How to Share Your Wisdom

In this comic I say that people don’t like comedians. I’ve also been known to suggest that people don’t actually like magicians, jugglers, or hypnotists. This is an exaggeration, but not much of one. Most people don’t like performance forms where audience members can suddenly find themselves as part of the show. In general, audience members don’t want to be part of the show. That’s why they’re in the audience, not on the stage.

Of course, there are some audience members who do want to be part of the show, quite badly, but nobody else wants them to be. Especially the actual performers.

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How to Understand things for what They Really Are

Yeah, I wrote this comic back when Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood was considered cool. This . . . this has not aged well.

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How to Handle an Awkward Family Discussion

Yes, my mother has a thing for Jack Palance.

No, she doesn’t mind discussing it openly, in front of her sons. But, and I cannot stress this point enough, instead of calling him a “sexy, sexy man,” as she does in this comic, she would swivel her hips and say he was “sexy-poo.”

Did you know that it’s possible for a teenage boy to cringe violently enough to throw his back out of alignment?

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How to Register a Complaint

There was roadwork about two hundred yards from our home. They used a pile driver every night from about midnight to four AM. We contacted the D.O.T. to ask “Why?!” It wasn’t actually a traffic issue. They said that if they used the pile driver during the day, it disturbed people.

That lasted a couple of weeks. Then, later that year, we went on a brief vacation, and found that our hotel was across the street from a construction site where they were using a pile driver during the night.

I like to think that someday we will laugh about it, but we aren’t there yet, and it’s been a decade or so, but we will get there.

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How to Contemplate Your Past Decisions

At one point I was seriously working toward becoming a concierge at one of the deluxe Walt Disney World resorts. That lasted until I got a good look at what the job actually entails. At the time, the Disney concierge position was essentially a cashier who sold restaurant and tour reservations. I wanted to be like Monsieur Gustave H. of the Grand Budapest Hotel (in Nebelsbad), not Judy the Time Life Operator, who is standing by to take your order.

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How to Get to the Truth of the Matter

I forgot Gordon Ramsay in my list of rude Englishmen who Americans like. No doubt, he would call me a donkey and accuse me of having no passion for my work.

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How to Explain What Happened

I started taking daily walks for my health, and within two weeks I was walking with a limp because of the injury described here. A tiny dog nipped at me and I strained myself trying to jump away.

Later, after that injury healed, I had to change my walking route because every single day I would get attacked by a crow.  In retrospect, it probably wasn’t me the crow was attacking, but my black hat. In my defense, when a crow attacks a hat while you’re wearing that hat, the distinction between it attacking your hat and it attacking you is pretty thin.

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How to Recognize and Understand Change

This comic about misinformation on cable news channels was written seven years ago. If that isn’t proof that if you don’t deal with a problem it just gets worse, I don’t know what is.

I’m not saying that I know what to do about the problem, just that we didn’t do anything and it got worse.

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How to Disagree with Someone Else's Deeply Held Beliefs

Yet another one based on a real conversation. Someone told me that Windows 8 was “not a functional operating system.” I said that I had a computer running Windows 8, and that it copied and moved files, opened and closed programs, and otherwise fulfilled all the functions of an operating system.

He said, “Not well.”

I pointed out that that wasn’t the point, after all? He wasn’t arguing with me well, but he was still entitled to be called an arguer. My logic didn’t seem to sway him.

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How to Deal with Momentary Self Doubt

“Less Bad is Good Enough” could make an effective political slogan. Either party would find it sadly accurate.

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