Sure looks like it, judging by her facial expression. I can tell because I’m having an existential crisis and completely blanking everything else being said pretty much all the time.
I’m still trying to figure Harrison out, but I mean, he is right here. Sometimes, stuff happens that you couldn’t have planned for, and you’re better off for it.
And sometimes stuff happens that you saw coming miles away and still couldn’t change. It was a bit more than a year ago that I berated a friend that he needed to change his work/life balance, if necessarily taking a life coach because given our age difference I’d consider it more appropriate he was at my funeral than the other way round. He was 49. I’ll be at his funeral tomorrow.
Geneseepaws
At 40 years you get glasses and the “First Great Culling of the Males” begins. Male half of the herd gets their first culling about then. If they’re 35 and don’t have a fairly good life style, you might not want to hang out as much when they turn 40.
Thanks, sorry for venting. I’ll probably be upset for a while to come but then I was not in his “inner circle” which basically stuck together since their school days, decades before I moved here.
Librain
If venting to strangers on the internet helps you, then it’s not exactly a heavy burden on us to either read it and offer virtual commiserations, or move on.
Vent away, good sir, and who knows… maybe it will make a difference to someone who needs to hear it?
It’s worse than you think. That state law he got shut down was gonna make chicken fingers mandatory on every restaurant menu, and establish an official Dexter and Monkey Master Day.
And all it would have cost was the dignity and human rights of a marginalized group. You really think Joyce would still take selfish gratification over the safety of lgbt people?
Jon Rich
Wait, what’s this? What law got shut down, and how was it connected to LGBT rights? I feel like I missed a strip or two somewhere.
I hope Jacob learns something from his brother here, dude is wound a little too tightly. I understand why but he needs to take a deep breath and relax. That being said, I still wonder how this is going to ultimately affect Joyce and Jacob’s relationship.
At first I thought he meant that he didn’t see himself having kids before meeting his wife but I went back and read it and he says, “Stuff you couldn’t have planned for”.
Which, generally speaking, isn’t true about babies. You can plan to have a kid. So now I’m wondering if they thought one or both of them was infertile. It makes sense to say they couldn’t have planned for Jamie if they thought it wasn’t possible.
Some babies aren’t planned. I’ve known people on multiple forms of birth control who still managed to have an “oops”.
Jaime also may have/had health problems that you can’t plan for. My friend just had a pregnancy that by all accounts was healthy and her baby spent 3 weeks in the NICU, which no one expected. Our first has special needs.
How you feel about a new partner and baby can also blindside you. He may have never expected to be the kind of dad who straps his baby to his chest to visit his brother.
There’s a thousand ways babies can not go according to plan.
Welll….
I knew a couple in college.
One had been declared medically infertile.
The other had had their tubes tied.
When they started dating, they used condoms for STD safety rather than pregnancy prevention.
They got pregnant. They won the lottery on condom break + tube-tie reversal + no permanent scaring + 1 in 1000 chance to bypass infertility + the usual dangers to a pregnancy.
**insert Life Finds a Way meme here**
So yeah, maybe Jamie was unplanned, or maybe Jamie was next to impossible – the phrasing doesn’t really make it clear either way.
David
I know a couple where she got pregnant while still being a (not really immaculate) virgin in highschool. They rectified that before their daughter’s birth, though. If you already paid the price, you might as well do the deed. And even while that made their future education more tricky, they managed reasonably well.
I wouldn’t go that far. He didn’t plan to meet his wife, and he might have been surprised that he was willing to go along with having a kid with her. But saying, “Planning to have Jaime,” doesn’t work.
You also can’t plan to have Jaime specifically. A baby, yes, but this specific baby, of course not. Which is hard to be nuanced about when you’re making a different point.
There are a few other comics that also have Raidah going on about Jacob measuring up to Harrison’s level as well. Actually, I think if you read all the strips that cover that conversation in the both you get all the backstory you need for what’s happening here.
Y’know, I know Joyce is being bad and stuff here, but honestly? I think Raidah is really clearly unhealthy for Jacob and I want her to have her own story arcs that don’t rely on her vs. Joyce. I’m sure Raidah deserves better – she’s clearly no Mary, and is arguably close to Rachel on the “flawed but sympathetic” front – but this relationship with Jacob is not good and he is honestly better off single or with Joyce than with someone who constantly (and posibly accidentally) plays on his worst habits.
Fomalhaut88
…rachel is still like the least flawed character in the entire strip.
what SUGauthor said, and also, he’s done with university, so if he did four years and his LSAT, at least 22, but he seems to be at least a couple years out of university (since he has a job, isn’t an intern or and based on the preventing anti-trans law, probably isn’t really low in his firm), probably more likely to be in the in the 25-30 range?
Well law school’s what, three years? Assuming he started college at 18 and graduated at 22, he’d probably have graduated at 25ish. I’d put him mid-thirties.
Axel
Oh, my mistake. For some reason I was thinking it was just random courses plus LSAT and didn’t stop to think about how that doesn’t make sense and also that there are whole movies about law school.
Also, Jacob’s surprise about Harrison being chill makes me feel like it’s a fairly significant age gap, like they didn’t spend that many years at home together (esp in Jacob’s view, having been younger and probably having less solid memories in at least his first six years)
I feel for Jacob. I think he built up an idea of Harrison that was completely spotless, contained and organized, and Harrison is just… Another guy. A really kind and good person, but a human being. With how Jacob referred to him as “everything” and “practically a God”, I think in his brain, Harrison was everything to aspire to be, completely coordinated and self-assured and flawless. And seeing how much Harrison likes Joyce, neurotic and naive and heart-on-her-sleeve, must kind of throw his world out of equilibrium. Not that Harrison would have disliked Joyce as a person or a friend, but to accept her as a potential love-interest despite not checking any boxes, that must be pretty hard to suddenly come to grips with.
I first read it as him being embarrassed that she wouldn’t say it or that she implied she was undeclared, but on second reading I read it as him thinking Joyce was embarrassed about her major and encouraging her to say it.
But there’s that bolded TELL, so idk. It definitely doesn’t feel good.
I was thinking he was reacting to the conversation that happened here http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/salary/ I think it might have affected him more than it affected Joyce. Even at the time, Raidah’s condescension kinda rolled off her back, but if you look at Jacob, he noticed that Raidah was trying to make Joyce feel bad. I think he was thinking that Joyce is being self-conscious and got angry that she appeared embarrassed at her major.
This actually kinda feels to me like a validation on my thought that he might have had a fight with Raidah earlier about Joyce and that he’s feeling a bit defensive.
Axel
Related to that, I wonder if he’s thinking about Raidah’s comment about eating at an adult restaurant several pages later (Harrison decided to take them here right?)
150 thoughts on “Goals”
Ana Chronistic
Jacob: “I just fell straight into Joyce’s fan fiction, didn’t I”
Joyce: “idk, am I a fighter pilot? How’s my mac and cheese?”
FacelessDeviant
Separated into mac and cheese sections, most likely.
Adam Black
Impenetrable Wall, but transparent so they can still fantasio
Ana Chronistic
Macaroni and cheese without cheese is just… pasta
Stephen Bierce
Teach
Your Children Well
Their father’s Hell did slowly go by…
Miri
Is Joyce just having her own little existential crisis and resolution at the dinner table and completely blanking everything else being said..?
Chris2315
Sure looks like it, judging by her facial expression. I can tell because I’m having an existential crisis and completely blanking everything else being said pretty much all the time.
DailyBrad
I’m still trying to figure Harrison out, but I mean, he is right here. Sometimes, stuff happens that you couldn’t have planned for, and you’re better off for it.
Durandal_1707
And sometimes, stuff happens that you couldn’t have planned for, and you’re unfathomably worse off for it.
There isn’t a cosmic plan. Life is just life.
vlademir1
Hell, often enough stuff happens and the only thing that really changes is your perspective on your situation
David
And sometimes stuff happens that you saw coming miles away and still couldn’t change. It was a bit more than a year ago that I berated a friend that he needed to change his work/life balance, if necessarily taking a life coach because given our age difference I’d consider it more appropriate he was at my funeral than the other way round. He was 49. I’ll be at his funeral tomorrow.
Geneseepaws
At 40 years you get glasses and the “First Great Culling of the Males” begins. Male half of the herd gets their first culling about then. If they’re 35 and don’t have a fairly good life style, you might not want to hang out as much when they turn 40.
Ana Chronistic
Dang, so sorry for your loss ?
David
Thanks, sorry for venting. I’ll probably be upset for a while to come but then I was not in his “inner circle” which basically stuck together since their school days, decades before I moved here.
Librain
If venting to strangers on the internet helps you, then it’s not exactly a heavy burden on us to either read it and offer virtual commiserations, or move on.
Vent away, good sir, and who knows… maybe it will make a difference to someone who needs to hear it?
DailyBrad
I’m sorry to hear that.
DailyBrad
Also true. Shit happens, and you sometimes need a moment to figure out if it happened in your favor or not.
Dean
Harrison is working up to telling Jacob that he’s had a personal epiphany, is quitting the law, and is getting a job as a rodeo clown.
Clif
Beats going into politics.
Sunny
I would have assumed “getting a job as a rodeo clown” was a metaphor for going into politics.
David
Rodeo clowns aren’t really funny.
Geneseepaws
Funnier than politicians, no?
David
Seems like you read too little Trump news.
Delicious Taffy
He’s not funny.
He Who Abides
Yeah, he’s just depressing at this point.
thejeff
Nah, he’s going to really freak Joyce out. He’s quitting law to be a stay at home dad.
Ana Chronistic
It’s on the checklist, anyway
pienapp1e
Joyce solved her crisis, and Jacob’s having one.Poor guy- hope he figures out soon that life happens.
ShinyNeen
That’s a fine lesson and all Harrison, but man if you only knew what kinda timing you have right now >.>
Doctor_Who
It’s worse than you think. That state law he got shut down was gonna make chicken fingers mandatory on every restaurant menu, and establish an official Dexter and Monkey Master Day.
Z
And all it would have cost was the dignity and human rights of a marginalized group. You really think Joyce would still take selfish gratification over the safety of lgbt people?
Jon Rich
Wait, what’s this? What law got shut down, and how was it connected to LGBT rights? I feel like I missed a strip or two somewhere.
Minim
Harrison and his team took down anti-transgender legislation. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/laws/
Deanatay
Friggin riders… friggin “omnibus legislation”… Oh, you want LGBTQ equality? *Piles on pork*
Danielle
awesome, raidah hasnt shown up yet!
Doctor_Who
“Could be worse.”
“How?”
“Well…there could be snakes in here with us.”
Keulen
I’m assuming she’ll show up at the worst possible moment.
Clif
She doesn’t have to show up. Jacob just has to explain why she doesn’t get to meet Harrison and get taken out to eat. It should be interesting.
thejeff
“He showed up early and had to leave right after.”
Kyrik Michalowski
I hope Jacob learns something from his brother here, dude is wound a little too tightly. I understand why but he needs to take a deep breath and relax. That being said, I still wonder how this is going to ultimately affect Joyce and Jacob’s relationship.
BBCC
Yeah, let’s see if you still think this is better after finding out the context, Harrison. Cuz, I mean, that might cause you to re-evaluate a lot.
Shane Wegner
Did we just imply Jaime wasn’t 100% a planned baby?
One more entertaining “knows things that do make him look a little more like what a boyfriend would know” for Jacob.
Rectilinear Propagation
At first I thought he meant that he didn’t see himself having kids before meeting his wife but I went back and read it and he says, “Stuff you couldn’t have planned for”.
Which, generally speaking, isn’t true about babies. You can plan to have a kid. So now I’m wondering if they thought one or both of them was infertile. It makes sense to say they couldn’t have planned for Jamie if they thought it wasn’t possible.
Z
Some babies aren’t planned. I’ve known people on multiple forms of birth control who still managed to have an “oops”.
Jaime also may have/had health problems that you can’t plan for. My friend just had a pregnancy that by all accounts was healthy and her baby spent 3 weeks in the NICU, which no one expected. Our first has special needs.
How you feel about a new partner and baby can also blindside you. He may have never expected to be the kind of dad who straps his baby to his chest to visit his brother.
There’s a thousand ways babies can not go according to plan.
LeslieBean4shizzle
Welll….
I knew a couple in college.
One had been declared medically infertile.
The other had had their tubes tied.
When they started dating, they used condoms for STD safety rather than pregnancy prevention.
They got pregnant. They won the lottery on condom break + tube-tie reversal + no permanent scaring + 1 in 1000 chance to bypass infertility + the usual dangers to a pregnancy.
**insert Life Finds a Way meme here**
So yeah, maybe Jamie was unplanned, or maybe Jamie was next to impossible – the phrasing doesn’t really make it clear either way.
David
I know a couple where she got pregnant while still being a (not really immaculate) virgin in highschool. They rectified that before their daughter’s birth, though. If you already paid the price, you might as well do the deed. And even while that made their future education more tricky, they managed reasonably well.
Rectilinear Propagation
I know some babies aren’t planned. I was only suggesting that the phrasing used, “couldn’t have” instead of “didn’t”, meant something.
Jamie
I wouldn’t go that far. He didn’t plan to meet his wife, and he might have been surprised that he was willing to go along with having a kid with her. But saying, “Planning to have Jaime,” doesn’t work.
You also can’t plan to have Jaime specifically. A baby, yes, but this specific baby, of course not. Which is hard to be nuanced about when you’re making a different point.
Chaucer59
Aw, isn’t that cute? Joyce is learning to think for herself. Kinda.
PHNX
State Law?
How much backstory am I missing?
Rectilinear Propagation
Harrison was part of the legal team that got some anti-transgender laws struck down: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/laws/
There are a few other comics that also have Raidah going on about Jacob measuring up to Harrison’s level as well. Actually, I think if you read all the strips that cover that conversation in the both you get all the backstory you need for what’s happening here.
Rosstifer
Yeeesh. I mean, I’m proud of my siblings, but referee g to one as a ‘God’ even in jest is just a bit much.
Nikol Geier
Y’know, I know Joyce is being bad and stuff here, but honestly? I think Raidah is really clearly unhealthy for Jacob and I want her to have her own story arcs that don’t rely on her vs. Joyce. I’m sure Raidah deserves better – she’s clearly no Mary, and is arguably close to Rachel on the “flawed but sympathetic” front – but this relationship with Jacob is not good and he is honestly better off single or with Joyce than with someone who constantly (and posibly accidentally) plays on his worst habits.
Fomalhaut88
…rachel is still like the least flawed character in the entire strip.
Tandel
Rachel or Other Rachel?
CK
Raidah mentioned that Harrison played a role in “striking down anti-transgender laws,” presumably at the state level.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/laws/
CK
That was… supposed to be a reply to PHNX, oh well.
Nono
I wonder how old Harrison is. That’s a kind of life lesson you don’t learn for a while usually.
SUGauthor
I learned that lesson when I was 19, it has less to do with your age and everything to do with the hand life deals you.
Axel
what SUGauthor said, and also, he’s done with university, so if he did four years and his LSAT, at least 22, but he seems to be at least a couple years out of university (since he has a job, isn’t an intern or and based on the preventing anti-trans law, probably isn’t really low in his firm), probably more likely to be in the in the 25-30 range?
Portland
Well law school’s what, three years? Assuming he started college at 18 and graduated at 22, he’d probably have graduated at 25ish. I’d put him mid-thirties.
Axel
Oh, my mistake. For some reason I was thinking it was just random courses plus LSAT and didn’t stop to think about how that doesn’t make sense and also that there are whole movies about law school.
Also, Jacob’s surprise about Harrison being chill makes me feel like it’s a fairly significant age gap, like they didn’t spend that many years at home together (esp in Jacob’s view, having been younger and probably having less solid memories in at least his first six years)
Electriccombines
I feel for Jacob. I think he built up an idea of Harrison that was completely spotless, contained and organized, and Harrison is just… Another guy. A really kind and good person, but a human being. With how Jacob referred to him as “everything” and “practically a God”, I think in his brain, Harrison was everything to aspire to be, completely coordinated and self-assured and flawless. And seeing how much Harrison likes Joyce, neurotic and naive and heart-on-her-sleeve, must kind of throw his world out of equilibrium. Not that Harrison would have disliked Joyce as a person or a friend, but to accept her as a potential love-interest despite not checking any boxes, that must be pretty hard to suddenly come to grips with.
Lawzlo
“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans,” as John Lennon once said.
I was trying to work out some Harrison/George Harrison/John Lennon joke, but it was just becoming unwieldy and awkward, so I gave up.
Spaceman
“As Harrison said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ Oh wait, no, that was Lennon.”
Best I got.
Opus the Poet
Lennon was quoting Allen Saunders : https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/05/06/other-plans/
Zellgato
Huh. I didn’t like him in that first panel th ere. Nope.
Axel
I first read it as him being embarrassed that she wouldn’t say it or that she implied she was undeclared, but on second reading I read it as him thinking Joyce was embarrassed about her major and encouraging her to say it.
But there’s that bolded TELL, so idk. It definitely doesn’t feel good.
Terry
I was thinking he was reacting to the conversation that happened here http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/salary/ I think it might have affected him more than it affected Joyce. Even at the time, Raidah’s condescension kinda rolled off her back, but if you look at Jacob, he noticed that Raidah was trying to make Joyce feel bad. I think he was thinking that Joyce is being self-conscious and got angry that she appeared embarrassed at her major.
This actually kinda feels to me like a validation on my thought that he might have had a fight with Raidah earlier about Joyce and that he’s feeling a bit defensive.
Axel
Related to that, I wonder if he’s thinking about Raidah’s comment about eating at an adult restaurant several pages later (Harrison decided to take them here right?)
Zellgato