I was gonna say, why not leave a note or something? I can relate though, as someone who grew up in the country where there were no telephones and limited paper, I know it can be easy to forget that you don’t always need to see someone in person in order to tell them things.
Besides, what if Billie left the agreement on Sla’s bed, and Sal…
*took it, and never signed it or gave it back
OR
*threw it out
OR
*tore it up
OR
*Used it to roll cigarettes, or whatever the young kids are smoking these days.
Whenever you have a new college roommate, you need to get to know them very carefully before leaving them with anything valuable.
Were sal and walky twins in the older comics? because I thought he and beef were twins… I know that the universes are not connected and things change from comic to comic, just curious of the walky/sal relationship from previous walkyverses.
ooooooohhhhhhh…. thanks kindly. I’ve read through a good deal of the back issues but must have missed that part of the story arch. makes much more sense now.
Yeah, they’re twins. FRATERNAL twins, not identical twins. Twins of opposite gender are not identical. Which means the chances of them having the EXACT same facial features are the same as if they were the product of two separate pregnancies. While you could say my brother and I share certain facial characteristics, you’d never say I had his face on my body. And as a woman, if I had his exact facial features, I’d be ugly as hell.
Actually, there’s a greater-than-zero chance for one half of male identical twins to be born female through genetic mutation. Sal would’ve needed hormone therapy growing up, but it isn’t impossible.
Or, more likely, they’re just plain freakishly similar for siblings, and it’s got nothing to do with being twins.
My brother and I used to look like palette swaps of eachother, though in recent years separate lifestyle has created a bit more of a discrepancy. You certainly don’t have to be twins to look alike.
I know that you frown on us mentioning previous instances of these characters in other strips, Mr. Willis, but you could perhaps drop in a link to elsewhere so that people would know what Walky as a female might look like so that they could evaluate Plizzle Mon-Dawg’s claim for themselves.
Lack of market, mostly. Those who do want into Linux systems usually just attack. Virii are for botnets and info dumping, both better on more widespread systems.
Wow, never came back to check on this until now… just in case anyone in the future comes by and cares, yes, all systems need security. And Vista/7 infamous UAC is the same exact thing as Linux’s “su – root” or sudo. Windows is just poorly implemented and indeed is not built around that concept so it ends up being very obtrusive. As for internet security, yes Linux has that as well, in various forms. If you disable all of them in some way (which may require enabling certain services, one form of security is not having unneeded crap running on public interfaces), your Linux will get owned in no time. Yes, I am a Linux user.
I’ve been using Windows for years (from 3.1 all the way to 7, although I skipped Vista) with little complaint or software failure. ‘Course, I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s amazing how few viruses you get when you don’t open strange email attachments, look at the URL information for links before clicking on them, use something other than IE, avoid MySpace like the plague, use third-party computer-scan programs (and a healthy dose of ‘I don’t recognize this, time to look it up) regularly and apply security patches more often than twice a year.
Sucks to be the ‘computer guy’ that a number of people know, though. My step-dad does computer work on the side, and I’ve lost track of how many times he’s had to perform complete wipe-and-install operations on a particular relative’s computer because said relative has a teenage MySpace-and-Miley-Cyrus daughter.
Yeah, but she just had one of those valuable Learning Moments in which you realize you’ve been a moron. Hopefully this will lead to self-reflection and personal growth.
Who am I kidding? This is Billie; it’ll lead to booze.
But who’s to say Sal would have even signed the agreement? I mean, she could easily have snuck into the room in the middle of the night, knocked the paper to the ground in her desire to sleep and rushes out the next morning without ever even giving the agreement a glance. There’s a a lot of ways that plan could fall through. Meeting face to face at least would have guaranteed the agreement got signed.
But if that hadn’t worked, they’d be in the same spot they are now. There is no guarantee that anything other than a face to face confrontation would have worked.
I actually don’t get why people were expecting violence. Neither of them has done anything to actually -provoke- violence from one another, and while I certainly have my issues with Billie’s personality, she isn’t really irrationally violent.
Yeah, what’s with that? You’d think that Ruth went and stole something Billie considered a precious memory from her past, and then held it for ransom. Or something.
Weird.
*is standing on Invincibilty tile in case of flaming*
When someone approaches me while slamming their fist into their palm in a display of physical aggression I don’t know what else I’m supposed to think. That’s kind of the universal sign for “I’m about to beat your ass”. Or at least it was in every movie in the eighties. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone use that particular gesture since elementary school.
Still, I can’t see what else Billie could be attempting to communicate with her hands in panel 4 of friday’s update.
Until last night, she had no idea if Sal was coming into the room at all. In fact, it seemed like Sal was making every effort for it to seem like she wasn’t in the room at all. Ever.
And Ruth was actively threatening her stuff. If she had just left it on Sal’s bed, Billie might not have gotten it signed at all and had a part of her childhood destroyed because she couldn’t find the Sal.
But Ruth removed two letters from the uniform, so it has been ruined despite the crazy approach. Leaving it on the bed would have been simpler and might have yielded better results.
Chances of waking up to find it signed after leaving it on the bed: Notable.
Chances of waking to find it signed after falling asleep with it in your arms (or really anywhere else): None.
Whether or not Sal would have signed it, her course of action was brutally inefficient. It had a 0% chance of success. Any plan with the potential to produce a signed agreement would have been preferable.
Attempting to find Sal in the first place would have been better. Actually staying up(her plan to begin with the first night), would have been better. Doing all of the above was the best course of action(including the leave it on the bed). But just leaving it on the bed could have been a 0% yield as well. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been a good idea, but saying that the others weren’t is logically fallible.
Well sure, if you want to get into hedging your bets then combining the plans is a great idea. Otherwise though staying up to find her is contingent on your ability to actually stay up. Gotta know your limitations. If you can’t then it’s doomed to failure. Searching for someone on campus with no information as to where they might be is a suicide mission. 15000 people here and you’re looking for a particular person? Good luck.
But yeah, if we’re getting technical then combining these things is optimal.
I’m just trying to point out that the solution that everyone is saying is so obvious and Sal used in an attempt to break Billie’s brain would only work in a normal situation. Danny or Joe could have done it. Walky and Mike could have done it. Joyce and Sarah could have done it.
But all of them had actually seen their roommate the night they moved in and none of them were being threatened.
Yeah, Billie should have optimized her bets, but it still comes off that she’s getting punished because Sal can’t act like a normal person. Yes, her suggestion makes sense, but not for her the way she has been acting.
As someone with a roommate who’s active social life and night life have him gone most of the time, and who doesn’t speak to me at all, I gotta say that “Leave a note” seems like the most basic of basics. If I had to rely on actually meeting him in person for something it wouldn’t get done in months.
Sal’s acting perfectly normal imo. Her behavior’s being exaggerated for fiction’s sake. Normally someone doesn’t for example leave and enter through a fourth story window for example. Her hours of entrance and exit and antisocial behavior strike me as more than believable. For some people their living space doesn’t equate to much more than a place to crash for a few hours every couple days or to grab an actual meal after weeks of “Eating on the go”.
Either way you’re gonna have trouble selling me on the notion that “Leave a note” isn’t step one, especially with a roommate like Sal. This is like elementary school shit here. You need something from someone who’s not present, you leave a note. I’d expect it of my twelve year old sister and I’d expect it of a legal adult. You’re not being punished for someone else’s behavior when the problem solving abilities of a small child could potentially have saved you from this.
Who said it wasn’t step one? Leaving a note on the desk or door would have been an appropriate first step.
It’s just not this eureka step everyone seems to be making it out to be. Yes, Billie could have handled the situation better, but the way it was handed to her, she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for Sal to find a passive note. Actually going out and physically finding her roommate was her best solution to the problem.
In that case I think the difference in opinion here actually has more to do with the expectations of success in an attempt to actually find someone on campus. I mean we’re talking about a location she doesn’t know how to navigate, huge and densely populated, and a person who’s one of a large shipment of new people with very few interpersonal connections and nowhere you could ask about them. I mean I suppose you could head over to a social hotspot and try and keep an eye open or something, but I really can’t fathom actually finding anyone in that.
I’ve been at my campus for a few years now. I can navigate it just fine. Still, if you asked me to find one of my acquaintances with naught but a name and facial recognition it’s not gonna happen. That immediately just devolves into me asking each of these fifteen thousand individuals if they’ve seen Ted McCormac hanging around anywhere. “About yay high, skinny. Probably wearing a windbreaker. No? You don’t know him? Thanks anyway.
You! Yeah You. You know Ted McCormak? Here’s a photo I’ve got on my phone. You seen a guy like that? No? Well thanks for trying. I’ll go check out the pool hall next.”
I take it however that you’ve got a better set of experiences with that kind of endeavor. I can respect that. Just because it sounds like a suicide mission to me doesn’t necessarily make it so.
Either way, whether it’s a eureka moment or not I think we can both agree that this was a pretty important step in the process she skipped, and despite problems of urgency it actually could have saved her a lot of time had she included it within her methods. Guaranteed success? Not so much but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea and that’s not just the hindsight talking.
I can agree on that. I admit I generally have a bit of a better time of finding someone by facial recognition, but instead of hiding in a class room when I need to do such, I generally hang about in a student commons area. You know, a place in which a good chunk of the student body tends to pass by. If I don’t know where a person I’m trying to find actually is at that moment, I’ll ask people in the area. I even know where a good chunk of these people live, but leaving a note would actually be one of the least effective ways to get a hold of them. They just wouldn’t notice it.
But I can agree that it was an important step that could have alleviated her situation, though I doubt it would have solved it.
I always had fun filling out my roommate agreement with my roommates. We’d never put anything serious on it. One of them said that if one of us ever dug a moat around our room, it was up to the other person to fill it with water, spikes, and/or trolls.
“In the event that we are attacked by aliens I am obligated to help” seems the kind of thing that you’d sign for a laugh, before you learn what you were getting yourself into.
I think my favorite contractual clause is in the Big Bang Theory, where one clause in the Roommate Agreement that Sheldon wrote up was along the lines of “Should either of us invent a time machine in the future, our first trip in said machine will be to this particular time and place.”
Leonard immediately agreed to that one, initialed the clause, and then both of them looked around the room expectantly for about five seconds.
My roommate agreement made my RA laugh for ten minutes straight. It included things like “Frantic gesticulation is an appropriate subsitute for actual conversation” and if we needed to get in touch with each other, “phones, email, and smoke signals were all allowed”. We even duct taped the room in half.
Including my fish tank.
The fish thought the tape on the glass was some alien and wouldn’t swim by it.
….I can’t wait for semester to start again
I assumed there were security measures in place preventing people from actually approaching the ledge of a skyscraper roof. Even if a penny couldn’t do it there’s plenty of stuff you could drop to lethal effect. Bowling balls, cutlery, other people, cans of soda, all manner of office equipment including but not limited to fax machines etc etc.
If you really can just walk up and start dropping penny’s I don’t see how the fact that a penny specifically wouldn’t kill anyone makes this less of a concern.
Well, Sal, if you must know why then I’ll tell you: that would have made sense and when something makes sense, we tend to not do it. Or, like my mother likes to describe it, “Making things more complicated than they really are”.
Yes Sal… you ARE the freak. Well, you’re ALSO the freak.
I mean, Sal still hasn’t explained WHY she had to climb the window and WHY she’s been going out of her way to avoid being seen by Billie. Sal is the one who made this more complicated than it needed to be. All she needed to do was spend a few minutes with Billie on the first day to sort out the Agreement stuff, and then spend the rest of the semester avoiding each other as much as they like. It would have saved them the awkward sleeping positions, the climbing in through the fourth story window and this confrontation.
Yeah, Billie could have found an easier way to handle things, but she drunk 80% of the time. I don’t think logic much factors into things. What’s Sal’s excuse for making it complicated?
I think her only excuse is ignorance. She wasn’t at the original meeting when Ruth threw/defended Billie into a couch, and so she didn’t know about the agreements. I don’t think she’s exclusively avoiding Billie anymore than Dina was exclusively avoiding Ethan and Mike.
Sal has been climbing through the window in the middle of the night and leaving before Billie wakes up, in a room that they alone share. At this point, the only person she’s been avoiding has been Billie, I’d say.
And even if she was ignorant of the agreement, Sal could have spent five minutes to interact with Billie and say “I’m going to come and go as I please. You don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you and we’ll be fine.” I highly doubt Billie would have taken issue with that agreement and they would have gotten their form signed done and thus continued their lives without drama.
Maybe she climbed through the window because there was an unconcious drunk sleeping in front of the door one time and she figured it’d just be easier. Or she could be avoiding going through the dorms because she doesn’t want to bump into Walky, or she could just be -weird-.
I have to disagree with you MeHael. Sal has lived at a boarding school in the South for several years (hence her accent, which is different from Walky’s). I’m pretty sure she’s had to sign a roommate agreement before, probably more than once if she had a new roommate every year. She knows this is what you do in a residence hall.
That’s not to say that Billie handled the situation very well. But it does explain why Sal is so good at roommate avoidance: years and years of practice.
She might not have realized that in this particular instance the roommate agreement was such an urgent concern. She doesn’t seem like she’d be a stickler for getting these things done on time just because those are the rules.
Yeah, but agreement or not, she could have still spoken to Billie to sort out anything important for both of them. I mean, from how it sounds, Billie and Sal haven’t interacted much, so unless they have some sort of previous bad blood not mentioned, there’s no real reason to avoid her.
Considering how much of a drunk she’s implied to be, and the fact she’s constantly feeling the need to get drunk, I’m pretty sure she’s killed most of her braincells. I’d say that’s a pretty good excuse for why logic doesn’t apply for Billie these days.
Going to be honest, on my roomates bed is the worst place to put anything that he needs to do anything with. he just falls on his bed and will probebly crush it or it will end up behind the bed. which is… no man’s land… scary scary ass place.
Those smokes she’s going through at a steady clip can’t be doing wonders for her constitution.
Does she have superpowers again, or not? Maybe a high Fort check…
She is going to crack. She is going to crack and kill her and everyone around her. She is going to go on a murderous rampage the likes of which have never been seen before…and she may or may not speak Chinese in the process
And this is the crowning moment of funny. Where against all logic, Sal manages to make a good point, even in the face of her whacked out behavior. Good play, Mr. Willis. 😀
You saying that Sal, girl who can’t simply step over the sleeping body of her roommate and instead feels the need to climb up the wall of a four story building… has common sense…? Seriously?
I’m pretty sure the door opens inwards. If Billie was sleeping on the floor directly in front of the door then she was actually obstructing the door from being opened.
Am I the only one who thinks Sal’s cigarette looks more like a lollipop stick? I think it’s because there aren’t any mouth lines around it. When you suck on a lollipop, your lips scrunch together. When you’re just holding a cigarette in your mouth (or talking around one), your lips are in regular, elongated position.
lips and nostrils do not exist in this universe…. Walky once got in trouble with his art teacher for drawing those body parts in a self portrait because his teacher said he made them up.
I’ve decided that Sal is skittish. It explains everything. Just think “What would a squirrel do if was rooming with Billie” and you’ll find that everything makes sense.
Can’t go waking up the slumbering beast in front of the door. Better just crash elsewhere tonight.
“Ohshit! Who the hell is barging into my room at 3am?!” *Leaps through a fourth story window*
“Oh gee. The girl in my room seems really pissed about something right now. I better giver her some space. Maybe come back once she’s gone to sleep.”
Would you expect a squirrel to grasp this? I’d be more prone to expect a squirrel to forage for assorted nuts while avoiding everything that moves quickly or loudly.
Squirrels are also known for their exemplary climbing and jumping abilities. I’m on to something here I tells ya.
It would explain a lot about her, for sure. Makes me wonder if it were actually a bunch of squirrels in charge at that school she was sent away to, instead of humans.
I think Sal has forgotten what the second word of “Roommate agreement” is.
When I went to my college, it was a huge form of terms we both had to fill out, many of which I could pretty easily seeing those two disagreeing on.
I love imagining the frustration of the science division in GaoGaiGar. Keep coming in to work. “There’s only a 10% chance of success” “Courage makes 10% into 100%!”
“There’s a 0.5% chance of success” “The spirit of a hero makes 0.5% into a hundred percent!”
“No! Commander you can’t do that! It just won’t work! The machine wasn’t even built with a feature like that!”
“We’re the good guys, bongoes! Yeehaw!”
Poor scientists aren’t even sure why they’re being paid anymore.
Loaded question, that. Super Robot in itself implies that reality took a hike back around the point someone decided making a machine more than five times the size of a human in the relative form of a human was possible scientifically, monetarily, and (in most cases) militarily.
That’s like saying ‘name one monster-collecting CCG/game-based show that doesn’t do things beyond the impossible’.
tl,dr TAKE THIS! MY LOVE, MY ANGER, AND ALL OF MY SORROW! SHIINIIIIING FINGAAAAAR!
Unless, however, the characters in question examine the odds closely, decide they’re not quite 1:1 million, try to make those odds correct, and still end up missing the mark by one.
So I am really new to all this amazingness. I didn’t even know about shortpacked or anything else till today. See, I’m kinda rooting for Amber and Dan to be together and after the whole fiasco with Joe and Dorothy, Amber takes off. Then I see shortpacked and Mike and Amber are not only dating, but talking about marriage. My brain is full of fuck right now.
You know what, Willis? (…sir) Rather than removing the links to IW! and Shortpacked, maybe you -could- enclose directions for each for new readers. Such as: It’s Walky!: It’s like DoA but everyone is an alien fighter. Shortpacked!: It’s like DoA but everyone are adults and work in a toy store.
Just a few words may help to clear up things for newcomers.
I didn’t even sign my last roommate agreement. I was sick so I didn’t want to touch the pen and get my roomies sick. But the RA was there the whole time and said someone else could sign for me. Of course she was a complete ditz and despite standing by a door with my name on it and having called me that all night was confused that my name wasn’t Taylor. (a friend we were discussing was allowed to stay when ever she wanted.)
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I think Billie’s going to drink herself stupid for this. Well, stupider.
I mentioned this like … months ago.
Then again heavy drinking college freshmen are not known for their problem solving skills
I remember readin that comment! So you called it…..months ago
And freshmen in college AND high school don’t have reasoning available to them until the last month before school ends 🙂
Even THAT is debatable. I swear there are some dumb people out there.
I was gonna say, why not leave a note or something? I can relate though, as someone who grew up in the country where there were no telephones and limited paper, I know it can be easy to forget that you don’t always need to see someone in person in order to tell them things.
Sal is still the freakier of the two.
Besides, what if Billie left the agreement on Sla’s bed, and Sal…
*took it, and never signed it or gave it back
OR
*threw it out
OR
*tore it up
OR
*Used it to roll cigarettes, or whatever the young kids are smoking these days.
Whenever you have a new college roommate, you need to get to know them very carefully before leaving them with anything valuable.
Then she would acquire a secondary copy. Can’t imagine Ruth handwrote the thing.
I think Ruth would murder Billie first.
Indeed… perhaps a photocopier would be a better course of action. We want to keep the campus a murder-free zone.
Says you.
We should ask the Dean for the official policy. This could prove enlightening.
Don’t you have to agree that you’ve both agreed on the contents of the agreement?
These things sound like they get customised a bit.
I think they simply consider it like user agreements for stuff on the internet. No one wants to read it because they pretty much guess whats on it.
A lot of kids exclusively smoke Roommate Agreements now. They mess you up, man.
That’s what happens when you make them out of hemp paper.
College students will smoke ANYTHING.
Roommate agreements, textbooks, napkins, oak leaves, tobacco, week-old tacos, puppies, hair…
Grass rolled up in notebook paper.
…don’t judge me! It was only one puff!
Don’t Fecking care.
“Sal is still the sexier of the two.”
Fixed that for ya.
Sal is sexy, really? Here’s another fun fact: the sea is wet.
Sal in the first panel looks a little…odd.
She looks very Walky-esque.
Well, they are siblings.
Weren’t they twins?
Twins tend to also be siblings.
Except in very rare circumstances, of which this is clearly one.
Were sal and walky twins in the older comics? because I thought he and beef were twins… I know that the universes are not connected and things change from comic to comic, just curious of the walky/sal relationship from previous walkyverses.
Yes, Sal and Walky were twins in the other comic. Beef and Sal were switched at birth. 😐
ooooooohhhhhhh…. thanks kindly. I’ve read through a good deal of the back issues but must have missed that part of the story arch. makes much more sense now.
I always forget they’re twins but then a panel like panel one shows up and its a walkys head on sals body. Its a saltaur!
Sal looks like Walky with long hair and boobies.
:O
is that :O cos I hit the nail on the head? 😀
Er…. I’m pretty sure it’s ‘cuz they’re twins. Still pretty sure that’s a thing.
Yeah, that never stopped being something that was a thing.
+1
Would laugh at reference again.
Yeah, they’re twins. FRATERNAL twins, not identical twins. Twins of opposite gender are not identical. Which means the chances of them having the EXACT same facial features are the same as if they were the product of two separate pregnancies. While you could say my brother and I share certain facial characteristics, you’d never say I had his face on my body. And as a woman, if I had his exact facial features, I’d be ugly as hell.
Actually, there’s a greater-than-zero chance for one half of male identical twins to be born female through genetic mutation. Sal would’ve needed hormone therapy growing up, but it isn’t impossible.
Or, more likely, they’re just plain freakishly similar for siblings, and it’s got nothing to do with being twins.
My brother and I used to look like palette swaps of eachother, though in recent years separate lifestyle has created a bit more of a discrepancy. You certainly don’t have to be twins to look alike.
Siblings have the terrible habit of looking like each other. Regardless of age or gender. Most of the time.
Hell everyone said I look like my brother (despite the fact I never saw it)
Whats more it’s hardly just a mirror image of your brother and/or sister.
You simply resemble them. thats all.
Some people mistake me for my brother, some people mistake my brother for me, and some people can’t for ****’s sake find any similaity. Go figure.
I know that you frown on us mentioning previous instances of these characters in other strips, Mr. Willis, but you could perhaps drop in a link to elsewhere so that people would know what Walky as a female might look like so that they could evaluate Plizzle Mon-Dawg’s claim for themselves.
And just think, she could’ve avoided each fiasco with that simple task. Simplicity though just escapes us these days in this computer driven world.
You can see Billie’s mind break in that last panel.
Mind, nothing. That there is a total system shutdown. A beautiful, hilarious total system shutdown.
Her brain must have been running with Windows Vista.
Nothing beautiful about Vista.
No, that would just be grinding to a halt under the load.
This is more Windows ME-esque.
Vista is actually a good system if you know how to disable all the security checks.
No internet connected system is a good system when all security checks are disabled.
tell that to linux. nobody makes viruses for linux. nobody.
Lack of market, mostly. Those who do want into Linux systems usually just attack. Virii are for botnets and info dumping, both better on more widespread systems.
wrong security checks i’m refering to things more allong the lines or “Are you sure you wish to edit files in C: drive?”
Also Linux needs no internet security.
Wow, never came back to check on this until now… just in case anyone in the future comes by and cares, yes, all systems need security. And Vista/7 infamous UAC is the same exact thing as Linux’s “su – root” or sudo. Windows is just poorly implemented and indeed is not built around that concept so it ends up being very obtrusive. As for internet security, yes Linux has that as well, in various forms. If you disable all of them in some way (which may require enabling certain services, one form of security is not having unneeded crap running on public interfaces), your Linux will get owned in no time. Yes, I am a Linux user.
:wq!
I’ve been using Windows for years (from 3.1 all the way to 7, although I skipped Vista) with little complaint or software failure. ‘Course, I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s amazing how few viruses you get when you don’t open strange email attachments, look at the URL information for links before clicking on them, use something other than IE, avoid MySpace like the plague, use third-party computer-scan programs (and a healthy dose of ‘I don’t recognize this, time to look it up) regularly and apply security patches more often than twice a year.
Sucks to be the ‘computer guy’ that a number of people know, though. My step-dad does computer work on the side, and I’ve lost track of how many times he’s had to perform complete wipe-and-install operations on a particular relative’s computer because said relative has a teenage MySpace-and-Miley-Cyrus daughter.
I HAVE BEEN ASKING THIS SAME QUESTION FOR MONTHS GOD BILLIE IS A MORON.
Why? What proof did she ever have that Sal had entered the room period after initially dropping her stuff off?
Why did she need proof? Was there a more productive location to store the agreement overnight?
I’ve actually had (and lost) arguments just like this one in college. Always funny in retrospect. Always hurts my brain at the time.
Yeah, but she just had one of those valuable Learning Moments in which you realize you’ve been a moron. Hopefully this will lead to self-reflection and personal growth.
Who am I kidding? This is Billie; it’ll lead to booze.
But who’s to say Sal would have even signed the agreement? I mean, she could easily have snuck into the room in the middle of the night, knocked the paper to the ground in her desire to sleep and rushes out the next morning without ever even giving the agreement a glance. There’s a a lot of ways that plan could fall through. Meeting face to face at least would have guaranteed the agreement got signed.
Yes; however, at least she would be trying something else, since what she had been trying wasn’t working.
But if that hadn’t worked, they’d be in the same spot they are now. There is no guarantee that anything other than a face to face confrontation would have worked.
Logic. Learn it well.
logic is for nerds
That explains why some people do stupid things like making love to their cars or being naked in front of school children.
Those things can be often explained with alcohol.
Some cases doesn’t involve alcohol.
Other drugs are likely to be the reason in those cases.
But that only enables you to be wrong with authority, as Lewis Carroll told us, assuming he didn’t swipe it from Doctor Who.
Nobody threw a punch today? After the buildup we have on Friday? Now that’s what I call a shocking swerve.
Sal threw a logic punch.
Sal used logic punch its super effective!
Billie is frozen solid.
I think Paralyzed would be the better status. Or confused.
Bille hurt herself in her confusion!
Quick use a hyper potion (booze)
I actually don’t get why people were expecting violence. Neither of them has done anything to actually -provoke- violence from one another, and while I certainly have my issues with Billie’s personality, she isn’t really irrationally violent.
She keeps getting into fist fights with Ruth though…
Yeah, what’s with that? You’d think that Ruth went and stole something Billie considered a precious memory from her past, and then held it for ransom. Or something.
Weird.
*is standing on Invincibilty tile in case of flaming*
When someone approaches me while slamming their fist into their palm in a display of physical aggression I don’t know what else I’m supposed to think. That’s kind of the universal sign for “I’m about to beat your ass”. Or at least it was in every movie in the eighties. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone use that particular gesture since elementary school.
Still, I can’t see what else Billie could be attempting to communicate with her hands in panel 4 of friday’s update.
Dun dun DUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!
Until last night, she had no idea if Sal was coming into the room at all. In fact, it seemed like Sal was making every effort for it to seem like she wasn’t in the room at all. Ever.
And Ruth was actively threatening her stuff. If she had just left it on Sal’s bed, Billie might not have gotten it signed at all and had a part of her childhood destroyed because she couldn’t find the Sal.
But Ruth removed two letters from the uniform, so it has been ruined despite the crazy approach. Leaving it on the bed would have been simpler and might have yielded better results.
Chances of waking up to find it signed after leaving it on the bed: Notable.
Chances of waking to find it signed after falling asleep with it in your arms (or really anywhere else): None.
Whether or not Sal would have signed it, her course of action was brutally inefficient. It had a 0% chance of success. Any plan with the potential to produce a signed agreement would have been preferable.
Attempting to find Sal in the first place would have been better. Actually staying up(her plan to begin with the first night), would have been better. Doing all of the above was the best course of action(including the leave it on the bed). But just leaving it on the bed could have been a 0% yield as well. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been a good idea, but saying that the others weren’t is logically fallible.
Well sure, if you want to get into hedging your bets then combining the plans is a great idea. Otherwise though staying up to find her is contingent on your ability to actually stay up. Gotta know your limitations. If you can’t then it’s doomed to failure. Searching for someone on campus with no information as to where they might be is a suicide mission. 15000 people here and you’re looking for a particular person? Good luck.
But yeah, if we’re getting technical then combining these things is optimal.
I’m just trying to point out that the solution that everyone is saying is so obvious and Sal used in an attempt to break Billie’s brain would only work in a normal situation. Danny or Joe could have done it. Walky and Mike could have done it. Joyce and Sarah could have done it.
But all of them had actually seen their roommate the night they moved in and none of them were being threatened.
Yeah, Billie should have optimized her bets, but it still comes off that she’s getting punished because Sal can’t act like a normal person. Yes, her suggestion makes sense, but not for her the way she has been acting.
As someone with a roommate who’s active social life and night life have him gone most of the time, and who doesn’t speak to me at all, I gotta say that “Leave a note” seems like the most basic of basics. If I had to rely on actually meeting him in person for something it wouldn’t get done in months.
Sal’s acting perfectly normal imo. Her behavior’s being exaggerated for fiction’s sake. Normally someone doesn’t for example leave and enter through a fourth story window for example. Her hours of entrance and exit and antisocial behavior strike me as more than believable. For some people their living space doesn’t equate to much more than a place to crash for a few hours every couple days or to grab an actual meal after weeks of “Eating on the go”.
Either way you’re gonna have trouble selling me on the notion that “Leave a note” isn’t step one, especially with a roommate like Sal. This is like elementary school shit here. You need something from someone who’s not present, you leave a note. I’d expect it of my twelve year old sister and I’d expect it of a legal adult. You’re not being punished for someone else’s behavior when the problem solving abilities of a small child could potentially have saved you from this.
Who said it wasn’t step one? Leaving a note on the desk or door would have been an appropriate first step.
It’s just not this eureka step everyone seems to be making it out to be. Yes, Billie could have handled the situation better, but the way it was handed to her, she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for Sal to find a passive note. Actually going out and physically finding her roommate was her best solution to the problem.
In that case I think the difference in opinion here actually has more to do with the expectations of success in an attempt to actually find someone on campus. I mean we’re talking about a location she doesn’t know how to navigate, huge and densely populated, and a person who’s one of a large shipment of new people with very few interpersonal connections and nowhere you could ask about them. I mean I suppose you could head over to a social hotspot and try and keep an eye open or something, but I really can’t fathom actually finding anyone in that.
I’ve been at my campus for a few years now. I can navigate it just fine. Still, if you asked me to find one of my acquaintances with naught but a name and facial recognition it’s not gonna happen. That immediately just devolves into me asking each of these fifteen thousand individuals if they’ve seen Ted McCormac hanging around anywhere. “About yay high, skinny. Probably wearing a windbreaker. No? You don’t know him? Thanks anyway.
You! Yeah You. You know Ted McCormak? Here’s a photo I’ve got on my phone. You seen a guy like that? No? Well thanks for trying. I’ll go check out the pool hall next.”
I take it however that you’ve got a better set of experiences with that kind of endeavor. I can respect that. Just because it sounds like a suicide mission to me doesn’t necessarily make it so.
Either way, whether it’s a eureka moment or not I think we can both agree that this was a pretty important step in the process she skipped, and despite problems of urgency it actually could have saved her a lot of time had she included it within her methods. Guaranteed success? Not so much but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea and that’s not just the hindsight talking.
I can agree on that. I admit I generally have a bit of a better time of finding someone by facial recognition, but instead of hiding in a class room when I need to do such, I generally hang about in a student commons area. You know, a place in which a good chunk of the student body tends to pass by. If I don’t know where a person I’m trying to find actually is at that moment, I’ll ask people in the area. I even know where a good chunk of these people live, but leaving a note would actually be one of the least effective ways to get a hold of them. They just wouldn’t notice it.
But I can agree that it was an important step that could have alleviated her situation, though I doubt it would have solved it.
Billie could have avoided all this but then again there won’t be a story now will there?
We Could Have Avoided All This…You know the site…
Logic.
The enemy of fun.
Sal, I think you broke Billie.
Quick, somebody get her user’s manual.
*wonders if Billie actually has a For Dummies book devoted to her*
College for Dummies! Yes, Billie, we mean you.
And now I am angry Sal, perfect!
I think you’re just Sal, actually.
Yeah, angry SSL is kinda redundant
A beserking encryption scheme? Yeah, that’s probably redundant.
Breaking characters seems to be a common theme these days between Billie…Joyce…Walky (to an extent)…
Maybe this webcomic should be renamed Breaking of Age.
Or Breaking of Character. Yes, I’m not that creative.
or worse, Breaking of Wind. 😛
I always had fun filling out my roommate agreement with my roommates. We’d never put anything serious on it. One of them said that if one of us ever dug a moat around our room, it was up to the other person to fill it with water, spikes, and/or trolls.
In the event Sal fends off an attack by aliens, Billie has exclusive rights to a first interview.
“In the event that we are attacked by aliens I am obligated to help” seems the kind of thing that you’d sign for a laugh, before you learn what you were getting yourself into.
“I never said who I’d help.”
I think my favorite contractual clause is in the Big Bang Theory, where one clause in the Roommate Agreement that Sheldon wrote up was along the lines of “Should either of us invent a time machine in the future, our first trip in said machine will be to this particular time and place.”
Leonard immediately agreed to that one, initialed the clause, and then both of them looked around the room expectantly for about five seconds.
My roommate agreement made my RA laugh for ten minutes straight. It included things like “Frantic gesticulation is an appropriate subsitute for actual conversation” and if we needed to get in touch with each other, “phones, email, and smoke signals were all allowed”. We even duct taped the room in half.
Including my fish tank.
The fish thought the tape on the glass was some alien and wouldn’t swim by it.
….I can’t wait for semester to start again
That’s what I been trying to tell you Billy. Curse this fourth wall.
Maybe if we yell loud enough she’ll hear it. It works for football.
It’s like one of those one-way mirrors.
Alright, am I the only one imagining Marcy with hyper-advanced cyborg eyes right now?
Why are you imagining? You can see them right there on her face.
must
resist
urge
to
meme…
I have faith that the strength is within you.
Well damn, when you’re logical like that…
And the penny drops.
From the top of a skyscraper.
Doesn’t those kill you?
Nope – it’d hurt, a lot, but not enough mass to give it the kinetic energy needed to breach a skull, even at terminal velocity.
is it weird that knowing this makes me sad? it was way more fun to think the penny would travel straight through your head down to your feet 🙁
If this were the case, noone would ever be allowed on the roofs of skyscrapers. It would be against the freakin’ law.
I assumed there were security measures in place preventing people from actually approaching the ledge of a skyscraper roof. Even if a penny couldn’t do it there’s plenty of stuff you could drop to lethal effect. Bowling balls, cutlery, other people, cans of soda, all manner of office equipment including but not limited to fax machines etc etc.
If you really can just walk up and start dropping penny’s I don’t see how the fact that a penny specifically wouldn’t kill anyone makes this less of a concern.
Not according to Mythbusters.
Logic: 1
Billie: 0
Well, Sal, if you must know why then I’ll tell you: that would have made sense and when something makes sense, we tend to not do it. Or, like my mother likes to describe it, “Making things more complicated than they really are”.
I’m surprised noones said this yet, or maybe this memes nOt as cOmmon as I think… Ahem;
“This is the part where Billie’s soul snaps like ‘Twix’ bar.”
Dr. Insano, what are you doing here?
Yay! Marci finally gets facial features.
Yes Sal… you ARE the freak. Well, you’re ALSO the freak.
I mean, Sal still hasn’t explained WHY she had to climb the window and WHY she’s been going out of her way to avoid being seen by Billie. Sal is the one who made this more complicated than it needed to be. All she needed to do was spend a few minutes with Billie on the first day to sort out the Agreement stuff, and then spend the rest of the semester avoiding each other as much as they like. It would have saved them the awkward sleeping positions, the climbing in through the fourth story window and this confrontation.
Yeah, Billie could have found an easier way to handle things, but she drunk 80% of the time. I don’t think logic much factors into things. What’s Sal’s excuse for making it complicated?
I think her only excuse is ignorance. She wasn’t at the original meeting when Ruth threw/defended Billie into a couch, and so she didn’t know about the agreements. I don’t think she’s exclusively avoiding Billie anymore than Dina was exclusively avoiding Ethan and Mike.
Sal has been climbing through the window in the middle of the night and leaving before Billie wakes up, in a room that they alone share. At this point, the only person she’s been avoiding has been Billie, I’d say.
And even if she was ignorant of the agreement, Sal could have spent five minutes to interact with Billie and say “I’m going to come and go as I please. You don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you and we’ll be fine.” I highly doubt Billie would have taken issue with that agreement and they would have gotten their form signed done and thus continued their lives without drama.
Maybe she climbed through the window because there was an unconcious drunk sleeping in front of the door one time and she figured it’d just be easier. Or she could be avoiding going through the dorms because she doesn’t want to bump into Walky, or she could just be -weird-.
Scaling up the side of FOUR stories on a building to get into her room is easier, than just walking OVER the unconscious body of her drunk roomie?
Sitting in front of a door was not the first night, so it doesn’t explain why she was doing it in the first place.
She enjoys rock climbing and hasn’t found the good local spots yet.
I’d buy that.
I have to disagree with you MeHael. Sal has lived at a boarding school in the South for several years (hence her accent, which is different from Walky’s). I’m pretty sure she’s had to sign a roommate agreement before, probably more than once if she had a new roommate every year. She knows this is what you do in a residence hall.
That’s not to say that Billie handled the situation very well. But it does explain why Sal is so good at roommate avoidance: years and years of practice.
She might not have realized that in this particular instance the roommate agreement was such an urgent concern. She doesn’t seem like she’d be a stickler for getting these things done on time just because those are the rules.
Yeah, but agreement or not, she could have still spoken to Billie to sort out anything important for both of them. I mean, from how it sounds, Billie and Sal haven’t interacted much, so unless they have some sort of previous bad blood not mentioned, there’s no real reason to avoid her.
Drunk isn’t really an excuse, but that’s a whole different can of worms.
It’s an excuse, it’s just a BAD excuse.
Considering how much of a drunk she’s implied to be, and the fact she’s constantly feeling the need to get drunk, I’m pretty sure she’s killed most of her braincells. I’d say that’s a pretty good excuse for why logic doesn’t apply for Billie these days.
An explanation perhaps, but it excuses nothing.
Tequila worms no less.
As usual, the laziest way is the correct one.
Unless Sal ignored the note on her bed, and just knocked it aside. Then they’d be in the same situation they’re in now.
I love the “Err… what’d I do?” look on Sal’s face in the first panel. XD
I also get the feeling she’s had similar conversations before, seeing as she can be so calm with a crazy person yelling in her face….
*please let my comment not be deleted for a change :(*
Panel 4: thought bubble: WHY THE HELL DIDN’T I THINK ABOUT THAT!?!
Going to be honest, on my roomates bed is the worst place to put anything that he needs to do anything with. he just falls on his bed and will probebly crush it or it will end up behind the bed. which is… no man’s land… scary scary ass place.
*gigglesnort* That Billie, she is one SILLY B*TCH. I could almost see her soul fall apart…! Delicious! ^^
It tastes like beer. Yuck.
Those smokes she’s going through at a steady clip can’t be doing wonders for her constitution.
Does she have superpowers again, or not? Maybe a high Fort check…
She is going to crack. She is going to crack and kill her and everyone around her. She is going to go on a murderous rampage the likes of which have never been seen before…and she may or may not speak Chinese in the process
so long as theres a gratuitous amount of clothing damage, I’m good.
Fruity Oaty Bars make a man out of a mouse.
Fruity Oaty Bars make you bust out of your blouse.
Eat them all the time.
They will blow your mind!
… miranda….
And here we got the proof that drinking lots of alcohol makes you stupid. PROST! 😀
*goes to dumb-drink his brain*
Billie looks like she is being hung with an invisible noose in panel 4.
That could only mean one thing, there’s an invisible hangman on the loose.
invisible hangman = amazi-girl villain?
invisible hangman = ultra car?!?
I want to name one of my future albums that…
Invisible Hangman by MC Who Izzy
who izzy… i see what you did there 😛
And this is the crowning moment of funny. Where against all logic, Sal manages to make a good point, even in the face of her whacked out behavior. Good play, Mr. Willis. 😀
And this is why my RAs always had the roommates MEET them to sign the agreements…
She broke Billy.
Sal does have a super power.
and its name is common sense…its very rare.
You saying that Sal, girl who can’t simply step over the sleeping body of her roommate and instead feels the need to climb up the wall of a four story building… has common sense…? Seriously?
I’m pretty sure the door opens inwards. If Billie was sleeping on the floor directly in front of the door then she was actually obstructing the door from being opened.
Am I the only one who thinks Sal’s cigarette looks more like a lollipop stick? I think it’s because there aren’t any mouth lines around it. When you suck on a lollipop, your lips scrunch together. When you’re just holding a cigarette in your mouth (or talking around one), your lips are in regular, elongated position.
lips and nostrils do not exist in this universe…. Walky once got in trouble with his art teacher for drawing those body parts in a self portrait because his teacher said he made them up.
Sal never actually LIT the cig… it’s just kinda hanging there all limp and unlit.
It’s so lonely. 🙁
It’s a security ciggie – she just likes having one around; she doesn’t *really* smoke them. (Any apparent smoke in prior comics was just random smog.)
Also she doesn’t actually ride that bike; she just pushes it around for appearances’ sake.
suddenly it all makes sense….
Like how that guy who played the Fonz on Happy Days was too scared to ride a bike for real?
I’ve decided that Sal is skittish. It explains everything. Just think “What would a squirrel do if was rooming with Billie” and you’ll find that everything makes sense.
Can’t go waking up the slumbering beast in front of the door. Better just crash elsewhere tonight.
“Ohshit! Who the hell is barging into my room at 3am?!” *Leaps through a fourth story window*
“Oh gee. The girl in my room seems really pissed about something right now. I better giver her some space. Maybe come back once she’s gone to sleep.”
By that logic, Sal has somehow managed to miss the concept of “assigned roommate”.
Would you expect a squirrel to grasp this? I’d be more prone to expect a squirrel to forage for assorted nuts while avoiding everything that moves quickly or loudly.
Squirrels are also known for their exemplary climbing and jumping abilities. I’m on to something here I tells ya.
It would explain a lot about her, for sure. Makes me wonder if it were actually a bunch of squirrels in charge at that school she was sent away to, instead of humans.
Clearly, Sal is Squirrel Girl.
Now we just gotta figure out who that Amazi-Girl is.
Who here thinks it’s Marcy? I mean, she’s got the mild-mannered alter-ego thing down. Nobody would expect the mute girl to be the talkative hero.
I think Sal has forgotten what the second word of “Roommate agreement” is.
When I went to my college, it was a huge form of terms we both had to fill out, many of which I could pretty easily seeing those two disagreeing on.
Billie’s mind has been broken! Quick, do a hard reboot! *honk*
If ‘copping a feel’ doesn’t result in receiving a ‘reboot’ to the head, nothing will. 😀
If that happened, claim that you were force to do it. It works 0.5% of the time.
Thoses are pretty good odds, whenever someone mentions Million To One Odds, that pretty much becomes also 100% in TV, books, movies and webcomics.
I love imagining the frustration of the science division in GaoGaiGar. Keep coming in to work. “There’s only a 10% chance of success” “Courage makes 10% into 100%!”
“There’s a 0.5% chance of success” “The spirit of a hero makes 0.5% into a hundred percent!”
“No! Commander you can’t do that! It just won’t work! The machine wasn’t even built with a feature like that!”
“We’re the good guys, bongoes! Yeehaw!”
Poor scientists aren’t even sure why they’re being paid anymore.
That’s what made Super Robots genre in general awesome. Name one Super Robot series that didn’t do things beyond the impossible.
Loaded question, that. Super Robot in itself implies that reality took a hike back around the point someone decided making a machine more than five times the size of a human in the relative form of a human was possible scientifically, monetarily, and (in most cases) militarily.
That’s like saying ‘name one monster-collecting CCG/game-based show that doesn’t do things beyond the impossible’.
tl,dr TAKE THIS! MY LOVE, MY ANGER, AND ALL OF MY SORROW! SHIINIIIIING FINGAAAAAR!
Unless, however, the characters in question examine the odds closely, decide they’re not quite 1:1 million, try to make those odds correct, and still end up missing the mark by one.
How’ bout we turn the last two panels into a meme.
Please no more memes.
If it was a meme, it’d be something like INVISIBLE FEZ.
Quiet You!
Please, no more memes sounds like a meme in of itself.
background shatter?
D’oh!
So I am really new to all this amazingness. I didn’t even know about shortpacked or anything else till today. See, I’m kinda rooting for Amber and Dan to be together and after the whole fiasco with Joe and Dorothy, Amber takes off. Then I see shortpacked and Mike and Amber are not only dating, but talking about marriage. My brain is full of fuck right now.
You know what, Willis? (…sir) Rather than removing the links to IW! and Shortpacked, maybe you -could- enclose directions for each for new readers. Such as: It’s Walky!: It’s like DoA but everyone is an alien fighter. Shortpacked!: It’s like DoA but everyone are adults and work in a toy store.
Just a few words may help to clear up things for newcomers.
LOVE the blank background in the last panel. It really drives the broken reality feeling.
Crazy bongo?
Crazy bongo.
The last panel, I interpreted it as Billie grasping at the last shreds of her sanity as it escapes into the ether.
The mother of all facepalms.
AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! XD XD XD XD XD
I didn’t even sign my last roommate agreement. I was sick so I didn’t want to touch the pen and get my roomies sick. But the RA was there the whole time and said someone else could sign for me. Of course she was a complete ditz and despite standing by a door with my name on it and having called me that all night was confused that my name wasn’t Taylor. (a friend we were discussing was allowed to stay when ever she wanted.)
And that’s the ened of the first week….what a dumbass
It seems alcohol damages your liver AND your brain…or Billie’s been around Walky too much
Billie’s face in the last panel…….lol