Other times, it’s the lyrics we fill in when too busy dancing around in a towel like an idiot to properly remember the lines. A lot of overly repetitive choruses get way cooler with a little variation.
“We’ve got the music, makes you move it, got a song that makes you lose it! We say jump, you say ‘how high?’ Put your hands into the sky!
We’ve got the music, makes you move it, brought a song to help you lose it! We say jump, you beg to fly! Raise your fists up to the sky!”
is a lot more fun to stomp around to than just the first paragraph repeated twice.
thejeff
“Scuse me while I kiss this guy”
Pablo360
‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy
Pablo360
Curse you, thejeff! Foiled again for the first time!
Booyahman
Except Hendrix ended up liking this lyric so much, he would occasionally sing it like that.
Bruceski
My favorite is Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp. Until just last year or so I’d always heard “Diane’s debutante backseat of Jackie’s car” as “Diane’s dead in the backseat of Jackie’s car.” Changes the tone of the whole song to mournful flashbacks of the life they had and were going to lead until everything went wrong.
No, it’s baffled. As in, confused about this song. Did he compose it? Was it divinely inspired.
And, if you REALLY know your old Testament, David is wondering, as he’s playing for Saul, why does he keep having all these Feels about Saul’s son Jonathon. A perfect fit for this comic!
Elitist Oars
It’s baffled, and baffled makes perfect sense in the context of the song, as it throughout speaks about fallible people, failing, being overwhelmed, being betrayed or broken, and nonetheless their Hallelulaj (their love) being just as good.
You wanted “battle”? But love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelulaj.
It’s times like this that I appreciate that the dorms I was in had their own showers, so I only needed to share with 1-3 people, depending on how many roommates I had that year.
Senior year I even had the place to myself, as my roommate left to join the Air Force and I never got a new one. Private bathroom! Such bliss!
I just today moved into my own suite for the very first time. No kitchen but I totally have my own shower for the first time ever and it’s tremendously exciting.
Leorale
So now when I see tribbles of hair and shower grime, I’ll know it’s MY hair and grime.
I never had a communal shower, either. Half the time I had a communal bathroom with the dorm next door, and half the time I had my very own.
Oh, and since the hot water could never run out, I sometimes actually got to just sit and relax in there. You couldn’t do a bath, but you could just leave the water running.
(I, of course, do not live where there is remotely a water shortage.)
I laughed at every single panel here,
Panel 1. “She is here, right? I can FEEL her smiling at me.”
Panel 2. “GODDAMMIT, I HATE BEING RIGHT.”
Panel 3. “BRIGHTNESSSSSS, IT HURTSSSSS US:”
Panel 4 *goes through mental list of mean things to say* “Too mean, too spiteful, to horrible….”
Panel 5: “I got it”
Panel 6: “Thank God it worked, I found the dimmer.”
I love the silent tug-of-war between Morning!Sarah and Morning!Joyce.
Also, do we really want to speculate in what floats above in the communal shower?
It’s really not, but at the same time I can’t muster much sympathy – Joyce desperately needs to learn boundaries. Hovering over sleeping folks is NOT okay. Frankly, she’s lucky only one person has shoved her from the bed before.
I don’t think Joyce intended to surprise her, she’s just unreasonably perky.
Sarah only seems to mind the excessive smiling, though. If she has further complaints, she needs to speak up about them. Establishing boundaries you’re comfortable with requires communicating where those boundaries are.
“Unreasonably perky” is a decent description of both Joyce and Becky.
I love both Joyce and Becky.
Fiddler115
Unreasonably perky. Just how I like your mother, Trebek.
BBCC
She’s also asked Joyce to leave her alone when she’s sleeping/just waking up. This is not the first time she’s complained about this.
Dean
Some of us, who are not morning people, consider before-breakfast conversation to be an unreasonable imposition. Who uses actual sentences first thing in the morning?
She’s only really complained about the hovering specifically. Even if this still bothers her, it IS an improvement.
Further calibration may be necessary, but they’re dialing in on it
BBCC
Hopefully this will dial further as it goes before someone really chews Joyce out.
StClair
When she and Becky attempted it with Sal, there was strangling.
Willoughby Chase
Sal had the right idea.
Falcon
As much as clear communication and respecting boundaries are important things for anyone to understand, I’m really not interpreting Sarah’s protests here as ones seriously meant to warn Joyce off any interaction upon waking. Sarah *wants* Joyce’s sunniness, but is really bad at communicating it outside of when it makes her uncomfortable. Sarah here just seems to be acknowledging herself as the grouchy vampire burning under Joyce’s demeanor with some pretty impressive banter for a not-morning person. She’s not telling Joyce to stop what she’s doing.
BBCC
Except we’ve seen Sarah telling her to quit doing stuff like this before. And it isn’t just Sarah.
Falcon
And Joyce adjusted, after which Sarah has not given Joyce that same kind of feedback.
BBCC
Actually she hasn’t. If she were adjusting, she wouldn’t continue to wake up Sarah, which she admitted she still does yesterday. Or climb up in/on people’s bunks, which she’s doing today.
Joyce isn’t some irredeemable horrible person for it, but it is a boundary issue and it’s an assholish thing to do, imo.
BBCC
* I am mistaken about her waking up Sarah, but she has been told not to climb up in or on people’s bunks, which she’s still doing.
You need more than one situation to establish that Joyce has boundary issue problems. The only issue she seems to have is that she likes to wake people up cheerfully.
Joyce is just a morning person, while Sarah is the least morning person possible. She’s doing her best here. It’s not remotely unreasonable for her not to predict that saying “good morning” to Sarah would bother her, let alone that her smile would bother her.
Yeah, we get that Sarah wants to completely be left alone when she wakes up, but she’s never actually communicated that. And one of Joyce’s actual problems is that she doesn’t take hints very well–particularly when it’s at odds with what she’s learned growing up.
Sarah’s problem is that she’s a lousy communicator. So it’s gonna take some work.
And while Joyce may not talk to her, I honestly do not think she should ever have to stop smiling. That’s just too far.
trlkly
I’m not even sure she communicated it effectively this time. She cracked another joke, and made it about her smiling. (and, again, I do not think it’s remotely reasonable to ask Joyce to stop smiling.)
What Joyce has learned is not to be on top of her, not to be the one to wake her up (unless they have something they need to do together) and not to sit beside her.
Sarah is the one who needs to sit down and establish some boundaries in this situation. “Joyce, you’re really nice, but I’m just not a morning person. It take me a while to get fully awake. I don’t really like to talk when I first get up. So let’s wait until after our showers to talk.”
And, of course, Joyce would say something like, “You really think I’m nice? Best sisters forever!”
Of course, I predict this won’t happen, because we need the wacky morning shenanigans.
BBCC
Having a boundary issue with this one thing is still a boundary issue and she’s done so more than once to more than one person. Billie and Sal have also expressed this is not okay.
Joyce is not a toddler. She should know better than to hop up beside people on their bed to say good morning when she’s been told to back off before. She can say good morning as cheerfully from the floor or from her own bed. She does not need to get up in Sarah’s face.
Sarah is not the only one who has communicated this. Billie threw her off her bed and Sal has choked her at least twice. At this point, it’s on purpose. Joyce isn’t stupid. She can put two and two and two together. When people have told her more than once to stop, she needs to stop.
Sarah has yelled at her about this multiple times. As have Billie and Sal. The problem is Joyce is not listening because SHE likes it and that is really obnoxious.
The problem doesn’t seem to be talking, it’s Joyce JUMPING UP onto people’s beds and getting in their faces, which is something she refuses to listen to. She’s been yelled at, thrown off the bed, and choked. At this point, she’s either being wilfully obtuse or she’s being an asshole. Again, Joyce is not stupid or a toddler. It’s not unreasonable for her to take the hint and stop doing this. It won’t kill her to knock it off.
Joyce doesn’t need to stop smiling – that isn’t what Sarah was asking either. She was asking her to tone it down and if she’s going to get up in Sarah’s face after being told multiple times by multiple people that is creepy, weird, and annoying, I don’t consider that unreasonable.
No. Not communal shower stalls anything but that. I literally used the dorm showers once in my stay at college, after which I instead switched to showering at the gym because the gym showers were kept clean. Did I have to actually get a gym membership? Yes. Did it cost me money despite being a student? Yes. Was it really worth it? Oh hell yes it was!
Huh. My family does that too, but my parents definitely not Catholic. There were a lot of Swedes who settled in MN, so that could be it? Tho I think they just liked the idea of not getting woken up to open presents at the crack of dawn
David M Willis
NOT WAKING UP TO OPEN CHRISTMAS PRESENTS IS BULLSHIT
167 thoughts on “Dim”
Ana Chronistic
blinded by the light
woke up by a Joyce
another smile that’s way too bright
Doctor_Who
I still can’t listen to that song without hearing “revved up like a douche”. I KNOW it’s “deuce”, but my brain hears what it hears.
Retromash
On a tinny a.m. radio in the 70’s, that’s what it sounded like.
Stephen R. Bierce
…and with a very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing
her enthusiasm crashed to the ground
*guitar solo followed by organ blasts*
Aeron
Sometimes the lyrics we hear are more interesting than what’s actually being said. “Kissed by a rose on the grave”.
Ana Chronistic
Don’t go out tonight
It’s bound to take your life
There’s a bathroom on the right
Tualha
We’ll give the finger to those we pass on our way out of town
Disloyal Subject
Other times, it’s the lyrics we fill in when too busy dancing around in a towel like an idiot to properly remember the lines. A lot of overly repetitive choruses get way cooler with a little variation.
“We’ve got the music, makes you move it, got a song that makes you lose it! We say jump, you say ‘how high?’ Put your hands into the sky!
We’ve got the music, makes you move it, brought a song to help you lose it! We say jump, you beg to fly! Raise your fists up to the sky!”
is a lot more fun to stomp around to than just the first paragraph repeated twice.
thejeff
“Scuse me while I kiss this guy”
Pablo360
‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy
Pablo360
Curse you, thejeff! Foiled again for the first time!
Booyahman
Except Hendrix ended up liking this lyric so much, he would occasionally sing it like that.
Bruceski
My favorite is Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp. Until just last year or so I’d always heard “Diane’s debutante backseat of Jackie’s car” as “Diane’s dead in the backseat of Jackie’s car.” Changes the tone of the whole song to mournful flashbacks of the life they had and were going to lead until everything went wrong.
Chris Phoenix
“The baffled king composing Alleluia”
If you know your Old Testament, it’s obviously supposed to be the _battle_ king. But I can’t hear it.
Ellegos
“Baffled King” is how I’ve always heard it.
Mr. Bulbmin
Same here. In some versions of the song, they even say “baffled”, emphasizing the “f”.
Bicycle Bill
Actually, I think it’s “the embattled King composing….”
-“BB”-
Mrs. Pickles
Um…In Cohen’s original version, it IS “baffled,”
And Cohen doesn’t drop the H, it’s Hallelujah.
Frederic Garber
No, it’s baffled. As in, confused about this song. Did he compose it? Was it divinely inspired.
And, if you REALLY know your old Testament, David is wondering, as he’s playing for Saul, why does he keep having all these Feels about Saul’s son Jonathon. A perfect fit for this comic!
Elitist Oars
It’s baffled, and baffled makes perfect sense in the context of the song, as it throughout speaks about fallible people, failing, being overwhelmed, being betrayed or broken, and nonetheless their Hallelulaj (their love) being just as good.
You wanted “battle”? But love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelulaj.
nothri
Blinded by the light, went off like a douche in the rover in the night.
Skater Girl (@syleegrrl)
It always sounds like “dressed up like a douche” to me.
Bruceski
It may be *supposed* to be “deuce”, but he definitely pronounces it “douche”
MatsuoTanuki
Darn it, beat me to it.
Doctor_Who
It’s times like this that I appreciate that the dorms I was in had their own showers, so I only needed to share with 1-3 people, depending on how many roommates I had that year.
Senior year I even had the place to myself, as my roommate left to join the Air Force and I never got a new one. Private bathroom! Such bliss!
butts
Yeah, I was in a dorm with communal showers last year. Do not miss.
Leorale
I just today moved into my own suite for the very first time. No kitchen but I totally have my own shower for the first time ever and it’s tremendously exciting.
Leorale
So now when I see tribbles of hair and shower grime, I’ll know it’s MY hair and grime.
trlkly
I never had a communal shower, either. Half the time I had a communal bathroom with the dorm next door, and half the time I had my very own.
Oh, and since the hot water could never run out, I sometimes actually got to just sit and relax in there. You couldn’t do a bath, but you could just leave the water running.
(I, of course, do not live where there is remotely a water shortage.)
AnvilPro
Never a dull morning for these two
-Sentinel-
Making Sarah and Joyce roommates is one of the best ideas David Willis has ever had. One of the oldest, too; it dates all the way back to Roomies!.
Mr. Mendo
She’s learning. 😉
Nono
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Joyce’s roommate was Roz instead.
Mr. Mendo
…I would PAY to read that strip!
Bagge
Some things would have been different.
Some things, not so much…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curlingiron/
zoomer296
Oh hey, that’s where I got my avatar from!
Bagge
I laughed at every single panel here,
Panel 1. “She is here, right? I can FEEL her smiling at me.”
Panel 2. “GODDAMMIT, I HATE BEING RIGHT.”
Panel 3. “BRIGHTNESSSSSS, IT HURTSSSSS US:”
Panel 4 *goes through mental list of mean things to say* “Too mean, too spiteful, to horrible….”
Panel 5: “I got it”
Panel 6: “Thank God it worked, I found the dimmer.”
I love the silent tug-of-war between Morning!Sarah and Morning!Joyce.
Also, do we really want to speculate in what floats above in the communal shower?
Kernanator
Smile so bright I gotta wear shades.
TheAnonymousGuy
and hopes so high you gotta chop them down.
StClair
Sarah no.
That’s not “better”, it really isn’t.
BBCC
It’s really not, but at the same time I can’t muster much sympathy – Joyce desperately needs to learn boundaries. Hovering over sleeping folks is NOT okay. Frankly, she’s lucky only one person has shoved her from the bed before.
Fart Captor
She wasn’t hovering this time! She waited until Sarah was awake and starting to sit up!
BBCC
Hovering, jumping up to surprise them when they’re just waking up, close enough. She’s being a dick.
Fart Captor
I don’t think Joyce intended to surprise her, she’s just unreasonably perky.
Sarah only seems to mind the excessive smiling, though. If she has further complaints, she needs to speak up about them. Establishing boundaries you’re comfortable with requires communicating where those boundaries are.
Bagge
“Unreasonably perky” is a decent description of both Joyce and Becky.
I love both Joyce and Becky.
Fiddler115
Unreasonably perky. Just how I like your mother, Trebek.
BBCC
She’s also asked Joyce to leave her alone when she’s sleeping/just waking up. This is not the first time she’s complained about this.
Dean
Some of us, who are not morning people, consider before-breakfast conversation to be an unreasonable imposition. Who uses actual sentences first thing in the morning?
Fart Captor
She’s only really complained about the hovering specifically. Even if this still bothers her, it IS an improvement.
Further calibration may be necessary, but they’re dialing in on it
BBCC
Hopefully this will dial further as it goes before someone really chews Joyce out.
StClair
When she and Becky attempted it with Sal, there was strangling.
Willoughby Chase
Sal had the right idea.
Falcon
As much as clear communication and respecting boundaries are important things for anyone to understand, I’m really not interpreting Sarah’s protests here as ones seriously meant to warn Joyce off any interaction upon waking. Sarah *wants* Joyce’s sunniness, but is really bad at communicating it outside of when it makes her uncomfortable. Sarah here just seems to be acknowledging herself as the grouchy vampire burning under Joyce’s demeanor with some pretty impressive banter for a not-morning person. She’s not telling Joyce to stop what she’s doing.
BBCC
Except we’ve seen Sarah telling her to quit doing stuff like this before. And it isn’t just Sarah.
Falcon
And Joyce adjusted, after which Sarah has not given Joyce that same kind of feedback.
BBCC
Actually she hasn’t. If she were adjusting, she wouldn’t continue to wake up Sarah, which she admitted she still does yesterday. Or climb up in/on people’s bunks, which she’s doing today.
Joyce isn’t some irredeemable horrible person for it, but it is a boundary issue and it’s an assholish thing to do, imo.
BBCC
* I am mistaken about her waking up Sarah, but she has been told not to climb up in or on people’s bunks, which she’s still doing.
trlkly
You need more than one situation to establish that Joyce has boundary issue problems. The only issue she seems to have is that she likes to wake people up cheerfully.
Joyce is just a morning person, while Sarah is the least morning person possible. She’s doing her best here. It’s not remotely unreasonable for her not to predict that saying “good morning” to Sarah would bother her, let alone that her smile would bother her.
Yeah, we get that Sarah wants to completely be left alone when she wakes up, but she’s never actually communicated that. And one of Joyce’s actual problems is that she doesn’t take hints very well–particularly when it’s at odds with what she’s learned growing up.
Sarah’s problem is that she’s a lousy communicator. So it’s gonna take some work.
And while Joyce may not talk to her, I honestly do not think she should ever have to stop smiling. That’s just too far.
trlkly
I’m not even sure she communicated it effectively this time. She cracked another joke, and made it about her smiling. (and, again, I do not think it’s remotely reasonable to ask Joyce to stop smiling.)
What Joyce has learned is not to be on top of her, not to be the one to wake her up (unless they have something they need to do together) and not to sit beside her.
Sarah is the one who needs to sit down and establish some boundaries in this situation. “Joyce, you’re really nice, but I’m just not a morning person. It take me a while to get fully awake. I don’t really like to talk when I first get up. So let’s wait until after our showers to talk.”
And, of course, Joyce would say something like, “You really think I’m nice? Best sisters forever!”
Of course, I predict this won’t happen, because we need the wacky morning shenanigans.
BBCC
Having a boundary issue with this one thing is still a boundary issue and she’s done so more than once to more than one person. Billie and Sal have also expressed this is not okay.
Joyce is not a toddler. She should know better than to hop up beside people on their bed to say good morning when she’s been told to back off before. She can say good morning as cheerfully from the floor or from her own bed. She does not need to get up in Sarah’s face.
Sarah is not the only one who has communicated this. Billie threw her off her bed and Sal has choked her at least twice. At this point, it’s on purpose. Joyce isn’t stupid. She can put two and two and two together. When people have told her more than once to stop, she needs to stop.
Sarah has yelled at her about this multiple times. As have Billie and Sal. The problem is Joyce is not listening because SHE likes it and that is really obnoxious.
The problem doesn’t seem to be talking, it’s Joyce JUMPING UP onto people’s beds and getting in their faces, which is something she refuses to listen to. She’s been yelled at, thrown off the bed, and choked. At this point, she’s either being wilfully obtuse or she’s being an asshole. Again, Joyce is not stupid or a toddler. It’s not unreasonable for her to take the hint and stop doing this. It won’t kill her to knock it off.
Joyce doesn’t need to stop smiling – that isn’t what Sarah was asking either. She was asking her to tone it down and if she’s going to get up in Sarah’s face after being told multiple times by multiple people that is creepy, weird, and annoying, I don’t consider that unreasonable.
Doctor_Who
At least it’s down to about 300 watts.
WaltM
Ain’t no power in the ‘verse that can keep Joyce from smilin’ at 11.
Bagge
In times like these, it’s worth remembering Sarah’s mornings.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/babbling/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/bottle/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/wakeywakeywakey/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/gah/
Bagge
Not to mention Sal’s mornings
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/wakeupcall/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/noon/
butts
Panel 2: YAAAAAAY
Panel 6: yeaurgh
Rukduk
No. Not communal shower stalls anything but that. I literally used the dorm showers once in my stay at college, after which I instead switched to showering at the gym because the gym showers were kept clean. Did I have to actually get a gym membership? Yes. Did it cost me money despite being a student? Yes. Was it really worth it? Oh hell yes it was!
DarkoNeko
AAAH THE LIGHT, IT HURRRRTS
Bagge
ReJoyce everyone – Smiley Joyce is back!
And happy holidays (Fun fact – Swedes celebrate on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day)
butts
JOYCE TO THE WORLD, THE JOYCE IS COME
David M Willis
so do my catholic inlaws and it’s WRONG i tell you WRONNGGG
Fart Captor
Huh. My family does that too, but my parents definitely not Catholic. There were a lot of Swedes who settled in MN, so that could be it? Tho I think they just liked the idea of not getting woken up to open presents at the crack of dawn
David M Willis
NOT WAKING UP TO OPEN CHRISTMAS PRESENTS IS BULLSHIT
Fart Captor
NOT AS BULLSHIT AS CHRISTMAS WITH NO SNOW, HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK
DOES THE SLEIGH HAVE WHEELS OR SOMETHING? DO PEOPLE IN FLORIDA EVEN HAVE CHIMNEYS
butting
NEVER MIND CHRISTMAS WITH NO SNOW, HOW DOES CHRISTMAS WITH NO CRICKET ON THE BEACH EVEN WORK
there’s an entire hemisphere I’ll never remotely be able to understand