1161 See Worthy.

Who hasn’t learned some new use of a word and thought this? Language can be truly infuriating sometimes.

I have played a significant amount of Call Of Duties Zombies with my cousin. Enough now that a mythos is beginning to take shape between us. An example of this is Ballistic Knife Steve. The Ballistic knife is, in my opinion, the worst weapon in the game. The thing is, whenever there is something that sucks in a game there will all ways be people who will make that their THING. Like players who specialize in Zangief in Street Fighter. Ballistic Knife Steve is that person in our world. Nobody likes BK Steve. In fact, he had to transfer to a new school because of his obsession with this terrible weapon. Now he lives every day in fear of being invited to play Call Of Duty. If they ever learn of his terrible past it’ll be more of the same. Fuck you, Ballistic Knife Steve, wherever you are.

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Thank you. That is the same thing I think when I hear someone say “totes” if shortening a word actually turns it into another word that is already in use then you will sound stupid when you say it.

It takes some serious character development to get me to ship a pair. Most of the time, I just wait for the series to pan itself out. (For the record, Sokka and Toph would’ve been a great couple.)

Well just went to College Orientation, and I start in January. T-T
Extremely nervous and confused about what was going on for most of it. Everyone around me has been saying that I have little to worry about, as school was the only aspect I excelled in, still doesn’t ease the mind any.

When I started school in 2009, I had a frightening dream about school.

This dream took place in high school. I was going to classes and doing all that good stuff. Time wasn’t really a thing in this dream. I just sort of showed up one day, and realized that I had been slacking on too much of my homework. Then, I found out that I had forgotten to go to one of my classes for nearly an entire semester.

So, school became a bit of a disaster in that dream. It partially came true when I was at university. I came to a 2-year state technical college starting Fall 2012, and I’ve been doing much better.

This wasn’t meant to make you feel any better, but I hope it doesn’t make you feel worse. From what you’ve said, I don’t think my problems are going to be a problem for you, so I think you’ll find your worry did nothing but just unsettle you.

Oh! I did have another dream when I started here, though. Let me double-post, though.

Okay, I have to set this up a little bit. I worked as a polysomnography technologist for almost three years before I even thought about going back to school. The hours were horrendous, which is why I quit, but I learned a lot about sleep.

One of the more fascinating sleep disorders is when you wake up with motor atonia. This happens to everyone an average of two times in their life, but can happen more if that person has a lifestyle of poor sleep habits. The first time it happened to me, I was in the U.S. Marines, and it frightened me quite a bit. Let me describe it.

This is when you wake up, but you absolutely cannot move your body. You’re functionally paralyzed. I can’t remember the medical term for the “switch,” but there’s a switch at the bottom of the brain where it attaches to the spinal cord that shuts off the body while you dream. (Except for the lungs and heart, as well as other things like that. Your temperature regulation DOES get shut off, which is why being too hot or cold can wake you.) The reason your body shuts off is so it won’t act out what you are experiencing in your dream with your body as you lie in bed. There is a disorder where this doesn’t shut off you body like it’s supposed to. This is where stories of one spouse hitting another in a dead sleep come from.

Anyway, there’s one more aspect to motor atonia that sometimes comes up when you’re awake. If you get hypnogogic hallucinations along with your motor atonia, it just adds another layer of fright to the experience. By the way, those big words I just used mean that your eyes are open, and you’re awake, but your brain is still dreaming, and you see your dream superimposed over the environment you are in.

So, motor atonia with hypnogogic hallucinations are a thing that can happen from time to time. If people don’t know what’s going on, they’ll think they’re being visited by a demon or a witch. This is where these stories come from.

Anyway, that happened to me about two months before I moved to this town I’m in for school. I knew what was going on, though, so it didn’t frighten me too much.

I was doing a microscope cleaning job with my boss at the time, and we were staying in a town about an hour away from where I live now. We tend to work very long hours because my boss travels half the state (of Texas) cleaning microscopes. My boss lives about five hours away from this job. He’s also paralyzed from the waist down.

So, the entrance to the campus I attend is on Crest Drive. So, when I had this experience, it was actually my boss walking around my bed, mocking me for wanting to go to this school. He was walking around my bed saying, “Oh, so you want to go to school now, huh? You think you can do it now, do you? Alright, let’s go to Crest Drive! Let’s see how you do now!”

The funny thing is, I could hear my actual boss still snoring in his bed in the hotel room while my waking dream boss was walking around me, mocking me. He even walked up to the side of the bed I was lying in, and put his hand on my throat to strangle me. I felt his hand on my neck, but he wasn’t able to exert any pressure.

All this time, I couldn’t move. I could barely speak. Knowing what it was, I was actually kind of irritated. I knew I could barely speak, because I spoke to the entity in my dream, saying, “Why are you tormenting me?!”

Moments after I spoke, my body woke up with my mind, and the dream was over. Now, to give you an idea of just how bizarre my dreams can be, this experience really didn’t register more than frightening as far as my dreams go. As a reference, here are the tiers for my dreams:

Positive subset:

Amazing
Beautiful
Fun
Pleasant

Casual subset:

Normal
Strange
Weird
Frightening

Negative subset:

Scary
Bad
Nightmare
True Nightmare

TSTC Waco?

Yes. I’m attending there.

If anyone actually bothers to look me up, I’d be surprised.

Recognized Crest Drive. Former student (inmate) in Aviation Maintenance Technology. I left there in 1996 after I got my A&P License. Lived on campus in “Village Jokes”. Back then the campus used to still look like a former Air Force Base, which amused me to no end being a former zoomie and all. Actually I passed by there tonight on my way down from Dallas to visit my folks for Thanksgiving. I bet its changed quite a bit from when I attended.

I’ve had a motor atonia dream or two when I was a kid. Since they were nightmares too, I felt I was literally scared stiff and couldn’t look away.

Most people don’t discuss it because they don’t understand it. People will likely think strange things of them. Like I said, there are legends of witches or demons associated with these events. Paranoia and fear never helps in these situations.

I’m a Christian, and I do believe in spiritual things. However, I don’t count this as something to run to the exorcist for. There’s proof that the images tend to be specific things in different cultures. Seriously. It was my boss in my experience, for crying out loud! Am I going to exorcise my boss?

It’s like my mentor says, “Once again, skill and cunning overcome fear and superstition.”

I’ve had some experience with this, mercifully becoming rarer over the years. I never saw any demons or aliens or whatever, but I usually got that the sense of some sort of “presence” (for lack of a better word) nearby. I never saw it, but I could somehow sense that it was NOT friendly, so it was pretty creepy. The good news is that I learned about sleep paralysis shortly after my earliest experiences. This didn’t make the experience any more pleasant in the moment, but at least I knew I wasn’t mentally ill or about to die of a brain tumor or some damn thing.

I started College in 1975 (yeah, I’m that old), living at home and commuting to school in a nearby city. Although I was 18, I didn’t even have my Driver’s License yet (kept flunking the practical — nerves), and Dad had to drop me off on his way to work. After the first week it wasn’t bad; but I still dislike humongous classes given in amphitheater lecture halls. They’re just so impersonal, and you can’t really ask a question. I got used to learning the Professors’ office hours, and actually got to know a few of them pretty well.

I dropped out after two years and went to work. Twelve years, six cars and two houses later, I went back to the same school — now a University — and finished my degree in a completely different discipline. It was still slightly disorienting (is that why they call your first visit that?) and while I miss some elements, I’m glad it’s in the past.

That might be true if Toph showed him her sister sensitive side. As for me, I’m still waiting for Naruto and Hinata to get together.

I liked Zangief, but I will admit he was a real pain to learn. Also, I had to unlearn my dependence on jumping to play him.

Zangief so ruined jumping for me in fighting games for a long time. I got Marvel vs Capcom for the DreamCast. I was still in the Marines, and had a couple of my buddies over just to goof off. One of them was playing Spider Man, and he was jumping non-stop.

I asked, “Why are you jumping around so much?” He answered, “Well, that’s how you play.”

I couldn’t respond back. I had forgotten what having a mobile character in a fighting game was like.

Consequently, my favorite character in the Super Smash Bros. series is Random. I only stop using random when it’s either being too random and I crave playing a certain character, or it’s not random enough, and I’ve been playing too much of the same character.

Consequently, this translates in me not being very good at SSB. I did get a comment from someone that they liked having the variety of fighting with me, because I actually choose characters who would not normally be chosen just because I’m willing to play a character I might not be as good with, or that might just simply be a worse character.

I will say this. Brawl was the first SSB where Donkey Kong was not my worst character.

Thomas should introduce her to TVTropes and have her check out the Shipping tropes, of cause she will lose an entire weekend but that’s life.

Think I have seen you “EVERYWHERE” that have something even remotely related to some characters inside a some kind of space xD

Oh, hello by the way, nice meeting ya^^

Oh, also, CRAVE: worse here where I live in Norway where over 60% of our words have multiple meanings, and I don’t talk about “double meaning” am talking about more along “sixth double” meaning, no wonder poor foreigners get confused all the time xD

I admit that I do get around in webcomic comment sections and a few other places.

Also, does the Norse language have a lot of double entendres?

Dunno about the “Norse” lingo per se, but here in Norway aleast we have a lot fewer words for things then in English so many words get multiple meaning depending on the context they are used in so many words you may say one thing but the other person though you meant another thing because he/she might have missed some of the context…

Regarding this matter I can also tell Japan have pretty much the same setup of the lingo and the same way to say the letters as we do just with some added politeness to it and different words ( a lot of comedy in media like manga/anime/tv/etc is a play on words,they have pronouncement added to the mix as well though), so that’s why we have easier time learning it then many English people and such because we have less things we need to change except adding some new words ^_~

Is what you’re talking about conjugation, or is it more like desert, which means an environment that is dry, and normally associated with lots of sand, or plants able to sustain themselves with very little water? Also, desert, which is to abandon, usually in context to duty?

I did not know that ship in this context was short for relationship. I always pictured it as though you were wraping two people up together in a box and sending them somewhere. This makes so much more sense! It’s still stupid, but less so than it was in my head.

You are not alone. Outside of work, I have almost no contact with those under forty, so I’d never heard the term before reading the comments on “Dumbing of Age” a couple of months. I’ve since stopped reading them since many use terms I haven’t been exposed to and don’t get. (I’d never heard of ‘twerking’ before a couple of months ago either; what happened to ‘dry hump’ or ‘lap dance’?)

Obviously, those terms weren’t hip enough.

Good gravy, there’s a neologism right there! Neologisms everywhere! acvdfdjfknslferewcmsdlzcmdskjfndjsf;sd @_@

If we’re creating neologisms [n. a new word or expression or a new meaning of a word. Some Schizophrenics create a lot of these] I’d like to suggest (since @Crave set it up) Relationshit. It has two meanings:

1. An affair or marriage that has gone really bad, on the rocks, as it were, and,
2. The junk that clutters up an otherwise great show, movie, novel, comic, fanfic et cetera when it isn’t handled adroitly.

Example: “Whoever wrote this relationshit should take some pointers from Crave.”

Droll, Perfesser_Bear…

Then some lazy writer shortens it to the last four letters, expecting it to have the same definition.

I’m with Carol on this one. I never liked the term “shipping” when it comes to putting two people together. When I think of shipping, I think of goods being transported from one place to another. I also avoid using the term in real life and go with hooking or pairing instead.

Some forums I’ve seen spell it as ‘ship and ‘shipping, with the apostrophe at the front to indicate letters have been removed. I like that a little better, because it makes it less ambiguous when you see it in writing. (It still sounds exactly the same in speech, but nothing’s perfect.)

Sorry to jump in, but someone in the comic shipping someone in the comic to me is the equivalent of going to the starbucks across the street from the starbucks

I don’t see how it follows.

I believe that Spliced feels that the term “ship” is properly used when fans are “shipping” couples in a comic, story, show, etc that they are fans of.

Meaning you couldn’t “ship” a relationship between two friends of yours or characters in a story cannot “ship” relationships between other characters in the same story.

I could be wrong on my perspective of what Spliced was saying. I feel that terms such as “ship” are very silly and there really isn’t a proper way to use such things beyond using them in the proper context related to their given definitions. If that makes sense at all. Which since it’s me typing it, it probably doesn’t.

Long time reader and I never comment, so I want to take a moment to say; I really enjoy your writing, art, and comic. Between Failures was one of the first Webcomics I started to read when I got addicted to them and it remains one of my favorites.

All of your characters are well developed which has made me attached to all of them. Although, I have to say Nina is my favorite. I really enjoy her warm personality, great sense of humor, and fierce loyalty to her friends. She reminds me of myself in many pages and she’s also a tall girl like I am, so I could be a bit biased.

Thank you for the time and dedication you give to this Webcomic. I appreciate the entertainment, laughter, and fun that you bring to us with every page. The fact that you talk to the readers and provide us with extra stories about your life and The Adventures of Julius Drywood add even more enjoyment to an already great Webcomic. I feel that it’s important to show appreciation to others so once again, thank you and sorry about the lengthy post! =D

HEY!! I use the ballistic knife. You’re not really meant to shoot it, it’s trick is it has a half second shorter melee lag between strikes. It’s a bit faster to melee with than the regular knife and not bad in zombies once you learn how to use it. The worst weapon in my opinion in zombies is the fucking sniper rifles and the grenade launcher/rocket launcher in later waves. Now, I don’t primary the ballistic knife, usually I always try to get a heavy MG and a magnum. But when I run into shit luck and all i’m popping out of the chest is sniper rifles, grenade/rocket launchers, and the ballistic knife then i’d rather take my chances with the last one.

Man, you’re preaching to my choir! Although, I would still take bazookas and grenade launchers all day over the sniping rifle. There is just never a break or a safe distance from a charging undead lynch mob!!

Is ballistic knife just another way of saying that you throw it?

no, a ballistic knife is basically dual purpose gun and knife for CQB purposes. It has a charge of gun powder and a primer hidden in the handle. The blade itself is specially designed to release from the handle when the firing mechanism is activated. The user presses a button somewhere on the handle (in COD it’s on the side of the grip, in RL it’s on the bottom of the handle) and fires the blade.

correction (although I doubt you’ll see this, but i’d rather not leave a huge error up like that):

In RL the firing mechanism is at the bottom of the handle, for the models that use a blank cartridge or an explosive charge. On the air compressed or spring loaded models it’s on a modified hand guard.

LOL. I had forgotten all about this strip. I first saw the term Ship in a way I remember it about a year or two ago. It was in the context of “Shipping” and all I could think was “Wait, what? Shipping people? That can’t be right, it has to mean something else. You can’t send people places like that” and I had to hit Google to find out WTH they were talking about, when the whole time it was in a strip I read a few years ago

“Ship” already means two separate things; there’s no reason you can’t let it mean this as well.

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