There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Mac Hall
Matt Boyd
The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
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Read it while thinking the slipshine on the side is Mike and Walky for extra awkward feelings. (somebodyhelpme I can’t see this as Sal and Jason anymore. It’s destroying me inside c_c)
A while ago I thought I was the only one. The pairing made so little sense, but i figured rule of sexy demands a little buttface on butthead butt bumping, so why not!
They don’t all have the same face! They have, like, seven or eight different faces. Willis made a Tumblr post with all of them once.
Granted, about half the female cast shares Standard Female Face #1 with Joyce.
Neither Dorothy nor Amber are among those, and don’t share the same face, either, which is one of the reasons I don’t really get the “clone” thing.
Dorothy shares her face with Mandy and Carla, and probably others, but I think Amber’s face is unique to her (and Amazi-Girl), which is part of the reason I think Danny’s an idiot.
There are a number of thing that could potentially be butt opening disease. Most literal probably be a fistula, where two organ that aren’t supposed to be connected form a connection, and usually one of them is the colon. So it’s a new opening in the butt to somewhere it shouldn’t go.
Slightly less horrible medically, though not really any less gross, a butt opening disease could also be an abscess. Been there done there, very painful for months on end. Of course, if the abscess isn’t treated, it can tunnel through and form the above-mentioned fistula (very lucky that didn’t happen!)
a psychological condition which compels you to spread the buttcheeks of other people. it can be managed with the proper medication and/or physical trauma
I remember a time when MTV would censor it as “ass****” where every other station would censor as “***hole”… I would always be like, how is “ass” okay but “hole” isn’t??
(Friend: I remember seeing goddamn censored as “***damn” and thinking, isn’t “damn” the swear word??)
((Friend’s friend: We’re just a few years away from “******fucker”))
MTV likely had a higher age rating so they had access to higher level swears. They’d leave in the ass because that’s the real swear so they sound edgier.
Damn isn’t a swear, Goddamn is. Just like Ass isn’t, but Asshole is. At least according to the FCC. And no, that doesn’t make sense, but since when has a massive govt bureaucracy forced to define obscenity in the face of constantly shifting social norms ever made sense?
A-s-s can refer to donkeys, where it is relatively innocuous (Roald Dahl used it freely in his children’s books, though it undoubtedly helps that the Britons spell the two homophones differently), but appending “hole” makes sure everyone know which one your talking about.
Also, some really conservative religious folks consider “The G word” a bigger offense than the d-word, especially since the Bible strictly forbade anyone from using the Lord’s name in vain. Or at all really: this is why we don’t know the vowels of YHWH.
Someone who is really determined to use the Lord’s name in vain could just enumerate all the ways to add vowels to YHWH and use them in succession. Even supposing a countable infinity of vowels and a countable infinity of ways to add them to YHWH, he would eventually offend the Lord after a finite number of tries.
There’s something truly messed up about a deity that gets offended when you manage to pronounce its name correctly. If it was getting the name wrong I could understand – Nyarlathotep must spend half of eternity correcting people.
I thought we don’t know the vowels of YHWH because that’s a translation from Hebrew – a language without any vowels in its alphabet. That’s the problem with really old writings – often, they’re scribed in some half-baked writing system.
Sorta. There were vowel markings, thought they were optional. But they were never written for YHWH, because that word was never said out loud. Instead they used the vowels for Adonai, the word you would say instead (It mean “Lord”)
Those vowels gave us Jehovah. The J was originally pronounced like a Y, and the V more like a W.
And this has been your informative post FROM THE FUTURE!
I remember a promo for 107.7 The End where they said on their radio station they could say, “That’s a big-ass hole”, but they couldn’t say “that’s a big assh***.”
I remember watching a series, can’t remember the name, where they’d censor just one sound, like making “fucker” into “f*cker”
I also recall one of my friends telling me about a series where they’d censor trademarked words and names in a funny way, turning “Pokémon” into “Poke***mon”, really just splitting the word in half and censoring the gap in between
Butt the point is exactly to Not Say the Word, it doesnt matter ifpeople know whats meant or not, hence euphemisms, like, “unmentionables”, “sleep together”, “vajayjay”/”cooter”/etc, “bongo”….
Actually, in response to Jen Aside’s friend’s friend’s prediction (all the way up the chain there), the censored form of “******fucker” has a significant precedent already. In fact, it helped overturn the F.C.C.’s old ban on broadcasting expletives over U.S. airwaves. You can read about it at the end of this article here.
I’m not sure they’re saying they just censored the “mother” part. It sounds as if they censored the whole word before the decision came in that “motherfucker” was OK.
(Context for my mind being blown = I had a book of such brainteasers when I was a kid and that’s where I got that from, excuse me for forgetting to mention that part, I’m in the fever/coughing up body parts section of the latest flu bug)
OVERANALYSIS MODE ACTIVATED. That answer is philosophically sound, but logically inconsistent with the information given in the brainteaser. If it takes an hour to dig a hole, then it follows that whatever has been dug before the full hour elapses is not a hole, else it would not take an hour to dig a hole. Therefore, this brainteaser must necessarily admit fractions of holes, and the true answer is the intuitive one: half an hour.
Maybe the digging implement is so heavy that it takes an hour to actually lift a single scoop of material out of the ground! (Or maybe the diggers are just lazy buttopenings who voluntarily work at that pace.)
Or it takes an hour to plant, arm, and detonate a stick of dynamite to create each hole, because the morons never heard of wiring multiple explosives to a single detonator and can’t multi-task.
Also, because she’s using it to refer to herself, which means she’s not being an asshole to other people. Like, it’s not healthy to abuse yourself, but at least it’s unhealthy to yourself.
I don’t know, a good christian girl like Billie partaking in the consumption of alcohol? Next thing you’ll be saying she should have per-marital lesbian hankey pankey with authority figures!
If you’ve mistakenly taken Placebo instead of Nocebo, or Nocebo instead of Placebo, don’t take the respective other one to make them cancel out. Even though their effects are opposite when taken in isolation, the combined effect can often be something yet different and hard to predict.
Instead, rely on the newly discovered Placebo blockers, which will actually neutralize the effect of either and are thus much saver.
If she stopped drinking it’d be like taking self-esteem pills. Alcohol is a depressant, it doesn’t negative things to your body and mind no matter how much people argue how great it is.
About the only thing booze is good for is lowering inhibitions. That can produce behavior that looks like self-confidence for some people, at least for a while. Poor imitation to the real thing, though.
Yeah, it’s probably survivable at this point without medical intervention, but the point is that she’s going to be feeling like shit, which isn’t exactly what I would call a self-esteem boost. If she can get through that, then she can feel better about herself – unless or until she falls off the wagon, then it’s back to self-loathing.
It’s probably unrealistic, at least IME. Quitting cold has worked for the couple of alcoholics I’ve known who managed it, but I’ve never seen one tail off to zero slowly successfully.
An alcoholic, by definition, is incapable of drinking in moderation. Basically, Billie would tell herself that she’ll only have one shot today, but next thing she knows, the whole bottle is empty.
The only other feasible alternative is detox, but that would pull Billie out of school for a bit.
He went to the Oracle at Delphi. She told him that Walkyles was the wisest. For only he knows…that buttopening means butthole. Or that he knows nothing, one of those two.
Should Billie lie by omission to her girlfriend, so that her girlfriend can avoid a nasty struggle of human decency vs. keeping her job, or should Billie quietly support a homeless at-risk kid with nowhere else to go??
There is no chance whatsoever that Ruth would feel conflicted about evicting the annoying loud trespasser (as she would doubtlessly see the situation).
Doubtlessly? Really? I know Ruth can be a bit harsh but she is capable of sympathy. We saw how she tried to talk to Amber after her dad showed up and has been super-forgiving of Billie. And while Ruth’s parents are dead, we have solid evidence that she’s living under someone’s thumb, so there is some common ground.
Agreed. I dove through the Ruth archive over the last few days, and I’m going to say I think there’s good grounds for Ruth not being the ogre about this that she could be. There’s a big difference between intimidating and heartless, and Ruth is not the latter. Willis likes his twists too much to make “Ruth finds out about Becky” the straightforward disaster most people are assuming it will be.
While Ruth is certainly capable of full sympathy and in no way heartless…I think she would kick Becky out. Or at least give her a deadline of when she has to be out. That said, she’d probably also try to find places that can help her. Like many have said, she’s not heartless just harsh.
Sure, Becky can’t stay forever. That’s been clear from the start. And really, she hasn’t even been there very long in strip time yet. Might not even be in violation of any rule at this point – my schools all allowed informal guests to stay for 3-4 days, and you could make formal arrangements for up to two weeks as long as there were no objections from roomies involved.
Lot of people have been talking like Ruth’s going to physically hurl her out of the building the moment she catches on. That just isn’t going to happen, and never was.
Ok ,
It kind of looks like Joyce was conspiring with Billie, while pointing to the “Buthole” ; or breaking the 3rd wall. and agreeing with danny-hate in the comments.
Either one would raise Joyce up to near Alpha-Bongo level .
I can all too readily imagine what Mike would be like if he went trolling on-line — Willis would surely not let anyone do that in the comments! — but maybe Mike considers that far too easy and prefers to work live.
Fooling themselves or fooling others? Speaking of which, do Danny and Billie remember each other? Both of them might feel wierd about how they behaved at their last encounter.
Maybe Joyce figured it was possible for Becky to accidentally invite Joe, but NO ONE could even accidentally invite Mary. So no need to specify for her.
Lets be realistic, even if Joyce did consider a secret girlfriend as a possibility, what are the odds that she’s the literal only person on this entire floor who has the power to do something about it?
Billie will tell Ruth, just because she hopes it may snap Ruth out of her depression if she has someone to beat on.
Or, maybe she will realize that Joyce is trusting her with a major biggie…
I have never dropped a critique before, but it feels like this strip would play/ flow better without the last pannel. The punchline works but seems shoehorned in.
But then the start of the strip wouldn’t work. The joke is actually a complete framing story, with the dramatic bit tucked in the middle to allow the drama to happen without resulting in a jokeless comic.
Wait, what am I doing here? Jen Aside is right there… not posting first. Oh and there is a discussion about the homeless in your universe too. Fascinating.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t drink but that he shouldn’t drink anymore as here hes funny and drunkenly charming but if he has anymore it’ll all be downhill…probably to Pukey town
I doubt Billie will be playing bartender any more tonight. She almost apologized to Dorothy about the first drink already, and she’s enough of a drinker to recognize a lightweight when she sees one.
Now, Billie has a major personal crisis to confront! More importantly, it is a chance for her to prove to herself and to the world that she isn’t a toxic person. I honestly don’t know how she’ll handle this dilemma, especially given how her relationship with Ruth is pretty much a lynchpin of her self-identity and sanity right now.
A little PS: I’m loving the way Dorothy is enjoying the drunk Walky. Those two are such a tight pair already that I’m already seeing future press references to “First Gentleman David Keener” (can you see Dorothy being willing to change her surname? No, but oddly, I can see Walky being willing to do it, especially if he finds out just how badly his parents screwed up Sal’s mental and emotional health).
Why would either of them feel a need to change their name if they tied the knot? The majority of my married same-age friends kept their own surnames. There’s nothing particularly rare about it.
Kind of surprised we’ve never seen a trend for spouses to choose an entirely new name for their family, although I suppose social inertia works against that.
I know a guy who legally went by a (self-chosen) single name. When he married someone with a young daughter, as a Future Family, they chose a new last name together. (Daughter was given a bracelet during marraige ceremony, too)
The next arc of DoA involves Sal being killed by Mary, and Walky taking up a campaign to rule all of Indiana University by entering into a political marriage with Dorothy, while Joyce attempts to stop the girl’s dorm from summoning Ruth and destroying the world.
Panel 3 is just another one of those moments that hits me right where it hurts. Billie just immediately leaps to the worst possible description of herself like it’s nothing, and she can’t even consider that her presence is having a positive impact.
Prediction: It won’t be a drunken slip at all. I think she’s about to “adopt” Becky as a problem that needs solving, which is very much Billie’s thing. She’ll deliberately tell Ruth and ask her to help Becky rather than pitching her out on her ear. How Ruth reacts is harder to guess, but if there’s anyone she’ll listen to it’s Billie.
So… why Joyce’s said that to Billie in particular?
I mean everyone in the party could babble the whole thing to R.A. even by accident. The reason I can think of would be Joyce having knowledge about Billie and Ruth’s relation and spilling the beans as some sort of preemptive attack. But she’s no Mary to have that knowledge…
I think Joyce let Billie know because Billie pretty much guessed part of the story. (That Becky is homeless). Joyce is letting Billie know in part because Joyce considers Billie a friend she can trust, and in part because she doesn’t want Billie to jump to a wrong conclusion. (That’s my best guess on her reasoning at least) She has no reason to believe Billie would tell the RA anymore than Dorothy would.
Pretty much everyone else at the party either already knows about Becky or is in an a place where they’d be very sympathetic. Except Danny, who they don’t hang around regularily anyway.
Ruth has been shown having her own set of parent/parental figure-based issues, so I’m extremely interested in seeing how she’ll react to hearing Becky’s story.
I’m pretty sure she’d get fired if she didn’t kick her out, and she’s already in some pretty dangerous territory with her, quote, “sexy lesbian suicide pact”. Regardless of how she feels on the matter, she’s probably going to need to get Becky to leave, or at least pretend to try. But then, Becky’s in preview panels for September, so maybe not. Maybe she just adds a new secret to her pile.
Becky’s an acknowledged new main character, she won’t be kicked out of anywhere anytime soon. Just hiding her from Ruth could work for weeks, which would be years to us, and if Ruth pretends not to notice she’s safe for even longer.
Is there not one non-profit in this entire college town that can help Becky? None of them has put up posters in the dorm common rooms? Cards on bulletin boards? Banners on the Useful Links page on the university site? Something?
I know this is likely still Oblivious Joyce, but I swear the things she talks about and people she specifically talks to seems more than irony to me. Like why would she tell Billie specifically? She’s known not to be trustworthy, even to Joyce, and yet she specifically mentions not telling the RA with that.
Couple that with some jokes she’s been cracking makes me think she knows more than she let’s on, even outside the “expected to feign it good Christian” mindset.
I’ll continue to argue that she’s telling Billie because she trusts Billie as a friend. (And I’m blanking on why Joyce would think Billie is untrustworthy, if you could point me towards a strip that demonstrates this that would be awesome). Also, just last strip Billie guessed out loud that Becky is homeless. Joyce is trying to communicate to her the full situation as discreetly as possible probably to make sure she doesn’t have to answer Billie out loud in front of the whole room. (As for people in the room who know about situation, it’s only Dorothy, and Walky who know. Sarah also knows, but she’s in the bathroom right now. Danny, Dina, Ethan, and Amber do not know about Becky being homeless)
And she specifically mentions not telling the RA because the RA is the nearest authority figure who could cause trouble for Joyce. Joyce has no reason that Billie has any sort of dealings with the RA other than some public fighting. And Joyce would not be the one to assume any sort of sexual tension with a situation like that. And we know that she still believes Billie has a secret boyfriend: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/lecture/
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Butts
(Okay, was not expecting the page to be actually relating to posteriors. Swing of luck.)
That was a nice opening though.
That’s what he said.
Butt opening disease.
Wait…
Frankly, that sounds disgusting.
Read it while thinking the slipshine on the side is Mike and Walky for extra awkward feelings. (somebodyhelpme I can’t see this as Sal and Jason anymore. It’s destroying me inside c_c)
A while ago I thought I was the only one. The pairing made so little sense, but i figured rule of sexy demands a little buttface on butthead butt bumping, so why not!
Bonus. I guess it is like that vase picture that is also two ladies.
Nah, the orange area between them looks more like a bird or something. Or maybe like Texas.
Dammit, you guys. I *always* saw Sal and Jason, and now I see Mike and Walky, too. .____.
This pretty neatly addresses the issue of almost everyone in this comic having the same face.
They don’t all have the same face! They have, like, seven or eight different faces. Willis made a Tumblr post with all of them once.
Granted, about half the female cast shares Standard Female Face #1 with Joyce.
Neither Dorothy nor Amber are among those, and don’t share the same face, either, which is one of the reasons I don’t really get the “clone” thing.
Dorothy shares her face with Mandy and Carla, and probably others, but I think Amber’s face is unique to her (and Amazi-Girl), which is part of the reason I think Danny’s an idiot.
Oh god … Can’t … Unsee …
There are a number of thing that could potentially be butt opening disease. Most literal probably be a fistula, where two organ that aren’t supposed to be connected form a connection, and usually one of them is the colon. So it’s a new opening in the butt to somewhere it shouldn’t go.
Slightly less horrible medically, though not really any less gross, a butt opening disease could also be an abscess. Been there done there, very painful for months on end. Of course, if the abscess isn’t treated, it can tunnel through and form the above-mentioned fistula (very lucky that didn’t happen!)
a psychological condition which compels you to spread the buttcheeks of other people. it can be managed with the proper medication and/or physical trauma
I thought it was Butts Disease?
Some people can wiggle their ears…
I love the fact that “butts” is the first comment.
It’s even money in a Willis comic that it’ll be topical.
Uranus
Although it will apparently be renamed Urectum in the year 2620 by scientists who are fed up with that “stupid joke”.
“Butt Opening” is now my new favourite swear! I’mma see how many people I can convert to using it. ^_^
Along with “Divine Poop!” “Go sodomise yourself!” and “Incestuous Maternal Fornicator!”
Also “Sad Vagina” for that angry lady that just HAS to spread her miserableness!
maybe showing my age, BUTT…
I remember a time when MTV would censor it as “ass****” where every other station would censor as “***hole”… I would always be like, how is “ass” okay but “hole” isn’t??
(Friend: I remember seeing goddamn censored as “***damn” and thinking, isn’t “damn” the swear word??)
((Friend’s friend: We’re just a few years away from “******fucker”))
How many words per minute do you type?
I’m guessing she gets the strip a day early thanks to Patreon, types her comment in Word, then copy-pastes it here the moment the strip appears.
Naah she has the supoerpower to see 3 seconds into the future. long enough to say oh shit b4 something happens, but not to do much else.
Jen Aside’s a Kree? I hope she’s not leading an invasion.
Naw, a Jedi
Naw, totally a Skrull.
…She has spider-sense?
She’s a Drell from the future
She’s clearly Nicholas Cage’s illegitimate daughter from the movie “Next”.
(Which really was a surprisingly not-bad movie :P)
Ruining the magic
200
depending on the words, and when the minute starts
MTV likely had a higher age rating so they had access to higher level swears. They’d leave in the ass because that’s the real swear so they sound edgier.
+6483 exp
Level Up!
You now have access to HIGHER LEVEL SWEARS!
I wonder when we’ll get to Snakes on a Plane-level censoring being a normal thing.
It already is, on Monday-to-Friday planes. But it’s usually not worth the effort of finding a plane that will stay in the air for five days straight.
Only if the snakes bite monkeys.
Frankly, “butt opening” somehow sounds MORE obscene. Probably because I interpret it as a verb and then think of goat guy.
Butt opening sounds like a nicer way of saying Goatse.
No, I remember those times too! It always confused me.
Damn isn’t a swear, Goddamn is. Just like Ass isn’t, but Asshole is. At least according to the FCC. And no, that doesn’t make sense, but since when has a massive govt bureaucracy forced to define obscenity in the face of constantly shifting social norms ever made sense?
A-s-s can refer to donkeys, where it is relatively innocuous (Roald Dahl used it freely in his children’s books, though it undoubtedly helps that the Britons spell the two homophones differently), but appending “hole” makes sure everyone know which one your talking about.
Also, some really conservative religious folks consider “The G word” a bigger offense than the d-word, especially since the Bible strictly forbade anyone from using the Lord’s name in vain. Or at all really: this is why we don’t know the vowels of YHWH.
Someone who is really determined to use the Lord’s name in vain could just enumerate all the ways to add vowels to YHWH and use them in succession. Even supposing a countable infinity of vowels and a countable infinity of ways to add them to YHWH, he would eventually offend the Lord after a finite number of tries.
There’s something truly messed up about a deity that gets offended when you manage to pronounce its name correctly. If it was getting the name wrong I could understand – Nyarlathotep must spend half of eternity correcting people.
I thought we don’t know the vowels of YHWH because that’s a translation from Hebrew – a language without any vowels in its alphabet. That’s the problem with really old writings – often, they’re scribed in some half-baked writing system.
Sorta. There were vowel markings, thought they were optional. But they were never written for YHWH, because that word was never said out loud. Instead they used the vowels for Adonai, the word you would say instead (It mean “Lord”)
Those vowels gave us Jehovah. The J was originally pronounced like a Y, and the V more like a W.
And this has been your informative post FROM THE FUTURE!
What about the void in the roadway that the donkeys keep falling into, wouldn’t that be an asshole?
“I saw a car drive straight into an asshole today. Rescue crews had to set up a crane to retrieve it.”
I remember a promo for 107.7 The End where they said on their radio station they could say, “That’s a big-ass hole”, but they couldn’t say “that’s a big assh***.”
Oh for the days when The End was good.
I’ve always heard it as ass**** never ***hole on any channel
it was surreal because once MTV and a “regular” news station covered the same story, and they alternated which half of the word was censored
I’d say what story but that’s DEFINITELY dating myself =p (“who else would??” HAR HAR)
You can tell me, and then I’ll tell you where I was when JFK got shot.
Opus, ima get all pedantic on your donkeyhole: you remember where you were when you heard that JFK had been shot.
Nonsense, I’m sure everybody who was on the grassy knoll knows EXACTLY where they were when JFK was shot.
Right, Opus?
Twist ending: Opus is actually JFK’s ghost.
Explains the unkillable part.
Dating yourself? Well, you’ll probably choose a movie you’ll like XD
[groan]
MTV doing something interesting or important? You’ve already dated yourself, sorry.
I remember watching a series, can’t remember the name, where they’d censor just one sound, like making “fucker” into “f*cker”
I also recall one of my friends telling me about a series where they’d censor trademarked words and names in a funny way, turning “Pokémon” into “Poke***mon”, really just splitting the word in half and censoring the gap in between
To my way of thinking, even that doesn’t make censorship any more confusing than it already inherently is.
“It’s a good thing you censored that, or I might have known you meant ‘fuck’.” – source forgotten
Butt the point is exactly to Not Say the Word, it doesnt matter ifpeople know whats meant or not, hence euphemisms, like, “unmentionables”, “sleep together”, “vajayjay”/”cooter”/etc, “bongo”….
When sending messages on the Playstation it censors the word Assassin, leaving you with *******in.
I’ve never tried other ass-words though, such as class, assert or similar. Maybe I should
Damn is a very mild curse. Using God’s name as a curse is blasphemous.
Actually, in response to Jen Aside’s friend’s friend’s prediction (all the way up the chain there), the censored form of “******fucker” has a significant precedent already. In fact, it helped overturn the F.C.C.’s old ban on broadcasting expletives over U.S. airwaves. You can read about it at the end of this article here.
I’m not sure they’re saying they just censored the “mother” part. It sounds as if they censored the whole word before the decision came in that “motherfucker” was OK.
Some would consider “using the Lord’s name in vain” to be a greater profanity than the word “damn.” At least, I think I’m remembering the logic right.
Boozles
Butt… Opening
Sign seen on The Monkees: “DANGER! WHOLE HOLE!”
Reminds me of that brainteaser: if it takes one hour to dig one hole, and two hours to dig two holes, how long does it take to dig half a hole?
(Answer: there’s no such thing as half a hole.) (And that concept BLEW MY MIND.)
(Context for my mind being blown = I had a book of such brainteasers when I was a kid and that’s where I got that from, excuse me for forgetting to mention that part, I’m in the fever/coughing up body parts section of the latest flu bug)
Try securing said body parts with duct tape.
OVERANALYSIS MODE ACTIVATED. That answer is philosophically sound, but logically inconsistent with the information given in the brainteaser. If it takes an hour to dig a hole, then it follows that whatever has been dug before the full hour elapses is not a hole, else it would not take an hour to dig a hole. Therefore, this brainteaser must necessarily admit fractions of holes, and the true answer is the intuitive one: half an hour.
Howbout that whatever de-dirtified excavation is created in less than an hour is a ProtoHole?
That sounds way dirtier than “asshole”.
Comes down to whether we’re meant to assume that a hole is a quantum unit, doesn’t it? That really settles the issue.
Yep. If you can frame the game using your own assumptions then the outcome is predetermined.
Maybe the digging implement is so heavy that it takes an hour to actually lift a single scoop of material out of the ground! (Or maybe the diggers are just lazy buttopenings who voluntarily work at that pace.)
Or it takes an hour to plant, arm, and detonate a stick of dynamite to create each hole, because the morons never heard of wiring multiple explosives to a single detonator and can’t multi-task.
Rycan, Should we be concerned that you seem to know how to rig blowuppystuff to make bangs and excavations in roadways?
damn, billie’s self esteem is totally babies
So sad.
Yeah, she ain’t getting better until she believes that she is capable of getting better.
You know you’re brain’s dicking with you when you expect Joyce to call you a bongo.
Doublestandard: how come Billie gets to say bongo but we dont?
Or, how come we have to say bongo but Billie doesnt?
Because she doesn’t say it as often as we were.
Also, because she’s using it to refer to herself, which means she’s not being an asshole to other people. Like, it’s not healthy to abuse yourself, but at least it’s unhealthy to yourself.
I’m pretty sure DoA characters have used words like that to describe each other (or milder variants, in Joyce’s case).
There are, in fact, a lot of things Dumbing of Age characters get to do that I wouldn’t let people in the comments do.
Now how would you feel if we were to start patrolling college campuses while dressed in masks and yellow jump suits?
Probably proud, as long as we’re showing that we’re aware that with great cosplay, there comes great responsibility.
If, however, fans would begin to channel Faz or Blaine O’Malley, that’d a significantly more dire.
What if you only channeled Faz’s love of charts and not the pervertedness?
Dear God: i just imagined someone cosplaying Faz …
Problem with cosplaying Faz is that everyone in ShortPacked dressed the same
“Dont try this at home boys and girls!” Seriously.
She may think Joyce is thinking it, but isn’t willing to say it.
Babies MacIntyre?
Babies Becky MacIntyre?
Ass. Hole. Ass****.
Jeez, Billie, take some self-esteem pills.
For the record, that’d be nice if they existed.
I’ve heard alcohol can boost confidence. Billie should try it sometime.
I don’t know, a good christian girl like Billie partaking in the consumption of alcohol? Next thing you’ll be saying she should have per-marital lesbian hankey pankey with authority figures!
pre-marital is spelled wrong but auto-correct like per-marital? what the heck is per-marital!
Once per marriage.
You only get one? Damn. Better make it count.
It’s simple.
You start fucking, and then NEVER STOP.
Have one of these max strength sugar pills: they contain a triple dose of Placebo!
Don’t listen to the fraud! Those are nocebo pills – they only make matters worse!
If you’ve mistakenly taken Placebo instead of Nocebo, or Nocebo instead of Placebo, don’t take the respective other one to make them cancel out. Even though their effects are opposite when taken in isolation, the combined effect can often be something yet different and hard to predict.
Instead, rely on the newly discovered Placebo blockers, which will actually neutralize the effect of either and are thus much saver.
Careful there: Placebo-Bloc has yet to be proven safe and more effective than placebo through a double blind randomized control study.
Pla — the active ingrediant in Placebo!
That actually explains a lot.
Probably better to stick with the pills that mother gives you.
That = nocebo
If she stopped drinking it’d be like taking self-esteem pills. Alcohol is a depressant, it doesn’t negative things to your body and mind no matter how much people argue how great it is.
…Very true. Makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it.
About the only thing booze is good for is lowering inhibitions. That can produce behavior that looks like self-confidence for some people, at least for a while. Poor imitation to the real thing, though.
If Billie stopped drinking, she’d just go into withdrawal. We’re talking about physical dependence at this point, I’m guessing.
She’d have the same withdrawal symptoms Ruth was suffering with. They’re unpleasant but you can live through them, especially at their tender ages.
Yeah, it’s probably survivable at this point without medical intervention, but the point is that she’s going to be feeling like shit, which isn’t exactly what I would call a self-esteem boost. If she can get through that, then she can feel better about herself – unless or until she falls off the wagon, then it’s back to self-loathing.
Isn’t weaning herself off it slowly a possibility? Or is that an unrealistic expectation for that much self-control?
I can’t help but feel we’ve had this conversation before…
It’s probably unrealistic, at least IME. Quitting cold has worked for the couple of alcoholics I’ve known who managed it, but I’ve never seen one tail off to zero slowly successfully.
It might work, but she won’t do it.
An alcoholic, by definition, is incapable of drinking in moderation. Basically, Billie would tell herself that she’ll only have one shot today, but next thing she knows, the whole bottle is empty.
The only other feasible alternative is detox, but that would pull Billie out of school for a bit.
This is sooooo going to end well. Not!
What could possibly go wrong?
Drunk Walky. One of the greatest minds of our time.
He went to the Oracle at Delphi. She told him that Walkyles was the wisest. For only he knows…that buttopening means butthole. Or that he knows nothing, one of those two.
As they say in my native language, “Porque no los dos?”
Cue the carrying of Tacos on our collective shoulders whilst also having…tacos, actually.
Dorothy looks quite charmed!
Oh, the tangled webs we weave.
a “butt opening” uh. Actually if Walky didn’t explain I wouldn’t have gotten it ^^;
(english as 3rd language)
Also Walky & Dotty are so cute on that last panel~
English as 3rd language = intoxicated Walky?
Conflict of interest!!!
Should Billie lie by omission to her girlfriend, so that her girlfriend can avoid a nasty struggle of human decency vs. keeping her job, or should Billie quietly support a homeless at-risk kid with nowhere else to go??
She’s already put her girlfriend’s job at risk… by being her girlfriend.
There is no chance whatsoever that Ruth would feel conflicted about evicting the annoying loud trespasser (as she would doubtlessly see the situation).
Doubtlessly? Really? I know Ruth can be a bit harsh but she is capable of sympathy. We saw how she tried to talk to Amber after her dad showed up and has been super-forgiving of Billie. And while Ruth’s parents are dead, we have solid evidence that she’s living under someone’s thumb, so there is some common ground.
Agreed. I dove through the Ruth archive over the last few days, and I’m going to say I think there’s good grounds for Ruth not being the ogre about this that she could be. There’s a big difference between intimidating and heartless, and Ruth is not the latter. Willis likes his twists too much to make “Ruth finds out about Becky” the straightforward disaster most people are assuming it will be.
While Ruth is certainly capable of full sympathy and in no way heartless…I think she would kick Becky out. Or at least give her a deadline of when she has to be out. That said, she’d probably also try to find places that can help her. Like many have said, she’s not heartless just harsh.
Sure, Becky can’t stay forever. That’s been clear from the start. And really, she hasn’t even been there very long in strip time yet. Might not even be in violation of any rule at this point – my schools all allowed informal guests to stay for 3-4 days, and you could make formal arrangements for up to two weeks as long as there were no objections from roomies involved.
Lot of people have been talking like Ruth’s going to physically hurl her out of the building the moment she catches on. That just isn’t going to happen, and never was.
Billie’s new job.
Anyone else think he looks like what Moe from The Simpsons must have as a little kid?
Moe on the Simpsons was a member of a knock-off “Our Gang” troupe. He resembled Spanky McFarland. And that’s canon.
I would be entirely unsurprised if the Recess character designers were thinking of Moe.
Did Joyce call Danny an Asshole ( way harsh ) ,
or Joe?
The one person on the “do not invite” list, Joe.
Joe.
Joe. It’s why he is the ‘do not invite’ list.
Ok ,
It kind of looks like Joyce was conspiring with Billie, while pointing to the “Buthole” ; or breaking the 3rd wall. and agreeing with danny-hate in the comments.
Either one would raise Joyce up to near Alpha-Bongo level .
Bring on the Anti-Joyce
I guess the best indication otherwise would be the lack of whispering in that panel (smaller text, wavy speech bubble).
Joyce has barely interacted with Danny and she tends to like everyone unless they constantly insult her or are sex obsessed.
Except when she cant tell whether Mike is “on her side” or baiting her. Trollong her? Is Mike a meatspace troll?
I can all too readily imagine what Mike would be like if he went trolling on-line — Willis would surely not let anyone do that in the comments! — but maybe Mike considers that far too easy and prefers to work live.
Hence, Mike was invited on the condition that he behave nicely. This might be a good night for Mike to get drunk ….
Joe.
Hey Joe, where did ya go?
i hope we see joe wearing a shirt that says “butt opening” at some point soon
Seeing his reaction to Danny’s big bi awakening… I … seriously… doubt it.
He could wear Walkys Butt-taco shirt.
It ought to look sexy on him as a halfshirt
Dorothy and Walky are adorable in that last panel. Too cute.
This will end well.
Don’t be a snitch Billie!
Snitches are bongoes.
(I intentionally wrote all those words.)
So snatches are bangoes? (Dang, you set me up and i walked right into it …)
Aw, I can’t take credit for something I never thought of. (Even if everyone else would have.)
Thought of it or taken credit anyway? Ie, is the commentariat perverted or fraudulant/dishonest?
Sheesh Billie, you are literally the only person in the room who doesn’t think Billie’s great. What’s your damage?
She’s depressed, an alcoholic, and in a self-destructive spiral pact with another depressed alcoholic?
Oh, well, if you’re going to apply facts to an answer, I’m not sure we can have a reasonable conversation!
I doubt Amber agrees.
Well, who in that room does have a fully functioning self-esteem?
Dorothy probably comes closest, and even she stresses out too much about grades and potential scandals coming back to bite her in the future.
The better question would be “which character is best at faking self-esteem ?”
Fooling themselves or fooling others? Speaking of which, do Danny and Billie remember each other? Both of them might feel wierd about how they behaved at their last encounter.
Uh-oh, TRUST! Billie’s third-greatest weakness!
What, after ethanol and ethyl alcohol?
Yes, and followed immediately by Ruth.
In Billie’s case, ethanol and Ruth are kinda the same weakness, at this point.
Wait a sec…Mary wasn’t on the definitely do not invite list?
Maybe was she on the probably do not invite list.
Maybe Joyce figured it was possible for Becky to accidentally invite Joe, but NO ONE could even accidentally invite Mary. So no need to specify for her.
I think the point was to insult Joe just as much as make sure he didn’t come
Yeah, vengeful Joyce can be kind of a bongo.
(You know, like the drum.)
But she is the one who gave the beating, not the one beaten on
Mary’s status as uninvited is an inviolate law of the universe, it goes unsaid.
Mary delenda est.
Nobody in their right mind would invite Mary, so why bother writing?
You meant that sarcastically, right, because if something is too outrageous for anyone to do then someone. will. do. it.
The dangers of heteronormativity.
Lets be realistic, even if Joyce did consider a secret girlfriend as a possibility, what are the odds that she’s the literal only person on this entire floor who has the power to do something about it?
Pretty good, IF you saw their interactions (Not just the nice ones).
Frankly, if, uh, those other two gals who are basically the Greek Chorus saw the fight in the hall, they’re probably even more sure they’re banging.
I’d say ‘dangers of bigotry’. Homosexuals aren’t the only ones who get thrown out of their families for no good reason.
And All Lives Matter, we know.
Billie will tell Ruth, just because she hopes it may snap Ruth out of her depression if she has someone to beat on.
Or, maybe she will realize that Joyce is trusting her with a major biggie…
Walky and Dorothy are cute.
I think Joyce is only telling because she had to interrupt Billie be begin with, some panels back. Billie already had kinda guessed.
I have never dropped a critique before, but it feels like this strip would play/ flow better without the last pannel. The punchline works but seems shoehorned in.
But then the start of the strip wouldn’t work. The joke is actually a complete framing story, with the dramatic bit tucked in the middle to allow the drama to happen without resulting in a jokeless comic.
Wait, what am I doing here? Jen Aside is right there… not posting first. Oh and there is a discussion about the homeless in your universe too. Fascinating.
So Walky best thing you can do here is not drink anymore
He’s had a rough time with exams. Let him relax among friends.
No, Walky having another drink will just lead to Walky puking in the toilet. Alcohol tolerance of a shrew, remember?
I’m not saying he shouldn’t drink but that he shouldn’t drink anymore as here hes funny and drunkenly charming but if he has anymore it’ll all be downhill…probably to Pukey town
I doubt Billie will be playing bartender any more tonight. She almost apologized to Dorothy about the first drink already, and she’s enough of a drinker to recognize a lightweight when she sees one.
That, and Billie would hate to run out of booze for herself before the night is over.
Point taken. My tolerance is the worst as well – alcohol is not favored down my family tree.
The first week of July makes me doubt that Billie will keep the secret…
Wait, that panel’s dated three days ago.
The text underneath says “(july 6)”
So you time traveled here from next month? …Got any lottery numbers?
I swear to god that post said “June 6” when I clicked on it last night.
Great…now Billie is caught between a rock and Ruth’s headboard.
better between a Ruth and a hard-on?
Pleasantly trapped!
“I trust you Billie because you’re a good friend and would never rat us out”
Dorothy’s smile is the cutest
And her judgement the worst.
Nah, she doesn’t do bad when it comes to boyfriends.
You’d think Ruthless is my favorite, but no, it’s Amazing Girl.
More apt to use violence as a solution to her problems?
Actually, that’s Amber.
Yes, clearly. That’s why you can’t her name right. “Amazing Girl” is a bit like me calling you a GoBot.
What’s wrong with GoBots?
Don’t play that game, Megatron. We’ve all seen the footage the hidden paparazzi guy filmed at the diner. https://youtu.be/PtSl3Khf1aE
College Humor doesn’t speak for me.
I can’t expect the best judgement from a robot, I know.
I wish I’d found someone like Dorothy earlier in my life, would have made things a whole lot easier for me
In other words best girlfriend ever!
Drunk Walky is best Walky.
Joyce, I don’t think you fully understand the concept of ‘keeping a secret’.
Not really – she noticed that Billie started to catch on, so she decided it better to talk about it instead of letting the drama happen.
A rare occurence in Walkyverse, that’s for sure.
But luckily not as rare in the Dumbiverse?
Exactly as rare.
In the Walkyverse the majority of problems are solved by punching
Joyce can’t do this on her own, Billie’s one of her best new friends so she’s letting her in.
My wife wasn’t even allowed to say butt. Her father insisted on “better intentions”.
So, the road to hell is paved with butts?
Asphalt…
Ha ha, you said “As”…
Coooooonnnnnnnfliiiiiiiiiiict
Now, Billie has a major personal crisis to confront! More importantly, it is a chance for her to prove to herself and to the world that she isn’t a toxic person. I honestly don’t know how she’ll handle this dilemma, especially given how her relationship with Ruth is pretty much a lynchpin of her self-identity and sanity right now.
Billy, I think the word you’re looking for is “bongo.”
Drunk Walky is adorable
He is, and so is taking-care-of-drunk-Walky-Dorothy
Petition to Willis to replace all the B-words in his comics with “bongo”.
Is “Opening” in “butt opening”, a noun? Or a verb?
It’s a noun-verb. Like “grand opening” only, crappier.
Related haha
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2146
Goddamnit, I had worse case scenarios that started like this.
A little PS: I’m loving the way Dorothy is enjoying the drunk Walky. Those two are such a tight pair already that I’m already seeing future press references to “First Gentleman David Keener” (can you see Dorothy being willing to change her surname? No, but oddly, I can see Walky being willing to do it, especially if he finds out just how badly his parents screwed up Sal’s mental and emotional health).
Why would either of them feel a need to change their name if they tied the knot? The majority of my married same-age friends kept their own surnames. There’s nothing particularly rare about it.
Kind of surprised we’ve never seen a trend for spouses to choose an entirely new name for their family, although I suppose social inertia works against that.
I know a guy who legally went by a (self-chosen) single name. When he married someone with a young daughter, as a Future Family, they chose a new last name together. (Daughter was given a bracelet during marraige ceremony, too)
I’m still holding out for First Lady Joyce Keener.
For a second, I wondered why Danny was talking about Final Fantasy Tactics in the first panel.
‘Tis Joyce’s birth and faith that wrong her, not Joe!
The next arc of DoA involves Sal being killed by Mary, and Walky taking up a campaign to rule all of Indiana University by entering into a political marriage with Dorothy, while Joyce attempts to stop the girl’s dorm from summoning Ruth and destroying the world.
Is it just me that’s loving watching them all interact in the same room?
I need more drunk Walky explaining every joke to me
Panel 3 is just another one of those moments that hits me right where it hurts. Billie just immediately leaps to the worst possible description of herself like it’s nothing, and she can’t even consider that her presence is having a positive impact.
Yes, it hurts to watch someone abusing themselves like this.
We all know that Billie will slip this info out to Ruth during their “workout” time after few drinks too much.
Prediction: It won’t be a drunken slip at all. I think she’s about to “adopt” Becky as a problem that needs solving, which is very much Billie’s thing. She’ll deliberately tell Ruth and ask her to help Becky rather than pitching her out on her ear. How Ruth reacts is harder to guess, but if there’s anyone she’ll listen to it’s Billie.
And if it does all go to hell I get the strange feeling Sarah will be blamed if everyone else is clueless as to who spilled the beans.
Why do I have this feeling that the shit will hit the fan soon?
What, like it did with Sal/Amazing?
It’s okay, there’s plenty of it to go around.
I love Joyce’s incredulous reaction to Billie. She’s really good at accepting people as they are (and has gotten a lot better at it recently ;P).
Oops, never closed the HTML tag. That’s a link to an avgn bit that Walky reminded me of.
* And I heard Harry said he wants Spiderman dead, ah, but his buddy Pete, he can trust *
I think what Joyce said sounds way grosser.
We’re numbed to terms like ‘asshole’.
I am convinced Billie is going to try to help Becky, in her own way. Billie is not a heartless person. And neither is Ruth, if she knows what’s up.
So… why Joyce’s said that to Billie in particular?
I mean everyone in the party could babble the whole thing to R.A. even by accident. The reason I can think of would be Joyce having knowledge about Billie and Ruth’s relation and spilling the beans as some sort of preemptive attack. But she’s no Mary to have that knowledge…
I think Joyce let Billie know because Billie pretty much guessed part of the story. (That Becky is homeless). Joyce is letting Billie know in part because Joyce considers Billie a friend she can trust, and in part because she doesn’t want Billie to jump to a wrong conclusion. (That’s my best guess on her reasoning at least) She has no reason to believe Billie would tell the RA anymore than Dorothy would.
Pretty much everyone else at the party either already knows about Becky or is in an a place where they’d be very sympathetic. Except Danny, who they don’t hang around regularily anyway.
Ruth has been shown having her own set of parent/parental figure-based issues, so I’m extremely interested in seeing how she’ll react to hearing Becky’s story.
I’m pretty sure she’d get fired if she didn’t kick her out, and she’s already in some pretty dangerous territory with her, quote, “sexy lesbian suicide pact”. Regardless of how she feels on the matter, she’s probably going to need to get Becky to leave, or at least pretend to try. But then, Becky’s in preview panels for September, so maybe not. Maybe she just adds a new secret to her pile.
Becky’s an acknowledged new main character, she won’t be kicked out of anywhere anytime soon. Just hiding her from Ruth could work for weeks, which would be years to us, and if Ruth pretends not to notice she’s safe for even longer.
Is there not one non-profit in this entire college town that can help Becky? None of them has put up posters in the dorm common rooms? Cards on bulletin boards? Banners on the Useful Links page on the university site? Something?
There are resources, but they are all for current or soon-to-be-former students of Indiana University. Becky is neither of these.
Walky has attained triangular smile. Boozification complete.
The triangular smile is adopted by subjects of the Queen of the Drunks.
I know this is likely still Oblivious Joyce, but I swear the things she talks about and people she specifically talks to seems more than irony to me. Like why would she tell Billie specifically? She’s known not to be trustworthy, even to Joyce, and yet she specifically mentions not telling the RA with that.
Couple that with some jokes she’s been cracking makes me think she knows more than she let’s on, even outside the “expected to feign it good Christian” mindset.
I’ll continue to argue that she’s telling Billie because she trusts Billie as a friend. (And I’m blanking on why Joyce would think Billie is untrustworthy, if you could point me towards a strip that demonstrates this that would be awesome). Also, just last strip Billie guessed out loud that Becky is homeless. Joyce is trying to communicate to her the full situation as discreetly as possible probably to make sure she doesn’t have to answer Billie out loud in front of the whole room. (As for people in the room who know about situation, it’s only Dorothy, and Walky who know. Sarah also knows, but she’s in the bathroom right now. Danny, Dina, Ethan, and Amber do not know about Becky being homeless)
And she specifically mentions not telling the RA because the RA is the nearest authority figure who could cause trouble for Joyce. Joyce has no reason that Billie has any sort of dealings with the RA other than some public fighting. And Joyce would not be the one to assume any sort of sexual tension with a situation like that. And we know that she still believes Billie has a secret boyfriend: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/lecture/
Walky is totally gonna end up spilling his math woes drunkenly, I foresee it.
Go home Walky, you’re drunk.
Toss her something to validate her cynical worldview and make her your ally, Joyce. Doing good.
I’ve been reading through the archives, and sometimes the comic images take a bit to load.
This page loaded with no image, but the title, “Butt opening”, clearly visible.
Needless to say I was concerned…
I was totally lost when Joyce said “butt opening” until that last panel.