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Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social ⋅ 15h
LOWρUFO 
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preternia @preterniadotcom.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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then later that night…
…
Ceiling Cat watches her masticate
Blowjob Cat watches us always.
I just want to know who names their donkey Waffles.
I can’t tell if that’s auto-correct, a typo, or you really did mean “chew”. I’m going with option three.
Seeing this is Joyce we’re talking about, I think this was intentional and not auto-correct.
(Whispers) “Your epidermis is showing!”
Also, Joyce is secretly a philatelist.
She loves tax exemptions? Who doesn’t?
One of the greatest campaign speeches of all time.
“His parents not only permitted him to masticate excessively in their presence, but even urged him to do so.”
Next thing you know, she’ll come out as a practicing thespian.
Wouldn’t surprise me. She has already matriculated in college.
But since she is the youngest, she may not have ever perambulated a child on a public street.
Oh, Joyce, honey…
“My donkey didn’t even start to talk”? Did she get a new, perhaps magical, plushie while we weren’t paying attention?
She named it Balaam.
Worse. Far worse. She named it Ollie.
Everyone gets a loss of faith donkey. Comes with the Rich Mullins dreams.
When this came up on Patreon, my mind immediately went to Numbers 22:28. I am ashamed to admit that Shrek never occurred to me.
I was thinking of the caterpillar from Veggie Tales, weirdly enough.
Even though I grew up on Sid & Marty Krofft, what little I’ve seen of Veggie Tales seems weird and trippy to me.
Sid and Marty? Thanks, I need the occasional reminder I’m not the only Boomer around here.
Donkey=Ass
So in modern day, when you skip church, your butt starts to talk? Does this mean that regular church goers don’t fart?
a homage to “Wonderfalls”???
Aw, hon, this’ll feel liberating some day.
One hopes anyways.
You could say she’s having a…
Doki Doki Panic.
NO
Your reaction is worth a thousand strips, thank you.
Could be worse. Could be a Colonel Panic.
Wouldn’t be the first time she’s needed rebooting.
She has no reason to Doko Doki Panic. These aren’t Doki Doki School Hours and she hasn’t joined the Doki Doki Literature Club, that said, depending on the particular flavor of worship service Joyce is used to it could still be Doki Doki Morning so let’s see if that can’t be cued up on the hacked muzak.
**claps**
Bravo.
Donkey Donkey Panic?
Joyce, you don’t have to take your pulse. YOU HAVE A FITBIT.
I rather suspect that this scene is fairly directly autobiographical. I’m not sure what year Mr. Willis did this, but a regular wrist watch – NOT a Fitbit – seems most likely.
That looks like her “fitness watch that tells you fitness things”, probably a Ruttech version of a FitBit.
Ninja’d again by asynchronous network transmission! Curse you, asynchronous network transmission!
Willis keeps his buffer full, but not THAT full. This would have been drawn around January of 2019 or so, give or take a few months. More than enough time to have heard of Fitbits.
Also, I’m pretty sure Joyce’s Fitbit has been explicitly discussed, but I’m too lazy to archive binge for it.
She’s got one of those fitness watches that tell you fitness things! Go, fitness conquistador, go!
I think that’s “when Willis did this” in the sense of checking his heart rate when he first skipped church back in the day, not when he drew this strip.
Under the assumption this bit is autobiographical.
Yes.
Joyce taking her lack of donkey, talking or otherwise, in stride
Joyce, your what? Is that a reference I’m missing?
Its an Old Testament story of a guy who decided to not do what God told him and eventually his donkey started yelling at him to get his shit together.
So you’re saying that God was talking out of his ass?
*clap* *clap*
*joins the clapping*
OMG
*standing ovations*
Or out of Her bush. Which is on fire, ’cause it’s hot.
Not God. God sent an angel to talk out Balaam’s ass.
Some angel-jobs are less glamorous than other angel-jobs.
Some of Gods signs are mysterious and open to multiple interpretations.
Other are… fairly straight forward.
Did Willis leggo his Eggo or something that morning?
*plays “Breakfast In America” on the hacked Muzak*
That (the title text) is one of Donkey’s lines in Shrek, when Donkey pesters the titular ogre into letting Donkey stay.
Donkey’s voiced by Eddie Murphy, who I’ve always assumed had to exercise all the self control he could muster to keep it clean for a kids’ movie.
He also took a crack at a singing career, where he tried to emulate Lionel Ritchie for some reason.
And recorded a song about putting stuff in people’s butts.
Honestly he should have done more fun, nonsense, “Boogie in Your Butt” music; I don’t think 1985 America was ready to take him seriously.
Sad…but that’s me the first time I skipped a college class…(*spoiler* it would NOT be the last time, and no, it did not turn out well)
I went to a massive school, and there were lectures with a few hundred students so they never took attendance, and the slides were online, and it’s not like you can ask questions in a lecture that big anyway.
Might as well sleep in. 7:30 AM is no time for learning.
Nah, 7:30 am is a great time for learning, just not in an entry level dumb lecture class.
It’s the 2:30pm one that eats your soul… especially when your boss keeps scheduling you at 3pm and trying to write you up for being late when you show up at 5pm even though your availability doesn’t start until 4:30. OK, yeah, I’m still bitter about that jerkoff twenty years on since he set a tone for the type of stupidity I could expect in the workplace. Same dumbass used to also salute me in the NSDAP style as I walked into work because black trench coat and combat boots… it was 1998, that was sorta the style, well before April of ’99 anyway.
His salute truly invoked Popehat’s
Rule of Goats.
The narrow Venn Diagram of Popehat and Dumbing of Age followers.
Well Joyce, being worried over something tends to cause an elevated heart rate and I’d say expecting angry angels or a talking donkey would do it. Now what is her heart rate going to look like if Becky/her mom/anyone asks how church was and she doesn’t have an answer?
Nothing bad happened. And the longer nothing happens, the more she’s going to worry about the really bad things that could happen, because she knows that the universe won’t just ignore her not going to church. That’s how anxiety works.
And now I really need to start a band just so I can name it “Expecting Angry Angels.”
Many rules are there to provide structure. Living outside of it, without any consequence, it’s odd. Part of growing up.
I’m wondering what her reaction is going to be as she starts testing her beliefs and finds everything she’s afraid of doesn’t happen. ill she be happy? Relieved? Angry? Sad? A combination of the above?
Current evidence is trending towards “Panicked.”
unfortunately, christianity is smarter than that and promises you thing that you won’t find out before your earthly life is over. You may feel fine but then you’ll end up in hell, and since you can’t disprove that, you better believe…..
even after years of content atheism, there’s still this tiny nag of doubt of “but what if i die and find there IS a hell with biblical entry criteria?” …. well played, christianity, permanent dread instilled early on!
Her donkey didn’t what now
I didn’t know Joyce was a fan of William S Burroughs.
Oh wow, it’s been *forever* since I heard a Balaam reference. I was starting to think I imagined that… admittedly weird story.
A weird story? In the squirrelly depths of the OT? That’s crazy talk. Next you’re gonna tell me there was a dude so fat that when somebody stabbed him, the sword disappeared into his fat rolls.
Or a dude who was teased by some kids for being bald, so God sent a bear to eviscerate those miscreants.
Never had a talking donkey, but I’ve had a really shouty ass.
I keep trying to evade worshiping the lord but the shouting of my ass keeps alerting him to my presence
You are eating far too much broccoli.
She took missing church better then Orel did.
I know that. Poor Orel hat an epiphany and his father forced him to forget it. It’s okay to have spirituality, but it isn’t okay to follow restrictive dogmas that harm you and others.
Well Joyce, now you can use your Sunday for whatever you want. Watch cartoons, write erotic fanfictions, eat pizza without mixed toppings, fantasize about Doro-Okay that one not really unless you want.
Orgasms. I recommend them.
or maybe it is Puzzle from CS Lewis, “The Last Battle”? Is it the end of Time when Joyce stops believing?
Loving that alt text.
Don’t take a pulse with yout thumb, Joyce. It doesn’t matter here, but it is bad practice and you ought to avoid it in case you ever have to take someone else’s pulse.
Yeah, you’re actually meant to use your teeth. Me da told me.
Yeah, apparently you Humans have a different pulse in your thumbs or something like that. Either way, you don’t read it right with your thumb…
It’s same pulse, it’s just that you risk confusing the pulsing in your thumb and the pulsing you’re supposed to be checking.
. . . .And now I don’t think Joyce has ever felt more relatable then right now. I can’t tell you just when I crossed this line myself but whoo boy do I remember that feeling.
Thanks everyone for explaining the references! They were all over my head today.
Privacy chairs, only effective against supernatural beings
Absolutely useless against college peers
You’re doing amazing, sweetie.
No talking donkey? Well, the day’s not even ogre yet.
*Ran out of time looking for anyone else who noticed she’s taking her pulse with her thumb. Humans shouldn’t take their pulse with their thumb, it has a pulse of its own apparently. Can’t do it like that on us Cybertronians…*
I imagine you just have some sort of HUD that displays your current level of Cybertronium?
Joyce’s heart rate is worrisome. She doesn’t feel any different. These are pretty close to mutually exclusive facts.
I feel that if your metric for if something is bad is that your donkey starts talking, that gives a lot of leeway.
When you don’t feel God in prayer and church is your only contact with Him, this feels like a big step. She’s going to be thinking about it for a long time.
Damn you, Willis! How did you know?? What secret spies told you about my Sat/Sun Midnight Waffle schemes??
Time for a pogrom of my inner circle again… I lose more brain cells that way…
I love how she doesn’t know that her thumb will give her a false reading on her pulse.
It wouldn’t give a false reading of her own pulse, but would if she was trying to take anybody else’s.
Well, of course. Waffles are awesome!
…is it bad that I immediately assumed that “donkey” was a Joyce-euphemism for her vagina?
No, just weird. It’s obviously her euphemism for her butt.
Right. She’s talking about her caboodle, and not her capoodle.
… At least her euphemisms are getting a little easier to parse over time.
My mainline self is sitting over here wondering at being so terrified over…not going to church. Like it’s an exam you have to pass every week, or a button you must push on time to keep the smoke monster from getting out, instead of a thing people do together to help one another stay focused and grounded.
Oh honey. What an awful way to live.
Joyce reminds me of the first time I blew off class in uni…
Yeah I was that straight-laced.
The world didn’t blow up and I had time to finish my physics homework (yep I cut a shitty bio class to do homework. Truly I was a Paragon of Rebellion), I didn’t spontaneously combust from stress, and that class was boring and introduced me to literally no new content (yay living in a fucking creationist paradise region so first year uni teaches everything HS should have but didn’t) so it wasn’t like I was missing anything worth seeing.
Moments later, Joyce would be given the worst case of indigestion she’s ever had.
An important realization. But not a happy one. That’s not fair : (
All this donkey talk sounds like something Dante Alighieri would’ve wrote.
somebody better talk to her, I’ve heard pretty bad stories about extremely religious people falling into VERY bad situations after de-converting. I think it has to do with the whole “I’ve been lied to about THIS, so they must have lied to me about all of THESE too” mentality, and the “these” can include everything from mainstream hollywood movies (remember her parents disapproved of Frozen) to drugs and gangs and all kinds of self destructive stuff.
Seriously people, don’t lie to your kids, nothing good comes from lies…
In my fanfiction, Sierra walks by and gives Joyce a hug.
… I really think Joyce should get a hug.