Deer Readers,

I know that there are female weather people out there but I am not going to take that into consideration while I write the rest of this email.  I hope you don’t mind.

I often wonder how much interpretation the weatherman has to do when relaying the output of the weather models to the public.  If the weather model says there will be 29″ of snow does he curb it down a bit to hedge his bets?

“I couldn’t possibly predict 29″ of snow.  They’ll laugh at me when we only get 12-16″ of snow.  On the other hand, 29″ of snow would make a great story.  Everyone will hang on my every word.  What to do, what to do!  Eeek.”

I’ve often thought that more of our weather than we’d like to know comes from a weatherman’s “good feeling” about something based on the data he gets.

Now, of course this is all pretty much nonsense since I virtually never, nay, literally never watch a weather report on purpose.  If it comes up on the radio it goes in one ear and out the other.  0 retention.  I couldn’t possibly care any more about the weather than I do about carpet.  (carpet was the most boring thing I could think of just now)  In reality this comic is based completely on what I hear other people say about weather reports and my own deep seeded personal wish to just once hear a weatherman predict a small herd of dinosaurs.  That would totally make my day.  I’m so happy just thinking about it.  Aaaah…small herd of dinosaurs, ha…

(a few minutes pass)

Don’t mind me.  I’m just enjoying the moment.

Hi Readers,

Sometimes I spend time with my wife instead of writing to you.

I greet thee,

About the comic, Its not true.  When I encounter a problem I solve it.  Immediately.  On my own.  I might talk it out just for a minute but only if someone else is there to talk it out with.  You know, just to get a valuable consensus of some kind.  Make sure everybody is on the same page.  That kind of thing.

Note for those interested in my grammar: I know what a sentence fragment is.

In case you have never read the book here is a recap of the male perspective found in it.  When talking to a male colleague it is always best to just keep it simple, stick to the facts, and absolutely no sports talk unless you really know what happened in the game.  (That last bit wasn’t actually in the book but I think it is quite true and probably should have been.)

Hello from one of your friends (not me, it was someone else),

I feel like I may have been getting a little bit too silly lately for a professional person such as myself.  After every message I write I wonder, “What would my boss think if he were to read this?”  It is a good question.  I could hardly imagine that his opinion of me would go up.  When he is trying to figure out who to hand out that next big project to is it going to be the guy who had pink frilly things on the brain at least once in the last several months or is it going to be the guy who keeps all his pencils sharp and orderly?  Not to worry, I happen to be both of those guys.  The fact that I know the maximum percentage of lead that you can ever hope to use from a regular wooden pencil is a mere 33% (assuming you sharpen it with a pencil sharpener and not a pocket knife) and that if you keep that pencil decently sharp the percentage drops to a miniscule 2% or less (for those inclined to numbers, 1/4 usage of the height of a newly sharpened pencil between sharpenings means you are wasting 47/48ths, of the lead.  Its crazy, I know.) puts me right back in the thick of things.

Pencil lead wastage equation (for those who care, ONLY):

W = ratio of lead wasted, otherwise known as wastage

k = ratio of the height of exposed pencil lead used between sharpenings

1/3 = the amount of any pie (other than cherry) I would generally like to receive whenever pie is served.

1 = what my wife and I became when we got married. (Didn’t see that coming did you?)

Here it is: W = 1 – (1/3)*k^2

Actually, now I hope my boss does read this.  The big project is as good as mine.  Hmmm, I did do that equation from the memory I have of deriving it some months ago.  I hope it is correct.  If it is…I get the big project.  If it is not…I still probably get the big project because my recent work, though in error, has “GREEN” written all over it.

‘sup

I don’t know if you have noticed or not but I am trying to open every message with a different greeting.  Also, I am not keeping track of what greetings I have used before so this is becoming a little bit challenging.  If I ever do repeat a greeting I would be interested to hear about it.

Hello again, again,

I hope you all enjoyed that illustrated poem last time.  I say that because I don’t know how many of you actually knew that that was what it was and may have assumed that it was supposed to be funny, couldn’t see anything funny in it, wondered if you were missing something, couldn’t imagine that you were, and were starting to wonder about me again.  I’m giving you fair warning, there will probably be more random illustrated poems in the future.  I do have a few in mind.

Anyway, today we are back to something relatively normal.  If any of you have ever asked me to say hi to someone, and after reading todays comic are now concerned that I might not have done so, well, there are two sides to that coin.  I also might have done so.

I almost never ask anybody to say hi to anybody for me mainly because I immediately feel so hypocritical.  That is probably why some of you never hear from me so often.  Don’t worry about it.  I’m just being genuine and I still like you.

Hello,

This might be a good time to mention that this series of comics has no rules.  I may stop using stick men altogether sometime.  Probably not though because they are much easier to draw than just about anything else except maybe the dot people.  I’m not sure what’s funny about the dot people but I’ll figure it out someday.

There is a sequel, “How to Make a Tan and Gold House with Coffee Colored Trim”. Wherever you see the color blue in the original replace it with the color tan-and-gold-with-coffee-colored-trim.

People,

Does it bother anybody that these pictures are graphically on the large side?  It is a bit of a technological hassle for me to try and shrink the dimensions and retain the fine level of detail that I like to include in all of my comics.

I’m quite open to feedback by the way.  I don’t mind at all hearing how bad a particular comic is or how I could have done it better and I respond to every message that says more than something along the lines of “good one”.

I hope that all of my readers are having a brilliant day, but maybe not quite to the point of blindness,

Benjamin Boyd

Hello Dear Readers,

This one stretched my artistic abilities a little bit.  I had a heck of a time drawing that rock 6 times over.  I’m going to have to get creative about ways to avoid drawing things in the future.  I’ve got some ideas.

Hello again,

The cheap gift for the man or woman who has everything…