How to Justify Upgrading Your Computer

If you’re using a computer that has a mechanical, spinning-disk hard drive, and you want it to be faster, I strongly suggest getting a Solid State Drive (which, from this point forward I will refer to as an SSD).

I upgraded to an SSD years ago. I told Missy many times that I wanted to upgrade her computer with one, but she wasn’t interested. Something about not fixing what isn’t broken.

Then, one day, she complained that her computer took too long to boot up.

I said, “We should get you an SSD.”

She asked, “Would that make it boot faster?”

It still makes me smile when I remember the look on her face as she watched my computer boot up and shouted, “Are you shitting me?!”

She has had an SSD ever since.

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How to Adjust to Society's "Progress"

I have the same problem with “fee fi fo fum” that I had with the musical Cats. If you’re just using made up nonsense words anyway, it’s unforgivably lazy to not at least make up gibberish that rhymes.

“Fee fi fo fan, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” How hard was that?!

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How to Learn About Yourself

I can’t eat at Hooters. I tried once. It was just no good. I became extremely self-conscious about where I was looking. Every time the waitress got anywhere near my table, I ended up forcing myself to maintain eye contact with her the entire time. I’m pretty sure my efforts not to ogle her gave her the creeps.

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How to Maintain Your Authority

A few commentaries ago I was depressed that the comic in question was still timely. I find it even more depressing that this comic, about a leader who sends a mob to attack someone, only to see that mob turn on him, wasn’t timely when it was written, and still isn’t.

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How to Describe Something

In America, Netflix has a series called Losers. There is an episode called “Stone Cold,” about a Canadian curler who thought of a perfectly legal, legitimate strategy that resulted in an almost guaranteed victory. The only reason nobody had ever used it before was that nobody seemed to have thought of it, even though it had been possible pretty much since the sport was invented. In the end, all of the other teams implemented his strategy and it rendered the game so unwatchable that one year, during the national championships, the crowd spontaneously chanted “boring.” In the end, they had to change the rules to eliminate his strategy and make the game fun to watch again.

It sounds unbelievable, but it is true. Simple, powerful, and sometimes painfully obvious things are out there just waiting to be noticed.

For example, Netflix doesn’t seem to have a way for someone to easily link to a specific episode of one of their shows, or even a trailer for that episode, to make it easier for someone with a blog to direct potential paying customers to that bit of content.

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How to Understand Reality (Shows)

I find it depressing that eight years later this comic is still timely, both because neither income inequality nor reality TV has gotten any better.

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How to Review Who Your Characters Are

I never drew a second pose for Rocket Hat. He just stood around as if he was wearing handcuffs, whether he was captured or not. In a way, it’s fitting that a character who never says anything was drawn by a cartoonist who never drew anything.

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How to Figure Out "What They Meant By That"

“Shoot” is often used as a non-curse alternative to saying “shit.”  It could be said that this is a sign that, in our society, gunplay (something any sane person wants to avoid) is more socially acceptable than defecation (something every human on the planet does.)

Which is true, now that I think about it.

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How to Decorate with Flair

This is the comic in which I had to figure out how to pluralize the letter S. I don’t know why I delayed it to run four comics after the comic that referred to it. I’m sure I did it for a perfectly logical reason. (Note: I consider “I screwed up” to be a logical reason, and so does everyone who knows me well.)

We do have a big metal S on the wall, but I’ll have you know that I didn’t buy it. Only an egomaniac would do that. Missy bought it for me, as only a person who knows she is married to an egomaniac would.

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How to Understand the Use of Blatant Status Symbols

Yes, this is based on a real story. Yes, it was really a Mercedes. Yes, it did, in fact, have purple/brown color change paint.

Yes, this was while I was living in Florida.

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