Scott Meyer

Two Lines from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Deal with Miscommunications

I want to be clear. In my opinion, Zardoz is not a good movie.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

The first time I saw it, I listened in silence to Arthur Frayn’s weird preamble. I watched the floating stone head lecturing men in masks, gun belts, and speedos about how the penis is evil, then the vomiting piles of the hunting rifles on them. I saw Sean Connery with a Dr. Johnny Fever mustache and a pony tail shoot camera. As the opening credits ran over the stone head flying majestically through fog, with mournful music p...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Talk a Friend Through a Crisis

Ask people to name a cool jazz trombonist, and 99.99999% of them will only come up with one name: “William Riker.” A fictional character, from Star Trek: the Next Generation. That series featured a lifelike superhuman robot, a space alien, a telepath, a blind man given sight by a futuristic banana-clip, and a cool guy who played jazz trombone.

It was not realistic.

I do get it though. The idea that nobody wants to hear what you’re playing is sort of baked into the jazz-man aesthetic in a way that a former stand-up comic lik...

One Line from a Future comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to React to New Information about a Subject You Thought You Knew Well

Phil was the man.

It’s hard to make the extent to which he was “the man” clear to people who weren’t there, in the 1980’s, in America, and who were not me.

I took to wearing ill-fitting suit jackets.

I wore out my copies of ‘No Jacket Required,’ and ‘Invisible Touch.’

I watched the film ‘Buster,’ in it’s entirety. I think I may be the only person in America to do so.

I’m bummed that Genisis already had what they called their last performance before 2023-10-23 07:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Express Dissatisfaction

Those of you who have watched the TV show, Foundation, but not read the books may be surprised to hear that in said books the emperor is barely ever shown in person.

Those who read the books but haven’t watched the show will be equally surprised to hear that the emperor probably gets more screen time than any other single character, including Hari Seldon. They will also be surprised at how much screen time Hari Seldon gets.

After the first episode (which may have been the pilot) the tv show is, pretty much, a totally d...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Understand Another Person's Point of View

Fifty-four days in a row, over 110 degrees! People were going into the emergency rooms with severe burns from falling in parking lots and touching the pavement.

Humans were not meant to live in Phoenix.

Peggy Hill knew it!

https://youtu.be/4PYt0SDnrBE?si=zPT4t0EFZl1FX8iB

Michael Bluth knew it!

https://youtu.be/5oEnNXyEPlQ?si=8Z66oZn_g51yRav-...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Better Yourself

Missy looks my comics over before I publish them. Usually, she just finds spelling and punctuation errors.

Notice, I didn’t say, “she usually looks for,” them, I said, “she usually finds them.”

Also, notice that I didn’t say she finds spelling “or” punctuation errors. I used the word, “and.”

The English language can be surprisingly precise.

Anyhoo, when she saw this comic, she didn’t like the Columbus mnemonic, and tried to come up with a better one. In the end she decided to leave it as is, but ...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Begrudgingly Admit Somebody Might Be Right

Charles Lindbergh has a ... complicated legacy.

That said, one has to admit that his achievement of being the first person to fly solo, non-stop, from New York to Paris is impressive. It is made more impressive by the fact that, as I say in this comic, he did it in a plane with no front window. You might think that means his face was exposed to the wind, but that would be wrong. He was inside a cockpit.

That cockpit had no window at the front.

If he looked forward, all he saw was his instrument panel. You might be wondering...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

There is a new, much better (because Missy designed it) version of the Smarter than a Monkey, Cheaper than a Robot graphic. It is available on shirts for him, shirts for her, and 2023-09-14 07:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post

How to Get to the Root of the Problem

It’s a handheld vacuum, a Dust Buster, to be specific. I don’t know where the offending bit of “dirt” came from.

…

Let me rephrase that. I know all too well where it came from. I don’t know where the vacuum picked it up. I don’t think it’s anything either of the cats deliberately hid. I suspect it was what is commonly referred to as a “Klingon.”

What a proud addition to Gene Roddenberry’s legacy that bit of slang is.

Anyway, I pulled the dirt chamber apart, cleaned all of the immersible parts wit...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Process a Disturbing Occurence

It’s possible that the doctor used some other term, but my father interpreted it as his “tenderloin.” Frankly, that would not make the situation less disturbing for me.

If I remember my Good Eats properly, the tenderloins are two pointy cylinders of meat that run along the sides of the spine, toward the rear of the cow. They are where we get filet. I remember Alton Brown describing them as “meaty baseball bats.” I’m going to assume my father’s tenderloins are somewhat smaller than those of an Angus cow, though I fear they...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Reflect Fondly on Days Gone By

For those who are unfamiliar with Hanford, the Wikipedia page might make for interesting reading.

Part of that article talks about the decommissioning of one of the reactors, and includes the following juicy little nugget. “This involved the removal of hundreds of tons of asbestos, concrete, steel and contaminated soil.”

Radioactive asbestos. We truly live in an age of wonders.

I grew up far enough away from Hanford that we couldn’t lit...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Contemplate Other People's Choices That You Do Not Understand

I am not against nudity in films. Far from it.

There are, of course, movies where nudity is the entire point. Aside form those, there are some stories that can’t be told in a straight forward, or visceral manner without a certain amount of nudity. One obvious example is Boogie Nights.

Also, there are stories you wouldn’t think would require nudity, that very much do. There’s an episode of the miniseries Chernobyl that would have been awkward to get the point across without showing multiple people naked, and I think all the ...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Express Your Positive Vision for the Future of Humanity

Short commentary today. I like to keep my vision for the future more positive, and less apocalyptically bleak.

I got the idea for this comic when the real Ric complained that he made a social media post about the rise of AI in creative fields, and few of his friends/followers liked it. I told him that the post in question literally ended with the suggestion that anyone who wants to survive should get good at mining lithium by hand.

Asking people to “like” that is a tad ambitious.

When created the “Smarter than a Monke...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Impart Wisdom

This is based, with precious little embellishment, on an actual conversation Ric and I had. He is truly lucky to have me for a friend. Imagine the awful things I’d say about him if I was his enemy!

Reportedly, Jerry Garcia said, “Style is the stuff you get wrong.” If that’s the case, then Basic Instructions is the most stylish comic strip in existence.

I know that’s not what he meant, but misinterpreting this sort of thing is just part of my style.

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

Hey, Ric has written another song. This one is a hypothetical theme song for a 1970's TV series based on my novel, The Authorities. If that sounds like your kind of thing, please go check it out!

How to Take an Interest in History

The Musical Instrument Museum is real, and it is really good! If you’re ever in Phoenix, I strongly suggest you go.

The only thing I can only compare it to the Experience Music Project, which no longer exists. It is now part of the MoPOP museum in Seattle. See, when the museum that is now MoPOP first opened, it was two different museums in one building. There was a music museum upstairs, and a science fiction museum...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Proclaim Your Beliefs

The “Room Where it Happens” joke was specifically designed just to amuse Missy. I hope at least some of you enjoy it as well.

Back during that portion of our lives when it felt like Missy and I were attending at least two weddings a year, our big go-to wedding gift was matched sets of NERF guns. The card would say something about a non-violent means of resolving conflicts.

Anyway, for the NERF dueling pistols, I picture a brown plastic, faux-woodgrain case. Inside, there’d be two ornate, curved handled, filigreed pistols ma...