Scott Meyer

How to Share Your Knowledge

Added 2025-01-20 08:00:04 +0000 UTC

I sometimes get almost finished with a comic and become convinced that I did a comic on that exact subject, using those exact jokes, years ago. I would just write this feeling off as paranoia, if it hadn’t actually happened, twice. In both cases, I scrapped the new copy of the comic and started over.

I got that creeping feeling about this comic, but a quick search showed that I had not done the whole comic before. What I had done was to include one similar joke, with the same, very specific two line phrase as a punchline. It’s the big balloon in panel two of this one.

I decided to stick with it in this case, because it’s quoted from my old stand-up act, specifically, one of the hundreds of bits I could never get to work. I always liked this bit, and I figure if I’m allowed to steal from myself, I might as well do it twice, as long as I resolve not to do it again. I feel like most of my act was made up of bits that didn’t get the reaction I expected. Right now I can only remember the one that IKEA is built on the idea that you’re more likely to buy a furniture if you’re trapped in a baffling maze. If I come up with more later I will try to collect them so you can enjoy them slightly less than I do, like my audiences of old.

After I quit stand-up, absconded to Florida, and started working at Walt Disney World, IKEA came to Orlando. It was fun to watch my new coworkers discover IKEA for themselves. One coworker found their furnished maze layout so off-putting that she literally fled and drove straight to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy something there as a sort of retail detox.