Is it just me, or is there something up with Justin’s eyes?
I don’t see their profile, or his pupil or iris. At that angle, I don’t think the glasses would be hiding them…
Reminds me of me when people try to explain why my needle phobia is silly – generally people just slavering to stick a huge pointy (probably dull) needle in me.
I know the feeling. I haven’t entirely been cured of my needle phobia, but weekly allergy shots will work wonders on your ability to handle the regular sized ones.
Now the needles used in blood draws…those still send me into panic attacks that usually lead to hyperventilation and doctors deciding that maybe they really don’t need that test after all.
Granted, I don’t go into full on “scare the doctors and nurses” mode until they tell me they can’t find the vein at my elbow and need to pull from my hand. I can NOT handle hand wounds.
I am probably one of the only people who would say, “I’m so glad I got Hepititis when I was a kid.” I can’t donate blood. I only ever have to deal with blood draw needles for medical testing pre-surgical procedures and whatnot.
i actually got over mine by forceing myself to watch them take blood. it was kind of neat the way the blood kind of shoots into the tube and since then i have not been afraid..i mean i have broken my ankle and that hurt way worse than a little pin prick..and i also got over my fear of spiders by holding my freinds tarantula…it was really soft..like a an 8 legged kitten…i was shocked…i almost cried but then i touched it and was like..whoa…lol but i am still afraid of heights and do not plan on sky divieng..2 phobias out of 3 is good enough and falling from a large height last i checked is still genuinely dangerous.
It’s not the pain. I’m pretty sure it traces back to a major panic attack i threw when i was five or six and my mother took me in for a Salk polio booster.
(That was the pain – not the needle pain, the apin i recalled from the initial shot and the first booster.)
But i literally once fainted after a shot that i didn’t even feel…
I’m right there with you on the whole needle thing. I always warn the nurses that I am terrified of needles and that I’m going to stare very hard in the other direction and please don’t tell me to look until the needle is at least 15ft away from me. My fight or flight response tends to fall into ‘beat the crap out of them until they can’t follow you and *then* run away’. Add to this that I a) have a rare blood type so any city I live in I have to keep a personal supply of blood on hand (which I top off regularly in order to release the older pints into the general supply), b) I have 20+ tattoos, and c) I’m a mortician so working with needles of all gauges is part of my daily job. I always always get giggled at and told that I shouldn’t have a phobia, to which my response is phobias aren’t based on logic, so just take the friggin blood already!
The first time I had to have dental work, the doctor hit a major nerve with the shot, and then over-dosed me on the gas. The result was the feeling of nails being driven into my face while spinning really really fast.
Yeah…they had to call my mom in to calm me down, and they threatened to make me seek dental care elsewhere. *sheepish grin* Now I warn all dentists to be very careful if they’re going to do anything that involves numbing me.
Heh. This is, to some extent, me and my wife. I understand why she’s afraid of spiders and don’t try to talk her out of it.
And I haven’t been afraid of needles since I was 5 — went in with my little sister for immunization. She got hers first and WAILED. I resolved to be tougher, cos I was older AND a boy.
Not afraid of dental work either. In fact, when I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I told them to get them all at once. The first one the orthodontist went after was ALSO the only one he didn’t numb properly. I didn’t bite on the blocks until he started prying with a rongeur. And I did it as a conscious choice, not as a reflex.
I demand a centain level of intelligence from the spiders that share my domain. If they’re not smart enough to avoid my attention, they do not deserve to live.
So YOU’RE the one who has been creating all these super smart spiders through selective culling! That explains the disappearence of my cell phone, calculator, and credit card. Not to mention the threatening notes with really tiny writting, and all the little ink footprints. Mark my words, this will not end well.
I mean, uhh.. *clears throat* I bet Shelly either really LOVES or really really REALLY HATES house centipedes. … Probably the latter, eh? “But these eat spiders, and you hate spiders right?” “EEEEH JUST SQUISH IT! It’s got too many legs! So creepy!”
I have never been happier to live in Canada. Mosquitoes & black flies, I can handle; spiders & other sorts of crawlers, no problem. Scorpions? Hell, no.
Well, if someone wants something more exotic than a house cat, they might get a house scorpion, I suppose.
There are scorpions in the southern states, although they are less common the further north you go. There is such a thing as a spotted house scorpion in the southeast, but pretty much any scorpion in a house might be called a house scorpion. Apparently bark scorpions are the most common kind. They are sometimes brought in with firewood and can find other places to hide once they are indoors.
I don’t think it was an actual house scorpion (didn’t know there was such a thing).
The scorpions that used to wander into our place when we lived north of Dawsonville in the woods were just your basic black/brown scorps, less than an inch long.
Up in the Piedmont of South Carolina, we used to have a fair number of anoles (which some mis-called “chameleons” because they can change from brown to green and back again).
No. When Tina saw Phix, it was the equivalent of a rabbit seeing a wolf. A hungry wolf. Phix is a predator, a top-of-the-food-chain demon-eater. Tina was terrified of being … well, perhaps killed isn’t the right term …
Every one of us has, somewhere in our make-up, a weakness that can shatter the illusion of perfection. Shelly, strong and powerful, has spiders. SPIDERS!! It’s precisely things like this that allow us to need someone else.
Aren’t spiders great? They bring us together. …Well, sorta…
i don’t mind spiders anymore but bees and wasps still freak me out…i am shelly when it comes to one in my house..but that can actually hurt you lol so maybe my fear is a bit less weird.
After this arachnophobic crisis is over, I expect Shells to start singing…
“… I don’t like spiders and snakes,
And that ain’t what it takes to love me,
You fool, you fool.
I don’t like spiders and snakes,
And that ain’t what it takes to love me,
Like I want to be loved by you!”
I can handle snakes and reptiles (though I will dart out of the way very quickly if I can’t tell exactly what kind it is in the instant I first notice it).
I think I take the position of Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd. I don’t handle anything with more than seven eyes.
Funny thing is, I work with these big, tough juvenile delinquents. Hardcore gangsta wannabes, and yet (because we’re set in the depths of a state forest preserve) when the bugs invade, they turn into Shelly when they see earwigs and moths and other bugs.
This is probably one of the most common phobias in the world – the same scene takes place with my girlfriend – she really hates all sorts of insects, including moths, so I have to hunt them down and relocate them to a more suitable habitat (outside). Toads seem to be okay with her though. She even thinks they’re cute.
We have a gecko in our house to handle the bugs, which is good cause I hate spiders too. But it’s also bad, cause my mother hates lizards. So needless to say, the gecko isn’t here by design, though she hasn’t made a great effort to run him/her out.
I have to admit that Justin could have worded things better, not that Shelly was in the mood to be logical. Making Shelly think about a war between spiders other “poisonous bugs and pests” in her kitchen area probably wasn’t going to help her feel less creeped out.
It also probably didn’t help that Shelly was standing in the kitchen area in her bare feet when Justin brought up the other creepy crawly things. I think that’s what made her jump on the stool. Now she in a “KILL THEM ALL!” mood.
Oh I couldn’t agree with you more! When I first say this one all I could see was him talking to her and as I read the dialogue all I could think was this isn’t helping. Then I scrolled down and saw her face, Yup! That just made it worse. Of course Shelly’s continues rambling isn’t helping now either.
And there you have it folks, the stereotypical female reaction to small household pests by jumping on a chair/stool. And right now, Justin is wondering if the sex was worth it.
If it crawled up the stool, I wonder if Shelly might leap onto the ceiling, holding herself to it with her nails it like they show in cartoons when a cat jumps straight up from fright.
When Ma died last year, one of my aunts told a story at the funeral of when they were on the phone, and a big katydid I hopped on Mom’s TV, and she screamed into the phone, trying to get my attention. I was right in the next room. She used to work as a dental assistant, and as a nurse at the local hospital. I know she saw really soupy injuries and such, but she couldn’t stand bugs and mice. Comanche women!
I had a wind-up “spider” that had an eccentric cam in its innards; wound up, it would skitter across a smooth floor, occasionally jumping into the air. It was black, hairy, large as your hand and had bulging cartoon eyes and (seven) non-functional legs. I’ve used it to scare the hell out of people.
My stepmother beat the poor thing to bits with a pan. Damn what it looked like, it moved.
My father has the same ‘thing’ about snakes. If it wiggles, kill it.
Holy —- that is a fast little– er… big bugger of a spider to be under the garbage can on the floor and over by the toaster is 2.5 nanoseconds… Poor Shellybean.
Ahhh truth… its always the best joke
Love the worried look on Shelly’s face in panel 2!
On second look, puppy dog eyes
I’m tired… lol
No your right. It”s both a puppy eyes & a grimace of terror at the same time. Not easy to pull off Paul. Excellent work.
Ditto .
I kow just how she feels….spiders outside good, spiders inside …hear me scream!
3rd! lol and this comic hilarious, shows why men still exist.
As what? Human Shields ???
Heck yeah! A shield and a tree all in one!
BTW , is me or is he missing his eye in the first panel ?
I think it’s closed.
Beat me to it. I thought the same thing.
Think its suppose to be like the ^_^ sorta thing. Does seem kinda high up on there though.
Oops. All fixed, hit refresh.
Ah . Thank you .
Hey . What happened to the vote button ?
It was missing when I went to vote yesterday evening.
Is it just me, or is there something up with Justin’s eyes?
I don’t see their profile, or his pupil or iris. At that angle, I don’t think the glasses would be hiding them…
Could be just me though.
He’s rolling his eyes. My wife HATES it when I roll my eyes at her. Unfortunatly, I’m not even concious I’m doing it.
LOL!! While I can understand your dilemma (I roll my eyes too), Paul actually just foget to draw it in.
He fixed it though.
NOT HELPING
Reminds me of me when people try to explain why my needle phobia is silly – generally people just slavering to stick a huge pointy (probably dull) needle in me.
I know the feeling. I haven’t entirely been cured of my needle phobia, but weekly allergy shots will work wonders on your ability to handle the regular sized ones.
Now the needles used in blood draws…those still send me into panic attacks that usually lead to hyperventilation and doctors deciding that maybe they really don’t need that test after all.
Granted, I don’t go into full on “scare the doctors and nurses” mode until they tell me they can’t find the vein at my elbow and need to pull from my hand. I can NOT handle hand wounds.
You have my sympathy. I’ve given blood over 100 times. But I still don’t look when they stick the needle.
I am probably one of the only people who would say, “I’m so glad I got Hepititis when I was a kid.” I can’t donate blood.
I only ever have to deal with blood draw needles for medical testing pre-surgical procedures and whatnot.
i actually got over mine by forceing myself to watch them take blood. it was kind of neat the way the blood kind of shoots into the tube and since then i have not been afraid..i mean i have broken my ankle and that hurt way worse than a little pin prick..and i also got over my fear of spiders by holding my freinds tarantula…it was really soft..like a an 8 legged kitten…i was shocked…i almost cried but then i touched it and was like..whoa…lol but i am still afraid of heights and do not plan on sky divieng..2 phobias out of 3 is good enough and falling from a large height last i checked is still genuinely dangerous.
It’s not the pain. I’m pretty sure it traces back to a major panic attack i threw when i was five or six and my mother took me in for a Salk polio booster.
(That was the pain – not the needle pain, the apin i recalled from the initial shot and the first booster.)
But i literally once fainted after a shot that i didn’t even feel…
I’m right there with you on the whole needle thing. I always warn the nurses that I am terrified of needles and that I’m going to stare very hard in the other direction and please don’t tell me to look until the needle is at least 15ft away from me. My fight or flight response tends to fall into ‘beat the crap out of them until they can’t follow you and *then* run away’. Add to this that I a) have a rare blood type so any city I live in I have to keep a personal supply of blood on hand (which I top off regularly in order to release the older pints into the general supply), b) I have 20+ tattoos, and c) I’m a mortician so working with needles of all gauges is part of my daily job. I always always get giggled at and told that I shouldn’t have a phobia, to which my response is phobias aren’t based on logic, so just take the friggin blood already!
Dental work. Novocaine…
I’m pretty sure that the hard plastic arms of a couple of dental chairs still have my fingerprints squeezed into them.
The first time I had to have dental work, the doctor hit a major nerve with the shot, and then over-dosed me on the gas. The result was the feeling of nails being driven into my face while spinning really really fast.
Yeah…they had to call my mom in to calm me down, and they threatened to make me seek dental care elsewhere. *sheepish grin* Now I warn all dentists to be very careful if they’re going to do anything that involves numbing me.
Heh. This is, to some extent, me and my wife. I understand why she’s afraid of spiders and don’t try to talk her out of it.
And I haven’t been afraid of needles since I was 5 — went in with my little sister for immunization. She got hers first and WAILED. I resolved to be tougher, cos I was older AND a boy.
Not afraid of dental work either. In fact, when I had my wisdom teeth pulled, I told them to get them all at once. The first one the orthodontist went after was ALSO the only one he didn’t numb properly. I didn’t bite on the blocks until he started prying with a rongeur. And I did it as a conscious choice, not as a reflex.
I have to say that Justin apparently “gets it” faster than some males.
Or, perhaps, he’s unwilling to risk the chance that Shelly might, actually, rip his head off of he teases her.
Being pretty well free of such worries, i sometimes do tease Kate about such things…
You know, a woman can still *be* a woman even while having muscles 3x size of mine
No, I don’t care how logical it is… get rid of it!
Very funny, and so, so true.
I demand a centain level of intelligence from the spiders that share my domain. If they’re not smart enough to avoid my attention, they do not deserve to live.
I LIKE that theory!
I think I shall borrow it next time someone looks at me funny when I freak out and demand the death of a small house spider.
Well, I’m hoping you only apply it to spiders.
Usually.
It works for flies too. One fly this morning was smart enough to fly away when I got the swatter. It got to live.
I agree with Julie. That is an EXCELLENT theory.
So YOU’RE the one who has been creating all these super smart spiders through selective culling! That explains the disappearence of my cell phone, calculator, and credit card. Not to mention the threatening notes with really tiny writting, and all the little ink footprints. Mark my words, this will not end well.
I have the same sort of deal with the spiders here. Keep your webs out of my way, and you can stay. Web where I walk, bathe or sleep? Yer outta here!
Woahhhh, officer studmuffin. Heheee..
I mean, uhh.. *clears throat* I bet Shelly either really LOVES or really really REALLY HATES house centipedes. … Probably the latter, eh? “But these eat spiders, and you hate spiders right?” “EEEEH JUST SQUISH IT! It’s got too many legs! So creepy!”
Ditto.
On both points.
I’m not real big on house scorpions, either.
Especially since i stepped on one when we lived in Dawsonville GA.
I was not wearing shoes.
Kate and Helen informed me that the ensuing hopping-up-and-down-swearing-fervently was Very Funny.
“House scorpions??!?” That, uh, that’s just a nickname, right? They’re not actually scorpions?
The “house” might be a nickname…
Yes. They are.
North Georgia woods.
Some places it’s considered to be a good idea to shake out your shoes before donning them.
We got ‘em in Arkansas too. Usually the exact color of the wood panelling, so invisible – until they moove…….
I have never been happier to live in Canada. Mosquitoes & black flies, I can handle; spiders & other sorts of crawlers, no problem. Scorpions? Hell, no.
Well, if someone wants something more exotic than a house cat, they might get a house scorpion, I suppose.
There are scorpions in the southern states, although they are less common the further north you go. There is such a thing as a spotted house scorpion in the southeast, but pretty much any scorpion in a house might be called a house scorpion. Apparently bark scorpions are the most common kind. They are sometimes brought in with firewood and can find other places to hide once they are indoors.
And they hurt in ways you cannot imagine when you lay back on what you thought was a scorpion-free pillow.
I don’t think it was an actual house scorpion (didn’t know there was such a thing).
The scorpions that used to wander into our place when we lived north of Dawsonville in the woods were just your basic black/brown scorps, less than an inch long.
I preferred the blue tailed skinks who showed up occasionally.
Up in the Piedmont of South Carolina, we used to have a fair number of anoles (which some mis-called “chameleons” because they can change from brown to green and back again).
Okay then, scratching Georgia off of the list of places I ever want to visit!
I wonder if this is anything like what Tina went thru when she saw Phix for the first time.
No. When Tina saw Phix, it was the equivalent of a rabbit seeing a wolf. A hungry wolf. Phix is a predator, a top-of-the-food-chain demon-eater. Tina was terrified of being … well, perhaps killed isn’t the right term …
More like a rabbit and a snake.
Or, actually, a mouse and a snake.
Yeah. This is just like at my house. Save I don’t look near as good without a shirt.
…Of course, being the big softy I am, I have to go get the ‘spider cup’ and capture and release it in the wild (aka “out the window”)
Every one of us has, somewhere in our make-up, a weakness that can shatter the illusion of perfection. Shelly, strong and powerful, has spiders. SPIDERS!! It’s precisely things like this that allow us to need someone else.
Aren’t spiders great? They bring us together. …Well, sorta…
I just noticed how “weeping willow”-like Shel’s hair gets when she’s scared out of her gourd.
i don’t mind spiders anymore but bees and wasps still freak me out…i am shelly when it comes to one in my house..but that can actually hurt you lol so maybe my fear is a bit less weird.
After this arachnophobic crisis is over, I expect Shells to start singing…
“… I don’t like spiders and snakes,
And that ain’t what it takes to love me,
You fool, you fool.
I don’t like spiders and snakes,
And that ain’t what it takes to love me,
Like I want to be loved by you!”
(“Spiders & Snakes” Lyrics by Jim Stafford)
Maybe she’ll need comfort food. Then it will be Jim Stafford’s “Junk Food Junkie”.
I love spiders, snakes, bugs, reptiles, etc … but that would totally be me standing on that stool if it were an earwig.
I can handle snakes and reptiles (though I will dart out of the way very quickly if I can’t tell exactly what kind it is in the instant I first notice it).
I think I take the position of Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd. I don’t handle anything with more than seven eyes.
Funny thing is, I work with these big, tough juvenile delinquents. Hardcore gangsta wannabes, and yet (because we’re set in the depths of a state forest preserve) when the bugs invade, they turn into Shelly when they see earwigs and moths and other bugs.
This is probably one of the most common phobias in the world – the same scene takes place with my girlfriend – she really hates all sorts of insects, including moths, so I have to hunt them down and relocate them to a more suitable habitat (outside). Toads seem to be okay with her though. She even thinks they’re cute.
So she’s the total opposite of this…
http://www.pvponline.com/2010/08/31/this-means-warts/
We have a gecko in our house to handle the bugs, which is good cause I hate spiders too. But it’s also bad, cause my mother hates lizards. So needless to say, the gecko isn’t here by design, though she hasn’t made a great effort to run him/her out.
I have to admit that Justin could have worded things better, not that Shelly was in the mood to be logical. Making Shelly think about a war between spiders other “poisonous bugs and pests” in her kitchen area probably wasn’t going to help her feel less creeped out.
It also probably didn’t help that Shelly was standing in the kitchen area in her bare feet when Justin brought up the other creepy crawly things. I think that’s what made her jump on the stool. Now she in a “KILL THEM ALL!” mood.
Oh I couldn’t agree with you more! When I first say this one all I could see was him talking to her and as I read the dialogue all I could think was this isn’t helping. Then I scrolled down and saw her face, Yup! That just made it worse. Of course Shelly’s continues rambling isn’t helping now either.
And there you have it folks, the stereotypical female reaction to small household pests by jumping on a chair/stool. And right now, Justin is wondering if the sex was worth it.
No benifit with out a price tag, no price tag without a benifit.
If it crawled up the stool, I wonder if Shelly might leap onto the ceiling, holding herself to it with her nails it like they show in cartoons when a cat jumps straight up from fright.
Maybe instead of learning to poit, Shelly will learn to levitate – The hydrophobia wizards in one of the Discworld novels come to mind.
When Ma died last year, one of my aunts told a story at the funeral of when they were on the phone, and a big katydid I hopped on Mom’s TV, and she screamed into the phone, trying to get my attention. I was right in the next room. She used to work as a dental assistant, and as a nurse at the local hospital. I know she saw really soupy injuries and such, but she couldn’t stand bugs and mice. Comanche women!
anything that’ll eat an earwig is OK in my book…
Oh heck yeah! DEFINITELY agree with Origami Guy on this one! (Gawd! Those creepy things can get into the dangdest places!)
I wonder what would happen if Shelly found out its the JUMPING variety? (or, how fast are her reflexes?)
On Youtube, there are a number of spider pranks people have played…
Oh Sheeeelly, thare’s a big wolf spider on your pillow next to your heeead.
Shelly; AAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGHHH!!!!!
I had a wind-up “spider” that had an eccentric cam in its innards; wound up, it would skitter across a smooth floor, occasionally jumping into the air. It was black, hairy, large as your hand and had bulging cartoon eyes and (seven) non-functional legs. I’ve used it to scare the hell out of people.
My stepmother beat the poor thing to bits with a pan. Damn what it looked like, it moved.
My father has the same ‘thing’ about snakes. If it wiggles, kill it.
The cast page says that Shelly is “proud of her Comanche heritage.” I’m thinking she forgot about that at the moment.
I’ll bet she doesn’t play Spider Solitaire on her computer.
nothing more endearing than a glamazon with a neurosis
Holy —- that is a fast little– er… big bugger of a spider to be under the garbage can on the floor and over by the toaster is 2.5 nanoseconds… Poor Shellybean.
Ah, Shelly. You are such a girl, aren’t ya?