 2 on, that is. The first game was more grim and minimalistic.)

Anyway, Borderlands 3 came out recently and there’s one line that for some reason just kills me. A character tells a story about a paranoid relative who counted a every strand of spaghetti in a plate because he was suspicious the chef was “short-noodling him.”

Why do I bring this up? Because the phrase “Another man’s noodles” reminded me of it.

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