How to Accept Constructive Criticism

I’m afraid we’re now beginning to get into the stretch where the strain of writing over a thousand comics with four jokes in each one began to take its toll. Note that in this comic, I am being chastised by a coworker for telling our mutual boss that I am smarter than him. Now think back to two comics earlier (How to Speak Your Mind), when I chastised Jenkins for telling the boss that he is smarter than him. I think you see what I mean.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Change Your Plan

As cool as I think blimps and dirigibles are, I cannot abide any mode of air travel where part of the landing procedure is people running around in a field trying to grab a rope. It just seems like it would rob your arrival of much of its glamour.

I must say, I really like panel two in this one. I love the idea of the blimp-pack, and the dialog about the bloated gasbag strapped to a blimp feels like a throwback to good old-fashioned jokesmanship.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Speak Your Mind

When I was in high school, I had a job in the lucrative food service industry. One of my coworkers was perhaps the least intelligent person I’ve ever known. Like all truly stupid people, he believed himself to be far smarter than most of the people he met. One day he started popping off about how the restaurant manager was “just about the biggest dumb-s**t in the world.” We pointed out that the manager had hired him, but he didn’t see what we were getting at.

None of us went much out of our way to defend the manager beyond that. None of us wanted to look like suck ups, and also, we all knew the manager was a horrifying racist, so that dulled our enthusiasm.

It was not a great job.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Process New Information

I firmly believe that aside from screen size, the average TV available for sale at Costco probably delivers a superior viewing experience to what the average movie theater in the seventies and early eighties could deliver. It was an age of worn-out prints, dim projector bulbs, and one big mono speaker placed directly behind the screen.

Heck, if I wanted to perfectly recreate my experience the first time I saw Star Wars, I’d need to stretch a piece of bright green yarn down the screen to represent the massive scratch in the print, and I’d have to rent someone’s five-year-old to play my younger brother and constantly demand that I explain who everyone was, what they were doing, and why they have such funny names.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

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.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

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.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

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.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

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.”

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

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.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

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.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).