How to Deal with Someone You Have Offended

This was based on an actual argument I had in high school. I said “furthermore,” and got accused of using “fifty-cent-words.” I pointed out that their belief that knowing and using words was somehow something I should be scolded for was telling. I also pointed out that furthermore was a very common word, and only three syllables long.

The person I was arguing with called me a nerd, told me to shut up, and acted like she had won the argument. The maddening thing is, as far as she was concerned, she did.

Note from Missy: If memory serves, the last time this comic ran, we had a surprising number of commenters complain that “ratio” is only two syllables.  So for those of you who pronounce that word “ray-show” instead of “ray-shee-o”, I’d like to say: you’re absolutely welcome to be wrong. Just don’t write to us about it. :D

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How to Defend Your Choices

This rerun suffers from ironic timing, as it is running during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’ll be interesting to see if cruise ships are still a thing a year from now.

I’ve been on four cruises, three at steep discounts and one to take my elderly mother to Alaska, which she’s always wanted to see. I can heartily endorse the experience of going on a cruise. It’s basically like having a luxury hotel that moves from place to place while you sleep. The better cruise companies have the guest experience part dialed in. Now if they can just do something about the environmental impact, tax evasion, and working conditions, they’ll really be on to something.

I’m willing to bet that the cruise ship employees are not paid nearly enough, but I don’t feel that working on such a ship would inherently be a bad job. The isolation from family is a problem, but that’s true for many jobs. It’s just a matter of compensating the employees fairly for it.

On one of the cruises I took I heard another passenger say that they felt bad for the crew because their jobs were “demeaning.” At the time I was a man in his late thirties working as a ride operator at Walt Disney World, another job they probably would have found demeaning. I considered it an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, helping create a product I believed in. (I’m not always a fan of the Disney corporation or its actions, but I am a firm believer in their parks.)  My experience was that the job was only demeaning when the guests deliberately demeaned me.

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How to Give a Friend Romantic Advice

People don’t call the bill in a restaurant “the tab” so much anymore. Saying it here in panel 2 sounds like he wants to share a diet soda with his date, but then again people don’t drink Tab much anymore either.

Man, I’m old.

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How to Make a Story Where It Appears the Hero Turns Bad, but Has Not

I don’t know if I ever discussed this, but the idea for Mr. Everywhere came from the superhero Plastic Man. Not actually Plastic Man himself, but the Elongated Man and Mr. Fantastic, both of whom have pretty much the same powers as Plastic Man, I.E. stretchy-ness.  

There are differences, of course. Mr. Fantastic is also a scientific genius. In addition to stretching, Plastic Man can form himself into complex objects, like mailboxes and cars, and Elongated Man . . . is a widower? I’ll be honest, I was always more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy.

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How to Differentiate Between an Explanation and an Excuse

There’s a distinct difference between an explanation and an excuse. Sadly, someone making an excuse will often describe their excuse as an explanation, and if the person you’re explaining to is angry, any explanation will sound like an excuse.

There’s a saying I used to repeat to myself as a reminder that keeping quiet, at least in the short term, is usually the best policy when things go wrong.

“Don’t explain, don’t complain.”

It’s something I once heard that someone I respected and admired had said. I still remember the phrase occasionally, but now its meaning is completely overshadowed by irony, because it was said by Bill Cosby, whom I no longer respect or admire, and who has done a great deal of both explaining and complaining in recent years.

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How to Tell People About Your Accomplishments

I lived in Seattle for many years. I loved Seattle. I still miss Seattle. But (and this seems weird to me even though I’m the one saying it) the Seattle I miss doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been buried under an immense traffic jam.

One aspect of the Seattle I once knew that is still there is Red Mill Burgers, my favorite burger place in the world. I live within a ten-minute drive of several In-and-Outs, a Smash Burger, and a Shake Shack. I’d take Red Mill over any of them.

Why, you ask?

If you’d ever eaten at Red Mill, you wouldn’t have to ask, but I’ll answer anyway. Bacon. The giant pile of Bacon.

Here’s the results of a Google image search for the words “Red Mill Bacon.

And here’s a news story about the restaurant, and, of course, the bacon.

They also have the excellent taste to use Tillamook Medium Cheddar, the Cadillac of cheese.

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How to Figure Out Who You Are

Smoking jackets, dressing gowns, pajamas, ascots, slippers, all the stuff Victorian guys wore for lounging around the house in the evening seems to denote class and sophistication to us now. Makes you wonder if a hundred and fifty years from now, when trying to make a character seem stuffy, they’ll have that character wear terrycloth shorts and an old ugly t-shirt.

Just goes to show, the words “progress” and “improvement” do not mean the same thing.

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How to Slow the Spread of Germs (Re-Rerun)

This comic has appeared as a rerun before, but I’m rerunning it again now, for obvious reasons.

Those obvious reasons are that I am lazy and opportunistic.

An interesting bit of inside-baseball detail: you can tell this comic is from before Basic Instructions began running in some local alt-weekly newspapers because of the gradients in the backgrounds. It seems they were difficult to render in newsprint. Also, the appearance of “Classic Rick” is a hint.

Here, for your enjoyment, are three more old comics that are tangentially related to our planet’s current predicament. One is about people standing too close to you, another involves hand sanitizer, and the third involves bidets, which can lessen the need for toilet paper.

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How to Make a Positive Change

Sadly, it takes a lot of guys a long time to reach the conclusion that a woman not being interested in them is a dealbreaker. Society kind of conditions young men to view a total lack of interest on the woman’s part as a challenge to be overcome with persistence and aggression. Who knows how much misery this erroneous message has caused?

If I could go back in time and give teenage me one piece of advice to improve my social life, it would be that pretending to be what you think people will think is “cool” is self-defeating. You’ll never guess right, and even if you do you’ll mess up eventually and they’ll decide you’re a poser (which you in fact will be). Better to find people who already think what you’re actually into is cool. If you know some of those people but you don’t think they are cool enough, then look in the mirror and consider giving them the chance that you wish people who don’t think you’re cool would give you.

That, and I’d tell younger me to lose the Hawaiian shirts. You’ve never seen a palm tree in person, and everyone knows you bought that shirt at the JC Penney in Yakima.

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How to Gain Perspective

I understand wearing sandals. I understand wearing socks. I understand wearing sandals with socks; I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

My father sometimes wears sandals with dress socks. That I don’t understand. The closest thing to an explanation I can come up with is that he knows people will see his socks, so for appearances sake he chooses to wear his fanciest socks.

One could argue that people who wear socks with sandals are sending the message that they don’t care what other people think. Admirable, but if it were true they wouldn’t care when we mock them for wearing socks with sandals, and I can tell you from experience that they do mind. At least my father does.

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