How to Give Advice

I love the PBS Documentary series NOVA. Missy doesn’t enjoy it. So, for the last few years I’ve mostly watched it on my tablet with headphones in bed. Doing so has conditioned me to subconsciously know it’s sleepy time when NOVA is on. I’ve reached the point where I’m lucky to withstand ten minutes of an episode before I pass out. At this point, someone could probably subdue me with nothing but an audio recording of Zachary Quinto talking about the planet Saturn.

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How to look Out for Your Own Interests

There was a time when dentists would get a young adult in their chair, look into their mouth, and if they found the patient was going to need anything more serious than a few fillings the dentist would make them an offer.

“We can drill these cavities out and fill them. It’ll cost money and it’ll hurt. And when you come back in another six months I’ll probably find more. Or you can pay me the same amount you would for the fillings, and I’ll just pull all of your teeth, set you up with a full set of dentures, and you’ll never have to worry about cavities again.”

My mother told me about this. She made dentures for a living. I’m not sure now if she told me this to scare me, to make me feel grateful for modern medicine, or if it’s just that she and her denture making colleagues considered those to be “the good old days.”

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How to See Someone Else's Point of View

R. Lee Ermey was not originally cast as the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. He was originally brought in as a consultant to help the actor they had cast to play that role. That actor didn’t pan out, Ermey replaced him, and a fine career as a character actor followed.

There’s a story, one that I hope is true, that Stanley Kubrick wasn’t sure that a first time actor would be able to maintain his character and the false reality of a scene while surrounded by all of the distractions that come with filming a major motion picture. To see if he could hack it, Kubrick filmed R. Lee Ermey improvising insults in character and shouting them into the camera as several crew members threw tennis balls at his head.

I would pay good money to watch that footage.

Inside joke from Missy: “We just want to see if you can continue acting after being struck by a falling Spider-man.”

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How to Respond When Someone States and Opinion with Which You Vehemently Disagree

I am going to have to be maddeningly non-specific for a bit here, for obvious reasons.

I had a job, in which I did work at a place, and other people did work at this place as well.

One of these coworkers had strong political and religious convictions, which is fine. Less fine was the fact that he was incapable of not expressing them, constantly, to any coworker who got anywhere near him. There was no wiggle room, no room for disagreement. He believed that he knew what was right and who was worth voting for and anyone who disagreed needed to be argued out of that position, informed why their opinions were wrong, and educated about which talk-radio shows they should listen to.

I told him many times to stop, not just for my sanity but because I knew for a fact that he was permanently damaging his own career, but he would not stop. We reached a point where if I even made eye contact with him he’d smile like he thought he was a naughty boy, say, “Hey, you know that subject we can’t discuss at work?” Then he would talk about it at length over my protests.

Finally, I made up the card below, which I laminated and carried with me at work. (The other side of it was filled with important phone numbers and other information I needed on a daily basis.) The next time he brought up the forbidden subject, which was very early in the very next shift I had with him, I pulled it out and read it aloud.

By the time I finished, coworkers had come over from two rooms away to say that the card went for them as well.

Afterward, he asked me, “You didn’t really make up that card just because of me, did you?”

I said, “Yes, I did.”

He went quiet for a moment, then said, “You know, that was a chance for you to let me off the hook there.”

I said, “I know.”

To this day, I have no idea why he would think I might have any urge to let him off the hook. I made the hook, specifically for him.

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How to Understand Someone Else's View of Reality

Panel three is one of the grimmest things I ever wrote.

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How to Pass a Folk Legend on to a New Generation

Johnny Appleseed was straight up mentally ill, and I told my second-grade teacher that when she tried to hold him up as some sort of role model.

I saw through the legend of Johnny Appleseed because I was from the Yakima Valley, land of the Red Delicious apple, which I have before referred to as “the crappy fruit that’s  name is a lie.” Growing up with that cursed fruit taught me to view anything apple-related with suspicion, as my mother learned the one time she purchased Apple Jacks cereal. Even now I remain highly skeptical as to how much apple that cereal contains.

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How to Differ from Popular Opinion

I forget what book about zombies Missy had read. I’m certain it was not Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

The reason I’m certain of this is that Missy and I have entertained ourselves during this quarantine by binge-watching the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice with Collin Firth, then followed it with the 2005 movie with Kiera Knightly.

Both were enjoyable, but very different, with the miniseries employing a more broadly comic approach and the movie having much higher production values.

The message of Pride and Prejudice seems to be that even a socially awkward, emotionally remote man can find love, as long as he’s very good looking and fabulously wealthy.

Note from Missy: Yeah, it definitely wasn’t P&P&Z, because until we watched the miniseries, I’d never experienced Pride and Prejudice. (Though I did read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter!) For the life of me, I can’t figure out what book this would have been, lo these 7 long years ago.

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How to Fix Something Yourself

When I was a kid, our family had this make and model of vacuum.

I can’t vouch for how good a vacuum it was, but I can tell you that it made a great pretend R2-D2.

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How to Explain Your Personal Feelings

This story about James Doohan is true, except for the part about my relatives thinking he was in Star Wars. They all knew he was on Star Trek, though some either called it “the Star Trek” or “Star Track,” I suspect in a deliberate effort to irritate me.

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How to Share an Innovative Idea

During a fit of boredom I gave the first episode of the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive a chance, ended up binging the whole thing over two weeks, and, heaven help me, I’ve actually recorded a couple of F1 races, despite the fact that F1 racing is generally recognized as a “sport.”

There are three things I find interesting about F1 at the moment.

1.       It’s the most high-tech sport.

2.       It isn’t just one sport. The drivers try to out drive one another, the mechanics try to out-mechanic the other teams mechanics, and the pit crews engage in what could classify as a sport in its own right. My understanding is that the Red Bull racing team currently has a noticeable advantage because their pit crew can perform a full tire change in 2 seconds, instead of the positively glacial 3 seconds the other teams take.

3.       The drivers’ training regimens include exercises that look like clips from a montage in a Will Ferrell movie.

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