1482 Aspects.

by

When I was a kid the other side of the street was populated by kids from the Catholic school. The school itself was down the street a ways. Said kids were the meanest, most evil, kids on the block. The oldest one was a real thug and made it unpleasant to go outside on many sunny days. His siblings were similarly trashy but in the way that toadies who fear their leader are. They were all I knew of Catholicism for many years. I simply assumed because they were such bastards that the whole school was populated with bastards. I vaguely remember seeing the school let out sometimes and thinking it would be a good idea to hide until all of them passed by. So I hid in the bushes. I don’t think I ever actually encountered any of the students from that school apart from the ones that inhabited the rats nest across the street. Some years later the eldest boy got expelled from the Catholic school and they moved way down the end of the street where I rarely went. He ended up in regular school and apparently someone knocked him on his ass one day when he tired to pull his regular bullshit. After that his power was broken and he wasn’t as much of a problem. He tried to bully me on my way home one day but I told him to get out of my way and he did. I don’t know why because he stood well over a head taller than me at the time.

The only other time I encountered Catholic kids was walking home in the snow one day. A gang of them started throwing ice balls at me, but I just kept walking. Even when they hit me in the face. They apparently weren’t satisfied with my reaction and surrounded me. Then they started shoving slush in my face and down my shirt and pants. I just endured it until they got bored. It’s one of the first times I remember being so mad that I wanted to really hurt someone. I’d never encountered them before and never saw them again. A lot of that memory has faded with time, but I still remember the leader. Curly blonde hair, freckled face, sneering at me, yelling at me to fight back.

I don’t even know if I ever told anyone. Ha ha… Remembering that made me start crying. Not like crying outright but tears started running down my face without the corresponding emotions happening. This is an odd feeling. It’s like part of my brain wants to do one thing but the main part just doesn’t care enough to bother. Being a kid was bullshit. Everyone was so mean. If we hadn’t moved away I’d probably have killed myself. Moving to a bigger town gave me the gift of anonymity. I could just fade into the background. Small towns do not favor the shy and sensitive.

Now I remember why I don’t think about that stuff anymore. It makes my brain burn. None of that matters anymore, it’s too far away. I wonder how many of the kids from back then are dead now. Statistically there have to be a few. I only really wonder about one person from back then, and only because she’s the only one I want to apologize to. I bet she doesn’t even remember me.

Let’s leave the past where it belongs.

I think the new star wars might come to our shitty little theatre this weekend. I’d really like to try and see it, but I’m not sure I can handle sitting in the crap seats for that long. I’ve already had almost the entire filmed spoiled just by doing the things I normally do. The only thing left at this point is to actually see the recordings of light. I also really don’t want to watch it with the Teen. She is very difficult to watch movies with, plus star wars is not something she cares about so any regard for the experience of others will go right out the window. I just want to go to the cinema like the miserable little shit that I am and enjoy the pretend universe of one of the luckiest hacks in all of history.

31 Comments

Please don’t call yourself a “miserable little” anything.

Remember, you make one of my favorite web comics. You created characters I care about. You have lots of fans, not just me, and that means you are the kind of person who can create good things. To get all sappy about it, you’re special and I’m not teasing.

I don’t know if you are clinically depressed or what, but you really don’t sound happy. I don’t know what to do to help you, but if I knew I would want to do it. Your comic makes me happy and I wish I could make you happy.

The honest truth about the new Star Wars movie: it’s my third favorite. First place is a tie between _A New Hope_ and _The Empire Strikes Back_ (I just can’t pick a favorite between them); and after that, the new one. This means that I actually liked it better than _Return of the Jedi_.

I’ve seen it twice, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time. So I hope you do go and watch it and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I hope that 2016 is your best and happiest year yet, and the years that follow get even better.

Three out of the six schools I went to were SDA schools, so I learnt all the important things like how backward masking was the devil’s way of brainwashing you, how the song “I Write The Songs” by Barry Manilow was actually about Satan and even the somewhat controversial theory that Medieval Knights hunted the last of the dinosaurs into extinction.

Message to the teen:

I am not, and haven’t really been a Star Wars fan ever. I got dragged to the movie. It was not bad. Cute at times. Not enough to make me a Jedi Junkie- but it was made by Disney and they tend to do things well.

Would you mind watching it with J? If I could sit through it (and like I said- NOT the biggest fan), I’m sure you’d find some fun moments too.

I guess that by “difficult to watch movies with” he means the teen is the kind of spectator that likes to provide running commentary. It’s fine if you’re with similar people but it can sour the experience for your company if they have to SHHH you every other minute. My mom and my brother are like that and I’ve already left the room when a movie I wanted to watch was about to start, because I like to watch silently and they feel like they need to talk even more to compensate, so I’d rather leave it for another day. Star Wars is virtually unwatchable if they are around because they make puns for every funny name or point out scientific inaccuracies.

What a bunch of dicks. I went to Catholic School from kindergarten through high school and we didn’t have a problem with bullies. Mostly, everyone was selfish and just did their own thing.
We did have a rep for having hoodlums just because rich people would send their problem kids there once they were kicked out of other places. They thought because it was stricter there that the kids would straighten out. The kids that had a complete ride through the system (rather than jr high/high school transfers) didn’t really do anything just because we’d known each other forever. It was like embarrassing yourself in front of family.
Maybe my experience was different just because our class was tiny.
Much like people that had it shoved down their throats, I am not big on religion, but, it was a good school, for the most part. Sorry you had to deal with do much shit from those kids.

I went to catholic school T_T yes, tons of kids were mean and many were pretty angsty from stupid latin classes T_T not justifying their behavior, just indirectly venting over those stupid latin classes

I wanted a good friend of mine to go see SW with me, but he backed out because his wife is “anti star wars” whatever the hell that means.

So I rode over by myself and saw the damn thing by myself. F*ck it.

I was really figuring it’d be on par with the prequels, but it’s actually good and on par with the original three movies. It actually put me in a good mood for a change and made me stop wanting to stab myself so much. It was worth it.

The bad part is a lot of the movie are shots that just won’t work on anything smaller than a theatre screen, kind of like the opening Star Destroyer shot of “New Hope” doesn’t work on a TV.

Go see it.

On religion: I never really cared much for it. Me and my sister really only went because of mum. But we’d sneak out about half an hour in, and play in the park with our associated friends until the thing was over. We stopped going all together when I was like 10 or something.

I had a simple philosophy when I was a kid: be nice to people, and get niceness in return. I tried to help people when I could, and because I had pretty low expectations, sometimes I’d get given a drink or some biscuits and walk away happy. Sometimes I’d get money (like 20c to $2), which 20-odd years ago, made 10-year-old me feel like I was loaded (fuck, I’m officially OLD. That’s a “back in my day” story right there!). Sometimes I’d get nothing, which, depending on whether the person I’d help was a dear elderly person or a stupid jerkface, would leave me either happy, or with a lesson learned, respectively.

My philosophy hasn’t really changed much, but has matured of course: “Don’t be a dick, don’t be a pussy, and don’t be an asshole”.

Don’t be a dick; don’t cause undue pain or stress on a person if it can possibly be avoided. Minimise the effects as much as possible if you can’t avoid it. Don’t be a pussy; don’t let others get away with treating people like dirt. Step in and help people who need it if you can, call for assistance if you can’t. And don’t be an asshole; don’t encourage or organise matters for your own satisfaction, if it means putting others in harms way or at a detriment.

On Star Wars: Now having time off from work (well, a decent rostered day off), I am finally going to check it out myself on Friday. I have tried to avoid spoilers as much as I can (fuck, people get too bloody enthusiastic about blabbing shit especially on social media!). I promise I will keep that shit to myself though. Better to go alone, or with someone who has Cinematic respect (like knowing to STFU during the movie (I don’t know what’s worse, people who provide commentary all the way through, or people who demand commentary from you instead of watching it themselves >:( ))

Hearing that tirade about small towns really takes me back. I was stuck in a small town all my life, in a situation not much different than yours. If not for the internet as an escape vessel, I’d probably be dead myself.

You young whippersnappers don’t know how easy you’ve got it. Why, back in my day we didn’t have no internet. We had walk two miles in the snow, in 80 degree weather, uphill both ways, to go buy our porn at a store, where the guy across the counter knew your dad. The dickwads who shoved slush in your face had to have an audience of at least 6 toadies with them at all times (probably for protection from anyone who’d dare to fight back), and didn’t have anything else to do.

Yeah, I lived in that same small town on the other side of the country.

Jeezus Jackie. That sucks … When it read about shit like that, I can’t imagine what makes some kids be such a bag of dicks.

i guess everyone figures out how to get through a day to the night and into the next one, until you don’t anymore, which can be a relief i guess, once the lights are out for forever. But getting to that is hard, and many many many days will drive you into the darkness before relief comes. Many of us know the darkness… me included.

Darkness hurts you, messes with your health, makes it harder to heal, harder to take care of yourself, causes stress, i feel the stress just pouring off of you in rising running rivulets. Have you ever seen a therapist at all? Maybe the comic is therapy in a way, but i know it also stresses you out.

I have a friend who kept pushing things down and not dealing and running away from the past, she got cancer. It was a pretty hard wake up call for her, but she started making changes, dealing with her stuff, and she’s doing better.

i don’t know all the things that push on you, but it feels like a mountain. i worry for you. Try to be good to yourself in just one way everyday. Do something for you. And be aware that you are doing something for you, that you matter. Because you do.

be gentle with your beautiful self, please!

I wasn’t in Catholic school but I did have to go to CCE which is like Catholic school lite. The teachers always struck me as way too into this religion stuff, and in actual church I always thought “the adults are talking, so I don’t have to listen because this conversation isn’t for me” and I guess that inadvertently inoculated me against religion. I spent most of my time in church just reading ahead in the reader. The bible has some really interesting stories, confirmed when I took ancient literature and we read a lot of bible stories.

I would recommend going to see star wars if only because the effects are pretty awesome. A small primer I read online gives some much needed back story which I’ll try too rehash here without spilling anything: the empire lost it’s head which caused the moffs to fight amongst themselves and the first order is basically the winner that came out on top in the end. The republic is remade while that is going on, and the resistance, while technically independent to retain plausible deniability, is secretly backed by the republic and was formed to stop the first order. So the situation is similar to what the US did in Syria and Iran. Other than that, enjoyers of a new hope will love this one, and it’s got some pretty funny moments, and to everyone waiting for Luke Skywalker to show up I would just say “be patient”.

A little off topic but I’ve been meaning to ask: what prompted you to get checked for sleep apnea? I’ve been having memory problems for a while and my girlfriend and her family both say I stop breathing while sleeping sometimes and it scares them, plus my grandmother has it and it’s looking like my dad does too.

I love the comic and I really identify with many of the characters. I hope things get better for you and once I can actually get a stable income I’ll be joining the patreon. Kids, don’t major in math unless you know you can get good enough grades to get into grad school, otherwise you’re stuck with a useless degree on par with gender studies, or at least minor in education so you can get a job teaching.

Yup — what Thomas said…

I went to Public Schools all my life — even the College / University I got my Baccalaureate from is a State school. When I was in Elementary School, we only had a handful of Catholic kids. The teachers and administration were another story. The Principal, his secretary and a few of the teachers were French Catholic. Since my family were Unitarians and Dad worked at a factory out of town (instead of being a University professor) we were lower than snake squat. My brothers and I could do nothing right and we were singled out, along with a small handful of other kids (most of whom, now that I think about it, were also Unitarians) for verbal abuse and browbeating. The school looked the other way if we were bullied, but God help us if we fought back.

On the other hand, my dad was the Principal of the Elementary School in our small town. He tried to encourage me to fight back — to defend myself — but I just couldn’t lower myself to their level. So I’d let them do their thing until they got bored, or had proved to themselves they were powerful (for beating on someone they knew wouldn’t fight back. Pathetic.)

Ironically, I attended Catholic school from first grade up until graduating high school. The important thing to note is that Catholic school kids are people like everybody else. The same morons you run into anywhere are in Catholic schools. I’m still a practicing Catholic, though I’m not as big on the dogmatic ritualization as most are.

*hugs* been there. The tears thing isn’t purely a sadness response. Sometimes, it’s letting loose in other ways. Take care of yourself. It’s hard when things get rough, but it’s necessary to keep being so awesome.

Not all Catholics are like that. Some of us are actually OK. But thanks to dickwads like these, and the crop of perverts in the clergy, we get ignored. Or worse, told to quit the Catholic Church because decent people don’t belong there.

I went to Catholic school from 4th grade til the end of High School. What continues to boggle me is the experience I had at school seemed to be so much different than what others experienced. At the same time, it validated my faith in such a way that I’m eternally frustrated with the rest of the congregation (the priests and deacons included) who don’t seem to know what we actually believe in!

We learned about evolution, science, climate change, and the infinite universe. We had sex education, and discussed STDs, condoms, sexual orientations, and gender. Of course we had bible study, in which we read the bible, compared it to other passages in the bible, and learned about their the historical, cultural, and political manifestations. We studied Judaism, Islam, Shintoism, Buddhism, and even Wicca to learn how we are different, as well as how we are the same.

We learned that we should stop being dicks to one another. And that sometimes saying “I’m sorry” is a good place to start. And that we all believe in the same thing, but we just use different words to express them.

Maybe because it was also a college prep school. Maybe it was because the teachers were brilliant and some of them might’ve made the administrators a bit nervous. Maybe I’m just proud that my dad walked out of church one Sunday morning because the priest said something that he just plain hated. Maybe it’s because my grandmother always wanted me to be a preacher and I could really use a soapbox to announce myself.

I hate being Catholic because everyone around me isn’t Catholic enough :/

But… We DON’T all believe the same things.

For example, Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” Then 350 years later, Mohamed said that Allah (his moon god) was the true god, and he was his only prophet. Fifteen hundred years later, Joseph Smith claimed that Jesus was spirit brother and equal to Lucifer. These are all mutually exclusive truth claims.

To say that they are using different words to explain the same thing is to violate the logical Law of Non-contradiction.

Now, I’m not claiming that any of them are (or are not) actually true. I’m only pointing out how the different belief systems are mutually exclusive in their truth claims.

Luckier — The name means the bearer of light. Lucifer is an angel and has traditionally been on the good side. The association with evil has been relatively recent, IIRC. I found Lucifer’s Wikipedia page rather interesting.

I also had a good experience with Catholic school, but I found that it kind of depended on the cohort you ended up in. For example, in my year, most of the kids in my class were pretty good, but the kids my age in the public school were assholes. It was the complete opposite for my little brother. Growing up in a rural area, you’re stuck with the exact same group of kids from K-8 and into high school unless you switch school boards, so if you’re being bullied it can get pretty terrible. I should also mention that I’m in Canada, so Catholic and public schools are both publicly funded and anyone can go to Catholic school. That might be why it was different for me.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand in two days i’ve managed to binge ALL the comic, productivity my ass :D. now i have to work :(

i can’t wait to see more of nina and ed, i’ve been waiting forever for that!.

it’s funny that i had this comic on the backburner for months if not more, page 1 didn’t work for me art-wise and b/w(also too many text), but i caught up with all my other webcomics, was bored and plowed forward, i regret notheeeeng! :D

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