Looks like wearing safety pins is going mainstream, with NYTimes writing about it and Patrick Stewart wearing it.
1) Only wear it if you mean it – ready to help anyone who asks, regardless of what minority they’re in.
2) There are lots of non-violent ways to help – but in some parts of the country, wearing it could put you in physical danger.
3) If you might possibly be confused with a white supremacist, you might want to accessorize with something they’d never wear (like a Black Lives Matter pin or Pride flag) – because they’re so vile that they’re encouraging each other to co-opt the symbol.
Yes, we get it, people are determined to ignore what people stand to lose from Trump and why they are afraid. Are we going to do anything to help these people protect their civil and human rights or just condescend over it some more?
I could condescend, but this really isn’t the place for it.
bongoing that an orange asshole won a democratic election isn’t helping protect anyone’s civil rights, which is what I meant by ‘productivity.’
Surprisingly enough the threat of losing one’s civil rights is not the kind of thing people take calmly. Forgive people for still being upset and talking about it a week later.
Also completely ignore things like protests, movements to back up and de-escalate situations, etc. Sure.
Disclaimer: The following in no shape or form represents the true thoughts and political standings of MatsuoTanuki, this is an exaggeration for the sake of black humor*
*puts on discount Che Guevara T-shirt and red beret* Then we burn Congress! Drag every fat, slimy politician by the hair and rip them to shreds! Burn Washington! And a new America shall rise out of the ashes, in the hands of the people! Viva the Second Revolution! *froths at the mouth*
Yeah, great idea. Look how well that worked in France, and Russia, and Iran.
The reason the US didn’t turn out that way was because its revolutionary phase, strictly speaking, was limited to gaining independence from the UK. The post-revolution government was much like the UK’s government without the peerage, and everything since then has been a matter of gradual evolution.
The people who want to overturn everything and remake it all at once voted for Trump. It’s a bad idea; you generally end up with a new government worse than the one it replaced, but more stable and claiming more legitimacy. It remains to be seen whether it will work out that way in this case.
Two years. Midterms are in TWO years, and there’s more local control over those, and they will restore the checks and balances. Midterms. Are in. Two years. Start getting ready.
It’s a damn uphill slog and we’re going to need to work at it. Get those Democrats who don’t vote in midterms out.
The Senate has a lot Democrats up for reelection, in Red States, and there are only a few Republicans.
The House is gerrymandered to hell and gone and Voter Suppression will be worse by then. OTOH, gerrymandering tends to be less effective towards the end of a Census cycle as populations shift.
We’re going to have to make a hell of a wave. 50 State strategy.
If everyones just gonna bongo and moan about the election Willis may wind up having to ban political discussion (that doesn’t involve robin) on the comments section.
And, if he does, he’ll be treated like a Trump supporter.
And characterizing it that way only makes you look like an asshole. Not a single person is whining. Learn to care about other people more than yourself.
I don’t see him banning political discussions, but I could see him adding a few new word substitutions. If he gets tired of seeing the word Trump then I’m sure that are substitutions that would change the tenor of the discussion.
He can say whatever he wants – when he’s added conversion therapy to his platform and wants a judge who has vowed to overturn gay marriage, he’s an anti-LGBTQ+ politician.
Isn’t the VP next in line in case someone cuts through POTUS like a fucking cardboard standee? And isn’t the VP a guy with rather scary ideas and more government experience than the actual president elect? Sounds like an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire kind of scenario. 🙁
Correct. As long as the VP doesn’t get a promotion, their most important role is “tiebreaker in the Senate”.
Next in line is Speaker of the House. The Speaker became President once, to my knowledge: Gerald Ford became VP after Agnew resigned, then President after Nixon resigned. He fell down a lot.
Splork: indeed we do. But our old strategy won’t work – we can’t just focus on urban liberals and trust in their population to win the day. Trump won because a lot of rural Democrats felt ignored by the party mainstream, and either didn’t vote, or voted for Candy-Corn Mussolini in protest.
So, pick a state (probably yours), and go county by county. Organize, investigate, plan. Make no assumptions, take nothing for granted. We need to earn this next one, people!
Not to rehash the election even more, but it’s not at all clear to me that’s why he won. Dismissing racism, sexism and bigotry in a campaign that’s focused on them more openly than anything since George Wallace seems like a mistake to me.
I agree with the last. Work & organize. Get involved.
Ford wasn’t Speaker though. He was appointed to the Vice Presidency by Nixon after Agnew resigned.
It would only be if both the President & VP were absent/vacant at once that the speaker would become President.
If Billie cut through Trump, Pence would be President. She’d have to cut through him too, in order to make Paul Ryan President. At which point she might as well keep going. Eventually you work your way through the Cabinet and I doubt we’d want any Trump appointees in charge.
More seriously, given Trump’s complete lack of preparedness or apparent interest in actually doing the job, I suspect that Pence, like Cheney, will play a much more significant role than “tiebreaker in the Senate”.
Surprising nobody. Frankly, given Trump’s face after learning that the job is not, in fact, blowjobs 24/7 while giving vague instructions to a secretary who does all the work, I’m just wondering what the over/under is on him /actually resigning as president while sitting in the oval office/.
Pence is currently in charge of Trump’s “transition,” which in taking to mean he may have a lot of power to choose people he likes. We may have more of a Cheney than a Biden…
I’m not sure anyone is in charge of Trump’s transition.
I suspect there’s a lot of infighting among the various advisors and it’s not clear who’s winning. My guess is Bannon, but it’s hard to say. Trump has something of a reputation for going along with the last guy to suck up to him properly.
But yeah, definitely more of a Cheney running his own agenda out of the VP’s office rather than a loyal supporter (if occasional loose cannon) like Biden.
Thankfully, Ana, there are going to be places which continue to help and comfort people throughout Trump’s term. Because as bad and awful as he is, he is not going to be able to define the world. Safety pins and not. Also, Trump will never be elected in Willis’ world. It’s like Marvel comics that way that President Ellis or Peter Cullen will be the leader due to the sliding time scale.
No, he’ll never be elected. By the time we reach November in comic, he’ll have been in the office for several years. By the time we reach January, he’ll be long gone.
people have asked me why i never seem to hate anyone. my answer is typically something along the line of “Hating takes a lot of effort. im to lazy for that.”
Honestly, if anyone in DoA is Bulma, it’s Carla, since she’s the only person who ever built anything (that weird device she used to get revenge on Mary, who I guess can be Pilaf in this analogy).
And now I’m shipping Billie and Carla. Thanks, Wheelpath. Theelpath.
they could blame her for ruthless think she is insane lock her up and put her in a padded room with a straight jacket where she realizes that the entire dumbing of age universe is just her mind trying to cope with child hood horrors that she doesn’t remember anymore so they intend to torture them out of her.
Caaaaaaaaaaaaalm the fucks way down.
Take all the fucks that you have cultivated and cared for in your garden.
The ones you painstakeningly picked and cleaned.
The ones you stored in temperature controlled rooms.
Take them.
And caaaaaaaaaalm the gosh dang heck down.
Two questions:
1. What was Billie planning on cutting through people with?
2. Is anyone else now thinking of her as an anime protagonist doing one of those “slice someone in half but they don’t react or split apart until after I’ve sheathed my sword” moves?
Now I just imagine Billie’s speech bubble passing through people, and then her pointedly crossing her arms and shutting her mouth before the people literally fall to pieces.
It’s not like people in the dorm care much anyway. If there’s a universal constant it’s that chubby girls in glasses are constantly overestimating how much interest their hallmates have in forming an opinion on them.
Billie is only “chubby” by cheerleader standards. Or fashion magazine standards or TV/movie star standards… but not by real-world standards. I hope this culture hasn’t warped far enough that the people she lives with think of her as chubby.
How big are American dorm halls, if you can avoid having an opinion about any hallmates, regardless of body type? In the Netherlands, we average around fifteen, and you end up with an opinionabout your flatmates whether you want to or not, usually within a week, even if you only share a kitchen.
I think my dorm building had two “wings” and 3 floors. My “wing” or hall had maybe 15? rooms? most of which had 3 occupants a few had 2. The 15 number is my best guess, I don’t remember specifically and it may have been a few rooms… fewer. I know there were more than 9 rooms, though.
101,102,103(mine),104(that one guy),105(that other guy),106,107(the other other guy and the last room on that side), 108?, 109… bathroom… two blank spaces and an electrical panel… that other door was the sevice closet and the next was the RM’s room… maybe there were only 9 actual room rooms and I think 4 of them were doubles and the rest triples. So, maybe, 23 actual students in our “hall?”
Good thing she wasn’t the shooter looking for her non-dead victim.
Which really happened at least twice here- the time I know of, and the time that was the reason for the “no information” protocol.
I think in the clerk’s position I’d have read it as totally normal until Billie’s outburst, and then maybe I’d have called my supervisor or a security type.
According to my friend who worked in these situations, it’s a toss up because the families of people like Ruth are often incredibly stressed or on the verge of breakdown or possibly ill themselves. Billie’s outburst wasn’t so much Tuesday for him as 3:00PM.
i just spent two hours today mentally unable to move or speak. Like, I could, and i did if I got enough motivation to move, like to pick up a phone. But otherwise I just lay slumped down wherever I fell, not thinking or even moving my lips to smile or frown at my thoughts. Is this what dissociation is?
sorry, I just have no idea what to call it and that scares me more than what actually happened. I could tell that if I was in physical danger I would be able to move, so it was more concerning than scary
Sounds more like catatonia to me which, amoung other things, can be a symptom of depression. (if my HTML is busted I apologise)
Dissociation is your mind literally going away for awhile. You lose touch with reality. Some people have described it as “extreme daydreaming.” This is often accompanied by a loss of time (for instance, I will think 15 minutes have passed and turns out it’s been like three hours). This can happen with or without the presence of outside stimuli (so, I dissociate in class a lot, which sucks cause I can’t take notes like that).
Either way, you should see a therapist. Even if this was a one-time thing it might point to an underlying problem. After all, things like this aren’t always just psychological. There could be an underlying physical, neurological issue.
My immediate response was to tell you that this was your punishment for not following Willis’s will and becoming a patron subscribing to Slipshine, but that’s only because deep down I’m an evil person. So have a hug instead.
What you describe sounds like a cross between several things and not exactly like any of them. If this is a one time occurrence , nothing simular has ever happened, you haven’t suffered from depression recently and chronically, and particularly if you’ve had recent sleep disruption, then it may not be worth worrying about. If it’s part of larger pattern then you should get yourself checked out throughly from everything from undiagnosed sleep apnea and allergies or exposure to poisons, neurological degeneration and mental disorders. It isn’t necessarily serious but it could be very serious.
This is still less than 24 hours since Ruth was brought to the health center.
On top of that, Billie is still depressed. She’s supposed to see some sort of councilor once a week, but has not had a session yet.
Depression sucks. Imagine you had your own personal Donald Trump inside your own head. You’d be swinging wildly between anger, grief, and numbness too.
I think he’s not doing his job by letting Billie pass after that crazy violent rant she just went on.
Without a chaperone? I guess this is one of those budget mental facilities?
“The Privacy Rule permits a covered hospital or other covered health care provider to maintain in a directory certain information about patients – patient name, location in the facility, health condition expressed in general terms that does not communicate specific medical information about the individual, and religious affiliation.”
as someone working on getting comptia certified it is nice to know that in the worst case scenerio you buy a new item/product. harder to do with humans.
Good thing that clerk’s shift is ending, because Billie is going to be *ticked* when she discovers that Room 318 is actually the Urine and Stool Receiving Lab.
Billie really needs to learn to keep a few of her cards close to her chest.
Now, this promises to be a… difficult meeting. I would say that there is a decent possibility that Ruth may have decided that she needs to ‘protect’ Billie by driving her away. So, we can expect her to be abusive, acidic and to demand that Billie never come to see her again.
Clerk: “…ma’am, look, I’m 7 hours into my shift, I’m not getting paid enough for this crap, I really don’t care about your big cause, I’m just thinking about the bottle of whiskey at home. Please leave me alone.”
…and so Billie runs off with a young RA at the desk only to find healing and love, and no whiskey (the poor soul forgot he drank it all in one of his depressed binges, but on the weekend because he sort of likes his job). But billie seeing how much this RA loves his job decides to stick with it becomes an advocate for alcoholics who want to quit and they both get a house and have 2.5 kids together! THE END. (although how you have .5 of a kid has always confused me)
Honestly, Billie – You have to give him TIME to look it up!!
It’s not like he’ll know immediately whom you’re talking about and it’s not like they’d have the fastest computer systems…
I understand that she is stressed out, but it just reminds me of people calling me on my phone and giving up after the second ring because I didn’t answer in the first five seconds of them calling (it’s not like I could be in some other room or sthg) – the same thing repeating itself if someone (e.g. post man, neighbour) rings at the door and then just vanishes, because if someone doesn’t immediately open the door after three seconds it equals “isn’t home”
Carla’s name was a joke in the Shortpacked! continuity because she was literally a car, and then she got a robot body.
Dina used to be “Dina Sarazu”, i.e. dinosaur, back in It’s Walky!, and is now Dina Saruyama which is kind of close.
Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Billie’s anger is driven by the desire to see this establishment as a monstrous American Horror Story-esque place because if this place actually is helping Ruth then it’s going to be emotionally devastating to Billie. Billie needed to believe that LoveTM was going to fix Ruth or that they’d go down in flames together. It’s going to be an emotional gut punchx10 if she finds out that it’s not an “either or” get treatment and go back to her grandfather situation or die.
Or alternatively, Billie is concerned all they’re gonna do is stuff Ruth full of pills with laundry lists of negative side effects before turfing her ass out, rather than talk with her and actually take the time and care to help her work thru her depression. If the hospital staff genuinely intends to help Ruth, then Billie might calm down step back just far enough for Ruth to get better.
In case anyone has forgotten, this is what toxic co-dependency is.
Billie is not being heroic or badass by threatening a desk clerk to get to see Ruth. She’s pretty much an addict going through withdrawal and presenting herself as the abusive party in the relationship that caused Ruth’s breakdown.
Yes, Billie is indeed a depressed alcoholic with anger management issues in a codependent relationship. She literally IS an addict. Though implying she’s to blame for Ruth’s crash seems a bit much. Billie definitely enabled some destructive behavior, but Ruth’s depression, “Sir”, and Mary are the ones who actively pushed her towards the ledge
If this is meant as a sort of rebuttal to my comment, I don’t mean to discourage criticizing Billie. I just would hope that people doing so will have a little compassion for the real people out there who struggle with some or all of the same issues.
“Billie is not being heroic or badass by threatening a desk clerk to get to see Ruth. ”
And the desk clerk is pretty crap at his job if his response to “I’M GONNA USE VIOLENCE IF YOU GET IN MY WAY” isn’t “well, I better call security then, you’re talking like you’re a dangerous person who will harm a patient here!” but “yaaaawwwwwnnn go away I’m looking at old Vines”
You know, Billie makes a grand statement that she will move mountains to be with her eternal love, because Ruth’s depression is a thing that Billie can fix through caring and whiskey, and dude just DNGAF. It’s funny because* it’s an inappropriate response to what Billie is saying.
What are these “parties” you speak of? Is that where you find those “friends” critters everyone keeps harping on about? Wait, is the correct term pokémon instead of critter?
Billie right now: That embarrassing moment when you mistake a thinking sound for an ignoring sound and the person you thought was hiding info from you gives you the exact info you need and isn’t even annoyed but you still regret threatening them.
This comment has nothing to do with the strip. Instead, it is a request to click on the link I will provide, and give feedback to it. It is about an idea I have had in my brain for a while, about the possibility of a campaign called called “Let’s Make It Better”.
The project has -not- actually started. It is a project with many pitfalls, which is why I am seeking opinions on it first. Here is the link:
I’m angry and need to share. Went to see my nurse practitioner because I’m sick. Ended up having a nasty both ear, sinus, and upper lung infection. She notice I’ve gained a few pounds since my last visit. I told her it’s because I’ve been stress eating because the election has my anxiety up and I’m scared of what Trump will do because I’m female and polysexual and that there has been so much harassment, hate speech, and assault on the LGBTQ community and women especially women in hijabs. She replied “People are just acting that way because they’re tired of being politically correct.” She went on to say that the protesters are just making things worse and need to calm down and stop and all the high school kids that staged a walk out just did it so they could get a free day off from school. Then she said that everything will be fine and her sister is a lesbian and she’s not scared for her so why should I worry. -_-
I also mentioned corrective rape and how two such words should never be put together and she replied that a little white girl (I think she said 6 years old?) was raped by a bunch of black guys because of the color of her skin but you don’t here about that all over the news because she was white. Seriously why!?! Does one tragedy take away from the legitimacy of another?
Also, my nephew mentioned how all lives matter that Black Lives Matter should be gotten rid of because it gives [black people] and excuse to riot. He also said the rich should not be punished for being successful with higher taxes and that anybody can pull themselves up out of a poor home and make something of themselves if they want it bad enough.
“a little white girl (I think she said 6 years old?) was raped by a bunch of black guys because of the color of her skin but you don’t here about that all over the news because she was white”
Next time, press her for details on that. If she cannot even name the location where it happened, it probably was a typical lie that racists like to spread to excuse their own racist bullshit.
I never even considered that. That’s sick. You just don’t lie about a child being raped. You just don’t. I… I don’t know if I hope she is lying and her and others are telling it to people to try to excuse their racism or if it’s the truth and a child did get raped. I would rather the child be a lie so that a little girl wouldn’t have her life destroyed, but that makes my nurse practitioner a bald faced liar and a good one at that which makes me question her on so many levels even more so than learning her political leanings and racist undertones.
99-in-100 chance she knows about it because “she was told by her cousin, who heard it from his neighbour.” Possible bonus appearance by a canadian girlfirend.
At best (and admittedly it’s quite likely), you can hope it’s not intentional lying on her specific behalf. As JBento said, she probably heard it from someone who heard it from someone, etc.
And yes, that is fucking vile! But white supremacists can and will lie about -anything- to support their supremacy. And then they hope the outrage machine will do the job for them; assuming people will spread what they believe is the truth without actually checking them.
It may or may not be made up completely. Racists will latch on to and remember any incidents of black-on-white crime for this exact purpose. I actually saw this on facebook recently in response to an article about the Alt-Right:
“How come we never talk about the Alt-Left? You know, like the Weather Underground who actually BOMBED people?”
The Weather Underground is of course a militant left-wing organization that hasn’t been active since the 70’s. But that means liberals can’t complain about conservatives doing horrible shit today! All complaining rights were forfeit forever.
So if black-on-white crime or reverse racism happened just ONE TIME, it means white people have it just as bad and also that racism is over and/or that POC are just as racist against white people so that makes it okay.
One day I will learn how to punch the internet in the face.
That’s one of the shittiest situations I’ve read about in the past year…
Feel hugged and I wish you all the best (however stupid that might sound)!
I don’t live in the US and was shocked by how the votes turned out, though I can relate to the feeling of listening to people uttering stupid racist things (though in my part of the world it became worse in recent years because of refugees, and sometimes some family members are spouting shit as well – mostly naming economical reasons, of course -.-). I don’t understand how people can grow up (and stay) to be such haters (or worse) and act on their hatred in the worst possible ways. I mean, we’re all living and we’re all humans, ffffffff……!
So end of this monologue.
I wish you strength and again, many *hugs*, I’m so sorry about what you need to go through
Lol! Yeah. It just makes me sick. But when I do run across someone who feels the same, it’s a wonderful uplifting feeling. To know that my city isn’t completely filled with bigots. The best day was when I found three in one day: my female pharmacist (who even warned me that my male pharmacist was very happy about the results) and two cashiers at the grocery store I frequent. It gave me hope.
*hugs back* Thanks FC. I did too. It’s good to hear people acknowledge that it’s bullshit rather than blow it off. I live in to beautiful a town and state for it to be filled with so many ugly people.
All the more reason for decent folk to work together and put a stop to all of it. We might not be able to destroy the bigots, but we can take measures to ensure they don’t gain any more power, and take away what power they do have.
Bloody hell. You expect that sort of thing from randos on Twitter and “controversial” columnists (like the ones in the UK press telling us that President Trump is going to be fine because the people who criticise him are the same ones who criticised Brexit, and look how well that turned out). You don’t expect to have to deal with it from alleged medical professionals.
that one’s true. and they have no irony saying it, huh? I wouldn’t be so smug about that in their shoes, given what a shit show Britain’s end of Brexit is, how badly it screwed the global economy, and how incredibly Brexit’s politicians flopped on every relevant promise of what Brexit would bring the British people (“Our promises were a series of possibilities” is probably going to show up in Tropico 6)
Man, Farage managed to be worse than Trump in that regard (and possibly in others, but he has shown himself far too incompetent to be elected, so hopefully we’ll never have to find out).
“You promised the money we would stop paying the EU would go to revitalise the NHS.”
“I never said that.”
*footage of him saying it*
“But it’s not what I meant.”
“But you DID say it.”
“I never said that.”
If the whole thing hadn’t sent shockwaves throughout the global economy, it’d would’ve been funny.
My entire family supports Trump, with- as I found out yesterday -the express exception of my sister-in-law who happens to be visiting this week. So, to an extent, I know how you feel. I’m a cis white straight boy, so there’s that, but I’m also a temperamental intellectual who is intolerant of prejudice and stupidity, and lives with two conservative Christians who have to make a comment on every little thing that they hear on Fox News.
I know what it feels like to argue with family, and… unless you think you can really change their minds on something, it isn’t worth it.
If only I could take my own advice on the matter…
So… your brother married up, is what you’re saying.
If it helps, the comments I read on news sites would indicate you’re far from alone. The number of “and I cut contact with my family,” “I purged 90% of my facebook,” and similar has risen exponentially since Orange Tuesday. As a non-USian, I am spared from my family having any contact with Fox (ahah) News, but I can already imagine the whirlwind of loathing I would unleash upon my grandmother, and possibly mother, if I weren’t.
That’s fucking awful, and I have nothing useful to say except that I hope things turn out okay for you. I’m really sorry you had to deal with this gal =/
Vent. Vent it all. That that crap issues forth from people upon whose hands you have to trust your health just makes it all the more… frustrating. Infuriating? Burn-it-all-ating?
Hopefully future trips will not saddle you with the same nurse.
OKAY.
So I don’t like Trump. I happen to think hillary is worse. but I thought both of them were garbage, UNFORTUNATELY people are stupid, SO I’m going to clear up the worst of it.
“Grab her by the pussy… And they let you because you’re a star”
This is bandied about as sexual assault, but every single person out there is censoring the second half if the statement. He’s talking about consent due to elevated social status. NON ISSUE.
” Trump hates Muslims. ”
this one has a little more credence. What actually is going on here is that trump was calling for a freeze on immigration from Muslim countries until more strenuous background checks can be performed. Yes. It’s profiling based on religion, but the reason trump was calling for it was because he was listening to his constituents. An elected official is supposed to enact the will of the people who put him in power, not nessicarally his own will, so yes. This is an issue, but the house and senate would have to agree for this to happen so, once again, NON ISSUE.
” Trump is Racist”
no. Trump has not said one single statement based solely on race or nationality. Every statement he has made regarding this has had the qualifier that he is talking about people who cross the borders illegally. No US citizen has anything to fear from trump. all he wants is is to get rid of people who are already breaking the law.
“Trump hates LGBT”
This one is a blatant lie. Trump has sworn on camera several times to protect LGBT rights. Pence is the one that you have to worry about in this case because pence is a legit monster. Sadly Pence was forced on Trump by the RNC.
So there you have it folks most of the major criticize of Trump are either manufactured lies or taken out of context. Keep in mind that in order to do anything that alters the path this nation is taking he has to get it through congress, and that is a big reason Obama was never able to get anything done. You can stop being afraid. Trump a boogeyman coming to get you.
Are you kidding me? Being too afraid of losing your job to object IS NOT CONSENT
He stopped by MN just before the election and expressed his sympathy for having to suffer from having a large community of Somali immigrants. He implied that Mexican immigrants were all rapists. He wants to force Muslims to register themselves the way the Nazis did with the Jews.
Speaking of which, his campaign staff includes a holocaust denier, a man who says the civil war was about free speech, and wife-beating anti-Semitist Steve Bannon.
And then there’s all the white-supremacists he kept retweeting, and the not-so-subtle way he took days to only kind of disavow David Duke’s endorsement.
Not to mention the half assed way he didn’t actually condemn the wave of bigots committing hundreds of hate crimes since the election, often in his name. He never decried it as terrible, or expressed dismay that they would associate him with hate like that. He barely even acknowledged that it was happening. Just “well, if you say so, I would say they should stop”
And as for him being a bogey man? Fuck you. He’s got both the House and the Senate behind him, and could end up naming as many as three justices to the Supreme Court. He may not have absolute power, but if you really think the republicans in Congress are going to start standing up to him NOW, you’re an idiot.
And the long history of racism – starting with lawsuits he lost back in the early real estate days and ending with birtherism – which is basically where he earned his conservative credentials.
It’s also worth pointing out his attacks on the Central Park Five: The full page add in the paper calling for their execution originally and doubling down on it this fall long after they were completely exonerated.
You’re somewhat right about his LGBTQ stance. Not a lot of evidence he cares one way or the other. But then he’s giving us VP Pence to handle that bigotry, so it’s not much comfort.
” This is bandied about as sexual assault, but every single person out there is censoring the second half if the statement. He’s talking about consent due to elevated social status. NON ISSUE. ”
l-o-fucking-l. Dude, “nobody will believe me or care if I talk about this” isn’t consent.
” this one has a little more credence. What actually is going on here is that trump was calling for a freeze on immigration from Muslim countries until more strenuous background checks can be performed. Yes. It’s profiling based on religion, but the reason trump was calling for it was because he was listening to his constituents. An elected official is supposed to enact the will of the people who put him in power, not nessicarally his own will, so yes. This is an issue, but the house and senate would have to agree for this to happen so, once again, NON ISSUE.”
” no. Trump has not said one single statement based solely on race or nationality. Every statement he has made regarding this has had the qualifier that he is talking about people who cross the borders illegally. No US citizen has anything to fear from trump. all he wants is is to get rid of people who are already breaking the law. ”
…Like when he talked about the Brooklyn 5? Not that it matters in the other cases – he’s fucking racist because he straight up and unabashedly supported negative stereotypes of people of ethnicity. He didn’t actually only mean illegal people. “You think Mexico is sending its best and brightest” is not a statement that puts a point on legality. For fuck’s sake, he shittalked the viewers of Univision and their reporter /to that reporter’s face/. If you think Univision is only viewed by illegal immigrants, u r dum. He shittalked /syrian fucking refugees/. Refugees are, by definition, legal. He is seriously looking at a muslim registry /now/.
Do White People listen to themselves when they talk?
” This one is a blatant lie. Trump has sworn on camera several times to protect LGBT rights. Pence is the one that you have to worry about in this case because pence is a legit monster. Sadly Pence was forced on Trump by the RNC. ”
Like when he made part of his platform the expansion of conversion therapy. that was a sterling protection of LGBT rights. Can you just fuck off?
*Insert point by point rebuttal of all your “arguments” that could have been made with a 10-minute Google search, but that I won’t go to the trouble of actually writing because the odds this comment thread survives Willis’s banhammer till tomorrow are… not good, euphemistically speaking*
I…gotta call crap on the guy at the desk. Unless there’s a notice to let her through or something, what she said in panel 3 could be seen as an abusive relative, and considering what Ruth is there for? No, that’d be time to call security.
There’s gotta be a TV Tropes for this, but I’m too close to bedtime to risk going there.
Consider the cartoon physics of Amber’s Toedad chase. As willing (and even eager) participants in the story’s narrative, we don’t even notice how impossible they would be in the real world. We just accept them as part of the story, the same way we accept the fact that the dragons in Game of Thrones can fly despite their pathetic wing-surface-area-to-weight ratio.
When does Amber sleep? When does she work out? When does she restock her caltrop supply? Even as a brilliant student, how does she do all those things and still maintain a regular college class schedule?
How did Billie never get caught sneaking in and out of Ruth’s room when she was essentially living there?
There are things that are essential to the narrative that we accept without even thinking about it, mostly because we are more invested in accepting the narrative of the fiction than we are in imposing reality on something that we have already accepted as fiction.
Guy-on-the-desk ignoring something that sounds an awful lot like internal monologue falls into this category.
I was a little bit scared to look up “Fridge Logic,” and I am awfully glad to discover that it has nothing to do Fridging. And yes, Fridge Logic is very close to what I was thinking of.
As someone of the generation for whom Harlan Ellison was a huge influence, I am happy to have discovered the term “Jellybean Moment”.
this actually happens to me a couple times a week at toysrus, someone asks for help finding a thing and I just start searching for it, forgetting to actually acknowledge the person who asked.
There is an entire thread of people ragging on Billie for losing her temper and being aggressive and not giving him time to answer. Did any of y’all stop to notice for one second that this is canonically a very conservative state they live in, and that Billie and Ruth are a lesbian couple? Can you really not imagine any reason why she might be pre-emptively freaked out, preoccupied and reactionary about the prospect of being refused access to her partner in this situation?
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plowin’ through like bullshit Republican laws rubberstamped by Trump
…look, doing better than if Trump were there is a pretty low hurdle to clear
Yes, we get it, people are upset that Trump won. Are we going to whine about it for the next decade, or do something productive?
We can do both.
We are the denizens of the internet. We can multitask.
Multi attack, and SWARM. don’t forget Swarm.
Denizens of the internet can multitask, yes, but being productive is beyond even our power…
Looks like wearing safety pins is going mainstream, with NYTimes writing about it and Patrick Stewart wearing it.
1) Only wear it if you mean it – ready to help anyone who asks, regardless of what minority they’re in.
2) There are lots of non-violent ways to help – but in some parts of the country, wearing it could put you in physical danger.
3) If you might possibly be confused with a white supremacist, you might want to accessorize with something they’d never wear (like a Black Lives Matter pin or Pride flag) – because they’re so vile that they’re encouraging each other to co-opt the symbol.
look up the green rings project. That hasn’t been co-opted yet
But then you might get attacked by a Red or Yellow Lantern.
Yeah, but you get to hang with Kilowog.
Can you clarify? Google brought up nothing but jewelry.
Seems to be a reference to this Tumblr post: http://therealhungryreader.tumblr.com/post/152967562111/how-to-look-for-the-helpers-hi-im-a
We’ll be whining about it for at -least- the next 4 years.
It’s cute that you think we’ll still be here in 4 years
post-apocalyptic scavengers can complain just fine, thank you
Productive? As in, produce something?
WE CAN PRODUCE WHINING!
(It’s one of the left’s core competencies. I say, as someone on the left.)
Yes, we get it, people are determined to ignore what people stand to lose from Trump and why they are afraid. Are we going to do anything to help these people protect their civil and human rights or just condescend over it some more?
I could condescend, but this really isn’t the place for it.
bongoing that an orange asshole won a democratic election isn’t helping protect anyone’s civil rights, which is what I meant by ‘productivity.’
Could’ve fooled me.
Surprisingly enough the threat of losing one’s civil rights is not the kind of thing people take calmly. Forgive people for still being upset and talking about it a week later.
Also completely ignore things like protests, movements to back up and de-escalate situations, etc. Sure.
‘this isn’t really the place to condescend’, says man after posting amazingly condescending thread reply.
He didn’t, in fact, win the democratic election.
We can multitask.
Fair enough.
…I feel that protesting a fucking racist, misogynistic rapist (or, as you’ve termed it here, “whining”) is a very productive use of time, actually.
Anything that fights the normalization of basically anything about that man is worth the effort
look, there was a request for that to be the first comment for the next four years of strips, I think that was an appropriate tapering-off point
[/uncharacteristic seriousness]
Anacronistic is providing us all with amusing jokes. That’s not whining. That’s far more productive than “UGH, WHINER” itself.
Decade? Don’t you mean 4 years?
The damage he does will last more than four years. More than ten, too, though.
Assuming someone doesn’t do the extreme thing by giving him turning his Inaugeration Day into an assassination.
Please, no. Pence will step up and he is much worse.
Disclaimer: The following in no shape or form represents the true thoughts and political standings of MatsuoTanuki, this is an exaggeration for the sake of black humor*
*puts on discount Che Guevara T-shirt and red beret* Then we burn Congress! Drag every fat, slimy politician by the hair and rip them to shreds! Burn Washington! And a new America shall rise out of the ashes, in the hands of the people! Viva the Second Revolution! *froths at the mouth*
Yeah, great idea. Look how well that worked in France, and Russia, and Iran.
The reason the US didn’t turn out that way was because its revolutionary phase, strictly speaking, was limited to gaining independence from the UK. The post-revolution government was much like the UK’s government without the peerage, and everything since then has been a matter of gradual evolution.
The people who want to overturn everything and remake it all at once voted for Trump. It’s a bad idea; you generally end up with a new government worse than the one it replaced, but more stable and claiming more legitimacy. It remains to be seen whether it will work out that way in this case.
Two years. Midterms are in TWO years, and there’s more local control over those, and they will restore the checks and balances. Midterms. Are in. Two years. Start getting ready.
It’s a damn uphill slog and we’re going to need to work at it. Get those Democrats who don’t vote in midterms out.
The Senate has a lot Democrats up for reelection, in Red States, and there are only a few Republicans.
The House is gerrymandered to hell and gone and Voter Suppression will be worse by then. OTOH, gerrymandering tends to be less effective towards the end of a Census cycle as populations shift.
We’re going to have to make a hell of a wave. 50 State strategy.
If everyones just gonna bongo and moan about the election Willis may wind up having to ban political discussion (that doesn’t involve robin) on the comments section.
And, if he does, he’ll be treated like a Trump supporter.
And characterizing it that way only makes you look like an asshole. Not a single person is whining. Learn to care about other people more than yourself.
I don’t see him banning political discussions, but I could see him adding a few new word substitutions. If he gets tired of seeing the word Trump then I’m sure that are substitutions that would change the tenor of the discussion.
People have been whining about Obama for 8 years, surely Trump is good for twice that.
I mean, I plan to complain about for the next four years. After that, we can see what happens.
Well no. Not all of us will be whining about it. Some will be whining about the whining. The important thing is to ask yourself, “What would Mike do?” https://www.google.com/search?q=trump%27s+mother+images&oq=trumps+mother
Billie, save your anger until next year when the anti-LBGTQ laws take affect.
Or, you and Ruth can just transfer to a Canadian University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSVLpzGseXw
He can say whatever he wants – when he’s added conversion therapy to his platform and wants a judge who has vowed to overturn gay marriage, he’s an anti-LGBTQ+ politician.
At least it’s better than if Trump was here?
Nah, I think it’d be better if Trump were there.
‘Cause then Billie could cut through him like a fucking cardboard standee, and at least one problem would be solved.
Isn’t the VP next in line in case someone cuts through POTUS like a fucking cardboard standee? And isn’t the VP a guy with rather scary ideas and more government experience than the actual president elect? Sounds like an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire kind of scenario. 🙁
Billie would cut through the VP, too.
But, in all seriousness, hope that nothing happens to Trump, because Pence is, as you said, even more vile than him.
I don’t think relying on Trump to keep a lid on Pence is a winning plan.
And Billie can just keep on cutting until she finds a decent human being somewhere in the chain of succession.
Correct. As long as the VP doesn’t get a promotion, their most important role is “tiebreaker in the Senate”.
Next in line is Speaker of the House. The Speaker became President once, to my knowledge: Gerald Ford became VP after Agnew resigned, then President after Nixon resigned. He fell down a lot.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is nearly as bad as Trump and Pence.
Just out of interest, who is next after the Speaker?
President pro tem of the Senate, then it works through the cabinet in the order the their respective departments were established.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession
So we gotta try to take back the House in 2018. President Pelosi!
Splork: indeed we do. But our old strategy won’t work – we can’t just focus on urban liberals and trust in their population to win the day. Trump won because a lot of rural Democrats felt ignored by the party mainstream, and either didn’t vote, or voted for Candy-Corn Mussolini in protest.
So, pick a state (probably yours), and go county by county. Organize, investigate, plan. Make no assumptions, take nothing for granted. We need to earn this next one, people!
Not to rehash the election even more, but it’s not at all clear to me that’s why he won. Dismissing racism, sexism and bigotry in a campaign that’s focused on them more openly than anything since George Wallace seems like a mistake to me.
I agree with the last. Work & organize. Get involved.
Ford wasn’t Speaker though. He was appointed to the Vice Presidency by Nixon after Agnew resigned.
It would only be if both the President & VP were absent/vacant at once that the speaker would become President.
If Billie cut through Trump, Pence would be President. She’d have to cut through him too, in order to make Paul Ryan President. At which point she might as well keep going. Eventually you work your way through the Cabinet and I doubt we’d want any Trump appointees in charge.
More seriously, given Trump’s complete lack of preparedness or apparent interest in actually doing the job, I suspect that Pence, like Cheney, will play a much more significant role than “tiebreaker in the Senate”.
Surprising nobody. Frankly, given Trump’s face after learning that the job is not, in fact, blowjobs 24/7 while giving vague instructions to a secretary who does all the work, I’m just wondering what the over/under is on him /actually resigning as president while sitting in the oval office/.
(BTW, this is not a good thing. Pence is only marginally less racist, and considerably happier to be hetero-, cis-, and regular sexist.)
Jared Kushner is currently the one doing the “thinking” behind the transition.
He’s a nasty little goon worth investigating as it appears that he might wind up doing the Cheney role.
I don’t think Pence has the gumption or the guile for that – he appears to be a nasty little prick promoted beyond his ability.
The day is young. Gaffney, the arch anti-muslimist has been slotted into the Security Adviser role.
Pence is currently in charge of Trump’s “transition,” which in taking to mean he may have a lot of power to choose people he likes. We may have more of a Cheney than a Biden…
I’m not sure anyone is in charge of Trump’s transition.
I suspect there’s a lot of infighting among the various advisors and it’s not clear who’s winning. My guess is Bannon, but it’s hard to say. Trump has something of a reputation for going along with the last guy to suck up to him properly.
But yeah, definitely more of a Cheney running his own agenda out of the VP’s office rather than a loyal supporter (if occasional loose cannon) like Biden.
Bannon’s been decided as the next ‘domestic strategist to the president.’ Sooooo yeah.
I think Jared Kushner is the best bet for the eminence grise.
Loving the Biden-Obama memes coming out.
Gonna miss both.
Thankfully, Ana, there are going to be places which continue to help and comfort people throughout Trump’s term. Because as bad and awful as he is, he is not going to be able to define the world. Safety pins and not. Also, Trump will never be elected in Willis’ world. It’s like Marvel comics that way that President Ellis or Peter Cullen will be the leader due to the sliding time scale.
No, he’ll never be elected. By the time we reach November in comic, he’ll have been in the office for several years. By the time we reach January, he’ll be long gone.
No chill
Ohhhh, Billie. You mean well. Ish.
Billie suddenly realizes the whole world isn’t actually against her. Most of it doesn’t care about her.
The front desk guy certainly doesn’t care. He gets paid about $9.00 an hour.
people have asked me why i never seem to hate anyone. my answer is typically something along the line of “Hating takes a lot of effort. im to lazy for that.”
Casual indiferente will take you surprisingly far.
My Spanish is showing!
in highschool when i worked in fast food i adapted the art of false sincerity quite quickly.
“I get this all the time”
That’s just how Billie talks mouse over text, she’s like Vegeta
YOU WILL TELL ME WHERE MY LESBIAN GIRLFRIEND IS FOR I AM THE PRINCE OF ALL SAIYANS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH
If Billie’s Vegeta, does that make Ruth Bulma?
Honestly, if anyone in DoA is Bulma, it’s Carla, since she’s the only person who ever built anything (that weird device she used to get revenge on Mary, who I guess can be Pilaf in this analogy).
And now I’m shipping Billie and Carla. Thanks, Wheelpath. Theelpath.
I don’t know who Goku is; Sal always wants to fight everybody, but Joyce is the happy-go-lucky one, and Danny is… the title character, shall we say.
It’s confirmed: Goku is a fusion of Sal, Joyce, and Danny. Salcenny.
Becky is Don Patch, Sal is Softon, Dina is obviously Dengaku Man, and Walky is Gasser. Joyce is probably Beauty.
I read Panel 3 in Liam Neeson’s voice. “I don’t know what room Ruth is in, but I *will* find her . . . “
EVERYTHING’S COMIN’ UP BILLIE
Don’t wait for the elevator, take the stairs.
Though twenty minutes is three weeks in pagecount time. 🙂
Time won’t give me Time…Won’t give me Time…
Billie will fight for her girl. Unless there’s no fighting to do.
Even if there’s no fighting to do. It’s good to be ready.
hope for the best but prepare for the worst. then do what you prepared anyway.
What could go wrong?
they could blame her for ruthless think she is insane lock her up and put her in a padded room with a straight jacket where she realizes that the entire dumbing of age universe is just her mind trying to cope with child hood horrors that she doesn’t remember anymore so they intend to torture them out of her.
Wow, that’s right up there with “And then Harry woke up in his cupboard under the stairs”
Look at his eyes… his dead, dead eyes. **shivers**
“My name is Jennifer Billingsworth. You killed my lover’s…. will to get out of bed.”
Prepare to be de-femured.
Prepare to die…. slowly inside, as this job saps away your soul.
Prepare to face
“Prepare to face what?”
“Prepare to FAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!”
“Stop the FACES!”
this has been a test of the Emergency Self-Righteous Threat Delivery System, we now return you to your regular programming
Had this been a real self-righteous threat, it would have been accompanied by invective and spittle.
Something something particular set of skills something something?
Ummmm, good luck ?
Caaaaaaaaaaaaalm the fucks way down.
Take all the fucks that you have cultivated and cared for in your garden.
The ones you painstakeningly picked and cleaned.
The ones you stored in temperature controlled rooms.
Take them.
And caaaaaaaaaalm the gosh dang heck down.
Depression set the garden on fire, so as she said before, there’s no fucks left to give.
Well, a couple she had saved, but those are earmarked for Ruth. No fucks left for anyone else, though.
I first read “fucks” as “farts”. (I blame Fart Captor.)
The sad thing is that Billie’s rant probably isn’t in the top ten of disturbing things he’s heard that day.
Two questions:
1. What was Billie planning on cutting through people with?
2. Is anyone else now thinking of her as an anime protagonist doing one of those “slice someone in half but they don’t react or split apart until after I’ve sheathed my sword” moves?
1.) razor sharp sarcasm
2.) They are now.
Now I just imagine Billie’s speech bubble passing through people, and then her pointedly crossing her arms and shutting her mouth before the people literally fall to pieces.
You might be surprised what fingernails can do.
Broken booze bottle.
Dude was >< this close to getting the world's bloodiest paper cut.
Billie, you’re not in the dorm anymore. No one cares about your drama aside from the people specifically assigned to deal with it.
It’s not like people in the dorm care much anyway. If there’s a universal constant it’s that chubby girls in glasses are constantly overestimating how much interest their hallmates have in forming an opinion on them.
Billie is only “chubby” by cheerleader standards. Or fashion magazine standards or TV/movie star standards… but not by real-world standards. I hope this culture hasn’t warped far enough that the people she lives with think of her as chubby.
How big are American dorm halls, if you can avoid having an opinion about any hallmates, regardless of body type? In the Netherlands, we average around fifteen, and you end up with an opinionabout your flatmates whether you want to or not, usually within a week, even if you only share a kitchen.
I think my dorm building had two “wings” and 3 floors. My “wing” or hall had maybe 15? rooms? most of which had 3 occupants a few had 2. The 15 number is my best guess, I don’t remember specifically and it may have been a few rooms… fewer. I know there were more than 9 rooms, though.
Actually, I’m not sure those numbers make any sense at all, please ignore me.
101,102,103(mine),104(that one guy),105(that other guy),106,107(the other other guy and the last room on that side), 108?, 109… bathroom… two blank spaces and an electrical panel… that other door was the sevice closet and the next was the RM’s room… maybe there were only 9 actual room rooms and I think 4 of them were doubles and the rest triples. So, maybe, 23 actual students in our “hall?”
I really really should have kept my mouth shut until I’d thought about things a bit.
Someone just pushed stealthily the “Security call” button.
Heh, I’ve been there: being the clerk that someone was preparing to fight with, but it turns out their request is entirely reasonable and doable
Awkward.
Good thing she wasn’t the shooter looking for her non-dead victim.
Which really happened at least twice here- the time I know of, and the time that was the reason for the “no information” protocol.
When he said ‘hrm’, he may have been checking whether she’s on the list of patients whom you don’t confirm are here.
Woobie, where is here?
Ugh, real info on the Internet-
Vallejo, CA, USA
I am Billy! Hear me roar!
Wow okay grieving time is over Billie you need to calm the fuck down and take it down a notch.
Tell that to her depression.
I think in the clerk’s position I’d have read it as totally normal until Billie’s outburst, and then maybe I’d have called my supervisor or a security type.
According to my friend who worked in these situations, it’s a toss up because the families of people like Ruth are often incredibly stressed or on the verge of breakdown or possibly ill themselves. Billie’s outburst wasn’t so much Tuesday for him as 3:00PM.
Oh, Billie, I love you. Never change.
i just spent two hours today mentally unable to move or speak. Like, I could, and i did if I got enough motivation to move, like to pick up a phone. But otherwise I just lay slumped down wherever I fell, not thinking or even moving my lips to smile or frown at my thoughts. Is this what dissociation is?
a bit…? comments section of DOA seems like a really weird spot to confess something like that, though.
sorry, I just have no idea what to call it and that scares me more than what actually happened. I could tell that if I was in physical danger I would be able to move, so it was more concerning than scary
I’m not familiar with it, but you should definitely talk to a doctor about it.
At the very least, talk to somebody on hand, who can help you figure out what to do next, and make sure you do something in case it gets worse.
I would see a doctor my friend. Immediately. It sounds serious.
Sounds more like catatonia to me which, amoung other things, can be a symptom of depression. (if my HTML is busted I apologise)
Dissociation is your mind literally going away for awhile. You lose touch with reality. Some people have described it as “extreme daydreaming.” This is often accompanied by a loss of time (for instance, I will think 15 minutes have passed and turns out it’s been like three hours). This can happen with or without the presence of outside stimuli (so, I dissociate in class a lot, which sucks cause I can’t take notes like that).
Either way, you should see a therapist. Even if this was a one-time thing it might point to an underlying problem. After all, things like this aren’t always just psychological. There could be an underlying physical, neurological issue.
I am seeing a therapist. I have an appointment tommorow and I’ll ask about it
My immediate response was to tell you that this was your punishment for not following Willis’s will and becoming a patron subscribing to Slipshine, but that’s only because deep down I’m an evil person. So have a hug instead.
What you describe sounds like a cross between several things and not exactly like any of them. If this is a one time occurrence , nothing simular has ever happened, you haven’t suffered from depression recently and chronically, and particularly if you’ve had recent sleep disruption, then it may not be worth worrying about. If it’s part of larger pattern then you should get yourself checked out throughly from everything from undiagnosed sleep apnea and allergies or exposure to poisons, neurological degeneration and mental disorders. It isn’t necessarily serious but it could be very serious.
What Clif said. If it has happened before, or happens again soon, see a professional.
I am depressed and sleep-deprived, but this is new.
I would highly recommend going to see a doctor at your earliest convenience and talking to them about this.
For what it’s worth I have depression and, on rare occasions, go through the same thing. It could possibly be that, but maybe not.
the reason I asked here was because it reminded me of what was happening to Ruth before she got taken to the hospital. Not the suicidal part though
Little reminder to anyone who’s forgotten:
This is still less than 24 hours since Ruth was brought to the health center.
On top of that, Billie is still depressed. She’s supposed to see some sort of councilor once a week, but has not had a session yet.
Depression sucks. Imagine you had your own personal Donald Trump inside your own head. You’d be swinging wildly between anger, grief, and numbness too.
you know at least Trump has passion for the stuff he says.
My flavor of depression just takes away all the passion. I can’t draw, I can’t write, I can’t get motivation to go out and succeed…
for the shit that Trump says, at least people are motivated to protest it passionately.
*appropriate gesture of support*
“Trump actually has some positives, by comparison” sounds like a more miserable experience than I can imagine
All of that, plus: this is a comic. Occasionally characters are going to act in hyperbolic or overstated manners for comedic effect.
That second sentence is a big important one that people seem to forget quite often.
Are you trying to say the superhero in your grav might be a little unrealistic?
*monocle shatters*
I think he’s not doing his job by letting Billie pass after that crazy violent rant she just went on.
Without a chaperone? I guess this is one of those budget mental facilities?
Probably not being paid enough to stand in the way for homicidal woman who can probably bench press his scrawny ass.
Too bad the clerk just violated hipaa.
Nah, that was fine.
“The Privacy Rule permits a covered hospital or other covered health care provider to maintain in a directory certain information about patients – patient name, location in the facility, health condition expressed in general terms that does not communicate specific medical information about the individual, and religious affiliation.”
http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/483/does-hipaa-permit-hospitals-to-inform-visitors-about-a-patients-location/index.html
Desk-man, I find your lack of resistance to my mundane request… disturbing.
What does he mean by HRM?
That’s just a noise he makes while he thinks
Makes me think of Rorschach from Watchman.
https://img.ifcdn.com/images/e315a77ba875cf0854eed70aab82d38fa400b2ebf583d03515e5b05f76b762eb_1.jpg
Human Resource Management. It triggers the scan to see if Ruth or Billie have a CAUTION flag set.
I dont think gavin even noticed she was talking after she asked for the room number.
20 minutes? I DEMAND 25!
He works in health care. He has heard worse today.
in the last hour.
Or in the last 5 minutes.
From all the code whites that happen around here on a given day, I’m thankful I’m an IT guy at the hospital and not a front line health care worker.
as someone working on getting comptia certified it is nice to know that in the worst case scenerio you buy a new item/product. harder to do with humans.
I get the feeling desk clerk guy was so focused on looking up Ruth’s room number that he wasn’t even listening to Billie in panel 3 at all.
“…Look, can you please try to stop me? It’s just that I had this whole speech planned out and I really need to let off some steam…”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I like my femurs where they are.
…and also my FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.”
Damn, Billie. Go hard or go home, I guess.
Good thing that clerk’s shift is ending, because Billie is going to be *ticked* when she discovers that Room 318 is actually the Urine and Stool Receiving Lab.
*ticked*
Gravatar checks out!
Dang, Billie… give a clerk a moment.
Billie really needs to learn to keep a few of her cards close to her chest.
Now, this promises to be a… difficult meeting. I would say that there is a decent possibility that Ruth may have decided that she needs to ‘protect’ Billie by driving her away. So, we can expect her to be abusive, acidic and to demand that Billie never come to see her again.
Which she’s done before, IIRC.
#tagthereceptionist
i call him gavin
#gavinfortags
Clerk: “…ma’am, look, I’m 7 hours into my shift, I’m not getting paid enough for this crap, I really don’t care about your big cause, I’m just thinking about the bottle of whiskey at home. Please leave me alone.”
“Look, I don’t care either. Just tell me where she is and let me through to see her!”
“Wait, did you say whiskey?”
…and so Billie runs off with a young RA at the desk only to find healing and love, and no whiskey (the poor soul forgot he drank it all in one of his depressed binges, but on the weekend because he sort of likes his job). But billie seeing how much this RA loves his job decides to stick with it becomes an advocate for alcoholics who want to quit and they both get a house and have 2.5 kids together! THE END. (although how you have .5 of a kid has always confused me)
severe birth defects combined with downright miraculous mutations that allow you to survive with half a body split heightwise
except for the whiskey, this is so me
Billy don’t skip steps.
Honestly, Billie – You have to give him TIME to look it up!!
It’s not like he’ll know immediately whom you’re talking about and it’s not like they’d have the fastest computer systems…
I understand that she is stressed out, but it just reminds me of people calling me on my phone and giving up after the second ring because I didn’t answer in the first five seconds of them calling (it’s not like I could be in some other room or sthg) – the same thing repeating itself if someone (e.g. post man, neighbour) rings at the door and then just vanishes, because if someone doesn’t immediately open the door after three seconds it equals “isn’t home”
I assume those are telemarketer bots that drop the other 19 calls they are making when the 20th answers and get shunted to the operator.
Probably, though telemarketers (or their bots) are normally the ones that let it ring up to minutes. Family members, however…
I fuckin’ love these two. I hope they get better and then still mesh!
How is it that I’m just now getting “Ruthless” comes from not only her personality, but also because her name is RUTH LESSick…
In the old continuity, her name was literally Ruth Lesse.
And her dad’s first name was Dick!
Are there other nyuck nyuck names around DoA that I have missed besides Ruth and the lesbian Leslie Bean?
Carla’s name was a joke in the Shortpacked! continuity because she was literally a car, and then she got a robot body.
Dina used to be “Dina Sarazu”, i.e. dinosaur, back in It’s Walky!, and is now Dina Saruyama which is kind of close.
Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Dorothy’s last name is Keener, which is pretty fitting. Though Word Of Willis is that it was an accidental pun.
I’ve also decided that Jason Chesterfield having a girlfriend named Penny was also a joke even though it probably wasn’t.
…Oh. Huh. Today I learned
Billie’s anger is driven by the desire to see this establishment as a monstrous American Horror Story-esque place because if this place actually is helping Ruth then it’s going to be emotionally devastating to Billie. Billie needed to believe that LoveTM was going to fix Ruth or that they’d go down in flames together. It’s going to be an emotional gut punchx10 if she finds out that it’s not an “either or” get treatment and go back to her grandfather situation or die.
Yup.
Or alternatively, Billie is concerned all they’re gonna do is stuff Ruth full of pills with laundry lists of negative side effects before turfing her ass out, rather than talk with her and actually take the time and care to help her work thru her depression. If the hospital staff genuinely intends to help Ruth, then Billie might calm down step back just far enough for Ruth to get better.
In case anyone has forgotten, this is what toxic co-dependency is.
Billie is not being heroic or badass by threatening a desk clerk to get to see Ruth. She’s pretty much an addict going through withdrawal and presenting herself as the abusive party in the relationship that caused Ruth’s breakdown.
I don’t think either was under any illusions that their relationship was healthy.
If you insist on seeing it through a classic co-dependency lens, then Billie wasn’t the abusive one. But I think it’s more complicated than that.
Yes, Billie is indeed a depressed alcoholic with anger management issues in a codependent relationship. She literally IS an addict. Though implying she’s to blame for Ruth’s crash seems a bit much. Billie definitely enabled some destructive behavior, but Ruth’s depression, “Sir”, and Mary are the ones who actively pushed her towards the ledge
If this is meant as a sort of rebuttal to my comment, I don’t mean to discourage criticizing Billie. I just would hope that people doing so will have a little compassion for the real people out there who struggle with some or all of the same issues.
“Billie is not being heroic or badass by threatening a desk clerk to get to see Ruth. ”
And the desk clerk is pretty crap at his job if his response to “I’M GONNA USE VIOLENCE IF YOU GET IN MY WAY” isn’t “well, I better call security then, you’re talking like you’re a dangerous person who will harm a patient here!” but “yaaaawwwwwnnn go away I’m looking at old Vines”
Like Shiro said above, it is a joke.
You know, Billie makes a grand statement that she will move mountains to be with her eternal love, because Ruth’s depression is a thing that Billie can fix through caring and whiskey, and dude just DNGAF. It’s funny because* it’s an inappropriate response to what Billie is saying.
*why yes i am fun at parties why do you ask
It was a humorous joke.
I too am fun at the parties.
Humour is a quality showcased in various social situations in order to invoke a positive response in the recipient.
What are these “parties” you speak of? Is that where you find those “friends” critters everyone keeps harping on about? Wait, is the correct term pokémon instead of critter?
Yes.
Billie right now: That embarrassing moment when you mistake a thinking sound for an ignoring sound and the person you thought was hiding info from you gives you the exact info you need and isn’t even annoyed but you still regret threatening them.
The Kryptonite to Billies threats of violence
Bureaucratic indifference
Hello.
This comment has nothing to do with the strip. Instead, it is a request to click on the link I will provide, and give feedback to it. It is about an idea I have had in my brain for a while, about the possibility of a campaign called called “Let’s Make It Better”.
The project has -not- actually started. It is a project with many pitfalls, which is why I am seeking opinions on it first. Here is the link:
https://skepticalclown.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/possible-project-lets-make-it-better/
You may now resume your normal thoughtful commentary of the DoA strip.
I’m angry and need to share. Went to see my nurse practitioner because I’m sick. Ended up having a nasty both ear, sinus, and upper lung infection. She notice I’ve gained a few pounds since my last visit. I told her it’s because I’ve been stress eating because the election has my anxiety up and I’m scared of what Trump will do because I’m female and polysexual and that there has been so much harassment, hate speech, and assault on the LGBTQ community and women especially women in hijabs. She replied “People are just acting that way because they’re tired of being politically correct.” She went on to say that the protesters are just making things worse and need to calm down and stop and all the high school kids that staged a walk out just did it so they could get a free day off from school. Then she said that everything will be fine and her sister is a lesbian and she’s not scared for her so why should I worry. -_-
I also mentioned corrective rape and how two such words should never be put together and she replied that a little white girl (I think she said 6 years old?) was raped by a bunch of black guys because of the color of her skin but you don’t here about that all over the news because she was white. Seriously why!?! Does one tragedy take away from the legitimacy of another?
Also, my nephew mentioned how all lives matter that Black Lives Matter should be gotten rid of because it gives [black people] and excuse to riot. He also said the rich should not be punished for being successful with higher taxes and that anybody can pull themselves up out of a poor home and make something of themselves if they want it bad enough.
“a little white girl (I think she said 6 years old?) was raped by a bunch of black guys because of the color of her skin but you don’t here about that all over the news because she was white”
Next time, press her for details on that. If she cannot even name the location where it happened, it probably was a typical lie that racists like to spread to excuse their own racist bullshit.
I never even considered that. That’s sick. You just don’t lie about a child being raped. You just don’t. I… I don’t know if I hope she is lying and her and others are telling it to people to try to excuse their racism or if it’s the truth and a child did get raped. I would rather the child be a lie so that a little girl wouldn’t have her life destroyed, but that makes my nurse practitioner a bald faced liar and a good one at that which makes me question her on so many levels even more so than learning her political leanings and racist undertones.
She may not be the one actively lying, but it may still be a lie. On some level, there is also: Well, I assume something like this must have happened…
also have *all the support*
99-in-100 chance she knows about it because “she was told by her cousin, who heard it from his neighbour.” Possible bonus appearance by a canadian girlfirend.
At best (and admittedly it’s quite likely), you can hope it’s not intentional lying on her specific behalf. As JBento said, she probably heard it from someone who heard it from someone, etc.
And yes, that is fucking vile! But white supremacists can and will lie about -anything- to support their supremacy. And then they hope the outrage machine will do the job for them; assuming people will spread what they believe is the truth without actually checking them.
It may or may not be made up completely. Racists will latch on to and remember any incidents of black-on-white crime for this exact purpose. I actually saw this on facebook recently in response to an article about the Alt-Right:
“How come we never talk about the Alt-Left? You know, like the Weather Underground who actually BOMBED people?”
The Weather Underground is of course a militant left-wing organization that hasn’t been active since the 70’s. But that means liberals can’t complain about conservatives doing horrible shit today! All complaining rights were forfeit forever.
So if black-on-white crime or reverse racism happened just ONE TIME, it means white people have it just as bad and also that racism is over and/or that POC are just as racist against white people so that makes it okay.
One day I will learn how to punch the internet in the face.
Wait… you mean weather underground isn’t just some crowdsourced weather station website?
really not the place to try and be funny…
That’s one of the shittiest situations I’ve read about in the past year…
Feel hugged and I wish you all the best (however stupid that might sound)!
I don’t live in the US and was shocked by how the votes turned out, though I can relate to the feeling of listening to people uttering stupid racist things (though in my part of the world it became worse in recent years because of refugees, and sometimes some family members are spouting shit as well – mostly naming economical reasons, of course -.-). I don’t understand how people can grow up (and stay) to be such haters (or worse) and act on their hatred in the worst possible ways. I mean, we’re all living and we’re all humans, ffffffff……!
So end of this monologue.
I wish you strength and again, many *hugs*, I’m so sorry about what you need to go through
I have no words. Just bald faced fury for your ignorant practitioner and nephew. Fuck her.
I’m sorry, girl. You don’t deserve to be surrounded by this bullshit. Hugs if you want them!
*hugs*
Sorry you have to put up with that bullshit. I’d probably start Judo Chopping skulls if I was exposed to that every day.
Lol! Yeah. It just makes me sick. But when I do run across someone who feels the same, it’s a wonderful uplifting feeling. To know that my city isn’t completely filled with bigots. The best day was when I found three in one day: my female pharmacist (who even warned me that my male pharmacist was very happy about the results) and two cashiers at the grocery store I frequent. It gave me hope.
*hugs*
You’d really think a doctor would have more sense than that, because that is bullshit.
*hugs back* Thanks FC. I did too. It’s good to hear people acknowledge that it’s bullshit rather than blow it off. I live in to beautiful a town and state for it to be filled with so many ugly people.
God this is going to be a shitty four years.
Oh yeah. Not just because of the president, but because of the people themselves.
All the more reason for decent folk to work together and put a stop to all of it. We might not be able to destroy the bigots, but we can take measures to ensure they don’t gain any more power, and take away what power they do have.
Bloody hell. You expect that sort of thing from randos on Twitter and “controversial” columnists (like the ones in the UK press telling us that President Trump is going to be fine because the people who criticise him are the same ones who criticised Brexit, and look how well that turned out). You don’t expect to have to deal with it from alleged medical professionals.
More hugs
that one’s true. and they have no irony saying it, huh? I wouldn’t be so smug about that in their shoes, given what a shit show Britain’s end of Brexit is, how badly it screwed the global economy, and how incredibly Brexit’s politicians flopped on every relevant promise of what Brexit would bring the British people (“Our promises were a series of possibilities” is probably going to show up in Tropico 6)
Man, Farage managed to be worse than Trump in that regard (and possibly in others, but he has shown himself far too incompetent to be elected, so hopefully we’ll never have to find out).
“You promised the money we would stop paying the EU would go to revitalise the NHS.”
“I never said that.”
*footage of him saying it*
“But it’s not what I meant.”
“But you DID say it.”
“I never said that.”
If the whole thing hadn’t sent shockwaves throughout the global economy, it’d would’ve been funny.
“Man, Farage managed to be worse than Trump”
Give him time.
My entire family supports Trump, with- as I found out yesterday -the express exception of my sister-in-law who happens to be visiting this week. So, to an extent, I know how you feel. I’m a cis white straight boy, so there’s that, but I’m also a temperamental intellectual who is intolerant of prejudice and stupidity, and lives with two conservative Christians who have to make a comment on every little thing that they hear on Fox News.
I know what it feels like to argue with family, and… unless you think you can really change their minds on something, it isn’t worth it.
If only I could take my own advice on the matter…
So… your brother married up, is what you’re saying.
If it helps, the comments I read on news sites would indicate you’re far from alone. The number of “and I cut contact with my family,” “I purged 90% of my facebook,” and similar has risen exponentially since Orange Tuesday. As a non-USian, I am spared from my family having any contact with Fox (ahah) News, but I can already imagine the whirlwind of loathing I would unleash upon my grandmother, and possibly mother, if I weren’t.
That’s fucking awful, and I have nothing useful to say except that I hope things turn out okay for you. I’m really sorry you had to deal with this gal =/
Vent. Vent it all. That that crap issues forth from people upon whose hands you have to trust your health just makes it all the more… frustrating. Infuriating? Burn-it-all-ating?
Hopefully future trips will not saddle you with the same nurse.
OKAY.
So I don’t like Trump. I happen to think hillary is worse. but I thought both of them were garbage, UNFORTUNATELY people are stupid, SO I’m going to clear up the worst of it.
“Grab her by the pussy… And they let you because you’re a star”
This is bandied about as sexual assault, but every single person out there is censoring the second half if the statement. He’s talking about consent due to elevated social status. NON ISSUE.
” Trump hates Muslims. ”
this one has a little more credence. What actually is going on here is that trump was calling for a freeze on immigration from Muslim countries until more strenuous background checks can be performed. Yes. It’s profiling based on religion, but the reason trump was calling for it was because he was listening to his constituents. An elected official is supposed to enact the will of the people who put him in power, not nessicarally his own will, so yes. This is an issue, but the house and senate would have to agree for this to happen so, once again, NON ISSUE.
” Trump is Racist”
no. Trump has not said one single statement based solely on race or nationality. Every statement he has made regarding this has had the qualifier that he is talking about people who cross the borders illegally. No US citizen has anything to fear from trump. all he wants is is to get rid of people who are already breaking the law.
“Trump hates LGBT”
This one is a blatant lie. Trump has sworn on camera several times to protect LGBT rights. Pence is the one that you have to worry about in this case because pence is a legit monster. Sadly Pence was forced on Trump by the RNC.
So there you have it folks most of the major criticize of Trump are either manufactured lies or taken out of context. Keep in mind that in order to do anything that alters the path this nation is taking he has to get it through congress, and that is a big reason Obama was never able to get anything done. You can stop being afraid. Trump a boogeyman coming to get you.
“So there you have it folks”
Wow. Don’t ban him right away, Willis. This one is actually kind of funny. He even calls himself Locke, like in Ender’s Game.
Are you kidding me? Being too afraid of losing your job to object IS NOT CONSENT
He stopped by MN just before the election and expressed his sympathy for having to suffer from having a large community of Somali immigrants. He implied that Mexican immigrants were all rapists. He wants to force Muslims to register themselves the way the Nazis did with the Jews.
Speaking of which, his campaign staff includes a holocaust denier, a man who says the civil war was about free speech, and wife-beating anti-Semitist Steve Bannon.
And then there’s all the white-supremacists he kept retweeting, and the not-so-subtle way he took days to only kind of disavow David Duke’s endorsement.
Not to mention the half assed way he didn’t actually condemn the wave of bigots committing hundreds of hate crimes since the election, often in his name. He never decried it as terrible, or expressed dismay that they would associate him with hate like that. He barely even acknowledged that it was happening. Just “well, if you say so, I would say they should stop”
And as for him being a bogey man? Fuck you. He’s got both the House and the Senate behind him, and could end up naming as many as three justices to the Supreme Court. He may not have absolute power, but if you really think the republicans in Congress are going to start standing up to him NOW, you’re an idiot.
And the long history of racism – starting with lawsuits he lost back in the early real estate days and ending with birtherism – which is basically where he earned his conservative credentials.
It’s also worth pointing out his attacks on the Central Park Five: The full page add in the paper calling for their execution originally and doubling down on it this fall long after they were completely exonerated.
You’re somewhat right about his LGBTQ stance. Not a lot of evidence he cares one way or the other. But then he’s giving us VP Pence to handle that bigotry, so it’s not much comfort.
” This is bandied about as sexual assault, but every single person out there is censoring the second half if the statement. He’s talking about consent due to elevated social status. NON ISSUE. ”
l-o-fucking-l. Dude, “nobody will believe me or care if I talk about this” isn’t consent.
” this one has a little more credence. What actually is going on here is that trump was calling for a freeze on immigration from Muslim countries until more strenuous background checks can be performed. Yes. It’s profiling based on religion, but the reason trump was calling for it was because he was listening to his constituents. An elected official is supposed to enact the will of the people who put him in power, not nessicarally his own will, so yes. This is an issue, but the house and senate would have to agree for this to happen so, once again, NON ISSUE.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/16/13649764/trump-muslim-register-database
” no. Trump has not said one single statement based solely on race or nationality. Every statement he has made regarding this has had the qualifier that he is talking about people who cross the borders illegally. No US citizen has anything to fear from trump. all he wants is is to get rid of people who are already breaking the law. ”
…Like when he talked about the Brooklyn 5? Not that it matters in the other cases – he’s fucking racist because he straight up and unabashedly supported negative stereotypes of people of ethnicity. He didn’t actually only mean illegal people. “You think Mexico is sending its best and brightest” is not a statement that puts a point on legality. For fuck’s sake, he shittalked the viewers of Univision and their reporter /to that reporter’s face/. If you think Univision is only viewed by illegal immigrants, u r dum. He shittalked /syrian fucking refugees/. Refugees are, by definition, legal. He is seriously looking at a muslim registry /now/.
Do White People listen to themselves when they talk?
” This one is a blatant lie. Trump has sworn on camera several times to protect LGBT rights. Pence is the one that you have to worry about in this case because pence is a legit monster. Sadly Pence was forced on Trump by the RNC. ”
Like when he made part of his platform the expansion of conversion therapy. that was a sterling protection of LGBT rights. Can you just fuck off?
I’m guessing you think you won’t be affected by Trump’s action.
Oh you will sunshine. You will.
Every mother fucking last one of us.
Now fuck off with your half-truths and sophistry.
On the bright side, it pretty definitively marks the beginning of the end of American Empire.
Indeed. The shining city on the hill has lost it’s gleam.
*Insert point by point rebuttal of all your “arguments” that could have been made with a 10-minute Google search, but that I won’t go to the trouble of actually writing because the odds this comment thread survives Willis’s banhammer till tomorrow are… not good, euphemistically speaking*
“Consent due to elevated social status.”
I haven’t heard such a stirring defense of droit du seigneur since 1527. “It’s not rape if the Lord of the manor does it!”
I…gotta call crap on the guy at the desk. Unless there’s a notice to let her through or something, what she said in panel 3 could be seen as an abusive relative, and considering what Ruth is there for? No, that’d be time to call security.
Come to think of it, isn’t Billie supposed to be separated from Ruth right now due to her codependency? Would she be allowed in there?
She isn’t supposed to be allowed in, but she didn’t tell the desk guy her name, so he wouldn’t know she was the banned girl.
There’s gotta be a TV Tropes for this, but I’m too close to bedtime to risk going there.
Consider the cartoon physics of Amber’s Toedad chase. As willing (and even eager) participants in the story’s narrative, we don’t even notice how impossible they would be in the real world. We just accept them as part of the story, the same way we accept the fact that the dragons in Game of Thrones can fly despite their pathetic wing-surface-area-to-weight ratio.
When does Amber sleep? When does she work out? When does she restock her caltrop supply? Even as a brilliant student, how does she do all those things and still maintain a regular college class schedule?
How did Billie never get caught sneaking in and out of Ruth’s room when she was essentially living there?
There are things that are essential to the narrative that we accept without even thinking about it, mostly because we are more invested in accepting the narrative of the fiction than we are in imposing reality on something that we have already accepted as fiction.
Guy-on-the-desk ignoring something that sounds an awful lot like internal monologue falls into this category.
Either Willing Suspension of Disbelief, or Fridge Logic. Probably a bit of both.
I was a little bit scared to look up “Fridge Logic,” and I am awfully glad to discover that it has nothing to do Fridging. And yes, Fridge Logic is very close to what I was thinking of.
As someone of the generation for whom Harlan Ellison was a huge influence, I am happy to have discovered the term “Jellybean Moment”.
this actually happens to me a couple times a week at toysrus, someone asks for help finding a thing and I just start searching for it, forgetting to actually acknowledge the person who asked.
Front Desk Guy shows all the movement and expression of a cardboard standee. (waydaminnitt…)
front desk guy is me on dorm desk duty when I just want to get back to reading cheesy creepypastas
Prepared speech meets minimum wage, hopefully Billie starts to learn that the rest of the world isn’t as wrapped up in her as she thinks it is
hmm, last time i visited a friend staying at a hospital for mental health reasons I had to have a specific code to see him.
The code phrase is “I will cut through every person here like …”
There is an entire thread of people ragging on Billie for losing her temper and being aggressive and not giving him time to answer. Did any of y’all stop to notice for one second that this is canonically a very conservative state they live in, and that Billie and Ruth are a lesbian couple? Can you really not imagine any reason why she might be pre-emptively freaked out, preoccupied and reactionary about the prospect of being refused access to her partner in this situation?
Intensity. I like it.