133

Grosser
Posted on January 26, 2021 by David M Willis

133 thoughts on “Grosser”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    a rookie mistake

    wanting to see things

    1. butts

      yeah i realized that a while back and now i am three years glasses-free

      1. Clif

        Shut your eyes until reality gives up and goes away.

        1. wwwhhattt

          Or just go the full Pyrrho and don’t accept anything you can’t be certain of, which includes everything. (It might help to have acolytes to gently guide you away from cliffs, wild animals etc.)

        2. Oberon

          But then I’d need acolytes to gently guide me away from my acolytes, and that would quickly spiral out of control.

    2. foamy

      What *I* want to know is how the hell Ruth knows Joyce is wearing her glasses in there.

      1. Needfuldoer

        She’s commenting on the shower grime, which she couldn’t see before because she went from 480p to 4k.

  2. Doctor_Who

    Wouldn’t the glasses get all steamy?

    Unless Joyce takes cold showers, to ward away the Hanky Panky Thoughts.

    1. Dave Van Domelen

      If they get wet, they don’t get steamy, just droplets all over.

    2. tim gueguen

      Steam goes away pretty quickly. It’s water drying on them and making blotches that’s a bigger problem.

    3. Thag Simmons

      Probably, but it looks like she only just started.

    4. 0phidiophile

      At first they are steamy, then the steam is washed away, leaving a bunch of water droplets that make seeing clearly difficult (which is why cars have windshield wipers). Trying to clear the droplets with fingers simply rearranges the water. Even if your head isn’t in the shower stream, water from your hair will get on the lenses. Given the mildness of Joyce’s myopia, she’d have better vision in the shower without the glasses.

      1. Zaxares

        Yeah, I’d say it depends on how bad exactly one’s myopia is. My eyesight is TERRIBLE. If I didn’t wear my glasses into the shower, the entire shower apparatus would look like a silver blob. Even so, I don’t keep them on the ENTIRE time. I mainly bring them in to wash them (gets rid of any sweat/oil/dirt that might have gotten on the lenses during the day), then take them off during lathering/showering, then pop them back on once I’m done.

      2. Mr D

        “mildness” Dude she couldn’t tell that a statue was anything other than a black splotch

    5. Bogeywoman

      the hell kind of spiffed up rinky dink sav sucking schools are you going to with hot showers?? In my day you were lucky if you had 2 minutes of water that wasnt cold a witches tit *shakes cane*

      1. Needfuldoer

        I had a hot, clean shower every day when I was in college.

        I commuted.

        1. Oberon

          I lived in off-campus slum-lord apartments, sub-divided homes used as rental income for, um, slum lords. They weren’t fancy, but they all had hot water on demand.

      2. KJ

        iu has an old, but VERY ROBUST network of steam lines. even the old, unrenovated dorms with no AC have hot water for hours

  3. Nicole

    Yeaaaah dorm showers… gross

    1. Ana Chronistic

      I don’t remember how I handled dorm showers. Or, shared dorm showers. The non-freshman dorms had a shower in the shared bath, or at least the one I had did. Prob I just walked to the shared shower without glasses, since I can barely sort of see enough to not hit everything in my way.

      1. Paradox

        I never went into the dorm showers without flip flops on

        Doesn’t matter how nasty the showers are if your feet don’t touch the floor

        1. marshallbanana

          Yes, shower shoes were a must there.

  4. Johan

    Omg Joyce is extra cute. ?

    1. He Who Abides

      Yeah, that wet-hair look is pretty cute on her.

      1. Nono

        It… reminds me of Shortpacked!Amber, actually.

        1. a snow mouse

          Really does

      2. AGV

        She looks like a wet puppy

    2. Dara

      ngl really is

    3. Keulen

      The glasses definitely make her cuter.

      1. Marcus Wallaby, M.D.

        But the mega-frown negates it somewhat. She’s much cuter with the white triangle.

        1. I am Nothing

          I couldn’t help but read that in Rocko’s voice.

  5. Steamweed

    Now I kinda want a Slipshine, just of Joyce taking a shower with eyeglasses on and choosing her footing very, very carefully.

    1. Zach

      Anxious caution is SO HOT

    2. Bicycle Bill

      Joyce has always know the showers were filthy. Remember when she tried to make her own shower shoes out of the bottoms of plastic milk jugs?

      1. Clif

        Yeah, what happened to the ones Carla made for her?

        1. Opus the Poet

          She still has them, Carla makes good stuff that lasts.

        2. Needfuldoer

          And the jug parts were removable for easy replacement, IIRC.

    3. Seregiel

      … is this a slipping in the shower will shine the floor joke…

  6. Stephen Bierce

    *plays Rose Royce’s “Car Wash” on the hacked Muzak*

  7. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    On the plus side, now she can properly admire the jug shows Carla made. She is a goddess and I am a pitiful bug!

    1. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      Jug shoes. The shower shoes for the feet to protect against the floor

      1. MrSmith

        Carlas jug shows became the stuff of legends

        1. Clif

          They were cold, swift, and absolutely ridiculous.

        2. Wizard

          Today’s Joyce & Walky is definitely a jug show.

        3. MrSmith

          and a fine one at that

        4. BarerMender

          Ooh, I want the Carla jug show.

    2. Needfuldoer

      Now she can properly admire Carla’s superior engineering.

  8. NinjaNick

    Don’t think too much, Joyce. Look up!

    1. Bagge

      Bold of you to assume that she will like the view of the ceiling any better.

      1. Felix

        Damn straight!

  9. TheLurkerAbove

    What Ruth said; how do you wash your face with them on?

    1. Blindness

      you don’t need to see to lather and wash…there’s no point, unless you like soap in your eyes

  10. He Who Abides

    Joyce, just . . . don’t wear those in there.

    1. thejeff

      But, the optometrist said is was important for her to wear them all the time to get used to them and she is that hungry for authority figures to blindly listen to.

  11. Dara

    huh. I like Joyce’s hair enough normally but without being pulled back over her ears it’s nicer.

    basically she has quality barbarian hair and should lean into it.

    1. heliska

      So much this. Also barbarian hair suits her new *constantly pissy* style

      1. Clif

        Am I going to have to google barbarian hair?

  12. Bagge

    awwwww. It’s the little things, like Becky waiting in line for the shower stall with her towel and little basket that really hits home that she’s a student now. She belongs. She’s allowed to be there.

  13. Sirksome

    They only clean the showers once every three months? I’m sorry but that has to be a weekly thing or I’m driving all the way back home to shower!

    1. Sunny

      Maybe they get a professional cleaning company to do it every few months and the students are supposed to keep it clean in between. That would about yield the results we’ve seen so far.

    2. zee

      ***daily, they cleaned out bathrooms every day and idk how people would function otherwise

    3. Needfuldoer

      I wash my bathroom whenever I can’t stand it anymore or I’m expecting company. (It’s just me and I’m basically a hermit, so that doesn’t happen too often.)

    4. Jhon

      Becky thinks the showers were cleaned over break?

    5. TheKelliestKelly

      In an early strip, Ruth was telling someone it was a good time to take a shower because the facilities had just been cleaned. I’m sure they don’t stay clean very long

  14. Axel

    people who lived in dorms, was it that bad? When I moved out I went into off campus housing (the campus I chose didn’t have housing, but others I considered did and I did not want to do dorms either way).

    1. Axel

      *was the sanitation of the showers in dorms where they were communal that bad?

      1. BarerMender

        The showers were fine where I went to school (Marshall U).

      2. Agemegos

        The showers were fine in both the student residences I lived in, one at UNSW and one at ANU. Staff mopped them every day and bleached them every week.

    2. Bicycle Bill

      Even if the showers were cleaned daily, after a few dozen people had used them in the morning the hair and other grunge that would collect around the drain could be rather off-putting.  Maybe that’s why Carla showered in the evening; she knew when the custodians came through and made sure she was one of the first ones in after they had been serviced and freshened again.

    3. drs

      They were fine.
      But I went to Caltech, which had money. Bathrooms were probably cleaned every day, though I’m not sure, and my hallways would have had like 6 people for 2 stalls.

      Also they came and cleaned our dorm rooms every two weeks. Not moving your stuff around but vacuuming and emptying the trash cans and maybe taking obvious trash, I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t a slob who left soda cans lying around.

    4. Norah

      We had 4-room suites with showers included. We had to clean them ourselves.
      When I worked at at Cedar Point one summer, we had shared showers, but because I’m nearsighted like Joyce I probably missed any grossness.

    5. Keulen

      For the most part they weren’t that bad at my college, but even so I still always wore sandals when using the dorm showers, because even when the showers are cleaned often you never know what stuff people might have on their bare feet that you don’t want spreading to your feet while showering.

      1. Needfuldoer

        You can minimize the risk by just not immediately putting shoes on afterward. You’re better off with sandals at most until your feet are as dry as your hands normally are. Whatever you pick up will thrive if you marinate in it, so don’t give it a chance.

        You don’t have to go full Sierra, but she’s on to something. Modern shoes (especially thick, cushion-y foam soled plastic sneakers) are actually kinda bad from an overall health perspective.

    6. zee

      Aside from a puddle of piss being left in front of the middle stall for days, the sanitation was weirdly fine for me

    7. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      The showers in my college were fine, except for the squirrels.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        The building heating system was such that for the people at the end of the hall to get any heat at all, rooms near the middle had to have their windows open all winter to keep from being way too hot. And the common bathroom was in the center.

        Since this was a classic ivy covered dorm, squirrels would build nests in the ivy out of stolen toilet paper, since they could get in the always open windows…

        (The lumps of toilet paper did detract from the classic ivy covered dorm look, yeah.)

  15. Alanari

    Huh. When I forget to take of my glasses, I’m basically blind instantly. They fog up and get wet. I actually see more without glasses in the shower.

  16. brionl

    Also don’t wear your glasses when swimming.

    1. Bicycle Bill

      That’s why I never made it as a lifeguard. Couldn’t see far enough without ’em, and couldn’t swim with ’em.

      1. Uly

        Prescription goggles?

        1. Agemegos

          I met an old guy one time who was surfing with prescription dark goggles. Said they were the best bit of surfing kit he had even had. (And he had neoprene tabi, paddle mitts, and a neoprene bucket hat with a velcro chin-strap. And knee-protectors. Guy was serious about his surfing.)

  17. BBCC

    Oh nooooooo. Oh sweetie. I feel bad laughing, but I am. XD

  18. Rikunda

    I like that she is starting to notice things.

    1. Sunny

      And Joyce does not like it. Sarah was right it seems, happiness IS a zero-sum game.

  19. sultryglebe

    Lasik+ ad on the side. Synergy!

  20. Reltzik

    What has been seen cannot be unseen.

  21. Barf Ninjason

    Mayhap one of those pornographic short story comics can be Joyce in the shower. Y’know, washing her butt. Maybe peeing, although I can’t imagine Joyce peeing in the shower, she seems like the type where the most she’d do is fart. People would pay for it though. To quote the Magnetic Fields, “Everybody’s somebody’s fetish.”

    1. Needfuldoer

      Dude what the fuck.

      Don’t pee in the shower.

      1. Barf Ninjason

        Everyone pees in the shower

        1. MrSmith

          I sharted in our barracks shower once (morning after a big night) I did clean it up though and by clean I mean I let the shower run until it was all gone

        2. BBCC

          No, no they do not, and I doubt Willis is gonna start doing random fetish comics.

        3. Needfuldoer

          Yeah, I was trying to do an “arson, murder, and jaywalking” bury-the-lede kind of joke with my reply. The whole rest of it was “what the fuck”, not just the peeing-in-the-shower part.

        4. BBCC

          Yeah, I get it.

        5. Barf Ninjason

          Almost said “everyone sane pees in the shower” but that’s not quite fair, just having a weird hangups doesn’t mean you’re insane. Everyone without weird hangups pees in the shower. How about that then? (Oh, and, assuming they have a shower, don’t wanna be all assuming everyone lives in an industrial society.)

  22. Anywhere

    I never get tired of “communal showers are gross” comics.

  23. Kella

    I finally had my glasses prescription updated for the first time in like 7 years and the first day I was like “when did everything get so dirty????”

  24. Ob

    Wait, did Ruth dye her hair? Or is that just a lighting effect?

    1. Norah

      It’s darker because it’s wet, like Joyce’s.

  25. BenRG

    JOYCE: “Now I can see the world in all its nuance, colour and beauty. Unfortunately, this only means I can just how icky and yucky being a human really is!”

  26. crow

    I like how Joyce is just standing in the shower in the first panel. Not scrubbing or anything. While people wait in line outside.

    1. Needfuldoer

      At least she’s not likely to use up all the hot water in a building-size boiler system.

      A 50-gallon residential water heater though? Take too long and it might run out before someone runs out of patience and shuts the supply off, leaving you with just cold.

  27. Keulen

    Shower floors being gross wasn’t even the main reason I didn’t wear my glasses when showering in college. The main reason I don’t wear glasses when showering is because water gets on them and you can’t see as well through water-covered glasses.

  28. TheFlamingonator

    Ok i know everyone has already explained why “dont wear glasses to shower” is a thing; however I would like to add some information in case someone is curious
    Hot Bath: depends on whether you are doing to put your head under water, and if I really want to relax I will take my glasses off
    Going swimming: Pool, take off glasses, in lake/sea, nah, I can keep my head above water and enjoy the scenery
    Hair salon; ask them beforehand if you need to take them off, usually I take them off for getting my hair washed/eyebrows dyed/drying hair because they get in the way and my eyes are closed anyway.

    In the winter, I HAVE RECENTLY DISCOVERED THAT THERE IS A SPRAY to avoid getting steam on your lenses when you step into a building after being outside/while wearing a mask anywhere. Its not very expensive and will save you time and embarrassment.

    1. Daibhid C

      I take my glasses off in the shower, but I usually keep them on in the swimming pool. Or I did; I haven’t been swimming for years. I am short sighted enough that without them, I can’t entirely judge where the edge of the pool is when I’m getting in. There were incidents.

      Also, you know that thing in swimming class where you have to retrieve something from the bottom of the pool? I was really good at that, since I practiced it at least twice every time I went swimming…

    2. Needfuldoer

      I just take mine off when I walk into the office after being out in the cold. If I don’t, I’m completely blind because they’re still dark from being outside and they fog up right away. After a couple minutes, neither of those is a problem anymore.

  29. Chris (the other one)

    “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone!”….. aaaahhhhhhhhhh

    1. Geneseepaws

      I can see clearly now, the drain is clogged.
      I can see all the detritus, in my way,….

  30. Giguioto

    I’ve been wearing glasses since I was like 9. I still go take showers with them on, for it helps not only shaving but it reminds me to wash them (something that I don’t do in other scenarios).

  31. DarkoNeko

    scream internally

  32. Josh Spicer

    Nah, Ruth’s right, never wear your glasses in the shower, least of all for this reason.

  33. Keith

    (cue violently uproarious laughter from crotchety old bastard) Oh kid, you got a lot to learn. wait until you are showering standing on a pallet, afraid to touch the knob because you’ll get a shock, there is no heat and you get a coating of sand when you get outside the shower.

    1. hof1991

      Thank you for your service? Sounds like my sons’ stories from Iraq.

    2. Sombrero

      Plus, there is just a trickle of the ice-cold water, so you have to contort yourself under it. (False teeth falling to the floor due to uproarious laughter)

  34. Needfuldoer

    How else are you supposed to keep them clean, Ruth?

    /s

  35. FacelessDeviant

    I don’t get this.

    I google image searched “dorm shower floors” even and I didn’t see anything that’d warrant such a horror.

    One of the related searches was athletes foot though.

    1. Sombrero

      But you allow your foods to touch (h/t sultryglebe)

    2. Jake'm

      Filth is relative, I’d say.

      Which reminds me I need to clean the bathroom…

  36. Rabisch

    Joyce should simply stop clean herself. Then, she gradually would start to feel more and more comfortable with the filth.

  37. Alaric

    How could you see anything while wearing your glasses in the shower?! They’d fog up immediately!

    1. NerdHerder

      Joyce is a cold shower girl. Keeps the impure thoughts away.

    2. Agemegos

      They don’t, perhaps because they get covered by a complete film of water, and perhaps because the lenses warm up to the same temperature as the air.

      You do get drops on them, though. It’s more like wearing glasses in rain than like leaning over the dishwasher when you have just opened it.

  38. thumb

    Clarity brings joy to no one.

  39. Jake'm

    The eyebrow has taken flight.

    1. misanthropope

      nice spot! i totally didn’t get the little mustache halo joyce has going on in panel 3

  40. Koms

    Can she see better with wet glasses than no glasses at all?

  41. Smooti

    Don’t worry Joyce, soon they’ll fog up and you won’t have to see anything at all!

  42. Carla's #2 Fan

    I had never in my life accidentally worn my glasses in the shower until I moved to this apartment. We have one of those bathtub showers and the shower head is really low, so it’s only as if some of it is the shower. Thank goodness we have the sink right next to the shower, I just took them off an put them on there, but I felt so stupid for a hot minute.

  43. ML

    Poor Joyce. It could be water from the shower, but it looks like she’s crying in the first couple of panels, that sort of blank faced dead inside crying when reality catches up.

  44. Dave the Inverted

    Is this technically the first time we’ve seen Joyce naked? (I get this isn’t a *meaningful* display of nudity….)

    1. Rotunda

      No, we have seen her in the shower before.

    2. Needfuldoer

      Appropriate gravatar is appropriate. Becky’s trying her hardest to not think about the fact that there’s a naked Joyce on the other side of that door…

  45. JA

    If using a public shower, NEVER look too closely at the walls. Or ceiling. Or showerhead. Or floor. Or drain.

    And always ALWAYS for the love of all that is holy and good wear your shower shoes.

  46. Hinoron

    I realize cleaning the showers isn’t the students’ responsibility, but they ARE living here for 2/3 of a year.
    This is a resolvable problem you can solve with a stiff brush (ideally on a long handle) and… hmm… what cleaning chemical would be best here? Degreaser? Dish detergent would be adequate, but I feel like something else would be more effective.
    Whatever. The point is, for under $50 and 30 seconds of of pre-shower “elbow grease” you can bath in a clean shower ever day. Leave the cleaning stuff in the shower and others might follow your lead, and a next time, perhaps you’re lucky enough to step into shower someone else already cleaned.

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