How to Maximize a Learning Opportunity

Here’s a detail of my former office job I’ve never mentioned. The office we occupied was in a building in downtown Seattle. The space had been extensively renovated by a cash-flush dot-com for use as their corporate headquarters. They had a game room, a conference table shaped like a surf board, and a full screening room with raised theater seats and a little stage in front of the screen. Building the place out must have cost their backers a fortune. It looked great.

I believe they were in the office for about a year before they got bought out and absorbed by a bigger dot-com.

Then the company I worked for rented the office. The first thing they did was pay for extensive renovations. Mainly, they had all of the risers, the seats, and the projector, the screen, and the stage removed from the screening room, restoring the floor to a flat, level state with thin cheap carpeting. It must have cost a fortune. It looked cheap and lazy.

What did we use that room for, you may ask? Mostly client presentations and corporate training seminars.

I used to think about how much money they spent pulling out the theater seating whenever we’d host an event, and I’d set up the folding chairs, all pointed at a make-shift stage in the corner.

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

How to Correct an Incorrect Opinion

I believe I’ve mentioned my theory that the menstrual cycle doesn’t directly make women irritable, but men think it does because it makes women severely uncomfortable, and often causes them tremendous pain. Most men either cut them no slack during this time or think it’s some kind of joke. THAT makes women irritable.

Similarly, there’s the common male complaint that women take forever to get ready.

There’s a YouTuber whose work Missy and I enjoy. Her name is Leeja Miller. She’s a lawyer who explains legal issues.

One evening Missy queued up a video in which Leeja explained how she does her makeup.

Okay guys, watch that video. Now try to imagine feeling like you need to do that before leaving for some event. Even worse, imagine you get almost done, then you mess up, or something doesn’t look right, and you have to clean it all off and start over. Now, add to that your spouse pressuring you to hurry, or coming up when you’re halfway done and complaining that you look fine and are wasting time.

Just saying.

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

How to Instruct a Trainee

I’m particularly proud of panel three. There’s something about incompetent cursing that always amuses me. I think it has to do with the idea that if you’re shouting insults and profanities at someone it’s already a sign that you’ve lost control of the situation. The idea that you then curse badly makes it even more pathetic.

Once, when I was in high school, my brothers and I went to visit my father and his second wife. We were in dad’s backyard when the kid next door, probably around eight years old, decided to shout insults at my father. Normally my brothers and I might not have found that funny (I say might. There’s a pretty good chance we would have, actually.), but in this case it was 100% hilarious, because the child chose to call our father a “boob butt brain.”

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

How to Accept an Apology

In case I haven’t been clear on this, I don’t consider Basic Instructions to be any sort of source of actual, usable, real-world advice.

One time, a young person I think very highly of told me that she had gotten useful advice from one of my comics. My stomach immediately clenched. I asked which comic. She said, “How to Apologize without Accepting Any Blame.”

I hoped she learned to deal with someone delivering a weaselly non-apology, but she told me that I had taught her the technique of seeming to apologize for something you don’t regret by telling the wronged party that you’re sorry they feel mistreated. She used this technique on someone she knew, and it worked.

I feel bad that I made this young person a worse human being. On the other hand, I suppose it’s nice to know that I’ve made a difference.

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

How to Appreciate a Mixed Blessing

One of our cats has a new game. She drapes herself across Missy’s lap, gazing up at her and purring for twenty or so minutes. When she’s done adoring my wife, the cat gets up, walks over to where I’m sitting, and bites me on the leg.

It’s like she knows that her affection for Missy will make the bite hurt more.

Note from Missy: to be fair, Cheddar (the lap cat who bites Scott, not the barfing cat [Trouble] who passed away a few years ago) only started draping herself on me for the last year or so; before that she was vehemently anti-lap.  The (hilarious) biting Scott’s legs thing came first.

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

How to Stand Up for Yourself

For whatever reason, I’m not coming up with anything to say about this comic. Instead of just spewing out something I think is just good enough, I’ll instead share what is probably the most-watched video in the history of the Meyer household. Both Missy and I have watched it countless times and are still amused by it.

It will either make you laugh, or haunt your nightmares . . . or both!

Note: The video is not in any way obscene, but I still wouldn’t watch it at work if I were you.

[Link, in case the embedded video isn’t showing for you]

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

How to Understand a Great Man's Actions

The legend is that Edison promised Tesla a huge bonus if he could get their electric generators to work above a certain high level of efficiency. Tesla managed to do it. When he demanded his bonus, Edison laughed and said, “Nicola, you have to learn to understand the American sense of humor,” and didn’t pay up.

So yeah, Edison wasn’t a great guy.

On the other hand, Tesla later claimed to have invented a death ray, so they both have their issues.

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

How to Adjust to a New Reality

Back when I was a comedian, there was a club in Green Bay, Wisconsin that I played several times. I always enjoyed it. The audiences there seemed to like me, for whatever reason.

Of course, you can’t perform in Green Bay without talking about football, and I’ve never been a fan of the sport, which they couldn’t understand and didn’t respect; but I was able to defuse that situation by explaining that I was from Seattle, and football had been nothing but a source of pain for my family.

The Green Bay audience liked that.

Note: I’m aware that eventually Seattle whipped itself into a formidable team. All I’m saying is that in the 1970s and 1980s, that very much had not happened yet.

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

How to Avoid Blame

Reading this comic about an unhealthy working dynamic puts me in mind of Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary, Get Back; but pretty much everything reminds me of it at the moment. That’s the natural side effect of spending nearly a week working through a documentary that is almost eight hours long.

I wonder if my enjoyment of Get Back might be a form of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve spent so much time with the Beatles that I’ve started to sympathize with them.

I won’t spoil anything about the documentary here, but those who have seen it will know what I’m talking about when I say, “Dude, shut up about your amphitheater in Libya. Nobody’s interested.”

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

How to Confront Someone

I’ve had people in my life who have pushed me to do things that I didn’t think I could. They always couch it as an attempt to help me, but think about this: the thing they encouraged me to achieve was always something they themselves wanted me to do.

They expressed faith in me that if I worked hard enough and faced my fears, I could do what they wanted.

Kinda makes it seem less benevolent, doesn’t it?

I’m just saying, my mother expressed confidence that I could keep my room clean and get good grades, but her faith in my ability to become a notorious cat burglar seemed to be lacking.

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