If there’s one thing Gary Larson makes it quite clear with his delightfully weird comic strip that failure is practically second nature when it comes to people.

Larson is an incredibly perceptive comic creator, and he’s 10 Far Side comics that showcase mishaps, mistakes, and other errors that prove no one knows what they’re doing.

10 Professor Schnabel's Cleaning Lady

Publication Date: March 29, 1985

There’s mistakes, and then they are moments that completely screw everything up. In this strip, a poor cleaning lady is simply trying to do her job laundering a professor’s clothes. However, she’s accidentally used the professor's time machine instead of a dryer and has been transported back to the Jurassic age, right into the middle of a field of dinosaurs. Maybe it’s the fault of Professor Schnabel creating a time machine that looks like a dryer, but only in The Far Side could someone accidentally the two and end up in a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

9 Octopus Lecture

Publication Date: November 11, 1987

There’s a reason public speaking is one of the greatest fears among people. After all, who wants to make a gaffe and accidentally say the wrong thing? The Far Side lampoons this fear in a comedic way by having an octopus give a symposium to his species. Unfortunately, just as most people are confused about what the plural form of ‘octopus’ is, the speaker its he has no clue whether he should be using octopi or octopuses. It’s a painfully real scenario and one doesn’t have to be an octopus to sympathize with being in such an unfortunate position.

8 Elephant Pianist

Publication Date: December 8, 1983

It’s not uncommon to dream about failure, whether it's a nightmare about school or one’s job. Larson acknowledges the tricks people’s minds will often play in these kinds of dreams with a Far Side strip where the logic doesn’t hold up, even by the comic’s usual absurd standards. An elephant is being forced to put on a piano concert, and he knows he can’t do it. Not because he’s an elephant, but because he only knows how to play the flute. Dreams of failure might not be logical, but that just makes them fit right into The Far Side.

7 Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Publication Date: July 5, 1983

They say the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, but instead of mice or men, this Far Side strip uses sheep and wolves to show how badly plans can go. What looks like a flock of sheep in this strip is actually a pack of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Apparently, there was no coordination among the wolves as none of them realized until just now that there aren’t any actual sheep around. It’s a hilarious spin on a common idiom and a gag that plans don’t always work out, no matter how much thought or effort.

6 Ride Off Into the Sunset

Publication Date: May 25, 1992

There’s no worse blow to one’s ego than when one completely misinterprets what someone else says. Except, as Larson posits, when that misinterpretation almost leads to one’s death. This Far Side gag is set in the Old West and a local is bringing a young cowpoke named Will Hawkins in for help. Hawkins is literally smoldering, a consequence of his attempt to ride off into the sunset. No, not a metaphor, as the reader is led to believe Will was foolish enough to (and somehow capable of) riding into the sunset. Hawkins is never going to live that incident down.

5 Early Business Failures

Publication Date: December 16, 1985

Trial and error is simply a part of running a small business. But as it usually does, The Far Side takes a negative aspect of reality and shows it to the world through an incredibly illogical lens. In this strip, a caveman is running a stand offering ‘porcupine on a stick’. The critter isn’t cooked or even dead. It’s simply tied to a stick and sold to other cavemen who, amazingly enough, are attempting to eat it. Appropriately captioned ‘Early business failures’, this is a hilarious way of looking at how rough it can be when trying to chase success.

4 Dangerous First

Publication Date: September 22, 1986

Even when one has the best intentions, that can still lead to severe consequences, especially if a person has absolutely no clue what they’re doing. The Far Side plays with this idea by having a group of aliens whose heads resemble hands arrive on Earth, only to be violently shaken by a man named Roy. Granted, Roy was just being friendly and attempting to shake hands, but the man dooms his entire civilization by throttling the alien leaders’ head. It’s always embarrassing to commit a social faux pas, but in The Far Side, a mistake can lead to annihilation.

3 Clown First Date

Publication Date: November 15, 1984

Romance can be a fantastic thing, but that doesn’t mean everyone knows how to do it correctly. The Far Side dives into matters of the heart and looks at the funny side of it in the most direct way, using clowns. Here, two clowns are on their first date and, instead of trying to get something else out of their first night out, Charles the clown is eager to pie his date while she’s already putting a stop to it. It’s hard to navigate the ins and outs of dating, even for amorous clowns in The Far Side.

2 Hog Heaven

Publication Date: November 9, 1987

Literally everyone makes mistakes at work and while few would expect that to apply to the almighty, nothing’s off the table in The Far Side. A man named Ernie has ed on, and he’s been welcomed into the afterlife. But instead of being surrounded by angels, Ernie is surrounded by swine as an ‘unfortunate celestial error’ has sent him to hog heaven. It’s normal to feel a little bad when erring at one’s work, but no matter how bad it is, no one can say they’ve ever condemned a man’s soul to spending eternity with a bunch of pigs.

1 Failed Marketing Ploys

Publication Date: May 24, 1993

Advertising is, more often than not, a guessing game. It's hard to figure out what’s going to resonate with people and, unfortunately, a lot of business-minded folks just don’t know how to get people excited. This Far Side gag shows off one of the best and funniest errors in the entire series as an asparagus vendor is trying to get people excited with a new jingle and delivery truck to sell his wars. But it’s not enough to just steal ideas from ice cream men and hope that will get people excited about asparagus in The Far Side.