How to Capitalize on an Insight

Again with the wart saga. I’m surprised how many comics I did about such a disgusting health issue. Sorry about that. At that time, the two biggest things I had going on were my foot warts and the surprising success of my first book. I, of course, chose to write about the warts. It turns out I’d rather be embarrassed than sound like I’m bragging.

Unless you’re into foot warts, in which case it still sounded like I was bragging.

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How to Tell Someone They Are Being Rude

It used to be there were etiquette experts, people who would tell you the polite way to handle any situation. I think one was called Miss Manners. It’s tempting to assume they went away because people don’t care enough about being polite to read their advice, but I suspect most of them got out of the job because it required them to spend their entire day reading requests for help from rude people. You know that would wear on you. I doubt many of them bothered to say “please.”

Note from Missy: On that note, if any of you are in the market for a good advice column, I strongly recommend Ask a Manager.  Even though I’m self-employed, I still read it eagerly every dang day.

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How to be a Responsible Pet Owner

I did have to give my cat medicine, and sneaking up behind him with a syringe did make me feel like a monster. My love of the Hitman series of games didn’t help, as it’s essentially a game about sneaking up behind people with syringes full of things other than medicine.

There are some good laughs to be had in the idea of Goldfinger’s cat wanting to play with the laser. Mike Myers could have filled a good five minutes of an Austin Powers movie with Mr. Bigglesworth screwing up Dr. Evil’s laser-based plans.

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How to Understand Stereotypes

Once I saw an older guy in a two-seat Ferrari convertible wearing a Ferrari t-shirt and a Ferrari cap. This was not a great look, but it didn’t push things quite far enough that I wanted to make fun of him. He crossed that line when he parked in the pick-up lane at Ikea and started slotting flat-pack boxes into his passenger seat.

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How to Understand "Labels"

Once, in a former job, I attended a meeting where we were asked to break the ice by giving one minor detail that would tell the other attendees about us. I mentioned that I had just spent my lunch break watching part of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on my smartphone. My intention was to tell them that I was a bit of a geek, but I ended up telling them that I was getting old, as over half of the people at the table had never heard of the film, as it had come out years before they were born.

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How to Manage Your Fear

Ric has a dark sense of humor, is clever, and is good with words. These are good things if you’re his friend and want to have a fun conversation. These are bad things if you’re his spouse and are trying to have an argument with him. Once, when discussing an argument he and his (then) wife had the night before, someone referred to Ric’s sense of humor as a “tremendous power” that he needed to “control.”

It was meant as criticism, but he took it as a huge compliment. He told me about it, and we started making jokes about fitting him with a muzzle designed like the X-Man Cyclops’s visor.

To this day, our shorthand for telling someone off is to “open the visor.”

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How to Figure Out What Went Wrong

People did get the characters of Rick and Kate confused. Looking at them, the shirt and hair colors almost matching didn’t help. In my defense, aside from their genders being different, she’s wearing a sweater while he’s wearing jogging shorts, which are like the opposite garments. You can’t see the shorts, but he’s wearing them. Trust me.

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How to Remember That Thing You Can't Remember

Back when I worked for Disney, a coworker came up and said, “There are eight Disney animated films whose titles are just the main character’s name. Can you name them all?”

I spent like a half hour wracking my brain, but I stalled at five. Finally, I gave up and told him to go ahead and tell me the ones I’d missed.

He said, “I don’t know. Someone else asked me to name them all. I couldn’t and it was driving me nuts, so I thought I’d see if you could.”

You just don’t do that! To ask someone a brain teaser like that when you don’t have the answer and can’t end their suffering is cruel! That was one of the two times I’ve ever been angry enough to denounced a coworker as an idiot at work, to their face.

The other was a guy who misidentified the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark as the theme from Superman.

There’s a list of animated Disney films at this page. Feel free to count them if you wish. There are more than eight.

List of Disney theatrical animated feature films - Wikipedia

Note from Missy: I'm gonna try to do this before I look at the Wikipedia page Scott linked.

Cinderella, Mulan, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Peter Pan ... hmm. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs includes others. Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, and The Great Mouse Detective are all descriptors, not names. (Aurora, Ariel, and Basil ... if you're wondering.)

Yeah, I got stuck at 5 as well! (Checks Wiki) Now how on earth did I forget some of those??

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How to Tell Your Friends About Your Embarrassing Health Issues

Yes, for a while I had warts on the bottom of one foot. They are all gone now, cured by medical science (and acid and knives, used scientifically). I have a very good idea of where I got them and when but the story is both disgusting and boring, so instead I will claim that I was challenged to a barefoot kickboxing match with the local champion, “Warty” McGee.

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How to Recognize a Vicious Circle

My understanding is that Modern design was meant to use common materials and mass production techniques to make high quality, attractive items that were affordable. It’s tempting to claim that was a bit too ambitious, so they dropped the “affordable” part.

But that’s not entirely fair. IKEA does a pretty good job of living up to the idea, even if the stores are built on the concept that you’re more likely to buy furniture if you’re trapped in a baffling maze.

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