i’ve heard that expensive gifts are a no-no early in a relationship. something about weight or obligation. but, heck, i confidently predict that these two will be a sweet, granulated pile of cuddles until the end of the comic! what could possibly go truck?
Doctor_Who
“Go truck” should totally be this fandom’s term for disaster.
gkheyf
a freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother for a nickel.
that joke works best when said aloud. please read it aloud
Yeah, and Becky is on some level aware of that because it was Dina’s offer of buying expensive dinner that led her to spending today obsessively job searching.
Spencer
Which is probably making Becky feel even worse. She already has it in her head that she’s a burden on Joyce, so she’s trying to make up for that. Now Dina is trying to be helpful in perfectly normal, girlfriendy ways, and Becky’s pushing those attempts away too.
Losloslos
I swear if Becky breaks our little Dina’s heart, even accidentally, she shall face a wrath with the intensity of a thousand, thousand suns.
I had cheaper, but the service was irritating (non-muteable expiration alerts at 3a EST). I like to give averages vs. rock bottom, anyway, to better reflect a repeatable experience (no idea whose services are getting jacked)
Virgins not been bad. My original pLan was minimum $15 per 3 months. It gave enough minutes for calls and texts as I needed most months. I still have that phone and plan as a fallback, tho I think that you can’t get that plan anymore as a new option. The phone is probably 10 generations old.
Indeed. Easier to just take turns carrying each other, and that’s not the easiest either.
gkheyf
Whoa…I did actually consider that when I first saw the comic. My conclusion was that they would collapse into an adorable pile, as neither of them looks too strong
i think she did. they chatted with joyce on occasion. she may have just left it when she fled her campus
Someone
I think she used a home phone for that
David M Willis
It was a landline. They used to exist!
gkheyf
oof. if only i had seen your comment before responding. now i feel a fool, a fool am i!
Someone
Thats what I meant by home phone. And to gkheyf wireless land lines do exist. I own one
gkheyf
fair, so do i. i just didn’t know that dorm rooms had them. i figured it would at most be a single phone in the hall that you wouldn’t take to your bed to lie around with. when i was in college, landlines were already largely outdated. and yet many forms still ask me for a home and cell number as mandatory.
Disloyal Subject
I’ve never had problems come from giving the same number for both, or just writing N/A for Home Phone #.
Erin
Even before cell phones, teenagers were well known for spending hours on the phone. Installing only one phone for a hallway full of them would have been like installing only one toilet. That infrastructure remains in any dorm more than a decade old, which is most of them on most campuses. I’m a little younger than Willis, but my college had phone jacks in every room right next to the ethernet jack.
When I was in college (I’m a few years older than Willis), the dorms had one payphone per floor. That was it. When I was checking the place out the summer before my senior year of college, they were saying they were going to put network and phone drops into the rooms the next summer. They put the conduit in – my roommate, who was working and living on campus that summer, woke up one morning to a masonry bit coming through the wall six inches in front of his face – but they didn’t actually run the cables until the semester after I left. So for my entire college career, I was sharing one payphone with about 65 other guys.
On the bright side, that meant I never had to answer the phone. I hate answering phones.
Landlines still exist, especially in the commercial sector, home landlines are mostly found in old peoples homes these days.
Eolirin
VOIP as part of ISP bundle packages surely isn’t that uncommon, and totally counts :p
Idon'tcarenomore
Voip is not a landline, it is part of a computer digital setup.
Landline is a phone that is totally connected to the now nearly extinct separate phone system: which was not electrical or digital. You know, Thomas Edison’s invention 🙂
N0083rP00F
Oh god, did you actually ascribe the telephone to that shyster?
Alexander Graham Bell was the gentleman inventor to invented the telephone.
Also, in other news, the telephone was and still is an electrical device.
Also the copper based phone system is not dead except in the USofA where the local companies are pushing wireless to save the costs of new builds. Cell towers are still not mandated in all jurisdictions to have backup power and 100% up time like the old wired systems. This is an issue with and health and emergency monitoring systems.
WolfLann
In Canada the copper lines are still in uses in lots of places. Slowly replaced with Fiber Optic or wireless.
Also VoIP in most case still use copper cables internally, as in between the Phone system, IP Phones, VoIP box and the internet modem. Cat 5 and Cat 6 cables are made of copper.
An all Fiber Optic internal infrastructure is not yet cost effective for SMB and in most case it is implemented only for long distances between network hubs and between each switches in same rack to avoid bottleneck.
I have a VOIP phone and I can tell you now, it is no where near as reliable as a traditional landline and as for the term landline, I only started referring to traditional phones as landlines in the last few years, before that, they were just phones.
all DSL lines are land lines ; for example “cable internet” isn’t common in France.
Orbit Junkie
By the laws of the sliding timeline, the events of this comic will one day occur in an era where kids don’t know what landlines are. I’m not sure what this contributes to the conversation, but it disturbs me.
DarkVeghetta
There’s already plenty of those, actually. Welcome to the grimdark future where only mobile phones count!
de Combys
You are right, at the university I go to, when people ask for my phone number I specify that it’s a landline, and I’ve had “what do you mean”s.
BenRG
Ah! Someone else who remembers the stone age! I actually get shocked looks when I give my home land-line as a contact number!
Ryek Hvek
Some of us are reading this comic through a landline (w/DSL)
I had a landline in college! But, uh, that was 2000-2004.
gkheyf
dunno, it was definitely wireless and she was lazing about with it. not sure campus rooms were ever that well-equipped
Disloyal Subject
Perhaps it was borrowed.
JaneDoe
My sister’s dorm room and mine both had just outlets for any standard landline. While neither of us used them since we both had cell phones by that point, all either of us would have needed is to plug in a regular cordless phone and we would have had that kind of setup.
Becky never had a cellphone.  According to Joyce, her parents wouldn’t allow it.
The phone she had in her room at Anderson is probably a cheap cordless model ($10 or $15 at Wal-Mart) that connects to a base unit/charger that plugs into the wall jack elsewhere within the room.
Mmmmm, I dunno.
I get why people find this adorable, but this is kinda starting to smack of the same kind of jealous obsession that Dina showed in I.W. Not to the same extent as that, but in a similar vein, what with actively inconveniencing herself in order to try and keep a hold on the person she likes.
Though that could just be my terminal case of pessimism flaring up again.
132 thoughts on “Sticks”
Ana Chronistic
or, ya know, a “stupid” phone only costs like $40 with $15/month time refill cards, since you have all that fancy dinner money
Cody
Come on Dina, give Becky the gift of her own phone.
Hell of a way to keep her.
Inkblot
Come to think of it, my girlfriend doesn’t have a phone either (fortunately not for the same reason.) Perhaps I should get her a dumbphone.
gkheyf
i’ve heard that expensive gifts are a no-no early in a relationship. something about weight or obligation. but, heck, i confidently predict that these two will be a sweet, granulated pile of cuddles until the end of the comic! what could possibly go truck?
Doctor_Who
“Go truck” should totally be this fandom’s term for disaster.
gkheyf
a freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother for a nickel.
that joke works best when said aloud. please read it aloud
Nakama
Preferably in public.
Cerberus
Yeah, and Becky is on some level aware of that because it was Dina’s offer of buying expensive dinner that led her to spending today obsessively job searching.
Spencer
Which is probably making Becky feel even worse. She already has it in her head that she’s a burden on Joyce, so she’s trying to make up for that. Now Dina is trying to be helpful in perfectly normal, girlfriendy ways, and Becky’s pushing those attempts away too.
Losloslos
I swear if Becky breaks our little Dina’s heart, even accidentally, she shall face a wrath with the intensity of a thousand, thousand suns.
bearpelt
Well I think the idea here if more that this is what they have available NOW, so Dina’s giving her what she has NOW.
fogel
There are even phones for half that and less for minutes (if you don’t use many).
Jen Aside
I had cheaper, but the service was irritating (non-muteable expiration alerts at 3a EST). I like to give averages vs. rock bottom, anyway, to better reflect a repeatable experience (no idea whose services are getting jacked)
Bob
Well actually:
http://m.virginmobileusa.com/mt/www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/kyocera-rise-phone/features/
And t mobile, straight talk and Wal-Mart family mobile have comparable pricing
fogel
Virgins not been bad. My original pLan was minimum $15 per 3 months. It gave enough minutes for calls and texts as I needed most months. I still have that phone and plan as a fallback, tho I think that you can’t get that plan anymore as a new option. The phone is probably 10 generations old.
liahansen
i was gonna cry about how becky’s can-do attitude is kicking my ass, but dina cuteness made me forget
Bagge
I know right. “You go gir… OH MY GOSH THIS IS ADORABLE”
Haven
This is so cute it hurts
Mada
Oh my god those last three panels are adorable.
tim gueguen
Cuddlewalking is a task one should not undertake without practice.
gkheyf
too much of a good thing, too much of a good thing!
seriously, though…tried it, very hard. doubly so if there’s a height discrepancy. like an ultimate 3-legged race
Disloyal Subject
Indeed. Easier to just take turns carrying each other, and that’s not the easiest either.
gkheyf
Whoa…I did actually consider that when I first saw the comic. My conclusion was that they would collapse into an adorable pile, as neither of them looks too strong
Bagge
1. Practice is fun
2. Cuddlewalking is my new favorite word
Mr. Random
I know a phone plan costs a lot for a person at this stage, but she really needs one.
Anonymous
The best value prepaid phone I can find is a $15 refurbished Android phone, which costs $20 for every 180 minutes of talk time.
Or maybe Dina can add a cheap refurb phone to her plan. Most carriers don’t charge much to add a voice line.
Mr. Mendo
In her own way, Dina’s one of the most romantic women who ever lived!
Arkantos
I’m confused, was she looking at her boobs?
Mada
Headcanon accepted.
Someone
Well she may have been looking at her tush in that last panel
doubleW
Boobs are as distracting as phones. Put them next to each other and anyone is bound to trip up.
inqntrol
There are some exceptions as well.
doubleW
Ah! Edit ‘boobs’ to ‘chests’ and I think we’re good. Folks can appreciate some good pecs, right?
brionl
Good thing she wasn’t chewing gum too. Could have been a trip to the emergency room.
Twilightomens
THESE TWO
JessWitt
At first glance, I thought Dina was freaking over the hidden dinosaur porn revealed in her phone.
Alice Macher
Adorkableness: restored.
inqntrol
Didn’t she have a phone?Or did her bigot dad confiscate it?
Someone
She never had one…i think
gkheyf
i think she did. they chatted with joyce on occasion. she may have just left it when she fled her campus
Someone
I think she used a home phone for that
David M Willis
It was a landline. They used to exist!
gkheyf
oof. if only i had seen your comment before responding. now i feel a fool, a fool am i!
Someone
Thats what I meant by home phone. And to gkheyf wireless land lines do exist. I own one
gkheyf
fair, so do i. i just didn’t know that dorm rooms had them. i figured it would at most be a single phone in the hall that you wouldn’t take to your bed to lie around with. when i was in college, landlines were already largely outdated. and yet many forms still ask me for a home and cell number as mandatory.
Disloyal Subject
I’ve never had problems come from giving the same number for both, or just writing N/A for Home Phone #.
Erin
Even before cell phones, teenagers were well known for spending hours on the phone. Installing only one phone for a hallway full of them would have been like installing only one toilet. That infrastructure remains in any dorm more than a decade old, which is most of them on most campuses. I’m a little younger than Willis, but my college had phone jacks in every room right next to the ethernet jack.
John
When I was in college (I’m a few years older than Willis), the dorms had one payphone per floor. That was it. When I was checking the place out the summer before my senior year of college, they were saying they were going to put network and phone drops into the rooms the next summer. They put the conduit in – my roommate, who was working and living on campus that summer, woke up one morning to a masonry bit coming through the wall six inches in front of his face – but they didn’t actually run the cables until the semester after I left. So for my entire college career, I was sharing one payphone with about 65 other guys.
On the bright side, that meant I never had to answer the phone. I hate answering phones.
John
s/senior year of college/senior year of high school/
inqntrol
So did the Nokia ,,bricks”. Back then it was a big deal if you dropped the phone…or throw it.
Plasma Mongoose
Landlines still exist, especially in the commercial sector, home landlines are mostly found in old peoples homes these days.
Eolirin
VOIP as part of ISP bundle packages surely isn’t that uncommon, and totally counts :p
Idon'tcarenomore
Voip is not a landline, it is part of a computer digital setup.
Landline is a phone that is totally connected to the now nearly extinct separate phone system: which was not electrical or digital. You know, Thomas Edison’s invention 🙂
N0083rP00F
Oh god, did you actually ascribe the telephone to that shyster?
Alexander Graham Bell was the gentleman inventor to invented the telephone.
Also, in other news, the telephone was and still is an electrical device.
Also the copper based phone system is not dead except in the USofA where the local companies are pushing wireless to save the costs of new builds. Cell towers are still not mandated in all jurisdictions to have backup power and 100% up time like the old wired systems. This is an issue with and health and emergency monitoring systems.
WolfLann
In Canada the copper lines are still in uses in lots of places. Slowly replaced with Fiber Optic or wireless.
Also VoIP in most case still use copper cables internally, as in between the Phone system, IP Phones, VoIP box and the internet modem. Cat 5 and Cat 6 cables are made of copper.
An all Fiber Optic internal infrastructure is not yet cost effective for SMB and in most case it is implemented only for long distances between network hubs and between each switches in same rack to avoid bottleneck.
Plasma Mongoose
I have a VOIP phone and I can tell you now, it is no where near as reliable as a traditional landline and as for the term landline, I only started referring to traditional phones as landlines in the last few years, before that, they were just phones.
DarkoNeko
all DSL lines are land lines ; for example “cable internet” isn’t common in France.
Orbit Junkie
By the laws of the sliding timeline, the events of this comic will one day occur in an era where kids don’t know what landlines are. I’m not sure what this contributes to the conversation, but it disturbs me.
DarkVeghetta
There’s already plenty of those, actually. Welcome to the grimdark future where only mobile phones count!
de Combys
You are right, at the university I go to, when people ask for my phone number I specify that it’s a landline, and I’ve had “what do you mean”s.
BenRG
Ah! Someone else who remembers the stone age! I actually get shocked looks when I give my home land-line as a contact number!
Ryek Hvek
Some of us are reading this comic through a landline (w/DSL)
leadsynth
I had a landline in college! But, uh, that was 2000-2004.
gkheyf
dunno, it was definitely wireless and she was lazing about with it. not sure campus rooms were ever that well-equipped
Disloyal Subject
Perhaps it was borrowed.
JaneDoe
My sister’s dorm room and mine both had just outlets for any standard landline. While neither of us used them since we both had cell phones by that point, all either of us would have needed is to plug in a regular cordless phone and we would have had that kind of setup.
Bicycle Bill
Becky never had a cellphone.  According to Joyce, her parents wouldn’t allow it.
The phone she had in her room at Anderson is probably a cheap cordless model ($10 or $15 at Wal-Mart) that connects to a base unit/charger that plugs into the wall jack elsewhere within the room.
gkheyf
daaa’w! jealous dina is possessive, yet still overtly logical!
gkheyf
she does however fail adorkably when the opportunity arises
…that time, i cut myself off by accident
JDemms
Mmmmm, I dunno.
I get why people find this adorable, but this is kinda starting to smack of the same kind of jealous obsession that Dina showed in I.W. Not to the same extent as that, but in a similar vein, what with actively inconveniencing herself in order to try and keep a hold on the person she likes.
Though that could just be my terminal case of pessimism flaring up again.
Someone
Now Dina do not take your hat off and hold it solemnly.
gkheyf
in this comic, that would carry far, far more weight.
i do say this not having read all of the old comics
Someone
in a couple years prepare to bawl prepare to bawl like you have never bawled before
Someone
Or just read the rest of the old comics heres a link
http://www.joyceandwalky.com/d/20010225.html
picking up where the reruns left of