How to Buy Someone a Technology Related Gift

If you only ever take one piece of advice from me seriously, make it this one. Don’t splurge on expensive HDMI cables. HDMI uses a digital signal, and the thing about digital signals is they either get through clearly enough to be read, or they don’t. Back in the analog days there was sometimes some advantage to buying big, thick, heavy duty cables with gold-plated connectors, but that’s not the case anymore. Don’t buy the cheapest thing in the world either, and sure, there are some edge cases where some specialty cable is needed, but for most uses, by most people, Amazon Basics cables or something from monoprice.com are all you need.

That concludes my useful advice. The usual ill-advised nonsense will commence immediately.

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How to Share a Thought That You're Afraid Might Be Offensive

I’m still fairly sure this idea is offensive, and I still can’t put my finger on why. I’m not insulting anybody. I’m not suggesting that anybody be forced to do certain jobs. If anything, I’m suggesting a way to create an advantageous opportunity for people. Still, the suggestion feels just wrong enough that I’m genuinely uncomfortable, even now.

If anyone is offended at my trailer hitch idea, I apologize. Even if the idea itself has no merit, the fact that it makes me feel so squirmy is worth examining.

It’s possible that the fact that I think that it might be offensive is what makes it offensive. I’m like Wile E. Coyote falling only after he notices he’s in midair. I only become an a-hole when I notice that I am an a-hole, and have been for a while.

But, on the other hand, often we have no idea that the thing we’re saying is offensive until after we say it and see that people are offended. I know for a fact that happens. I see it often, when talking to my elderly relatives.

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How to Take a Balanced View of an Important Artist's Work

2001: A Space Odyssey is a landmark in cinema, a towering technical achievement, and arguably a work of true genius.

But!

2010: The Year We Make Contact is a more enjoyable movie.

That’s just my opinion. It is also the undeniable truth.

Interesting side note: 2010 was the first film I ever saw Helen Mirren in, so while many guys my age hear her name and picture her as a sorceress wearing highly impractical armor in Excalibur, the mental image I get is her as a badass Russian Cosmonaut Colonel.

This image is from helen-mirren.org

This image is also from helen-mirren.org

Doing Google research for this comment lead me to discover that Excalibur and 2010 only came out three years apart. That doesn’t seem possible somehow. Helen Mirren doesn’t appear to have aged, but the film industry looks like it progressed multiple decades in those three years.

Speaking of how times change, thanks to YouTube making many of the early Bond movies available, I can now link directly to the least heroic three minutes in film history. I give you minutes 14 through 17:30 of Thunderball. It starts with Bond being menaced by a man in bandages, ends with him seeming friendly after a refreshing colonic, and those are the two most dignified parts of the clip.

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How to Help Someone Out

There was one summer vacation when I was in high school when, for three months, I wouldn’t go to bed until Late Night with David Letterman was over (About 1:30 AM), then would sleep until noon.

Now I literally can’t do either of those things.

If I try to stay up late, I often fall asleep in my chair well before 11:00 PM, and I wake up before 7 every morning no matter when I went to bed. You hope you’ll get better at things as you get older, but I’ve gotten worse at staying awake, and at sleeping. Those are two fairly important things, and getting worse at both of them at the same time seems kind of problematic.

On an unrelated note, if I started a band I would call it “The Problematics.”

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How to Sound Like a Miserable Old Crank

The other day, Missy and I were playing Borderlands 3. I opened a chest and celebrated finding a really good, rare gun, and it reminded me yet again that these games are a form of gambling. They keep me playing by giving me hope that I might get stuff I want if I just open that next chest or kill that next boss, just like a casino does with that next card or spin of the wheel. The only difference is that I know exactly how much the game will cost, which is nice. The downside is that the rewards are completely imaginary, but for the most part the same can be said of casinos.

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How to Find a Mutually Beneficial Solution

Of course, Monty Python did reunite for some live shows. I started to watch a video of one, but I stopped a minute into the opening sketch. Terry Jones looked confused, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy it.

I saw the all-woman Ghostbusters, and enjoyed it. As we speak there’s another Ghostbusters waiting on a shelf for the world to be ready for its release. This one seems to involve kids. I’m uneasy about it, but I know that I will see the film eventually.

After the Ghostbusters kids have had their shot, the last logical permutation to try will be a sort of Grumpy Old Men with proton packs. There was a story floating around at one time that Bill Murray refused to do more sequels because he said, “Nobody wants to see old men chasing ghosts.” But maybe it could work if they lean into it and make that the joke.

Or they could try to get Wes Anderson to write and direct it. They say he’s the only one who gets a no-questions-asked yes from Bill Murray anymore. You know Tilda Swinton would end up playing a ghost.

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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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