Other times, it’s the lyrics we fill in when too busy dancing around in a towel like an idiot to properly remember the lines. A lot of overly repetitive choruses get way cooler with a little variation.
“We’ve got the music, makes you move it, got a song that makes you lose it! We say jump, you say ‘how high?’ Put your hands into the sky!
We’ve got the music, makes you move it, brought a song to help you lose it! We say jump, you beg to fly! Raise your fists up to the sky!”
is a lot more fun to stomp around to than just the first paragraph repeated twice.
My favorite is Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp. Until just last year or so I’d always heard “Diane’s debutante backseat of Jackie’s car” as “Diane’s dead in the backseat of Jackie’s car.” Changes the tone of the whole song to mournful flashbacks of the life they had and were going to lead until everything went wrong.
No, it’s baffled. As in, confused about this song. Did he compose it? Was it divinely inspired.
And, if you REALLY know your old Testament, David is wondering, as he’s playing for Saul, why does he keep having all these Feels about Saul’s son Jonathon. A perfect fit for this comic!
It’s baffled, and baffled makes perfect sense in the context of the song, as it throughout speaks about fallible people, failing, being overwhelmed, being betrayed or broken, and nonetheless their Hallelulaj (their love) being just as good.
You wanted “battle”? But love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelulaj.
It’s times like this that I appreciate that the dorms I was in had their own showers, so I only needed to share with 1-3 people, depending on how many roommates I had that year.
Senior year I even had the place to myself, as my roommate left to join the Air Force and I never got a new one. Private bathroom! Such bliss!
I just today moved into my own suite for the very first time. No kitchen but I totally have my own shower for the first time ever and it’s tremendously exciting.
I never had a communal shower, either. Half the time I had a communal bathroom with the dorm next door, and half the time I had my very own.
Oh, and since the hot water could never run out, I sometimes actually got to just sit and relax in there. You couldn’t do a bath, but you could just leave the water running.
(I, of course, do not live where there is remotely a water shortage.)
I laughed at every single panel here,
Panel 1. “She is here, right? I can FEEL her smiling at me.”
Panel 2. “GODDAMMIT, I HATE BEING RIGHT.”
Panel 3. “BRIGHTNESSSSSS, IT HURTSSSSS US:”
Panel 4 *goes through mental list of mean things to say* “Too mean, too spiteful, to horrible….”
Panel 5: “I got it”
Panel 6: “Thank God it worked, I found the dimmer.”
I love the silent tug-of-war between Morning!Sarah and Morning!Joyce.
Also, do we really want to speculate in what floats above in the communal shower?
It’s really not, but at the same time I can’t muster much sympathy – Joyce desperately needs to learn boundaries. Hovering over sleeping folks is NOT okay. Frankly, she’s lucky only one person has shoved her from the bed before.
I don’t think Joyce intended to surprise her, she’s just unreasonably perky.
Sarah only seems to mind the excessive smiling, though. If she has further complaints, she needs to speak up about them. Establishing boundaries you’re comfortable with requires communicating where those boundaries are.
Some of us, who are not morning people, consider before-breakfast conversation to be an unreasonable imposition. Who uses actual sentences first thing in the morning?
As much as clear communication and respecting boundaries are important things for anyone to understand, I’m really not interpreting Sarah’s protests here as ones seriously meant to warn Joyce off any interaction upon waking. Sarah *wants* Joyce’s sunniness, but is really bad at communicating it outside of when it makes her uncomfortable. Sarah here just seems to be acknowledging herself as the grouchy vampire burning under Joyce’s demeanor with some pretty impressive banter for a not-morning person. She’s not telling Joyce to stop what she’s doing.
Actually she hasn’t. If she were adjusting, she wouldn’t continue to wake up Sarah, which she admitted she still does yesterday. Or climb up in/on people’s bunks, which she’s doing today.
Joyce isn’t some irredeemable horrible person for it, but it is a boundary issue and it’s an assholish thing to do, imo.
You need more than one situation to establish that Joyce has boundary issue problems. The only issue she seems to have is that she likes to wake people up cheerfully.
Joyce is just a morning person, while Sarah is the least morning person possible. She’s doing her best here. It’s not remotely unreasonable for her not to predict that saying “good morning” to Sarah would bother her, let alone that her smile would bother her.
Yeah, we get that Sarah wants to completely be left alone when she wakes up, but she’s never actually communicated that. And one of Joyce’s actual problems is that she doesn’t take hints very well–particularly when it’s at odds with what she’s learned growing up.
Sarah’s problem is that she’s a lousy communicator. So it’s gonna take some work.
And while Joyce may not talk to her, I honestly do not think she should ever have to stop smiling. That’s just too far.
I’m not even sure she communicated it effectively this time. She cracked another joke, and made it about her smiling. (and, again, I do not think it’s remotely reasonable to ask Joyce to stop smiling.)
What Joyce has learned is not to be on top of her, not to be the one to wake her up (unless they have something they need to do together) and not to sit beside her.
Sarah is the one who needs to sit down and establish some boundaries in this situation. “Joyce, you’re really nice, but I’m just not a morning person. It take me a while to get fully awake. I don’t really like to talk when I first get up. So let’s wait until after our showers to talk.”
And, of course, Joyce would say something like, “You really think I’m nice? Best sisters forever!”
Of course, I predict this won’t happen, because we need the wacky morning shenanigans.
Having a boundary issue with this one thing is still a boundary issue and she’s done so more than once to more than one person. Billie and Sal have also expressed this is not okay.
Joyce is not a toddler. She should know better than to hop up beside people on their bed to say good morning when she’s been told to back off before. She can say good morning as cheerfully from the floor or from her own bed. She does not need to get up in Sarah’s face.
Sarah is not the only one who has communicated this. Billie threw her off her bed and Sal has choked her at least twice. At this point, it’s on purpose. Joyce isn’t stupid. She can put two and two and two together. When people have told her more than once to stop, she needs to stop.
Sarah has yelled at her about this multiple times. As have Billie and Sal. The problem is Joyce is not listening because SHE likes it and that is really obnoxious.
The problem doesn’t seem to be talking, it’s Joyce JUMPING UP onto people’s beds and getting in their faces, which is something she refuses to listen to. She’s been yelled at, thrown off the bed, and choked. At this point, she’s either being wilfully obtuse or she’s being an asshole. Again, Joyce is not stupid or a toddler. It’s not unreasonable for her to take the hint and stop doing this. It won’t kill her to knock it off.
Joyce doesn’t need to stop smiling – that isn’t what Sarah was asking either. She was asking her to tone it down and if she’s going to get up in Sarah’s face after being told multiple times by multiple people that is creepy, weird, and annoying, I don’t consider that unreasonable.
No. Not communal shower stalls anything but that. I literally used the dorm showers once in my stay at college, after which I instead switched to showering at the gym because the gym showers were kept clean. Did I have to actually get a gym membership? Yes. Did it cost me money despite being a student? Yes. Was it really worth it? Oh hell yes it was!
Huh. My family does that too, but my parents definitely not Catholic. There were a lot of Swedes who settled in MN, so that could be it? Tho I think they just liked the idea of not getting woken up to open presents at the crack of dawn
I once spent Christmas with a couple from Australia bemoaning the lack of Christmas barbecue. There were also some people from Israel who were REALLY excited to see the mythical “white Christmas” up close.
We have about six inches of snow where I’m at in western Wisconsin, Fart Captor.
You’re welcome to come and fetch all you want. I’ll even leave a shovel out for you.
White Christmas is great. Whiteout Christmas not so much.
Snow better than the Wisconsin forecast for Sunday – Freezing rain. Can’t shovel it. It doesn’t melt . And the makes the existing snow all crusty and weird. Bad for sledding and snowshoeing. Good thing the Packers play today.
You poor Americans – having to wait till tomorrow morning for your presents.
Here in Germany, when it gets dark on Christmas Eve, the Christkind comes and puts the presents under the Christmas tree.
So it’s less than ten hours wait for me now (including three very crammed trains, however).
Yeah, Sweden has got most of its traditions from Germany, except for a few weird things we kept from the time when Christmas was all about the blood on the snow.
I didn’t mind community showers at all the one semester I was in a dorm with one. I forgot to take my shampoo with me every so often and i was probably very close to getting some kind of foot fungus (buy shower shoes, y’all) but there were doors on the stalls and i never had to buy toilet paper. also unlike the joint-bathroom dorms, there was never a passive-aggressive sticky-note to find. now that’s the pits.
Panel One: I have to admit, I’m with Sarah here. Mornings are the bane of my existence and I sleep through them whenever possible. Night owl all the way.
Panel Two: JESUS JOYCE. KNOCK IT OFF. This is not cute. It is not funny. STOP hovering over folks when they’re asleep/surprising them as they wake up. At least three people have expressed displeasure over it. You can no longer plead ignorance. Knock it the fuck off. It is getting very difficult to sympathize when they yell at her/choke her/throw her from their bed SHE SHOULD NOT BE ON/tell her displeasing things/reminding her of unpleasant things. She is being an asshole now and she needs to stop. I don’t care if she has good intentions to express affection, she has been asked to stop numerous times. That enters asshole territory.
And yes, a smile that bright is painful on freshly woken not a morning person eyes. Ayyyyeeee, I feel your pain Sarah.
Panel Three: Your optimism is adorable Joyce. Your behaviour less so.
Sarah isn’t even asking her not to be happy – she’s asking her to tone it down while she’s up in her face. I’d consider that reasonable if she insists on surprising Sarah as she wakes up despite multiple people expressing dislike of it LIKE AN ASSHOLE.
Joyce’s ignorance to other people’s reactions is really grating my nerves here. She knows various people have told her to stop doing that. She has not listened because ‘I just want to love people!’ That’s very admirable, but Joyce needs to learn BOUNDARIES.
Panel Four: Again, right there with you, Sarah. She looks like she is trying her damnedest to not say the meanest thing in her mind right now.
Panel Five: So she comes up with something that will shut her up without being overly cruel. Not very nice, and Sarah is still crabby at times (that won’t change overnight) but Joyce deserves it, imo. Sarah didn’t lash out with something traumatizing, abusive, or even overly mean – she just asked about an unpleasant reality Joyce finds gross that fed from what Joyce brought up (starting another day). Again, not nice, but not ‘omg you horrible person’ mean. Especially in the face of Joyce continuing to do this.
Panel Six: If this isn’t an overly sibling-esque panel, I dunno what is. Sarah grosses her out, Joyce doesn’t want to stop smiling, but her turning down the smile has let Sarah wake up and open her eyes without it hurting.
To be fair to Joyce, the bright smile first thing in the morning could be easily mitigated, simply by proffering a cup of coffee to the unfortunate recipient.
Agreed, Joyce is overstepping boundaries she shouldn’t overstep. I tend to think it’s rather cute and harmless though… probably because I’m not the one waking up with the JoyceSmile in my faaaace. But also because it’s such a sisterly thing. You just know this is how Jocelyne woke up most mornings of her life.
That said, Sarah’s response was perfectly proportional, and ALSO a very sisterly thing.
Big sis, little sis. The unbreakable optimistic morning person meets the unrelentingly crabby NON-morning person.
TBH, my personal history means someone hovering over me as I wake up is probably going to to get punched, or kicked as I scream loudly. If they are very lucky, I might realize that they are not the abuser who used to wake me with a knife to the throat before I am out the door and on my way down the hallway.
I am a black belt in two martial arts. My punches and kicks hurt. A lot. I damn near hit my sibling’s kids when they woke me up like that – and both of them were under 7. They thankfully didn’t realize my pulled punch was an actual punch and thought it was hilarious. I had a good chat with my sib about how it is not ok to send them in like that to wake me and how I almost hit them – and of course I am the asshole for “over-reacting”.
But yeah don’t fucking hover over someone as they sleep. You don’t know their history. Plus it is super creepy.
Joyce is so lucky she doesn’t room with me. … For one thing, I’m a guy and she’d spontaneously combust at the thought of sharing a room with me. But also because I take “not a morning person” to rather excessive levels of instinctive violence. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I once threw a piece of armor at my grandmother when she woke me prematurely. (I wasn’t awake enough to actually hit her, fortunately.) Joyce would seriously have been punched in the face by now if she were my roomie.
I’d probably go the Sal route – minus the asking her to stop constantly because she is clearly not listening. It’d be more like ‘Okay, now you listen to me you obnoxiously perky little twit – do not wake me up. Do not hover over me. Do not pop up onto my bed to surprise me as I wake up. Do it again and I will THROW you off my bed. Hope you land on your ass and not your face. Now get the fuck off my bed and leave me alone.”
THANK YOU, I completely agree, this hovering over sleeping people is Joyce’s least endearing behavior ever. She needs to honestly back off, at best it’s incredibly annoying and at worse it borders on harassment (especially since she does it REPEATEDLY)
She says she likes it because she used to have to wake her brothers. That is very sweet, Joyce, but this is college. These are not your brothers. They have other boundaries and you are not supposed to be waking them up.
It REALLY pisses me off when she does it to Billie and Sal because she’s taking advantage of the fact they can’t lock her out.
She missed her, sure, but she also screamed at Joyce in that dream to STOP doing this and she told Joyce just yesterday surprising her as she woke up was not actually better than hovering. At this point, it’s on purpose.
Joyce is not hovering over anyone. She’s just standing beside her. She waits until Sarah wakes up, and says “good morning” in a sing-songy voice, while smiling.
Sarah is not a morning person, and is cranky about this. But she’s never communicated to Joyce that she doesn’t want to be talked to in the morning. Even here, she just talks about her smile.
Everything that Sarah has asked Joyce not to do, Joyce has stopped doing. I actually worry that she’s gonna stop smiling in the morning over this, which is completely unreasonable. Her smile isn’t the problem. Sarah just wants to be left alone and not spoken to for a while until she’s fully awake.
But she’s never actually said that.
Plus Joyce’s only experience is with Becky, who is obviously a morning person, and her brothers, who she was probably praised for waking up. (I mean, it is “the day the Lord has made.” They must “rejoice and be glad in it.”
She’s a morning person. She’s not going to magically figure out how non-morning people think.
She jumped up on Sarah’s bed and is up in her face. That is not actually better. Sarah TOLD her that wasn’t better.
Sarah has communicated ‘do not wake me up’ (we know she doesn’t listen to that because just frigging yesterday she went to wake her up) and to get out of her face (admittedly, Joyce wasn’t there to hear it but I doubt this is the first time she’s said anything like that) and ‘what the hell are you doing here in/on my bunk?’ which she is doing RIGHT HERE. Joyce also asked what the hell Joyce was doing in her bunk (which pretty clearly implied she was not okay with it) and Joyce continued to do it, bringing Becky along into it. Billie expressed Joyce barging up to wake her made her feel unsafe – Joyce continued to do it.
Anyway you want to slice it, this is not okay behaviour.
Her smile isn’t the problem – Sarah isn’t even asking her ‘stop being cheerful’. She’s asking her ‘tone it down in the mornings’. Joyce doesn’t listen to people telling her not to do things like this.
Joyce also has experience with Sal and Billie who were ALSO not okay with doing this, and expressed so multiple times. Becky and her brothers may have been okay with things like this, but Sal, Billie, and Sarah are emphatically not and she does not respect that.
Magically, no. But if she’s not taking the hint after being yelled at, thrown off the bed, and choked, she’s either wilfully obtuse or does not care.
Thank you! Since Always Human doesn’t have an RSS feed (at least, not that I can find) I keep forgetting to check it. Fortunately, it’s mentioned here every few weeks.
Sarah looks like she’s giving birth. That means Joyce is the father?
Joyce- Push honey!
Sarah- What did you do to me?
I hate you right now!
Joyce- It’s the miracle of life.
Sarah- It’s coming!
Joyce- I think I’m going to be sick.
Poor Sarah really doesn’t seem to be a morning person, does she? Seriously, I love how Joyce is a ray of sunshine but I honestly say that I can see Sarah’s point. At the very moment of waking, you really don’t need to have that amount of pure, refined sugar thrust in your mouth!
If I didn’t know Joyce better, I’d wonder if she did it deliberately!
Morning person or no, Joyce’s actions are inappropriate. She’s been told multiple times by multiple people to stop doing stuff like this. She needs to listen.
Nope. She’s been told before that doing these things is not okay. Sarah, Billie, and Sal have all expressed things along the lines of ‘do not get in people’s faces in the morning when they’re sleeping/are just waking up’. Joyce continues to do that.
Given that the most likely scenario for Becky is to room with a fudgeton of people, without a tyrannic RA keeping them in line, I’m not sure that will be an improvement…
Now I’m just imagining Joyce, Becky, Dina, and probably Dorothy all renting a house together for sophomore year, and Sarah probably getting roped into it as well.
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blinded by the light
woke up by a Joyce
another smile that’s way too bright
I still can’t listen to that song without hearing “revved up like a douche”. I KNOW it’s “deuce”, but my brain hears what it hears.
On a tinny a.m. radio in the 70’s, that’s what it sounded like.
…and with a very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing
her enthusiasm crashed to the ground
*guitar solo followed by organ blasts*
Sometimes the lyrics we hear are more interesting than what’s actually being said. “Kissed by a rose on the grave”.
Don’t go out tonight
It’s bound to take your life
There’s a bathroom on the right
We’ll give the finger to those we pass on our way out of town
Other times, it’s the lyrics we fill in when too busy dancing around in a towel like an idiot to properly remember the lines. A lot of overly repetitive choruses get way cooler with a little variation.
“We’ve got the music, makes you move it, got a song that makes you lose it! We say jump, you say ‘how high?’ Put your hands into the sky!
We’ve got the music, makes you move it, brought a song to help you lose it! We say jump, you beg to fly! Raise your fists up to the sky!”
is a lot more fun to stomp around to than just the first paragraph repeated twice.
“Scuse me while I kiss this guy”
‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy
Curse you, thejeff! Foiled again for the first time!
Except Hendrix ended up liking this lyric so much, he would occasionally sing it like that.
My favorite is Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp. Until just last year or so I’d always heard “Diane’s debutante backseat of Jackie’s car” as “Diane’s dead in the backseat of Jackie’s car.” Changes the tone of the whole song to mournful flashbacks of the life they had and were going to lead until everything went wrong.
“The baffled king composing Alleluia”
If you know your Old Testament, it’s obviously supposed to be the _battle_ king. But I can’t hear it.
“Baffled King” is how I’ve always heard it.
Same here. In some versions of the song, they even say “baffled”, emphasizing the “f”.
Actually, I think it’s “the embattled King composing….”
-“BB”-
Um…In Cohen’s original version, it IS “baffled,”
And Cohen doesn’t drop the H, it’s Hallelujah.
No, it’s baffled. As in, confused about this song. Did he compose it? Was it divinely inspired.
And, if you REALLY know your old Testament, David is wondering, as he’s playing for Saul, why does he keep having all these Feels about Saul’s son Jonathon. A perfect fit for this comic!
It’s baffled, and baffled makes perfect sense in the context of the song, as it throughout speaks about fallible people, failing, being overwhelmed, being betrayed or broken, and nonetheless their Hallelulaj (their love) being just as good.
You wanted “battle”? But love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelulaj.
Blinded by the light, went off like a douche in the rover in the night.
It always sounds like “dressed up like a douche” to me.
It may be *supposed* to be “deuce”, but he definitely pronounces it “douche”
Darn it, beat me to it.
It’s times like this that I appreciate that the dorms I was in had their own showers, so I only needed to share with 1-3 people, depending on how many roommates I had that year.
Senior year I even had the place to myself, as my roommate left to join the Air Force and I never got a new one. Private bathroom! Such bliss!
Yeah, I was in a dorm with communal showers last year. Do not miss.
I just today moved into my own suite for the very first time. No kitchen but I totally have my own shower for the first time ever and it’s tremendously exciting.
So now when I see tribbles of hair and shower grime, I’ll know it’s MY hair and grime.
I never had a communal shower, either. Half the time I had a communal bathroom with the dorm next door, and half the time I had my very own.
Oh, and since the hot water could never run out, I sometimes actually got to just sit and relax in there. You couldn’t do a bath, but you could just leave the water running.
(I, of course, do not live where there is remotely a water shortage.)
Never a dull morning for these two
Making Sarah and Joyce roommates is one of the best ideas David Willis has ever had. One of the oldest, too; it dates all the way back to Roomies!.
She’s learning. 😉
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Joyce’s roommate was Roz instead.
…I would PAY to read that strip!
Some things would have been different.
Some things, not so much…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curlingiron/
Oh hey, that’s where I got my avatar from!
I laughed at every single panel here,
Panel 1. “She is here, right? I can FEEL her smiling at me.”
Panel 2. “GODDAMMIT, I HATE BEING RIGHT.”
Panel 3. “BRIGHTNESSSSSS, IT HURTSSSSS US:”
Panel 4 *goes through mental list of mean things to say* “Too mean, too spiteful, to horrible….”
Panel 5: “I got it”
Panel 6: “Thank God it worked, I found the dimmer.”
I love the silent tug-of-war between Morning!Sarah and Morning!Joyce.
Also, do we really want to speculate in what floats above in the communal shower?
Smile so bright I gotta wear shades.
and hopes so high you gotta chop them down.
Sarah no.
That’s not “better”, it really isn’t.
It’s really not, but at the same time I can’t muster much sympathy – Joyce desperately needs to learn boundaries. Hovering over sleeping folks is NOT okay. Frankly, she’s lucky only one person has shoved her from the bed before.
She wasn’t hovering this time! She waited until Sarah was awake and starting to sit up!
Hovering, jumping up to surprise them when they’re just waking up, close enough. She’s being a dick.
I don’t think Joyce intended to surprise her, she’s just unreasonably perky.
Sarah only seems to mind the excessive smiling, though. If she has further complaints, she needs to speak up about them. Establishing boundaries you’re comfortable with requires communicating where those boundaries are.
“Unreasonably perky” is a decent description of both Joyce and Becky.
I love both Joyce and Becky.
Unreasonably perky. Just how I like your mother, Trebek.
She’s also asked Joyce to leave her alone when she’s sleeping/just waking up. This is not the first time she’s complained about this.
Some of us, who are not morning people, consider before-breakfast conversation to be an unreasonable imposition. Who uses actual sentences first thing in the morning?
She’s only really complained about the hovering specifically. Even if this still bothers her, it IS an improvement.
Further calibration may be necessary, but they’re dialing in on it
Hopefully this will dial further as it goes before someone really chews Joyce out.
When she and Becky attempted it with Sal, there was strangling.
Sal had the right idea.
As much as clear communication and respecting boundaries are important things for anyone to understand, I’m really not interpreting Sarah’s protests here as ones seriously meant to warn Joyce off any interaction upon waking. Sarah *wants* Joyce’s sunniness, but is really bad at communicating it outside of when it makes her uncomfortable. Sarah here just seems to be acknowledging herself as the grouchy vampire burning under Joyce’s demeanor with some pretty impressive banter for a not-morning person. She’s not telling Joyce to stop what she’s doing.
Except we’ve seen Sarah telling her to quit doing stuff like this before. And it isn’t just Sarah.
And Joyce adjusted, after which Sarah has not given Joyce that same kind of feedback.
Actually she hasn’t. If she were adjusting, she wouldn’t continue to wake up Sarah, which she admitted she still does yesterday. Or climb up in/on people’s bunks, which she’s doing today.
Joyce isn’t some irredeemable horrible person for it, but it is a boundary issue and it’s an assholish thing to do, imo.
* I am mistaken about her waking up Sarah, but she has been told not to climb up in or on people’s bunks, which she’s still doing.
You need more than one situation to establish that Joyce has boundary issue problems. The only issue she seems to have is that she likes to wake people up cheerfully.
Joyce is just a morning person, while Sarah is the least morning person possible. She’s doing her best here. It’s not remotely unreasonable for her not to predict that saying “good morning” to Sarah would bother her, let alone that her smile would bother her.
Yeah, we get that Sarah wants to completely be left alone when she wakes up, but she’s never actually communicated that. And one of Joyce’s actual problems is that she doesn’t take hints very well–particularly when it’s at odds with what she’s learned growing up.
Sarah’s problem is that she’s a lousy communicator. So it’s gonna take some work.
And while Joyce may not talk to her, I honestly do not think she should ever have to stop smiling. That’s just too far.
I’m not even sure she communicated it effectively this time. She cracked another joke, and made it about her smiling. (and, again, I do not think it’s remotely reasonable to ask Joyce to stop smiling.)
What Joyce has learned is not to be on top of her, not to be the one to wake her up (unless they have something they need to do together) and not to sit beside her.
Sarah is the one who needs to sit down and establish some boundaries in this situation. “Joyce, you’re really nice, but I’m just not a morning person. It take me a while to get fully awake. I don’t really like to talk when I first get up. So let’s wait until after our showers to talk.”
And, of course, Joyce would say something like, “You really think I’m nice? Best sisters forever!”
Of course, I predict this won’t happen, because we need the wacky morning shenanigans.
Having a boundary issue with this one thing is still a boundary issue and she’s done so more than once to more than one person. Billie and Sal have also expressed this is not okay.
Joyce is not a toddler. She should know better than to hop up beside people on their bed to say good morning when she’s been told to back off before. She can say good morning as cheerfully from the floor or from her own bed. She does not need to get up in Sarah’s face.
Sarah is not the only one who has communicated this. Billie threw her off her bed and Sal has choked her at least twice. At this point, it’s on purpose. Joyce isn’t stupid. She can put two and two and two together. When people have told her more than once to stop, she needs to stop.
Sarah has yelled at her about this multiple times. As have Billie and Sal. The problem is Joyce is not listening because SHE likes it and that is really obnoxious.
The problem doesn’t seem to be talking, it’s Joyce JUMPING UP onto people’s beds and getting in their faces, which is something she refuses to listen to. She’s been yelled at, thrown off the bed, and choked. At this point, she’s either being wilfully obtuse or she’s being an asshole. Again, Joyce is not stupid or a toddler. It’s not unreasonable for her to take the hint and stop doing this. It won’t kill her to knock it off.
Joyce doesn’t need to stop smiling – that isn’t what Sarah was asking either. She was asking her to tone it down and if she’s going to get up in Sarah’s face after being told multiple times by multiple people that is creepy, weird, and annoying, I don’t consider that unreasonable.
At least it’s down to about 300 watts.
Ain’t no power in the ‘verse that can keep Joyce from smilin’ at 11.
In times like these, it’s worth remembering Sarah’s mornings.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/babbling/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/bottle/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/wakeywakeywakey/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/gah/
Not to mention Sal’s mornings
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/wakeupcall/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/noon/
Panel 2: YAAAAAAY
Panel 6: yeaurgh
No. Not communal shower stalls anything but that. I literally used the dorm showers once in my stay at college, after which I instead switched to showering at the gym because the gym showers were kept clean. Did I have to actually get a gym membership? Yes. Did it cost me money despite being a student? Yes. Was it really worth it? Oh hell yes it was!
AAAH THE LIGHT, IT HURRRRTS
ReJoyce everyone – Smiley Joyce is back!
And happy holidays (Fun fact – Swedes celebrate on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day)
JOYCE TO THE WORLD, THE JOYCE IS COME
so do my catholic inlaws and it’s WRONG i tell you WRONNGGG
Huh. My family does that too, but my parents definitely not Catholic. There were a lot of Swedes who settled in MN, so that could be it? Tho I think they just liked the idea of not getting woken up to open presents at the crack of dawn
NOT WAKING UP TO OPEN CHRISTMAS PRESENTS IS BULLSHIT
NOT AS BULLSHIT AS CHRISTMAS WITH NO SNOW, HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK
DOES THE SLEIGH HAVE WHEELS OR SOMETHING? DO PEOPLE IN FLORIDA EVEN HAVE CHIMNEYS
NEVER MIND CHRISTMAS WITH NO SNOW, HOW DOES CHRISTMAS WITH NO CRICKET ON THE BEACH EVEN WORK
there’s an entire hemisphere I’ll never remotely be able to understand
I once spent Christmas with a couple from Australia bemoaning the lack of Christmas barbecue. There were also some people from Israel who were REALLY excited to see the mythical “white Christmas” up close.
Yes! Beach cricket! How can you have a *proper* Christmas when it’s too cold to go outside, let alone go swimming?
10/10 agreed.
ha, you christians and your problems
We have about six inches of snow where I’m at in western Wisconsin, Fart Captor.
You’re welcome to come and fetch all you want. I’ll even leave a shovel out for you.
-“BB”-
White Christmas is great. Whiteout Christmas not so much.
Snow better than the Wisconsin forecast for Sunday – Freezing rain. Can’t shovel it. It doesn’t melt . And the makes the existing snow all crusty and weird. Bad for sledding and snowshoeing. Good thing the Packers play today.
We’ve got snow in MN too, for now. But it’s already all slushy and the forecast is saying it might rain. In December. WTF
Christmas without snow, and therefore without snow removal, is perfectly fine by me.
There are a couple of kids in the Bagge househhold who vehemently agrees with you.
“When can we open the presents?”
“Tonight when Santa comes.”
“THAT IS BULLSHIT!”
I honestly never pictured you as old enough to have kids. I think your avatar makes me think you must be like 18-19.
Heh, I wish. Double it and you will get closer to my actual age.
We celebrated Yule on Wednesday…
Ah, nailed the winter solstice!
(I’m of half a mind to throw an Elsa party that day. It is her birthday, after all)
So did we! 😀
We just stayed up till midnight and did it then.
Why not just open them on christmas evening and enjoy them in the morning?
Look, if it’s Christmas Eve here in the US, it’s Christmas Morning in, I dunno, Russia.
Actually their christmas Morning is on 7 January. They are still the Julian calendar.
*using
And yet, NORAD’s Santa Tracker says he’s been delivering presents out that way all morning. 😀
It’s fuckin’ perfect, let me tell you what. Especially if you were raised to be greedy with the family members you like on Christmas itself.
You poor Americans – having to wait till tomorrow morning for your presents.
Here in Germany, when it gets dark on Christmas Eve, the Christkind comes and puts the presents under the Christmas tree.
So it’s less than ten hours wait for me now (including three very crammed trains, however).
…Christkind is not related to Krampus, right?
Yeah, Sweden has got most of its traditions from Germany, except for a few weird things we kept from the time when Christmas was all about the blood on the snow.
No, Christkind is not related to Krampus – it’s baby Jesus!
Wow, today I REALLY didn’t earn any points with the heavenly host OR my old German teacher.
You’ve got to admit, Jesus being Krampus would make theology a whole lot more interesting.
Also, Happy Hannukah!
Happy Hannukah!
Yay!
I DON’T CELEBRATE IT HOW DARE YOU REMIND ME IT EXISTS
Happy Hannukah^-^
I’m spending my time tomorrow with a girl named Navidad.
You know, Phyllis Navidad?
-“BB”-
Not yet, it ain’t.
It’s already the 24th in many parts of the world. Yes it is.
Joycey-joycey Joyce ^_^
Joyce do you have the flip flops yet? They are like magic armor. At least I tell myself that when I need to use communal showers…
Nice Polyphonic Spree reference!
It’s too early in the morning for the triangular smile.
that is a rather frightening smile Joyce has on. Like something out of The Long Halloween.
*sings* “Let the sunshiiiine innnnn….”
I didn’t mind community showers at all the one semester I was in a dorm with one. I forgot to take my shampoo with me every so often and i was probably very close to getting some kind of foot fungus (buy shower shoes, y’all) but there were doors on the stalls and i never had to buy toilet paper. also unlike the joint-bathroom dorms, there was never a passive-aggressive sticky-note to find. now that’s the pits.
I hope everyone’s having a good festive season!
Panel One: I have to admit, I’m with Sarah here. Mornings are the bane of my existence and I sleep through them whenever possible. Night owl all the way.
Panel Two: JESUS JOYCE. KNOCK IT OFF. This is not cute. It is not funny. STOP hovering over folks when they’re asleep/surprising them as they wake up. At least three people have expressed displeasure over it. You can no longer plead ignorance. Knock it the fuck off. It is getting very difficult to sympathize when they yell at her/choke her/throw her from their bed SHE SHOULD NOT BE ON/tell her displeasing things/reminding her of unpleasant things. She is being an asshole now and she needs to stop. I don’t care if she has good intentions to express affection, she has been asked to stop numerous times. That enters asshole territory.
And yes, a smile that bright is painful on freshly woken not a morning person eyes. Ayyyyeeee, I feel your pain Sarah.
Panel Three: Your optimism is adorable Joyce. Your behaviour less so.
Sarah isn’t even asking her not to be happy – she’s asking her to tone it down while she’s up in her face. I’d consider that reasonable if she insists on surprising Sarah as she wakes up despite multiple people expressing dislike of it LIKE AN ASSHOLE.
Joyce’s ignorance to other people’s reactions is really grating my nerves here. She knows various people have told her to stop doing that. She has not listened because ‘I just want to love people!’ That’s very admirable, but Joyce needs to learn BOUNDARIES.
Panel Four: Again, right there with you, Sarah. She looks like she is trying her damnedest to not say the meanest thing in her mind right now.
Panel Five: So she comes up with something that will shut her up without being overly cruel. Not very nice, and Sarah is still crabby at times (that won’t change overnight) but Joyce deserves it, imo. Sarah didn’t lash out with something traumatizing, abusive, or even overly mean – she just asked about an unpleasant reality Joyce finds gross that fed from what Joyce brought up (starting another day). Again, not nice, but not ‘omg you horrible person’ mean. Especially in the face of Joyce continuing to do this.
Panel Six: If this isn’t an overly sibling-esque panel, I dunno what is. Sarah grosses her out, Joyce doesn’t want to stop smiling, but her turning down the smile has let Sarah wake up and open her eyes without it hurting.
To be fair to Joyce, the bright smile first thing in the morning could be easily mitigated, simply by proffering a cup of coffee to the unfortunate recipient.
For this strip, yeah. That’s be at least an attempt to mitigate it.
Hovering over sleeping folks though? Yeah, I’m thinking she’d still get choked/pushed off the bed.
Agreed, Joyce is overstepping boundaries she shouldn’t overstep. I tend to think it’s rather cute and harmless though… probably because I’m not the one waking up with the JoyceSmile in my faaaace. But also because it’s such a sisterly thing. You just know this is how Jocelyne woke up most mornings of her life.
That said, Sarah’s response was perfectly proportional, and ALSO a very sisterly thing.
Big sis, little sis. The unbreakable optimistic morning person meets the unrelentingly crabby NON-morning person.
I’d be more inclined to let it go as annoying little sister-ness except she’s been told multiple times by multiple people to stop.
Me, I’m with Sal. You hover over me like that, you’re getting choked.
TBH, my personal history means someone hovering over me as I wake up is probably going to to get punched, or kicked as I scream loudly. If they are very lucky, I might realize that they are not the abuser who used to wake me with a knife to the throat before I am out the door and on my way down the hallway.
I am a black belt in two martial arts. My punches and kicks hurt. A lot. I damn near hit my sibling’s kids when they woke me up like that – and both of them were under 7. They thankfully didn’t realize my pulled punch was an actual punch and thought it was hilarious. I had a good chat with my sib about how it is not ok to send them in like that to wake me and how I almost hit them – and of course I am the asshole for “over-reacting”.
But yeah don’t fucking hover over someone as they sleep. You don’t know their history. Plus it is super creepy.
Ugh, your sib is an asshole. I’m sorry to hear that.
I got a nasty feeling Sal has a similar story to tell…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/juvie/
Yeaaaahhhh, I’m betting ‘late night pranks in boarding school’ miiiiiiight not be the full story for her CHOKING PEOPLE as she wakes up.
It could be, of course, but I can very easily see it not being that way.
I think pranks should be written “pranks”
I’d be good with that until we get to see more about Sal’s past from her own POV.
Joyce is so lucky she doesn’t room with me. … For one thing, I’m a guy and she’d spontaneously combust at the thought of sharing a room with me. But also because I take “not a morning person” to rather excessive levels of instinctive violence. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I once threw a piece of armor at my grandmother when she woke me prematurely. (I wasn’t awake enough to actually hit her, fortunately.) Joyce would seriously have been punched in the face by now if she were my roomie.
Saaaame.
I’d probably go the Sal route – minus the asking her to stop constantly because she is clearly not listening. It’d be more like ‘Okay, now you listen to me you obnoxiously perky little twit – do not wake me up. Do not hover over me. Do not pop up onto my bed to surprise me as I wake up. Do it again and I will THROW you off my bed. Hope you land on your ass and not your face. Now get the fuck off my bed and leave me alone.”
THANK YOU, I completely agree, this hovering over sleeping people is Joyce’s least endearing behavior ever. She needs to honestly back off, at best it’s incredibly annoying and at worse it borders on harassment (especially since she does it REPEATEDLY)
She says she likes it because she used to have to wake her brothers. That is very sweet, Joyce, but this is college. These are not your brothers. They have other boundaries and you are not supposed to be waking them up.
It REALLY pisses me off when she does it to Billie and Sal because she’s taking advantage of the fact they can’t lock her out.
Well, I largely agree, but then I also flash back to that strip of Sarah waking up when Joyce was back home and missing her, so …
Perhaps Sarah’s protesting a little too much?
She missed her, sure, but she also screamed at Joyce in that dream to STOP doing this and she told Joyce just yesterday surprising her as she woke up was not actually better than hovering. At this point, it’s on purpose.
Joyce is not hovering over anyone. She’s just standing beside her. She waits until Sarah wakes up, and says “good morning” in a sing-songy voice, while smiling.
Sarah is not a morning person, and is cranky about this. But she’s never communicated to Joyce that she doesn’t want to be talked to in the morning. Even here, she just talks about her smile.
Everything that Sarah has asked Joyce not to do, Joyce has stopped doing. I actually worry that she’s gonna stop smiling in the morning over this, which is completely unreasonable. Her smile isn’t the problem. Sarah just wants to be left alone and not spoken to for a while until she’s fully awake.
But she’s never actually said that.
Plus Joyce’s only experience is with Becky, who is obviously a morning person, and her brothers, who she was probably praised for waking up. (I mean, it is “the day the Lord has made.” They must “rejoice and be glad in it.”
She’s a morning person. She’s not going to magically figure out how non-morning people think.
She jumped up on Sarah’s bed and is up in her face. That is not actually better. Sarah TOLD her that wasn’t better.
Sarah has communicated ‘do not wake me up’ (we know she doesn’t listen to that because just frigging yesterday she went to wake her up) and to get out of her face (admittedly, Joyce wasn’t there to hear it but I doubt this is the first time she’s said anything like that) and ‘what the hell are you doing here in/on my bunk?’ which she is doing RIGHT HERE. Joyce also asked what the hell Joyce was doing in her bunk (which pretty clearly implied she was not okay with it) and Joyce continued to do it, bringing Becky along into it. Billie expressed Joyce barging up to wake her made her feel unsafe – Joyce continued to do it.
Anyway you want to slice it, this is not okay behaviour.
Her smile isn’t the problem – Sarah isn’t even asking her ‘stop being cheerful’. She’s asking her ‘tone it down in the mornings’. Joyce doesn’t listen to people telling her not to do things like this.
Joyce also has experience with Sal and Billie who were ALSO not okay with doing this, and expressed so multiple times. Becky and her brothers may have been okay with things like this, but Sal, Billie, and Sarah are emphatically not and she does not respect that.
Magically, no. But if she’s not taking the hint after being yelled at, thrown off the bed, and choked, she’s either wilfully obtuse or does not care.
* Sal asked what the hell Joyce was doing in her bunk and Joyce continued to do it.
It should also be pointed out that per the decree of the Good Emperor of internet, today’s Always Human is a very doofusy Christmas story indeed.
ERHGcl/x I am now full of cavities. CUTE! <3
Thank you! Since Always Human doesn’t have an RSS feed (at least, not that I can find) I keep forgetting to check it. Fortunately, it’s mentioned here every few weeks.
I’ve often wondered if the obnoxiously cheery morning person aspect of Joyce is autobiographical.
I’d put my money on staying up long into the night to update the transformers wiki, instead.
Must be a theme today, “you don’t live among vampires without learning how to wave a crucifix”
On first glance, I thought the final panel was actually a little less bright than the others.
Ugh, morning people.
Uuurgh.
Morning people – fine.
Morning people who don’t keep to themselves? Launch them in the sun.
Their faces in the last panel are so priceless. XD
Sarah definitely seems to be one of those ‘I need to have at least two cups of coffee to get my eyes uncrossed’ sorts of people!
She found the dimmer switch!
Sarah looks like she’s giving birth. That means Joyce is the father?
Joyce- Push honey!
Sarah- What did you do to me?
I hate you right now!
Joyce- It’s the miracle of life.
Sarah- It’s coming!
Joyce- I think I’m going to be sick.
Panel 2 needs more sparkles.
There are fanfics written by teenage Joyce who agrees with you.
Poor Sarah really doesn’t seem to be a morning person, does she? Seriously, I love how Joyce is a ray of sunshine but I honestly say that I can see Sarah’s point. At the very moment of waking, you really don’t need to have that amount of pure, refined sugar thrust in your mouth!
If I didn’t know Joyce better, I’d wonder if she did it deliberately!
Morning person or no, Joyce’s actions are inappropriate. She’s been told multiple times by multiple people to stop doing stuff like this. She needs to listen.
No. She hasn’t. She’s been told specific things not to do, and she hasn’t done them.
And, yes, I’m repeating myself since you are doing so.
Nope. She’s been told before that doing these things is not okay. Sarah, Billie, and Sal have all expressed things along the lines of ‘do not get in people’s faces in the morning when they’re sleeping/are just waking up’. Joyce continues to do that.
I’m at least 80% sure she does this shit deliberately,
…which neatly proves BBCC’s point.
If Becky ever gets her own place, Joyce is going to try and shower there every morning instead.
Given that the most likely scenario for Becky is to room with a fudgeton of people, without a tyrannic RA keeping them in line, I’m not sure that will be an improvement…
Now I’m just imagining Joyce, Becky, Dina, and probably Dorothy all renting a house together for sophomore year, and Sarah probably getting roped into it as well.
Smile saturation might reach fatal levels
Throw in Walky and that’s basically my head canon for summer/sophomore year housing (minus Dorothy post-summer since she’s going to Yale, obvs).
OF COURSE Sarah would be roped in, and she would complain bitterly the entire time.
“Complain”. 😉
Goddamn, do I need to listen to a shit-ton of Polyphonic Spree after this year.
Happy holidays to the Willis household and to the commentariat’s!
Nothing like hygienic trauma to kill all joy…
:The light, it burns us it does!”
RUDE
May your days be merry, and BRIGHT OH SO BRIGHT
NOW MY CHRISTMASES ARE BLIND