How to Punish Someone for Not Liking You

I have known people that, if they had liked me, I would have been forced to reevaluate my life.

I once had to share a hotel room with a comedian who announced out of the blue that he was going to call his wife and try to get some “phone sex.”

His opening gambit was to tell her, “You need to lose some weight.” After that, he listed many of the sex acts he would do “to” her if she did lose weight.

If he had thought I was his kind of guy, I would have been inconsolable.

Also, I’ve always liked to think that as soon as he hung up the phone, his wife began carb loading to make sure she didn’t lose an ounce.

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How to make Conversation With a New Friend

If anyone in Florida asked where I was from, I said Seattle, because people knew where that was, and I had lived there most recently.

If people in Seattle asked where I was from, I said “The Yakima Valley,” because they knew where that was, and really, people from Seattle view anything east of the mountains as the planet Tatooine. (Making the city of Yakima the Mos Eisley Spaceport.)

If I meet someone from Eastern Washington, I tell them I’m from Sunnyside, then tell them that, yes, I am aware of the terrible odor from the feed lots that constantly envelop the freeway that passes the town, and I explain that when you live there you go nose-blind and stop noticing it.

If I meet someone from any of the towns immediately around Sunnyside, then I tell them the real truth, which is that I grew up in Outlook, a “town” 15 minutes away from Sunnyside that consisted of a post office, a church, a school, a Grange hall, and what used to be, before it closed down, the world’s least convenient convenience store.

Why do I bring this up now? Because if you ever meet someone from Outlook, you do NOT want to mention that you’ve heard that the astronaut Bonnie Dunbar is from Sunnyside. They will explain at great length and top volume that she was born and raised in Outlook, and that the you see sign as you enter Sunnyside stating that she came from there is inaccurate and needs to be torn down.

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How to Use a New Perspective to Solve a Long-Standing Problem

I have never been a sports fan, but during the current lockdown situation I have found myself watching marble racing and a bit of cornhole. It makes me wonder if my problem isn’t with sports so much as it’s with successful mainstream sports. Maybe I need an element of kitsch, or some twist that makes the sport vaguely pathetic.

Thinking about it now, the only sports program I have ever made a point of watching was the short-lived game show, Let’s Bowl.

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How to Craft a Sales Pitch

I never thought about it before, but talking to a friend about your plan to “ask someone out” is similar to talking about your plan to “call someone out.” The intent is the opposite—fighting vs. hopefully not fighting—but the sentence structure, the hushed tones of the conversation, and, sadly, the discomfort caused in the person you’re discussing can be very much the same.

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How to Discuss a Movie Without Spoiling It

Shameful admission time. I have only ever seen The Evil Dead once, and I never saw the modern remake. I kind of consider The Evil Dead 2 to not be a sequel so much as a second draft.

The movie I want to see is a documentary about the period of time in the early ’80s when Bruce Campbell and Sam Rami shared an apartment with the Coen Brothers, Francis McDormand, Holly Hunter, and Kathy Bates. That’s a lot of talent and strong personalities in a confined space. There must be some great stories there.

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How to Engage in Wordplay

For the record, this strip is not about a trip to Arby’s. It refers to some other purveyor of seasoned curly fries. I happen to like Arby’s every now and then. I like roast beef. I like seasoned curly fries. I like the vaguely coffee-ish flavor of a Jamocha shake. If you know a more convenient place to obtain these items, I’d like to hear it.

Arby’s gets a lot of abuse, and I don’t really understand why. Their food is certainly no worse than any other number of fast food chains. I think it’s just that it’s different. In a sea of burgers with ketchup, tacos with hot sauce, and chicken fingers with ranch, their French dip sandwiches with “horsey sauce” stand out, and as they’ve learned, standing out has its disadvantages.

I will admit, though, that their current slogan, “we have the meats,” has made “the meats” into a euphemism for intestinal problems in our house.

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How to Help Someone Make Sense of a Bad Experience

Again, the story is true, except that it happened to me, not Rick. And when I asked the cook what she was making she said, “Oriental.” That’s all, like that was the name of the dish, or maybe the primary ingredient.

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How to Reassess Something You've Been Doing Your Whole Adult Life

Of course, I’m not really any sort of expert on proper formal communication. When this comic was written I tended to finish my emails with “End Transmission.”

For a while, back when I was a comedian, I ended emails with “Your hatred nourishes me.” It was a catchphrase from my act, which should give you some idea of how my career was going.

Just so you know, at that time Ric ended his emails with “Yours in perfect manhood.”

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How to Deal with Your Shortcomings

I can stare right at one of my typos and not see it, even if I’m specifically looking for typos. If a ninja ever wanted to sneak up on me, their best gambit would be to wear a suit covered with text I typed in a hurry.

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How to See the Positive Aspects of Getting Older

I have only ever been treated by one chiropractor. His name was Glen. Not Dr. Glen something, or even Dr. Glen. Just Glen.

My mother met Glen god-knows-where and he offered a package deal to “adjust” her and her three boys for one low price.

Glen saw patients in his home, and in his street clothes. From my point of view as a 6th grader, this particular therapeutic intervention seemed like our mom took us to a house we’d never been to so some guy in a plaid shirt and jeans could twist us until our spines popped.

I swear to you, he spent most of the time grumbling about how unfair it was that his license to practice had been taken away.

So yeah, I have trust issues with chiropractors.

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