Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer for January 14, 2015

Ah, the classics!

The bag marked “innards” has actually become a running joke around my house.

Love the Burl Ives impression. ;)

Wait just a minute….why doesn’t the copyright date show 2015? Everybody else’s does.

After eight years, he missed relevance by just a month.

Looks like his partner’s hairstyle has changed in that time.

The Burl Ives is great. My wife and I usually just tell each other, “Your presents are ‘hidden’ (wherever) so don’t look there.” And we don’t.

We’d both rather be surprised on Christmas morning, or our birthdays, or for any other event.

the real copyright is well hidden… he wants it to be a surprise…. (the 2006 is just a screen)dont look in teh package in the 4th panel!!!

I’m confused. Didn’t’ this originally run in 2007? Why is it copyrighted 2006?

“What are you doing in there?”

“I’m… wrapping Christmas presents, Ma!”

I wonder who the guy on the left in panel 3 is. He hasn’t appeared (with that appearance, anyway) in a new strip for ages.

They were so young then! So terribly, terribly young….

If you have to hide your Christmas gifts for 11 months because you buy them in January, you are making life needlessly hard.

Love this strip and hesitate to nitpick, but the punctuation drives me crazy: unless you’re British, the period goes INSIDE the quotation marks.

Give them their Christmas present in July, but don’t tell them that it’s their Christmas present until December. “Hide in plain sight”.