Now [because my brain is prone to tangents] you’re making me feel like I missed out, not making a Game of Thrones deadpool bingo before the show was over. :/
Well, given how my roommates have been steadily escalating their cursing during our regular Super Smash Bros games, I could probably still manage the curse word bingo over there, though.. hmm..
But then if you say “urine” in third grade instead of “pee,” everybody stares at you. “What kind of terminology is her parents teaching her at home?!” Scientific terms, yes. Yes, this happened to me.
I tend to go by the rule of thumb “Would I have gotten detention for saying this in class during middle school?”.
I think the middle school part is important, by high school books with swears are required out loud reading, and in elementary you’d get in trouble for “poop” or “wiener”.
You’d get in trouble for saying “poop” in elementary school? That seems way too harsh. It’s a bodily function. What else are you supposed to call it? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “poop” “pee” and “piss” on children’s shows which is kind of the standard I use.
[I gotta go] “number 1” and “number 2”, going off the schools I was familiar with. Conservative regions just get stupidly weird when it comes to anything body related, and elementary schools [or, at least, the ones I was familiar with] had a bad habit of being overly controlling, even when it didn’t make any sense to be such. Rather, seemed to be much more the focus of most elementary through high school campuses I went to.. :S
Mind, that was decades back, though; From what I can see, TV shows and physical schools have both accepted such basic terms since then, so Doctor_Who’s framework is probably not as reliable for younger users as it is for older ones.
The troublesome, bullying-like social dynamic aspect of certain school staff probably hasn’t changed any, though. x_x;
I can 100% confirm that David would not have said “pissy” in middle school. He wouldn’t even write out the word “sucks” in high school. I was there, and I can tell you this aspect of Joyce is very autobiographical.
DID somebody, though? I mean, we all know Willis sent Terminator-styled Transformers back in time to eradicate his shameful past, so I thought all past contacts of Willis had been eradicated off-screen. I mean, that’s canon, at least according to Dammit, Willis!: The Complete & Completely True Memoirs.
Well, said Memoirs also claim Soggies Will Rule, so.. take it with a pinch of saltsugar, I guess.
Sorry, I forgot to check the comments again. Yes, I went to middle school with David (I find it weird to just call him Willis). I’ve been reading about Ultra Car and the gang since I was was 11, and I’m 41 now.
Depends on who hears it, context, and location. By and large, I think it’s fallen out of the realm of being a proper cuss word, with only older or “proper” people getting offended by it.
I really believe that will happen this semester. There’s lots of subtle hints like the divorce in the background shaking things up for the Browns, to Joyce reflecting on change in her life so much, to Booster an nonbinary character being introduced so Joyce has some experience with concepts like proper pronouns and dead names, even her wearing glasses now which makes her look exactly like Joyceline with longer hair. It will happen this semester. It’s just a matter of when.
Yuuup. In the back of my mind I can’t help but worry that the last four years were just a series of probing attacks, and the next megalomaniacal tinpot dictator won’t be such a predictable buffoon. We’re fucked if someone with Reagan’s persona, Trump’s penchant for frenzy-whipping, and Kushner’s agenda gets traction.
The fragility of our system of government was laid bare before us. We need to strengthen the system of safeguards and checks-and-balances against sabotage from within. (Just don’t ask me exactly how; anyone who has that answer should already be part of the new administration.)
IMO the problem at it’s root isn’t so much that our checks and balanced need to be strengthened (they do).
It’s that our government, specifically our legislature, no longer represents the people. This is a reality felt by left, center, and right. And in no small part the insurrection was a response to decades of failure on the part of Congress to do anything good for the working class.
We have to avoid starting an argument about which party’s congressmembers might be more responsible many conservatives are well aware of the failures of their elected representatives, it’s part of why so many of them are willing to dispense with democracy.
The problem isn’t IMO one of party but one of governmental structure. Were congressmembers beholden to act on behalf of their voters to stay in office republican lawmakers would surely fall in line and support the needs of their voters. But the reality is that neither party’s representatives need to do much of anything at all to get reelected. A fact very clearly reflected by polls that show an overwhelming majority of Democrats and a simple majority of Americans support Universal Healthcare, which an overwhelming majority of congressional democrats oppose it.
We need electoral reform, something to fight Gerrymandering, something to fight private money, something to fight social media manufactured engagement, and if we’re really lucky some ranked choice voting.
Fuck the bothsiderism. One party is openly supporting an insurrection, lying about who won the election and in some cases supporting blood libel conspiracy nonsense. The problem isn’t both parties not representing their voters, it’s that the GOP does represent their voter base and their voter base doesn’t represent reality.
I can certainly acknowledge problems with Democrats, but none of this crap where we do so to avoid admitting that Republicans have turned against basic democracy.
All of this. Republicans constructed a fantasy world that looks like a bizarro mashup of The DaVinci Code and The West Wing, stoked its flames, and rode that high until it came crashing down around them. They’ve lost control of the monster they created, and now they find themselves the object of its rage.
Now they’re disingenuously pointing out how “corrupt and evil” Democrats are, whining that “both sides are the problem and need unity” (by which they mean “Democrats are being divisive by not enacting 100% of our agenda”), or diving headfirst down the cuckoo for cocoa puffs rabbit hole.
How do these people come back to reality? I think it needs to be treated like a cult deprogramming. They’ve bought into this fantasy world where they can feel smart and clever by “reading between the lines” and “figuring out what’s really going on”, even if it’s just a bunch of made-up bullshit, because it gives them a feeling of power over their otherwise unremarkable lives. I think a good portion of them might come out of it if they’re given an out that lets them save face.
For now. We ignored the Bundies, and it just emboldened further militants. Time will tell if arresting the insurgents after the fact will send a clear enough message that breaking into the capital to murder elected representatives is, in fact, a crime, and will actually result in real consequences.
The “The Waco district court should declare that Trump’s cabinets are the real stewards of the country because Gondor and Aragorn and HAVA misreadings, and also that nobody is allowed to fire us for trying to overthrow the government we were totes peaceful!” lawsuit isn’t terribly encouraging in that respect.
You’re assuming the people who did it and the people who would see it as a trial run are operating on the same understanding of reality as the rest of us, which is a really bad assumption to make. They don’t see the attempted coup as an illegal action that is both terrorist and treasonous; they see it as the just actions of patriots who were liberating their country from an unlawful government.
Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take a lot of work and time to walk back the rhetoric of the right to the (admittedly still pretty bad) levels of pre-2015.
But part of the reason that they are able to maintain this delusion is because their actions aren’t treated as the crimes that they are.
No consequences for threatening cops with snipers.
No consequences for surrounding state legislatures with an armed mob.
No consequences for repeatedly talking about how democratic politicians should be killed.
Why should they think they’re doing anything wrong? The rest of the world doesn’t seem to treat it that way, outside of a few outraged words from those who are clearly blind to this supposed satanic conspiracy that they’re railing against.
I understand why we couldn’t round them all up during the insurrection, as Trump’s sabotage left the police hopelessly outnumbered – but with weeks of delay between their very public actions, and significantly less public arrests, I’m not certain that it will be as much of a deterrence as we need, considering how far things have gone.
The FBI is already considering not charging them because that would “flood the courts”, which amazingly never happens with black protesters who DON’T commit insurrection. Does anyone got an estimate of how many off-duty FBI officers were part of the mob yet, or are we still waiting on the Vegas odds?
Betting pool time: Do you think the next insurrection is going to wait till next election in 4 years, or is it going to happen much sooner?
Haven’t seen any reports of FBI in the mob. Plenty of cops and ex-military.
It’s a different dynamic to standard protest arrests in a lot of ways. Those are usually state, not FBI. They’re also usually swept up during the event and mostly given minor charges or just released.
I’d expect less bulk charges from the FBI, but hopefully more serious charges for some cases. We’ve already seen conspiracy charges for one of the Oathkeeper groups.
The reason Congress is still working to convict Trump of insurrection, despite him already being out of office. A convicted President can’t hold ANY federal office ever again.
I’m told it needs an additional vote BEYOND that of the impeachment, and, honestly, I odn’t have muhc hope on even the impeachment getting through, what with it needing all Dems and seventeen Reps. I mean, Romeny is going to vote yay, but nabbing the other sixteen…
I believe this is correct. The Senate votes on several measures separately in an impeachment, proceeding to the next only if one passes:
– Do we take the matter up for trial? (They voted “No” last time)
– Is the President guilty of the crimes for which they’re accused? (Clinton was found guilty here)
– Should the President be removed from office? (They voted ‘No’ on Clinton here)
– Should the President be barred from holding public office in the future? (Would prevent Trump from running in ’24 if they vote ‘Yes’)
Not quite correct.
The House votes to impeach. Once that happens, the Senate has to take it up for trial – though, as in Trump’s first impeachment trial they can set the rules to shorten it and keep evidence out.
There is a vote to convict, which requires a 2/3rds majority. Neither Clinton nor Trump were convicted.
Theoretically the vote to remove could be taken separately, but there’s a precedent from way back in the 1800s for treating the vote to convict as sufficient for removal.
The vote to bar from future office is separate, but it’s a simple majority vote that’s only taken if the 2/3rds vote to convict succeeds. It’s vanishingly unlikely that wouldn’t pass if the vote to convict does.
The hard part is getting the Republican votes necessary for conviction. Many will openly support him. Others will use the “he’s already out of office” excuse. OTOH, some might not like the idea of him running in 2024 and continuing to overshadow the party.
I see your point, and I want to be clear that I’m not at all advocating for not arresting them. I’d like these people to have the book thrown at them and to receive the maximum sentences possible, even though that’s already not happening. What I’m saying is that they’re so far round the bend I don’t think the arrests and convictions will do anything to bring them back. The people who were part of the Capitol coup are their Boston Tea Party. The people arrested are their Boston Massacre. It’ll take a lot of reeducation and deprogramming to bring them back to reality, and I don’t think they’re willing to let that happen.
Sometimes the point of imprisonment is to keep some bad apples from spoiling the barrel. Put away the most ardent extremists and that will such at least some wind out of their sails. Also it would be good to see some consequence for murderous “hyperbole.”
The arrests (and the public backlash) seemed to have done a good job of deterrence to the planned follow ups at state capitals and at the inauguration. Though the troop presence may have played a role for the inauguration as well.
They also tried to change the narrative to “it was really antifa!” Seems pretty clear they know what’s up.
The voting public has the collective memory of an amnesiac goldfish. Republicans are already trying to flip-flop into deficit hawks and trying to pin their crimes on “An-tee-fa”, their imaginary boogeyman organization of radicalized snowflakes. It won’t be long before they try to steer all but the most diehard conspiracy theorists away from the red hat cult.
The sad thing is, it’s probably going to work on everyone to the right of Mitt Romney.
“Computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973, but the average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever!”
– Richard Nixon’s head, Futurama
Maybe. Honestly, I hope they can steer the base away from the cult. Right now, it looks more like the cult has taken over the party and those catering to it are winning the internal struggle.
HOLY SHIT, I thought Jane was hyperbolising to mock some stupid lawsuit or another, but you made me google it and the fuckers REALLY WENT WITH “GONDOR HAS NO KING” AS A LEGAL ARGUMENT!
I’m replying late enough that I don’t expect many to see this, but for anyone else who wants to stare in amazement and horror at a truly delusional lawsuit, here’s a long twitter thread breaking it down and mocking every outlandish element: https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1352623589493768192
“Gondor has no king” is probably the most bizarre element, but it’s far from the only one.
At this point satire is dead and hyperbole is just sitting in the corner whimpering. Nobody would believe it if you made it up, but it’s real, so we’re stuck with it.
Yeah, I think today’s comic is okay (so far…), but having God-loving Becky “busting into” a room that she’d been kicked out of on January 6th of all days was perhaps a wee bit ironic.
And in retrospect, the January 20th strip was appropriate for the inauguration, no matter who won: from Walky’s point of view, Booster was either the Best (a great new roommate, i.e. Biden) or the Worst (same as the old roommate, i.e. Trump).
I have objections to any analysis which characterizes Biden as ‘great’ or ‘best’, rather than as the political equivalent to sawing off an infected limb
An infected limb was once useful. Trump never was.
I prefer to think of Biden as the mediocre neoliberal bullshit artist we’re all used to—awful, but less aggressively so than the last four years, and at least somewhat responsive to grassroots action.
Honestly, though he wasn’t my original choice, I think he might be what we need now. His experience as VP will be invaluable, given the complete lack of transition help – sabotage rather, and the immediate crises we face.
And given the narrow control over Congress, the most progressive President possible still wouldn’t be able to get sweeping legislative changes passed.
I think the strategy here is to bring a sense of normalcy and an amiable persona back to the executive branch (and the federal government as a whole in international affairs), while letting a more independent DOJ (and its associated alphabet soup agencies) off its chain to do the dirty work that needs to be done.
Biden wasn’t my first choice either, but his decades of experience (and 8 years as VP) will be invaluable for sweeping up the debris and patching the damage the previous administration left in its wake. You have to stop the bleeding before the wound can heal, then you can worry about the scar.
Yep. Aaaaall this. He knows he’s spending the next four years shoveling shit from the last guy, and he is ready for it. Keep pushing Congress, keep pushing for accountability, start fighting the next wave of voter suppression efforts now, but for now we’ve got a little breathing room to do it all and that’s huge.
And meanwhile, they’re going to demand he bend over backwards in the name of unity while not even acknowledging he won the election.
Or currently in the Senate, threatening a filibuster of the organizing resolution to keep control of committees and prevent anything from getting done. It’s going to be all obstruction, all the time and all of it blamed on Democrats.
Who will then be blamed by voters in 2022 for not getting anything done.
Honestly, I favored Warren in the primaries, but… That was back when it looked like we would get several more Senate seats so we’d have some wiggle room on votes, that Generic Dem would have a stronger advantage than it did in the general election, and that the government would have the time to do anything more than try to fix the pandemic.
Now, I think that Biden was probably the only one who could have won the election, and that it will be a hard enough job just trying to get congress functional enough to deal with an ongoing crisis.
I agree with your take. Biden may not have been the candidate we wanted, but if his first week is anything to go by, he’s shaping up to be the President we need right now.
Further to the alt-text, should there be a comma after, “since”? I found it hard to read the cadence since, “since that,” reads differently than, “since, that.” This is maybe since, “that,” might follow, “since.” Or perhaps since the reference to October had me expecting, “since then,” that I subconciously saw, “then,” instead of, “that,” so then, “that,” was associated with, “since,” instead of, “make.” So, I think that since, “since, that make,” makes more sense, since, “make,” is on a new line from, “that,” that perhaps, even if not strictly necessary, it would make sense to put a common after, “since.” Does that make sense?
The “lockdown” has meant I am almost never alone and the 0.01% of the time I am alone in the apartment, it’s only for maybe 15 minutes at a time at most.
Yeah, who’s leaving lockdown? Maybe NZ, those lucky bastards. In the US at least, even if you’ve got your vaccine, lockdown (where it’s still a thing) is still the law, and it’s still mandated that you wear a mask and maintain social distance. They won’t be lifting that until a significant percentage of the population is vaccinated, and that might be a while.
With bad: US Election Just…Just the shit show it was
With good: We got a vaccine for Covid in the works trying to be distrubuted and Trump ain’t in office.
The real question is, where does it end? Trump’s gone, for now… but for some reason I have the last page of the book Brundibar running through my head.
Nothing ever turns out neatly
Bullies don’t give up completely…
Though I’m gone, I don’t go far
I’ll be back.
Love,
Brundibar.
(There’s a sad backstory to the opera on which the book is based. Let’s just say it’s obvious Brundibar is Hitler and leave it at that.)
See Joyce? You are already more mature by accepting your fate with your glasses. At this rate you’ll be comfortable with things like vibrators and wieners in no time at all.*
*”No time at all may actually take years, don’t @ me over it, go to Willis.
When in the last few centuries has Russia not been fscked? It’s an awesome country with amazing people, but the ability for the power-mad to gain total control of the state is ridiculous.
Under Alexander the First, maybe? He instituted limited social reforms (which didn’t backfire nearly as badly as his nephews more extensive, but badly mismanaged, reforms), and significant educational reforms, and the country was in broadly good shape at the time… But, well, there was the whole Napoleonic Wars business. And rising tensions throughout Europe lead to him pulling back on the whole reform idea.
Otherwise, I guess Catherine the Great? While the condition of the serfs generally declined in this period due to increasing economic demands, she made notable improvements to public health, and her political and economic reforms greatly improved the condition of the country as a whole; without them, the country probably would have fallen to pieces as the country fell increasingly behind. Her promotion of the arts helped establish Russian culture on a broader scale, and her promotion of education, while limited in scope, at least established a model for future use.
That said, I’d say that Russia’s issue has generally been the power of nobility (and later oligarchs), rather than an issue of total control; the largest abuses were always by lower nobles rather than the royalty, and Russian monarchs who hoped to curtail these practices generally found themselves constrained by what was actually practical to enforce. This was a self-reinforcing cycle, as well; since the lower classes of Russia were rarely able to improve their position, they were never able to establish an alternative form of value to establish themselves as a potential base of support (such as how many merchants were able to use their position to gradually displace the nobility in other countries), and when they turned to violence because of their terrible conditions, this lack of value meant that they were seen only as something to put down. It would have taken a truly heroic effort to improve their lot to the point where a monarch could rely on them over the nobility – even more so if you wanted to avoid a violent revolution in the process, which is something no ruler would wish to invite.
I mean, not to say that the Tsars were particularly great or even sympathetic people – they were often real pieces of work themselves. But whenever something particularly cruel, wasteful, or just plain stupid happened, it was usually at a lower level – at the hands of those who saw the serfs daily, far away from the eyes of anyone who would call them out on it.
Seeing Sarah happy is genuinely moving. She’s one of my favorite characters in this comic, and her face in panel 4 is like looking at someone who has spent years in a cave finally finding a way out.
I’m really loving Joyce’s new look. I just wish I knew why, precisely, because each time I think I have the answer, I keep realizing that was something she had pre-glasses that just synergizes well with… Something about her new look.
You know, I think that I’ve finally worked out what is happening here. Joyce has been squinting so long to have some semblance of distance vision that not having to do so and suddenly having much clearer vision is giving her a mild headache. She’ll get over it for a while but expect her to be grumpy for a few days!
Actually, why is Sarah like this? I mean, we know what Joyce is going through, buy what happened to Sarah that made her decide actually, everything’s all right, really? When she detached herself from the “Joyce should wear glasses” debate, she was her usual self, so what happened to her during the appointment?
I should probably have been wondering this sooner, but honestly, it took this long before it came across as a genuine thing and not a way of winding up Joyce.
Proof that Joyce is capable of being genuinely grumpy – and crucially, over something that Sarah would not be belittling her extreme trauma by not taking seriously or otherwise not immediately offering vital support for – definitely checks several boxes for Sarah:
– Sarah has been relentlessly mocked, belittled, and ultimately ostracized from 99% of her peers since she’s been in school, for the mere crime of acting like an adult and taking life a little seriously. Now, all of a sudden, for literally any reason, someone else has made her not the de facto “grumpy one.” That must be a nice, funny little feeling in and of itself; the fact that she’s being upstaged by Joyce of all people is objectively hilarious, from her perspective.
– From Sarah’s perspective, you couldn’t really fault her from sometimes getting the impression that Joyce is either incapable of dropping her cherry demeanor, or she’s just so good at performing that traditional aspect of the feminine gender – one which Sarah’s career path explicitly puts her at odds with, and naturally forces her to discard parts of to move forward and succeed – that Sarah can easily feel deficient for not living up to Joyce’s cheeriness, which is fundamentally considered a virtue of Joyce’s, and a failing of Sarah’s; Joyce being in a sustained state of relentless grumpiness – and, once again, over something that it would not be extremely cruel to poke some fun at, or take a little lightly, unlike many of the things that might otherwise have put Joyce in a bad mood in the past year or so – is inherently validating to Sarah’s character, whether you look at it through a feminist lens or just a general one. “Oh, okay,” Sarah may think, “she is a real, complete person like me who can feel these things; and, I’m not a failure in relation to her abnormal perfection in maintaining the ‘correct’ emotional state and communication style like I sometimes feel that I am.”
– Like, sometimes Sarah does not feel good, and yet she has to deal with that pressure from Joyce to feel good all the time; even if Joyce goes out of her way to try not to actually make Sarah feel like any specific emotional performance is expected for her, or actually compulsory, when you’re that outwardly cheery and nice all the time, I think most people implicitly feel that reciprocity is expected. The new revelation that Joyce can sometimes not be subsumed by compulsory cheeriness due to normal life stresses, as opposed to her many recent, extreme instances of trauma, has probably resulted in a literal, if temporary, reduction in Sarah’s daily stress level. Like, I’m not necessarily saying she does, but imagine one of the times in your life you were suffering from depression, and Joyce was your roommate and she woke you up at sun-up every single day by hovering six inches above your face and cheerfully yelled you awake? Joyce’s demeanor is genuinely difficult to keep up with for some people, and the fact that they both love and support each other so much despite these genuine personal incompatibilities is a testament to how strong their friendship is. But, Joyce is definitely exhausting to be around, in general – definitely more do for Sarah – and right now? For once, she’s not being exhausting.
– Joyce is being Goddamned ridiculous right now, and it’s objectively funny, and how the hell can Sarah not be amused? Plus, from her perspective, I imagine the faster she snaps Joyce out of this, the better it will be for Joyce, because right now Joyce is beating herself up internally over this for a thousand reasons that don’t matter, but she’s refusing to unpack any of them and deal with them herself partly because she’s avoidant, and partially because, well, she has like zero practical experience on how to successfully do that in life without being guided by an authority figure.
I’m from the northeastern U.S., and I’ve heard P.O.’d plenty. It seems to be the accepted way to abbreviate “pissed off.” Language is weird; don’t think too hard about it
Loading ...
panel 3 Joyce is me
panel 4 Sarah is who I want to be
Panel 4 Sarah’s expression is like that of someone who just discovered ice cream and/or cake for the first time. “It’s.. so.. beautiful..”
She’s just realized that you can put ice cream on top of your cake.
There’s no turning back now.
I had a similar expression upon seeing a boba milk tea cake roll at a bakery recently, it’s a fair face to make when seeing a new treat~
Definitely Panel 1 Joyce here. Particularly right now.
I’m pretty sure I’m panels 1, 2 and 3 Joyce in the morning. Fuck mornings.
Panel 1 Joyce: Me before coffee
Panel 4 Sarah: Me after coffee
Sarah opens the door and shouts into the hall.
“We got a new one! She said piss!”
A voice echoes back:
“Alright, I got Bingo!”
This made me laugh!!
Mandy’s the winner, isn’t she?
Bravo.
That’s great!
Now [because my brain is prone to tangents] you’re making me feel like I missed out, not making a Game of Thrones deadpool bingo before the show was over. :/
Well, given how my roommates have been steadily escalating their cursing during our regular Super Smash Bros games, I could probably still manage the curse word bingo over there, though.. hmm..
Too funny! I could see that happening. Hey, is it too late to get in on a new game?
This is my headcanon now.
congratulations to the winner, is the prize a pool of nachitos?
Pissy Joyce is best Joyce.
love this for her. both. yes.
I love these faces! Lookit that face! And that one!
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!
We live in a golden age of Joyce faces.
Truly, this storyline has the best faces. A whole pile of smiling sarah and adorably grumpy joyce.
With their penises.
Is piss really a curse? That’s pretty tame to me.
It references bodily waste, so yeah.
Snot is probably like, kindergarten level curse.
It was one of the words in the George Carlin bit
You can say “piss” on TV now, but only referring to anger, not urine.
But then if you say “urine” in third grade instead of “pee,” everybody stares at you. “What kind of terminology is her parents teaching her at home?!” Scientific terms, yes. Yes, this happened to me.
I tend to go by the rule of thumb “Would I have gotten detention for saying this in class during middle school?”.
I think the middle school part is important, by high school books with swears are required out loud reading, and in elementary you’d get in trouble for “poop” or “wiener”.
You’d get in trouble for saying “poop” in elementary school? That seems way too harsh. It’s a bodily function. What else are you supposed to call it? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “poop” “pee” and “piss” on children’s shows which is kind of the standard I use.
[I gotta go] “number 1” and “number 2”, going off the schools I was familiar with. Conservative regions just get stupidly weird when it comes to anything body related, and elementary schools [or, at least, the ones I was familiar with] had a bad habit of being overly controlling, even when it didn’t make any sense to be such. Rather, seemed to be much more the focus of most elementary through high school campuses I went to.. :S
Mind, that was decades back, though; From what I can see, TV shows and physical schools have both accepted such basic terms since then, so Doctor_Who’s framework is probably not as reliable for younger users as it is for older ones.
The troublesome, bullying-like social dynamic aspect of certain school staff probably hasn’t changed any, though. x_x;
I can 100% confirm that David would not have said “pissy” in middle school. He wouldn’t even write out the word “sucks” in high school. I was there, and I can tell you this aspect of Joyce is very autobiographical.
….You went to middle school with Willis?!
Somebody did, why wouldn’t they read the comics he makes?
DID somebody, though? I mean, we all know Willis sent Terminator-styled Transformers back in time to eradicate his shameful past, so I thought all past contacts of Willis had been eradicated off-screen. I mean, that’s canon, at least according to Dammit, Willis!: The Complete & Completely True Memoirs.
Well, said Memoirs also claim Soggies Will Rule, so.. take it with a pinch of
saltsugar, I guess.Sorry, I forgot to check the comments again. Yes, I went to middle school with David (I find it weird to just call him Willis). I’ve been reading about Ultra Car and the gang since I was was 11, and I’m 41 now.
Joyce avoiding even the tamest of cussin’ sounds about right to me.
More a vulgarity than a curse…
Agreed.
Depends on who hears it, context, and location. By and large, I think it’s fallen out of the realm of being a proper cuss word, with only older or “proper” people getting offended by it.
Best sisters ever.
I’m still hoping/waiting for Joyce to discover she has a sister she didn’t know about.
I really believe that will happen this semester. There’s lots of subtle hints like the divorce in the background shaking things up for the Browns, to Joyce reflecting on change in her life so much, to Booster an nonbinary character being introduced so Joyce has some experience with concepts like proper pronouns and dead names, even her wearing glasses now which makes her look exactly like Joyceline with longer hair. It will happen this semester. It’s just a matter of when.
The good news is that sometime “this semester” will happen sometime before the decade is out.
Well, alt-text, there’s bad news and good news. It certainly could have been worse!
Lol. Truth.
On the one hand, there was a violent attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol.
But on the other hand, it didn’t work!
Not yet. Maybe this was the trial run.
Yuuup. In the back of my mind I can’t help but worry that the last four years were just a series of probing attacks, and the next megalomaniacal tinpot dictator won’t be such a predictable buffoon. We’re fucked if someone with Reagan’s persona, Trump’s penchant for frenzy-whipping, and Kushner’s agenda gets traction.
The fragility of our system of government was laid bare before us. We need to strengthen the system of safeguards and checks-and-balances against sabotage from within. (Just don’t ask me exactly how; anyone who has that answer should already be part of the new administration.)
Word.
IMO the problem at it’s root isn’t so much that our checks and balanced need to be strengthened (they do).
It’s that our government, specifically our legislature, no longer represents the people. This is a reality felt by left, center, and right. And in no small part the insurrection was a response to decades of failure on the part of Congress to do anything good for the working class.
We have to avoid starting an argument about which party’s congressmembers might be more responsible many conservatives are well aware of the failures of their elected representatives, it’s part of why so many of them are willing to dispense with democracy.
The problem isn’t IMO one of party but one of governmental structure. Were congressmembers beholden to act on behalf of their voters to stay in office republican lawmakers would surely fall in line and support the needs of their voters. But the reality is that neither party’s representatives need to do much of anything at all to get reelected. A fact very clearly reflected by polls that show an overwhelming majority of Democrats and a simple majority of Americans support Universal Healthcare, which an overwhelming majority of congressional democrats oppose it.
We need electoral reform, something to fight Gerrymandering, something to fight private money, something to fight social media manufactured engagement, and if we’re really lucky some ranked choice voting.
Fuck the bothsiderism. One party is openly supporting an insurrection, lying about who won the election and in some cases supporting blood libel conspiracy nonsense. The problem isn’t both parties not representing their voters, it’s that the GOP does represent their voter base and their voter base doesn’t represent reality.
I can certainly acknowledge problems with Democrats, but none of this crap where we do so to avoid admitting that Republicans have turned against basic democracy.
All of this. Republicans constructed a fantasy world that looks like a bizarro mashup of The DaVinci Code and The West Wing, stoked its flames, and rode that high until it came crashing down around them. They’ve lost control of the monster they created, and now they find themselves the object of its rage.
Now they’re disingenuously pointing out how “corrupt and evil” Democrats are, whining that “both sides are the problem and need unity” (by which they mean “Democrats are being divisive by not enacting 100% of our agenda”), or diving headfirst down the cuckoo for cocoa puffs rabbit hole.
How do these people come back to reality? I think it needs to be treated like a cult deprogramming. They’ve bought into this fantasy world where they can feel smart and clever by “reading between the lines” and “figuring out what’s really going on”, even if it’s just a bunch of made-up bullshit, because it gives them a feeling of power over their otherwise unremarkable lives. I think a good portion of them might come out of it if they’re given an out that lets them save face.
For now. We ignored the Bundies, and it just emboldened further militants. Time will tell if arresting the insurgents after the fact will send a clear enough message that breaking into the capital to murder elected representatives is, in fact, a crime, and will actually result in real consequences.
The “The Waco district court should declare that Trump’s cabinets are the real stewards of the country because Gondor and Aragorn and HAVA misreadings, and also that nobody is allowed to fire us for trying to overthrow the government we were totes peaceful!” lawsuit isn’t terribly encouraging in that respect.
You’re assuming the people who did it and the people who would see it as a trial run are operating on the same understanding of reality as the rest of us, which is a really bad assumption to make. They don’t see the attempted coup as an illegal action that is both terrorist and treasonous; they see it as the just actions of patriots who were liberating their country from an unlawful government.
Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take a lot of work and time to walk back the rhetoric of the right to the (admittedly still pretty bad) levels of pre-2015.
But part of the reason that they are able to maintain this delusion is because their actions aren’t treated as the crimes that they are.
No consequences for threatening cops with snipers.
No consequences for surrounding state legislatures with an armed mob.
No consequences for repeatedly talking about how democratic politicians should be killed.
Why should they think they’re doing anything wrong? The rest of the world doesn’t seem to treat it that way, outside of a few outraged words from those who are clearly blind to this supposed satanic conspiracy that they’re railing against.
I understand why we couldn’t round them all up during the insurrection, as Trump’s sabotage left the police hopelessly outnumbered – but with weeks of delay between their very public actions, and significantly less public arrests, I’m not certain that it will be as much of a deterrence as we need, considering how far things have gone.
The FBI is already considering not charging them because that would “flood the courts”, which amazingly never happens with black protesters who DON’T commit insurrection. Does anyone got an estimate of how many off-duty FBI officers were part of the mob yet, or are we still waiting on the Vegas odds?
Betting pool time: Do you think the next insurrection is going to wait till next election in 4 years, or is it going to happen much sooner?
Haven’t seen any reports of FBI in the mob. Plenty of cops and ex-military.
It’s a different dynamic to standard protest arrests in a lot of ways. Those are usually state, not FBI. They’re also usually swept up during the event and mostly given minor charges or just released.
I’d expect less bulk charges from the FBI, but hopefully more serious charges for some cases. We’ve already seen conspiracy charges for one of the Oathkeeper groups.
Also, just wait for Trump’s rerun in 2024, that’s going to be great *starts stckpiling alcohol*.
The reason Congress is still working to convict Trump of insurrection, despite him already being out of office. A convicted President can’t hold ANY federal office ever again.
I’m told it needs an additional vote BEYOND that of the impeachment, and, honestly, I odn’t have muhc hope on even the impeachment getting through, what with it needing all Dems and seventeen Reps. I mean, Romeny is going to vote yay, but nabbing the other sixteen…
I believe this is correct. The Senate votes on several measures separately in an impeachment, proceeding to the next only if one passes:
– Do we take the matter up for trial? (They voted “No” last time)
– Is the President guilty of the crimes for which they’re accused? (Clinton was found guilty here)
– Should the President be removed from office? (They voted ‘No’ on Clinton here)
– Should the President be barred from holding public office in the future? (Would prevent Trump from running in ’24 if they vote ‘Yes’)
Not quite correct.
The House votes to impeach. Once that happens, the Senate has to take it up for trial – though, as in Trump’s first impeachment trial they can set the rules to shorten it and keep evidence out.
There is a vote to convict, which requires a 2/3rds majority. Neither Clinton nor Trump were convicted.
Theoretically the vote to remove could be taken separately, but there’s a precedent from way back in the 1800s for treating the vote to convict as sufficient for removal.
The vote to bar from future office is separate, but it’s a simple majority vote that’s only taken if the 2/3rds vote to convict succeeds. It’s vanishingly unlikely that wouldn’t pass if the vote to convict does.
The hard part is getting the Republican votes necessary for conviction. Many will openly support him. Others will use the “he’s already out of office” excuse. OTOH, some might not like the idea of him running in 2024 and continuing to overshadow the party.
I see your point, and I want to be clear that I’m not at all advocating for not arresting them. I’d like these people to have the book thrown at them and to receive the maximum sentences possible, even though that’s already not happening. What I’m saying is that they’re so far round the bend I don’t think the arrests and convictions will do anything to bring them back. The people who were part of the Capitol coup are their Boston Tea Party. The people arrested are their Boston Massacre. It’ll take a lot of reeducation and deprogramming to bring them back to reality, and I don’t think they’re willing to let that happen.
On a lighter note, it is so weird that I get Wally on my phone and Dorothy on the computer.
You probably have your email address capitalized a different way on each device. (That’s how you play Gravatar Roulette.)
Sometimes the point of imprisonment is to keep some bad apples from spoiling the barrel. Put away the most ardent extremists and that will such at least some wind out of their sails. Also it would be good to see some consequence for murderous “hyperbole.”
The arrests (and the public backlash) seemed to have done a good job of deterrence to the planned follow ups at state capitals and at the inauguration. Though the troop presence may have played a role for the inauguration as well.
They also tried to change the narrative to “it was really antifa!” Seems pretty clear they know what’s up.
The voting public has the collective memory of an amnesiac goldfish. Republicans are already trying to flip-flop into deficit hawks and trying to pin their crimes on “An-tee-fa”, their imaginary boogeyman organization of radicalized snowflakes. It won’t be long before they try to steer all but the most diehard conspiracy theorists away from the red hat cult.
The sad thing is, it’s probably going to work on everyone to the right of Mitt Romney.
“Computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973, but the average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever!”
– Richard Nixon’s head, Futurama
Maybe. Honestly, I hope they can steer the base away from the cult. Right now, it looks more like the cult has taken over the party and those catering to it are winning the internal struggle.
Blaming antifa is just part of that.
I hope you’re right, but the past 4 years have taught me that being optimistic about the right is a losing bet more often than not.
The “Gondor has no king” lawsuit was awesome.
HOLY SHIT, I thought Jane was hyperbolising to mock some stupid lawsuit or another, but you made me google it and the fuckers REALLY WENT WITH “GONDOR HAS NO KING” AS A LEGAL ARGUMENT!
I’m replying late enough that I don’t expect many to see this, but for anyone else who wants to stare in amazement and horror at a truly delusional lawsuit, here’s a long twitter thread breaking it down and mocking every outlandish element: https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1352623589493768192
“Gondor has no king” is probably the most bizarre element, but it’s far from the only one.
Thanks. That’s where I first saw it, but I couldn’t find the thread again.
At this point satire is dead and hyperbole is just sitting in the corner whimpering. Nobody would believe it if you made it up, but it’s real, so we’re stuck with it.
Yeah, I think today’s comic is okay (so far…), but having God-loving Becky “busting into” a room that she’d been kicked out of on January 6th of all days was perhaps a wee bit ironic.
And in retrospect, the January 20th strip was appropriate for the inauguration, no matter who won: from Walky’s point of view, Booster was either the Best (a great new roommate, i.e. Biden) or the Worst (same as the old roommate, i.e. Trump).
I have objections to any analysis which characterizes Biden as ‘great’ or ‘best’, rather than as the political equivalent to sawing off an infected limb
I objection to that characterization.
An infected limb was once useful. Trump never was.
I prefer to think of Biden as the mediocre neoliberal bullshit artist we’re all used to—awful, but less aggressively so than the last four years, and at least somewhat responsive to grassroots action.
Honestly, though he wasn’t my original choice, I think he might be what we need now. His experience as VP will be invaluable, given the complete lack of transition help – sabotage rather, and the immediate crises we face.
And given the narrow control over Congress, the most progressive President possible still wouldn’t be able to get sweeping legislative changes passed.
I think the strategy here is to bring a sense of normalcy and an amiable persona back to the executive branch (and the federal government as a whole in international affairs), while letting a more independent DOJ (and its associated alphabet soup agencies) off its chain to do the dirty work that needs to be done.
Biden wasn’t my first choice either, but his decades of experience (and 8 years as VP) will be invaluable for sweeping up the debris and patching the damage the previous administration left in its wake. You have to stop the bleeding before the wound can heal, then you can worry about the scar.
Yep. Aaaaall this. He knows he’s spending the next four years shoveling shit from the last guy, and he is ready for it. Keep pushing Congress, keep pushing for accountability, start fighting the next wave of voter suppression efforts now, but for now we’ve got a little breathing room to do it all and that’s huge.
And meanwhile, they’re going to demand he bend over backwards in the name of unity while not even acknowledging he won the election.
Or currently in the Senate, threatening a filibuster of the organizing resolution to keep control of committees and prevent anything from getting done. It’s going to be all obstruction, all the time and all of it blamed on Democrats.
Who will then be blamed by voters in 2022 for not getting anything done.
♫ ♬ The circle of liiiife…. ♬ ♫
Honestly, I favored Warren in the primaries, but… That was back when it looked like we would get several more Senate seats so we’d have some wiggle room on votes, that Generic Dem would have a stronger advantage than it did in the general election, and that the government would have the time to do anything more than try to fix the pandemic.
Now, I think that Biden was probably the only one who could have won the election, and that it will be a hard enough job just trying to get congress functional enough to deal with an ongoing crisis.
I agree with your take. Biden may not have been the candidate we wanted, but if his first week is anything to go by, he’s shaping up to be the President we need right now.
*Sigh* I’m just using Walky’s words here, Thag.
The bad news is that we’re still going to hell in a handbrake. The good news is that we’ve started going there at a slower pace.
Particularly relevant to today’s strip, we still haven’t seen evidence of the alleged Trump piss tape, which I for one count as a win.
Further to the alt-text, should there be a comma after, “since”? I found it hard to read the cadence since, “since that,” reads differently than, “since, that.” This is maybe since, “that,” might follow, “since.” Or perhaps since the reference to October had me expecting, “since then,” that I subconciously saw, “then,” instead of, “that,” so then, “that,” was associated with, “since,” instead of, “make.” So, I think that since, “since, that make,” makes more sense, since, “make,” is on a new line from, “that,” that perhaps, even if not strictly necessary, it would make sense to put a common after, “since.” Does that make sense?
*comma, not common. /sigh/, internet rules on grammar/speeling/punctuation posts are inescapable. Almost like physical constants and laws.
I WAS JUST GONNA SAY AND ALL
For me at least, the good news is Trump is gone. The bad news is we replaced him with Biden.
*plays “Red Rubber Ball” on the hacked Muzak*
Joyce is those of us still in lockdown.
Sarah is those of us just leaving lockdown.
Reverse that if you’re an introvert tho.
Speaking as a reclusive shut-in, lockdown is still miserable
The “lockdown” has meant I am almost never alone and the 0.01% of the time I am alone in the apartment, it’s only for maybe 15 minutes at a time at most.
YOu guys get to leave lockdown!?
Joyce is those of us with no lockdown, despite there still being a desperate need for one.
Yeah, who’s leaving lockdown? Maybe NZ, those lucky bastards. In the US at least, even if you’ve got your vaccine, lockdown (where it’s still a thing) is still the law, and it’s still mandated that you wear a mask and maintain social distance. They won’t be lifting that until a significant percentage of the population is vaccinated, and that might be a while.
Seriously, what lockdown? Where in the US? Masks and we try to social distance, some kinds of gatherings and a few businesses are shut down.
That’s not a “lockdown”.
Yeah, I give Joyce like five minutes
The alt text made me laugh. I mean, where to start?
With bad: US Election Just…Just the shit show it was
With good: We got a vaccine for Covid in the works trying to be distrubuted and Trump ain’t in office.
The real question is, where does it end? Trump’s gone, for now… but for some reason I have the last page of the book Brundibar running through my head.
Nothing ever turns out neatly
Bullies don’t give up completely…
Though I’m gone, I don’t go far
I’ll be back.
Love,
Brundibar.
(There’s a sad backstory to the opera on which the book is based. Let’s just say it’s obvious Brundibar is Hitler and leave it at that.)
See Joyce? You are already more mature by accepting your fate with your glasses. At this rate you’ll be comfortable with things like vibrators and wieners in no time at all.*
*”No time at all may actually take years, don’t @ me over it, go to Willis.
Well since October…
Let’s just say it’s been an…
*interesting*
few months.
Things are looking okay for the U.S. now.
but Russia looks like it’s next for fucked-up o’clock.
When in the last few centuries has Russia not been fscked? It’s an awesome country with amazing people, but the ability for the power-mad to gain total control of the state is ridiculous.
Under Alexander the First, maybe? He instituted limited social reforms (which didn’t backfire nearly as badly as his nephews more extensive, but badly mismanaged, reforms), and significant educational reforms, and the country was in broadly good shape at the time… But, well, there was the whole Napoleonic Wars business. And rising tensions throughout Europe lead to him pulling back on the whole reform idea.
Otherwise, I guess Catherine the Great? While the condition of the serfs generally declined in this period due to increasing economic demands, she made notable improvements to public health, and her political and economic reforms greatly improved the condition of the country as a whole; without them, the country probably would have fallen to pieces as the country fell increasingly behind. Her promotion of the arts helped establish Russian culture on a broader scale, and her promotion of education, while limited in scope, at least established a model for future use.
That said, I’d say that Russia’s issue has generally been the power of nobility (and later oligarchs), rather than an issue of total control; the largest abuses were always by lower nobles rather than the royalty, and Russian monarchs who hoped to curtail these practices generally found themselves constrained by what was actually practical to enforce. This was a self-reinforcing cycle, as well; since the lower classes of Russia were rarely able to improve their position, they were never able to establish an alternative form of value to establish themselves as a potential base of support (such as how many merchants were able to use their position to gradually displace the nobility in other countries), and when they turned to violence because of their terrible conditions, this lack of value meant that they were seen only as something to put down. It would have taken a truly heroic effort to improve their lot to the point where a monarch could rely on them over the nobility – even more so if you wanted to avoid a violent revolution in the process, which is something no ruler would wish to invite.
I mean, not to say that the Tsars were particularly great or even sympathetic people – they were often real pieces of work themselves. But whenever something particularly cruel, wasteful, or just plain stupid happened, it was usually at a lower level – at the hands of those who saw the serfs daily, far away from the eyes of anyone who would call them out on it.
How dare you mock us with that sunshine comment, you should know the sun is no longer visible from earth.
Dear alt-text-writing October Willis: Oooooooh boy. You’re in for an interesting ride. Don’t think any of it relates to this strip, though.
Seeing Sarah happy is genuinely moving. She’s one of my favorite characters in this comic, and her face in panel 4 is like looking at someone who has spent years in a cave finally finding a way out.
Who’ll be the other bubbly person now? I don’t think Sarah can keep this up.
One is none, two is one.
*combines panels 2 and 3 for a variation of Ozon’s salute*
People have probably already said this on past comics but, I really like Joyce’s glasses. They’re a super nice color!
I’m really loving Joyce’s new look. I just wish I knew why, precisely, because each time I think I have the answer, I keep realizing that was something she had pre-glasses that just synergizes well with… Something about her new look.
It’s vexing to not be able to properly express myself.
(Hit post one line too soon)
Had Sarah presented this image to Jacob things may have gone differently
You know, I think that I’ve finally worked out what is happening here. Joyce has been squinting so long to have some semblance of distance vision that not having to do so and suddenly having much clearer vision is giving her a mild headache. She’ll get over it for a while but expect her to be grumpy for a few days!
THat and you get those when your eyes are adjusting to your glasses
I’m both weirded out and at the same time enjoying seeing Sarah smiling so much. Also still liking Joyce with glasses, even when she’s pissy.
Wtf is going on rn?!?
Grumbley Joyce and Smiley Sarah is giving me fuel.
Actually, why is Sarah like this? I mean, we know what Joyce is going through, buy what happened to Sarah that made her decide actually, everything’s all right, really? When she detached herself from the “Joyce should wear glasses” debate, she was her usual self, so what happened to her during the appointment?
I should probably have been wondering this sooner, but honestly, it took this long before it came across as a genuine thing and not a way of winding up Joyce.
Proof that Joyce is capable of being genuinely grumpy – and crucially, over something that Sarah would not be belittling her extreme trauma by not taking seriously or otherwise not immediately offering vital support for – definitely checks several boxes for Sarah:
– Sarah has been relentlessly mocked, belittled, and ultimately ostracized from 99% of her peers since she’s been in school, for the mere crime of acting like an adult and taking life a little seriously. Now, all of a sudden, for literally any reason, someone else has made her not the de facto “grumpy one.” That must be a nice, funny little feeling in and of itself; the fact that she’s being upstaged by Joyce of all people is objectively hilarious, from her perspective.
– From Sarah’s perspective, you couldn’t really fault her from sometimes getting the impression that Joyce is either incapable of dropping her cherry demeanor, or she’s just so good at performing that traditional aspect of the feminine gender – one which Sarah’s career path explicitly puts her at odds with, and naturally forces her to discard parts of to move forward and succeed – that Sarah can easily feel deficient for not living up to Joyce’s cheeriness, which is fundamentally considered a virtue of Joyce’s, and a failing of Sarah’s; Joyce being in a sustained state of relentless grumpiness – and, once again, over something that it would not be extremely cruel to poke some fun at, or take a little lightly, unlike many of the things that might otherwise have put Joyce in a bad mood in the past year or so – is inherently validating to Sarah’s character, whether you look at it through a feminist lens or just a general one. “Oh, okay,” Sarah may think, “she is a real, complete person like me who can feel these things; and, I’m not a failure in relation to her abnormal perfection in maintaining the ‘correct’ emotional state and communication style like I sometimes feel that I am.”
– Like, sometimes Sarah does not feel good, and yet she has to deal with that pressure from Joyce to feel good all the time; even if Joyce goes out of her way to try not to actually make Sarah feel like any specific emotional performance is expected for her, or actually compulsory, when you’re that outwardly cheery and nice all the time, I think most people implicitly feel that reciprocity is expected. The new revelation that Joyce can sometimes not be subsumed by compulsory cheeriness due to normal life stresses, as opposed to her many recent, extreme instances of trauma, has probably resulted in a literal, if temporary, reduction in Sarah’s daily stress level. Like, I’m not necessarily saying she does, but imagine one of the times in your life you were suffering from depression, and Joyce was your roommate and she woke you up at sun-up every single day by hovering six inches above your face and cheerfully yelled you awake? Joyce’s demeanor is genuinely difficult to keep up with for some people, and the fact that they both love and support each other so much despite these genuine personal incompatibilities is a testament to how strong their friendship is. But, Joyce is definitely exhausting to be around, in general – definitely more do for Sarah – and right now? For once, she’s not being exhausting.
– Joyce is being Goddamned ridiculous right now, and it’s objectively funny, and how the hell can Sarah not be amused? Plus, from her perspective, I imagine the faster she snaps Joyce out of this, the better it will be for Joyce, because right now Joyce is beating herself up internally over this for a thousand reasons that don’t matter, but she’s refusing to unpack any of them and deal with them herself partly because she’s avoidant, and partially because, well, she has like zero practical experience on how to successfully do that in life without being guided by an authority figure.
well said.
Pee-oh’ed?
Wouldn’t that make it “piss off’ed?”
Shouldn’t it be “Pee’ed-oh”, or even the more daring “Ticked off?”
LOL, Pee’ed.
I’m from the northeastern U.S., and I’ve heard P.O.’d plenty. It seems to be the accepted way to abbreviate “pissed off.” Language is weird; don’t think too hard about it
Panel 3 Joyce reminds me of Jeff Dunham’s Walter.
Moderately Happy Sarah is my new favorite.
She’s elbowed her way into my top three.
I wonder how long this Freaky Friday bit will last…
Now, if this dynamics could become stable forever… HAPPY Sarah is adorable ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡.
Joyce’s face in panel 3 will soon be available in a Gravatar store near you!
Thank you Dorothy Parker
Somewhere, Psalty sobs harder.
I love seeing happy Sarah. It can’t last, but it’s nice to have for now.
I’m frightened.