I’ve only been stuck on a tarmac once in my life, although I haven’t flown enough to make that any kind of significant feat. The flight in question was from Las Vegas to Chicago, and we were stuck for two hours waiting for crew members to complete some type of repair. To make matters worse, the in-flight movie was none other than Cheaper by the Dozen 2, which I remembered for its sheer awfulness. I would have preferred to read a copy of the book Fear that the woman in this strip is clutching intently in the first row of seats.

I use AT&T as my cell phone carrier, and have heard horror stories about massive bills people have piled up while on vacation. This seems to hit iPhone users especially hard, what with the international data charges piling up exponentially as they mindlessly check e-mail, surf the web or update their Facebook status. (Jane Q. Public is…having the time of her life in the south of France, not knowing that she’ll come home to a $5,000 phone bill!) Anyway, it would be a good idea for me to adjust my data plan before embarking on my Italian honeymoon early next year, even though Italy is not known to have a particularly bad wolf problem.

I agree that there’s no right way to fold a fitted sheet, and I’ve tried plenty of times to get it right. I usually start by matching up the tiny bits of unfitted cloth on either end of the sheet, assuming that their straight edges will impose some kind of order on their frill cousins. But the whole thing then devolves into a messy bundle of cloth that only looks neat stretched out across a mattress or bunched into the corner of a closet.

It might seem like the would-be taggers in this strip have made a mistake by purchasing white spraypaint, but they actually might have stumbled onto a goldmine. All they have to do is paint some rudimentary images on this igloo and put the whole thing up for auction. It might just go for a mint, like the outrageously expensive, white on white painting that stirred up such controversy in the play Art by Yasmina Reza. Of course, it’s hard to display an igloo inside one’s home, but I’m sure anyone who could afford an expensive art collection could also afford to build a meat locker devoted to housing their latest acquisition.

This is a pretty awful pun, but it made me laugh. It’s also sage relationship advice. When something isn’t working, it’s best to just end things. To rip off the proverbial Band-Aid quickly instead of inch by agonizing inch. To hit control-alt-delete and force the non-responsive program to quit, if you will…

It was only recently that I began keeping my bananas out of the refrigerator. Up until a few weeks ago, I would pack a banana with my lunch and put the entire bag in the fridge, not thinking that it would ruin the tender yellow fruit. And while an evening in cold storage didn’t turn the thing black, it did make it less appetizing to eat the next day, even after it had returned to some semblance of room temperature. Curiously enough, I was convinced to change my habits after reading a chain e-mail extolling the virtues of bananas and warning, quite sternly, that they should never be placed in a refrigerator. I guess those e-mails serve a purpose, after all.

For all the times I’ve seen it referenced in popular culture, I’ve still yet to watch Ingmar Bergman’s classic art film, The Seventh Seal. According to critics, it’s a powerful and austere meditation on mortality that is genuinely thought-provoking and downright creepy. According to almost everyone else, it’s an impossibly pompous piece of cinema that’s ripe for ridicule. I suppose I should rent the film and judge it for myself, although I’m not sure I’d be able to watch it without conjuring up images of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

I’ve been on a number of boats in my life, but can’t say that I was taken with the experience of venturing out on the water. When I think back on my two whale watching expeditions, for example, I tend to recall things that have nothing to do with the ocean. My memories of playing gin rummy with my aunt or eating clam chowder with my grandfather are stronger than those of staring out at the water and waiting for whales to surface. Not that I wouldn’t go again in a heartbeat, but I’d be sure to bring a deck of cards and a good book to help kill the time.

As someone with a hyphenated last name, I can appreciate the usefulness of that particular piece of punctuation. It both separates and joins together the two parts of my last name, which are my mother’s maiden name and my father’s last name, respectively. And though my name can be difficult to explain, and even more difficult to spell, in the company of strangers and customer service representatives, it has served me well over the years. I’m just glad I don’t have to include my middle name in the conversation and that there’s no junior, senior, or esquire to contend with.

Allow me to make a grammatical point that is probably not worth making: it is redundant to write “$500 bucks” with a dollar sign in front of the number 500. It would be sufficient to write “500 bucks” or “$500.” Otherwise, the phrase would be read as “500 dollars bucks.” It’s the same as saying “ATM machine” when the M in the acronym already stands for machine. I hate raising this point because, I found this strip to be genuinely funny and, grammar aside, quite worthy of praise.