As a college English teacher and a writer myself, let me tell you that’s bullshit. That’s why there are the different concepts of literal and figurative meaning. While those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, searching too hard for symbolism is an easy way to misread literature and sound like a pompous dumbass.
I once had a college English professor literally ask us to analyze the symbolism of the chalkboard eraser she was holding in her hand. I enjoy my English major very much, but MAN do some teachers take it overboard.
Actually Nietzche argued that every individual word is a metaphor for what is describes. Understanding a word means making assumptions, thus language is based on making assumptions, thus spoken and written words are not effective ways to convey knowledge and thus none of us know anything and everything we say is wrong.
Shit, I’m balding and have been since shortly after high school. I’m only 29. My Roommate’s the same age and he’s been going gray since high school too.
Making more from stand-up? Really? Malaya seemed to think he was doing poorly. Of course, Malaya may not be the most reliable resource.
Could Ethan be quitting? With Amber gone. a relationship outside the store, no ambition to be manager and the prospect of more money elsewhere, he’s got precious little reason to hang around…
Hm. Well, as we’ve seen back when the (then-fired) gang decided they had to save Shortpacked, part of the problem seems to be they have some weird Stockholm Syndrome toward the store. One that’s conductive to maintaining the status quo.
We don’t have Black Friday sales in Australia, but we used to have Boxing Day sales. Restrictions had to be placed on these when people started getting hurt.
Food for thought, USA.
Ain’t gonna happen. Hell, we’ve actually had a store employee trampled to death a few Christmases ago, and the greed and commercialization has only gotten worse, not better.
Indeed it does. After all, what is more important, the life of one temporary, part-time wage slave, or making the One Percent that much richer? Clearly, the latter.
I don’t give a shit about the one percent, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let that kind of peacenik hippie nonsense keep me from getting an iPad at half price.
I’m not a “peacenik hippie”. However, I’m tired of getting f**ked over by the big corporations either as a consumer, an employee or a taxpayer. I want more small businesses employing locals, not big chains like Walmart which routinely violate labor laws and who don’t pay anything near a living wage.
And don’t give me any hogwash about the self-regulating aspects of the “free market” economy. Lobbyists and lawyers for the big corporations make sure that it is all “regulated” in their favor. “Too big to fail” et cetera.
Being Swiss, I don’t really get this I guess. Closest we have are after-christmas and off-season sales, but they usually go for a whole month or so. So no reason to storm the stores day one, they’ll usually still have the whole sortiment for at least a week if not more.
Actually I was jokingly saying that trampling people was a holiday tradition.
Black Friday is an exercise in madness that is basically a giant orchestrated ploy to get people to bumrush stores. People that are in stores tend to buy things more than people who aren’t in stores. By selling things for extremely low prices you strongly entice people to come to stores; by making there be a very limited number of the best deals you encourage them to line up and fight over the chance to be the first one in. (And avoid losing your shirt giving all your stock away at a loss.) Basically the whole event is organized with the intent of making the stores into dangerously overcrowded and frenzied madhouses, because it’s extremely profitable for the store owners.
Plus, many of the store owners don’t have to actually be there, so it’s no skin off their nose if the event is a living hell for all present.
Yeah, I got that about the trampling. (Pretty sure it’s even true for someone like Mike. )
I can see the point. Just not how it ends up more profitable than our way in the long run. Plus if you tried it the very same way as videos I’ve seen from the U.S. around here, the fire department preeetty much would like to have a word or two with you and your legal counselors. And needless to say that you as the organising party of such an event would be legally responsible for any and all injuries and damages due to overcrowding. At least if it was your doing that led to it in the first place.
Fool! Everyone knows that ‘Murican Jesus worshiped Ronald Reagan, like any true patriot.
And not that namby pamby RINO “Historical” Reagan who raised taxes and talked things over with his enemies. I’m talking the one who won the Cold War on January 21st 1981 when he nuked Russia with radioactive copies of Atlas Shrugged.
Being a huge asshole and saying that we don’t want to go seems to work for me and my family.
Every Christmas I take the wife and kids to Disneyland or Universal Studios, and then drive back home late Christmas Eve. We spend Christmas Day at home unwrapping gifts and being as unsociable as possible. For bonus points, my wife’s birthday is Christmas and if you make the mistake of wishing her Merry Christmas before saying Happy Birthday, you are persona non grata until she forgerts.
Oh, wait, Leslie started collecting rent when Robin lost the election, didn’t she. So he definitely needs the supplemental income.
Also, I imagine if he’s making more money at stand-up than Shortpacked, he’s definitely making more than when he started, but I imagine you get the jist of it.
So how long until we get a plotline where a TV network exec contacts Ethan about turning his stand-up routine into a sitcom, and Shortpacked! ends up as a TV show, and all of Ethan’s friends get mad about how they’re depicted?
(And then for extra meta points THAT stock-sitcom plotline gets an episode of Ethan’s sitcom written around it.)
Then we’ll have David Willis appearing in the series playing Walky who depicts author David Willis who’s really Walky and played by David Willis and… okay, I think I broke the fourth wall.
It’s times like this when I wish I could tell what tone you are using but I guess I will assume that you are using some kind of deadpan snarky humour unless you state otherwise.
Anywhere else on the internet a sodomised muffin might suggest mirth, but after seeing at least one person here earnestly cry misandry while flying the Sodomuffin banner I guess I wouldn’t make assumptions either.
Here in Mexico some asshole decided to copy black friday and we just got “the good weekend” Last year when it started it was a total failure, the annoucement was made the week before and the discounts where not even trying. (10% or months payment lol!) Instead of learning and never repeating that shit again they tried again this year, announcing the date in time and making “bigger” discounts (if raising the prices then lowing them again is a discount) also more monthly payments, it was a fucking success… and going to the supermarket for food was HELL.
I don’t imagine Leslie wants to have that much contact with him. Besides her distasteful experience with the religion bearing the latinized version of his name, religious zealots are not to be considered predictable.
Plus, he’s a Galasso creation, and it’s anybody’s guess how that works. Stomping on him could get green goop all over your shoes.
SO glad we don’t have this in Britain. Even Christmas shopping weekends make me feel a bit Maoist- Black Friday would send me full-on Shining Path guerilla.
It’s a shame I couldn’t get in earlier. I would have quoted the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar and the scene of the man who claimed to “meddle with no trademan’s matters, nor women’s matters, but with awl.”–”Which is, indeed sir, a mender of bad souls.”
1. He leaves Shortpacked! and lives happily ever after with Manny, doing stand-up with the likes of Gabriel Iglesias and Lewis Black.
2. He realizes he truly loves working at Shortpacked! despite his hatred for some aspects of it. Manny breaks up with him because this is insane. This makes room for the impending return of Thadeus.
If Ethan leaves he and Thad totes need to have a JD/Janitor My Finale style moment of Closure. Complete with Thad standing around waiting for him to come back in the very next strip.
Why is it that so far, every one of Ethan’s boyfriends try to change him in some way. It annoys the hell out of me. they should love him for who he is and what he does.
……so encouraging someone to quit a job that’s a lot of stress and they’ve never been shown actually liking and doing what they actually like and are apparently getting succesful at it counts as chaning someone now?
as a person that has actually worked in a Toy Store on Black Friday (during the dark days of Tickle Me Elmo & the first generation Furbys) I can attest to the outright savagery of some humans. (one year I literally had to drag two women out of the store because they all but got into a fistfight over the Holiday Barbie). the poor employees were on the brunt end of every foul thing you could say about a living soul, & usually some of the more derogatory things you can say about inanimate objects as well.
When I remember these days, it actually makes me glad I was fired for buying a Yoda & Chewbacca.
it was a week or two before Star wars Ep 1 happened, & Hasbro had put street dates on all the Ep 1 toys. unbeknownst to me (as I had finally gotten 3 days off after going s month with no days off), & missed the internal memo from corporate that added some SKUs of regular waves to the *DO NOT SELL BEFORE* date. so I come back, see a new batch, picked up the ones I was missing for my collection, & got a visit from Loss prevention about 2 days later.
in short, K*B Toys were full of people looking to fire anyone to seem like they were appeasing the Hasbro Overlords, & I got the short end of the stick because of it.
Hey David, when do you think you’ll have a solution on the bundle pack of the Shortpacked! books? I wanted to buy the whole set, but since I live in Denmark, I don’t feel like buying all of the books separately and paying for individual shipping.
The DoA book was awesome by the way! Nice drawing.
So far, I haven’t found any cheaper options than sending two Priority Mail flatrate envelopes. Due to their size and weight, every time I try alternate posting means, it’s either way more expensive or automatically considered Priority Mail flatrate anyway.
At least it’s not Rebecca Black Friday.
Rebecca Black Friday would be greeted with a shotgun.
Oh, I’m sure someone is working on that with an even sicker person making a rule 34 version of it.
http://static4.fjcdn.com/comments/Well+Played+Sir+_feee03ee3225f1b76545d450ba6b46bc.jpg
Funnyjunk does not allow off-site linking.
… that is amazing….
Kohls beat you to it last year :/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH6d4Adm9U
Where’s my shotgun? We’ll take care of this at the source
No, everything is a metaphor, every English teacher I ever had told me so… at length.
As a college English teacher and a writer myself, let me tell you that’s bullshit. That’s why there are the different concepts of literal and figurative meaning. While those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, searching too hard for symbolism is an easy way to misread literature and sound like a pompous dumbass.
Understood, that was more hyperbole than anything, but it still got excessive with some of them.
Thank you Dan so much for saying what I have been thinking all these years
I once had a college English professor literally ask us to analyze the symbolism of the chalkboard eraser she was holding in her hand. I enjoy my English major very much, but MAN do some teachers take it overboard.
I’m glad some people feel that way. The whole metaphor in lit thing drives me nuts
Actually Nietzche argued that every individual word is a metaphor for what is describes. Understanding a word means making assumptions, thus language is based on making assumptions, thus spoken and written words are not effective ways to convey knowledge and thus none of us know anything and everything we say is wrong.
No, I think you’re wrong there.
This is what makes Nietzche awesome. You don’t so much read his work as you pound it into your skull with a brick.
‘Tis the season to stomp on our Lord.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
You know how sometimes people find it weird that Ethan’s going grey in his thirties?
I don’t find it weird.
Either he absorbed some cosmic rays, genetics or he’s just that stressed out.
I discovered my first gray hair at 17. It sure isn’t weird to me LoL.
Got my first gray hair at 10. Graying early is a trait on the male side of my family.
It runs in my family, too, so it has never bothered me.
Well yes. Just gotta deal, you know. At least it isn’t early baldness.
YOU GO TO HELL. YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE
/sobs
When you type it that way I read it League of Legends.
26 for me. And I’m a girl.
My bf has got a patch of grey at the age of 20.
Shit, I’m balding and have been since shortly after high school. I’m only 29. My Roommate’s the same age and he’s been going gray since high school too.
I’m 35 and have a few dozen grey hairs. It happens.
Don’t worry, Ethan, he’ll be back at work in three days.
And there will be reckoning the unlike what the world had ever seen.
Making more from stand-up? Really? Malaya seemed to think he was doing poorly. Of course, Malaya may not be the most reliable resource.
Could Ethan be quitting? With Amber gone. a relationship outside the store, no ambition to be manager and the prospect of more money elsewhere, he’s got precious little reason to hang around…
So we’ll be moving on to G2 Shortpacked? I suppose that makes the DOAverse Shattered Glass.
I’m just hoping that the antagonist’s name in Shortpacked! G2 has to do with a pun like Jhiaxus.
Nah, more like… the Marvel UK version.
No, that’s Amber’s store.
Hm. Well, as we’ve seen back when the (then-fired) gang decided they had to save Shortpacked, part of the problem seems to be they have some weird Stockholm Syndrome toward the store. One that’s conductive to maintaining the status quo.
We don’t have Black Friday sales in Australia, but we used to have Boxing Day sales. Restrictions had to be placed on these when people started getting hurt.
Food for thought, USA.
Ain’t gonna happen. Hell, we’ve actually had a store employee trampled to death a few Christmases ago, and the greed and commercialization has only gotten worse, not better.
Capitalism works!
Indeed it does. After all, what is more important, the life of one temporary, part-time wage slave, or making the One Percent that much richer? Clearly, the latter.
I don’t give a shit about the one percent, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let that kind of peacenik hippie nonsense keep me from getting an iPad at half price.
I’m not a “peacenik hippie”. However, I’m tired of getting f**ked over by the big corporations either as a consumer, an employee or a taxpayer. I want more small businesses employing locals, not big chains like Walmart which routinely violate labor laws and who don’t pay anything near a living wage.
And don’t give me any hogwash about the self-regulating aspects of the “free market” economy. Lobbyists and lawyers for the big corporations make sure that it is all “regulated” in their favor. “Too big to fail” et cetera.
And so does that icon, sir!
Don’t people get trampled to death on Black Friday every year? Thought that was really commonplace.
Really, it’s more like a cherished holiday tradition.
Being Swiss, I don’t really get this I guess. Closest we have are after-christmas and off-season sales, but they usually go for a whole month or so. So no reason to storm the stores day one, they’ll usually still have the whole sortiment for at least a week if not more.
Actually I was jokingly saying that trampling people was a holiday tradition.
Black Friday is an exercise in madness that is basically a giant orchestrated ploy to get people to bumrush stores. People that are in stores tend to buy things more than people who aren’t in stores. By selling things for extremely low prices you strongly entice people to come to stores; by making there be a very limited number of the best deals you encourage them to line up and fight over the chance to be the first one in. (And avoid losing your shirt giving all your stock away at a loss.) Basically the whole event is organized with the intent of making the stores into dangerously overcrowded and frenzied madhouses, because it’s extremely profitable for the store owners.
Plus, many of the store owners don’t have to actually be there, so it’s no skin off their nose if the event is a living hell for all present.
Yeah, I got that about the trampling. (Pretty sure it’s even true for someone like Mike.
)
I can see the point. Just not how it ends up more profitable than our way in the long run. Plus if you tried it the very same way as videos I’ve seen from the U.S. around here, the fire department preeetty much would like to have a word or two with you and your legal counselors. And needless to say that you as the organising party of such an event would be legally responsible for any and all injuries and damages due to overcrowding. At least if it was your doing that led to it in the first place.
poor historically accurate jesus
if only he was as tall and shiny as all the white people wish he was
Eh, he’s had worse Fridays…
But probably not more humiliating.
Ah-heh.
(Though Historical Jesus coulda been crucified on a Wednesday or Thursday.)
Granted, but a day spent dead is still a bad day.
I don’t know if that’s true in all cases. It would give you a good reason to skip holiday dinner with your relatives, for instance.
I don’t know if even being dead was a good enough excuse. Biblical Jesus was Jewish, you know.
Dangit. I meant Historical Jesus. Although, just about every Jesus is or was a Jew. Except for ‘Murican Jesus. He was a Christian, somehow…
Fool! Everyone knows that ‘Murican Jesus worshiped Ronald Reagan, like any true patriot.
And not that namby pamby RINO “Historical” Reagan who raised taxes and talked things over with his enemies. I’m talking the one who won the Cold War on January 21st 1981 when he nuked Russia with radioactive copies of Atlas Shrugged.
Hey, I didn’t “foolproof” I said “good“.
But if anyone knows a foolproof one, let me know. Before Christmas, if possible.
Take out your family with large caliber weaponry.
Being a huge asshole and saying that we don’t want to go seems to work for me and my family.
Every Christmas I take the wife and kids to Disneyland or Universal Studios, and then drive back home late Christmas Eve. We spend Christmas Day at home unwrapping gifts and being as unsociable as possible. For bonus points, my wife’s birthday is Christmas and if you make the mistake of wishing her Merry Christmas before saying Happy Birthday, you are persona non grata until she forgerts.
Does it matter whether he was killed that day or not? Dead is still dead.
… and in my rush to reply, as I scroll down, I miss the reply just below it. Damn You Willis!
Instant humor, just add Jesus!
So, for the sake of clarity: is Ethan making more money from stand-up than when he started, or more money from stand-up than from Shortpacked?
I imagine either way he needs both for livable income, even with the free housing.
Oh, wait, Leslie started collecting rent when Robin lost the election, didn’t she. So he definitely needs the supplemental income.
Also, I imagine if he’s making more money at stand-up than Shortpacked, he’s definitely making more than when he started, but I imagine you get the jist of it.
So how long until we get a plotline where a TV network exec contacts Ethan about turning his stand-up routine into a sitcom, and Shortpacked! ends up as a TV show, and all of Ethan’s friends get mad about how they’re depicted?
(And then for extra meta points THAT stock-sitcom plotline gets an episode of Ethan’s sitcom written around it.)
The best part will be when Shortpacked gets optioned for real, and they get around to this plot.
…There needs to be a kickstarter of Shortpacked: The Series.
Then we’ll have David Willis appearing in the series playing Walky who depicts author David Willis who’s really Walky and played by David Willis and… okay, I think I broke the fourth wall.
Abeeeeeeeeeeeedabedabedabed
For a horrible second, I thought that Lucy had reached her 23th birthday and ballooned even worse than Malaya.
The racism around here is getting out of control.
So all cartoon black people look the same now?
If their faces are drawn in a simple style like Willis’, have similar/same skin colour and sport the same ‘do then yeah, characters can al look alikel
Their faces are ‘simple’? Disgusting.
Next you’ll be saying that Amber and Dorothy look alike.
It’s times like this when I wish I could tell what tone you are using but I guess I will assume that you are using some kind of deadpan snarky humour unless you state otherwise.
Good call.
Anywhere else on the internet a sodomised muffin might suggest mirth, but after seeing at least one person here earnestly cry misandry while flying the Sodomuffin banner I guess I wouldn’t make assumptions either.
As anybody with the name “Groove” and a Sodomuffin avatar should know, we all look alike when the lights are out, baby. Aaawwwww yeah.
Ohhhhhh Jeeaaahhh
I just watched an episode of The Voice where Cee Lo Green said this, so you should know: In my head, you are him.
Here in Mexico some asshole decided to copy black friday and we just got “the good weekend” Last year when it started it was a total failure, the annoucement was made the week before and the discounts where not even trying. (10% or months payment lol!) Instead of learning and never repeating that shit again they tried again this year, announcing the date in time and making “bigger” discounts (if raising the prices then lowing them again is a discount) also more monthly payments, it was a fucking success… and going to the supermarket for food was HELL.
Thankfully here, grocery stores weren’t very busy.
Ethan better get over there before Leslie goes to “help” and “accidentally” stomps on him a couple times herself.
I don’t imagine Leslie wants to have that much contact with him. Besides her distasteful experience with the religion bearing the latinized version of his name, religious zealots are not to be considered predictable.
Plus, he’s a Galasso creation, and it’s anybody’s guess how that works. Stomping on him could get green goop all over your shoes.
Stomping on anyone can get goop on your shoes if you do it hard enough.
I thought everyone who had loved ones in retail understood that they’d be spending Black Friday alone.
Or, if they really love those loved ones, getting ready to give backrubs once they came home.
Is it bad that whenever Ethan said “Black” that I kept looking at the woman….. I am blaming Willis for this one
I don’t recognize this aisle. Are those transformers? Who’s the little dude on the packaging?
I think it is Iron Man. I still don’t know why Flash, Iron Man, or Human torch need cars.
Because you can’t pick up girls without a sweet ride, at least in the Flash’s case. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkz_ccWOm5g
Iron Man doesn’t need a car. He buys them as trophies, since he’s still super-rich despite rebuilding Stark Tower every time it gets destroyed.
SO glad we don’t have this in Britain. Even Christmas shopping weekends make me feel a bit Maoist- Black Friday would send me full-on Shining Path guerilla.
Sits in his chair in pajamas and a robe eating brownies and milk for breakfast. I love Black Fridays.
It’s a shame I couldn’t get in earlier. I would have quoted the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar and the scene of the man who claimed to “meddle with no trademan’s matters, nor women’s matters, but with awl.”–”Which is, indeed sir, a mender of bad souls.”
I see two futures for Ethan:
1. He leaves Shortpacked! and lives happily ever after with Manny, doing stand-up with the likes of Gabriel Iglesias and Lewis Black.
2. He realizes he truly loves working at Shortpacked! despite his hatred for some aspects of it. Manny breaks up with him because this is insane. This makes room for the impending return of Thadeus.
If Ethan leaves he and Thad totes need to have a JD/Janitor My Finale style moment of Closure. Complete with Thad standing around waiting for him to come back in the very next strip.
So much this.
Yes, only with Duncan, not Thad.
Why is it that so far, every one of Ethan’s boyfriends try to change him in some way. It annoys the hell out of me. they should love him for who he is and what he does.
Explain where the changing is coming from this time? I don’t see any.
Probably from the implication that he wants Ethan to quit his job with Shortpacked and do standup full time.
……so encouraging someone to quit a job that’s a lot of stress and they’ve never been shown actually liking and doing what they actually like and are apparently getting succesful at it counts as chaning someone now?
Not so much an attempt to change him, as much as to keep him sane. I wouldn’t blame him either.
As opposed to his last boyfriend, who wanted to change a massive part of Ethan’s personality.
Now all I can think about is, what could that possibly be a metaphor for? I wonder…
as a person that has actually worked in a Toy Store on Black Friday (during the dark days of Tickle Me Elmo & the first generation Furbys) I can attest to the outright savagery of some humans. (one year I literally had to drag two women out of the store because they all but got into a fistfight over the Holiday Barbie). the poor employees were on the brunt end of every foul thing you could say about a living soul, & usually some of the more derogatory things you can say about inanimate objects as well.
When I remember these days, it actually makes me glad I was fired for buying a Yoda & Chewbacca.
If I may, why would they fire you for buying something?
it was a week or two before Star wars Ep 1 happened, & Hasbro had put street dates on all the Ep 1 toys. unbeknownst to me (as I had finally gotten 3 days off after going s month with no days off), & missed the internal memo from corporate that added some SKUs of regular waves to the *DO NOT SELL BEFORE* date. so I come back, see a new batch, picked up the ones I was missing for my collection, & got a visit from Loss prevention about 2 days later.
in short, K*B Toys were full of people looking to fire anyone to seem like they were appeasing the Hasbro Overlords, & I got the short end of the stick because of it.
i gotta say…this is the one comic I read that the line trampling jesus makes sense in….
Who is the dude with the mustache that looks like ethan?
Hey David, when do you think you’ll have a solution on the bundle pack of the Shortpacked! books? I wanted to buy the whole set, but since I live in Denmark, I don’t feel like buying all of the books separately and paying for individual shipping.
The DoA book was awesome by the way! Nice drawing.
So far, I haven’t found any cheaper options than sending two Priority Mail flatrate envelopes. Due to their size and weight, every time I try alternate posting means, it’s either way more expensive or automatically considered Priority Mail flatrate anyway.
Arh okay. So is it possible to buy the bundle now and have you ship them that way?