Tina, despite what those emo songs may say, there are other ways to know that you can feel anything besides self inflicted pain. I hope she did not break her arm.
… Okay I am probably going to be one of the few to ask what is “C8 H30 N4 O2” suppose to be anyways. I actually looked for it for a few minutes with no success.
Perhaps coffee shops actually do keep some caffeine about for those who want extra strong wake-the-hell-up juice. Quicker than reducing batches of coffee to a syrup consistency. Still you’d think it would just be labeled caffeine.
I had a girlfriend who was, at the time, in med school (her undergrad degree was in Chemistry).
She had a coffee cup labeled with the formula, and often remarked, as she sipped her first cup of the morning, that she couldn’t properly start her day without (various chemical compound names)…
No way. Just 2 grams of caffeine could kill a healthy adult. You’d need a pharmacist on call to measure the proper dose. Even then, why risk the liability? It’s better business to just sell the schmuck two or three espressos.
Well, I’m figuring the supply of caffeine would be diluted for safe use. In the same way bleach would not be just pure sodium hypochlorite, but mostly water.
Well, maybe so, but using the gasoline analogy, it is still intended to give you “better performance”… For years I’ve been referring to caffeine-free cola as “unleaded” and the regular caffeinated stuff as “Ethyl” (for us old farts who still remember what “Ethyl” was!)… XD
Actually, now that I’ve re-examined all the facial expressions, etc. of the strip a few times, that makes more sense to me. Seems like Amanda doesn’t take a liking AT ALL to any suggestion of supernaturalism. I get the feeling that if Amanda ever found out what is really going on with Tina, Phix and the GGs, that would be the end of their friendship, period.
Hmm… Does Tina even feel pain? It seems with her otherwise total ‘absence’ of physical wear/tear (aka not needing to sleep except out of habit) and that we’ve seen her face ‘literally’ spark fires…
It’s true that Tina’s character and personality have changed a lot since then, but I assumed her physiology had to be pretty constant since we’ve known her…? Although it’s true that her eyes are drawn differently now. Anyway, I was arguing that if her actual physical body is the same now as it has always been, she appears to feel pain as indicated not only by this strip but by the one I linked to before.
Unless her growing awareness of her own “undead-ness” caused her to realize that her sense of pain was a fabrication based on expectation. Or something.
Also if we’re going to be really nitpicky I wouldn’t have said her face was ON FIRE in that strip. That is, I wouldn’t have called it physical like-in-a-fireplace fire, more of a laser-like zap from her body itself, but whatevs. We’ll probably find out tomorrow and I might be totally and utterly wrong.
I meant that I don’t think she would have overreacted like that if she wasn’t worried about Phix. But, yes, Tina wouldn’t want Amanda to know the details, either.
I would think that as well, except that Tina just broke her arm while standing ten feet directly in front of the both of them.
So, unless we’re going by old saturday morning cartoon logic (where someone who is hiding from someone else can loudly and dramatically narrate their hopes at not being found, and indeed… not be found) then I’d have to assume something else is happening here.
Her back is turned, and their attentions are directed at one another. Tina’s chances of being noticed are quite low (I pull the “out of nowhere” stunt far too often 😀 ).
She apparently hit herself hard enough to bruise herself at least. Given the size of that container she’d have had to swing it pretty high and hard to do that. Even if they were in the next room it’s likely they’d hear it and know it happened right now, not a little while ago.
It’s weird. If she wanted Amanda to stay in the dark the easiest way to do that is just to let her go as she was. Amanda’s pretty judgmental at times and it would be trivial for Tina to convince her that she’s just some irrelevant emo chick with out resorting to blunt-force trauma. Monica doesn’t want her involved either so that would work out. If she does want her involved then there are easier ways to get that then whacking herself in the arm.
There’s something else going on here, something Tina’s got in mind but I haven’t the foggiest idea what.
Good old Tina…validating Monica is nice and all, but how does she explain breaking her arm in easy to accept “Amanda” terms while letting Monica know she has nothing to worry about? I’m willing to bet that the average barista couldn’t do that with a coffee container.
You know, it’s weird. My initial impression (before reading other people’s comments and re-reading the comic for a second opinion) was that Tina was trying to convince Mon that Phix did something to her. It took me a while to realize that Amanda had already seen her unharmed and would communicate that to Monica. *sheepish grin*
True, but maybe monica’s bad feeling was that this would happen, but not necessarily that it had happened before they showed up (as I’m typing I’m coming to the realization that my theory is quite thin indeed…)
The first thing that came to mind when I read this wasn’t that Tina just broke her own arm (which is disturbing in it’s own right, I admit), but the fact that she’s yelling sideways… We’ve seen Doubt talk backwards, so I’m wondering if talking sideways is the same kind of disturbing unnatural sound…
We’ve seen sideways text before. This is the only one I remember off the top of my head. Both cases were a little panicky. She didn’t talk sideways in front of Phix, though. Perhaps it means she was talking without talking to anyone? Have other characters done the same?
Nope I dont think she broke it…. 🙂 ( unless she is *way* strong enough!! )
– Take good sized container, and bring it down hard on your arm – its gonna hurt!! its gonna swell up to a nice big bruise, depending on how much muscle got in the way…. 🙂
Take another look. She laid her arm down across the edge of the counter, supporting her elbow on the surface and striking the wrist. And the arm shows a perceptible distortion.
Either way, judging be the wry twist to Tina’s mouth in the second panel, she knew it was going to hurt.
At first look, I thought the wood behind her arm was the counter top, but second look shows it is raw wood. Perhaps it’s a stud framing the stairs into the basement? If it’s a vertical, then perhaps Tina stepped around the corner into the stairwell, out of line of sight, before she hit herself.
FWIW, you can see a corner in the 6th panel. I thought it was the counter top, too. Now I have no idea where she is, but I doubt it matters, as long as she is out of sight.
Frankly, possibly broken is probably about as good as broken in this case.
Actually, a thought just occurred to me. (That happens, occasionally.) Could a secondary goal for Tina be trying to set up a situation where Amanda would drive Tina to a doctor’s office for x-rays, thus leaving Monica free to do as she pleases? In a sense, I hope that doesn’t happen. I’d like to see Monica quizzing Tina about the doll soon.
Perhaps one of the small private tables in the shop? The counter top looks almost like etched stone; I don’t recall ever seeing one of the tops to the tables.
I tend towards opining she’s broken her arm, because this is a technique for breaking glass: etch a line and snap the pane at that line, by bending it at that line over a pencil, dowel, or the edge of the workbench. I’ve done it a hundred times.
I swear, when I saw that, I could hear the snap. It nearly turned my stomach.
What if Monica’s “bad feeling” was picking up on a sudden shift in Tina’s essence? Something that Tina herself has just become aware of, and performed the “owwie” test to confirm?
This was the source of Monica’s “bad feeling”. Monica doesn’t want to tell Amanda that Phix is a sphinx and Tina is a collection of demons, so she is being vague about it. Having learned her lesson from Phix, Tina is now trying to help Monica get away with not telling Amanda exactly what’s gong on.
Well, you were probably aware of that. I don’t see why there would need to be anything extra going on, though. After all, keeping Phix happy and out of her coffee shop is no doubt worth a broken arm to Tina.
This seems… excessive, on Tina’s part. Validate Monica’s excuse, yes (would Tina necessarily realize that Monica’s true cause of panic was the belatedly fear Phix might be a demon-killing Sphinx? Maybe, Tina has supernatural perceptiveness, after all). But breaking her own arm? what about dropping something on her foot, or claiming that a fire almost started in the shop but she put it out in time, or something less incapacitating? It’s going to be a bit difficult making coffee fast with one arm.
(I’m a bit dubious about the mechanics of this, too. Bone is VERY tough. With a heavy enough weight, sufficient momentum, and a willingness to hit yourself hard, yes, it’s POSSIBLE you could break your own arm the way Tina did. But it might be difficult. Maybe Tina has greater than human strength.)
One thing this will do, is determine if Tina is alive in a conventional sense. Take her to a hospital to have her arm set and a cast put on, and someone will surely notice if she’s not breathing, her heart’s not beating, she has no blood pressure…
IS her heart stopped? Does she breath? Can she simulate these things at will? I don’t believe any of these things have been established one way or the other. Though I could be wrong.
“Death Becomes Her” tends to spring to mind at times like this.
“Death Becomes Her”? totally different – no pain, just a bit confused your arm was bent un-naturally, or broke off like porcelain, and pick it up saying ‘erm, got some glue???’
definitely worth watching, good comedy / tragedy.. 🙂
Well, even though the previous occupant in Tina’s body died, that doesn’t mean that the body is necessarily a corpse in the medical sense. If the collection of demons can animate the body to walk, talk ,slip and fall on the ice etc. Surely they can fake a medical exam complete with heartbeat and BP.
This distraction must be for Amanda’s sake. I doubt Monica would fall for it. After all, Amanda is clueless about who or what told Monica to return to the coffee shop.
Lord. Tina is willing to go the extra mile to cover Monica’s back, isn’t she? And this tends to confirm my suspicion that Tina is not willing to say anything about Phix or what Tina perceives to be any business of Phix’s.
I can’t really work out how she could come up with an explanation for Amanda that wouldn’t open a can of worms. I mean, “Monica’s friend scared the pee out of me” would tend to beg questions best not asked.
As a distraction, a broken arm works well, stops the argument, keeps everyone occupied, and not so incidentally adds street cred to Monica’s bad feeling. It’s drastic enough that Amanda certainly isn’t going to think she faked it, or did it on purpose to stop the argument.
Might be too drastic. But then, she’s in a hurry, and used what was to hand.
It’s just bugs me that what a lot of the New Age-ers latch on to (and sometimes use wrongly) is stuff my people have known and done as a regular matter of course.
Then again, I have an amazing amount of info floating about in my big ol’ noggin, but the actual breakdown of it looks like a photomosiac crossed with a difference engine mixed with the reference library of Jeopardy! It tends to color my worlds-view.
A lot of people have a need to think that they are privy to special knowledge that is unavailable or unappreciated by the unwashed masses.
For the low, low price of $29.95, I’ll send you my book: Secrets of the Stock Market, which will tell all of the secrets about making a fortune on Wall Street that the brokers don’t want you to know. But wait, there’s more! You will also gain admission to the innermost and most trusted circle of my Cult of the Inter-terrestrial Desert Shark. Yes, many people know that the answer is 42, but only a few have been trusted by the Inter-terrestrial Desert Shark with the ultimate question. Will you be one of those few?
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Odd. Nudge was just trying to goad Monica into taking Amanda to the annex right before Phix showed up, and now Tina is breaking her arm to confirm Monica’s bad feeling and keeping Amanda out of the loop. I’m guessing that it was Nudge who was most affected by Phix’s visit…
Oh, and Paul’s comment the other day about hearing Alex Kingston’s voice whenever he imagines Phix speaking just made her 100x hotter…
Once he gets Amanda out of there, I think. “Hey, Amanda! I don’t mean to be rude, but will you get the hell out of there so we can find out what’s going on!”
It could be that it becomes impossible to hide things from Amanda and we find out that way. As Fatuncle said, Tina may have accidentally painted herself and Monica into a corner if she can’t come up with a good explanation of how she broke her arm.
Aha! My evil plan is bearing fruit! Speculate wildly about everything, and sooner or later you are going to be right about something… or confuse people about what you said to the point they think so.
I can’t think of a better reason for this than that Nudge is trying to get Amanda in on the supernatural aspect of Monica. I would like to think I could find a better way of doing that if I were Tina, but then again, Tina IS run by a committee.
Maybe thats a glass decanter and she shattered it, would be a more fakeable injury as opposed to cracking her arm hard enough to break it with an aluminum one. Also note Tina speaks so she pretty much has to breath.
WHAT.
did Tina just break her arm?
Yes.
Ouch! That’s not very pleasent, couldn’t she have done something else?
(and cute “Caffine” mug)
I totally thought that was the formula for sugar. *fail*
I’m using zazzle to get myself a travel mug with this formula on it.
thinkgeek.com has them.
Tina, despite what those emo songs may say, there are other ways to know that you can feel anything besides self inflicted pain. I hope she did not break her arm.
Yikes ! Come on Tina , don’t do stuff like that .
… Okay I am probably going to be one of the few to ask what is “C8 H30 N4 O2” suppose to be anyways. I actually looked for it for a few minutes with no success.
It’s the chemical composition for caffeine. C8H10N4O2, btw, not H30.
if i remeber right from an old john cusack movie its the chemical formula for cafeine
“Hot Pursuit” is my favorite ’80s Cusack movie…co-starring both Ben and Jerry Stiller!
Caffeine, my dear!
So.. a little caffeine never hurt anyone? Well, you’re WRONG!
A thermos filled with pure caffeine isn’t a “little.” that’s the equivalent of about a thousand No-Doze. 😛
Perhaps coffee shops actually do keep some caffeine about for those who want extra strong wake-the-hell-up juice. Quicker than reducing batches of coffee to a syrup consistency. Still you’d think it would just be labeled caffeine.
I had a girlfriend who was, at the time, in med school (her undergrad degree was in Chemistry).
She had a coffee cup labeled with the formula, and often remarked, as she sipped her first cup of the morning, that she couldn’t properly start her day without (various chemical compound names)…
No way. Just 2 grams of caffeine could kill a healthy adult. You’d need a pharmacist on call to measure the proper dose. Even then, why risk the liability? It’s better business to just sell the schmuck two or three espressos.
Perhaps that’s what Shelly meant back when she ordered “a sumatra with a depth charge”…
(http://wapsisquare.com/comic/02262003 I think that was Tina’s first ever appearance in the strip.)
Well, I’m figuring the supply of caffeine would be diluted for safe use. In the same way bleach would not be just pure sodium hypochlorite, but mostly water.
Maybe it’s just ironic labeling?
Rather more than that.
Mass for mass, caffeine is more toxic than plutonium.
im sure you can get coffee cups from the geek shop with the coffee formula on it now 🙂
maybe your gf inspired them 🙂
Mass for mass, a lot of commonly used things are more harmful than plutonium.
Namely everything that’s harmful when taken as a pure one ounce slug (what went in the body to show the circulatory system).
Not surprising, considering that the plant uses it for insecticide. Ditto for nicotine and theobromine.
I want one of those with the afor mentioned chemical included. I miss my NAVY coffee.
only when it comes in big cans.
Coffee mug with the diagram for caffeine: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5df15dd460a36169f1acc7fd/5f0c9da664c3151637806669/5f0c9daa64c3151637806714/1594662314784/caffeine-mug.jpg?format=original
Yep. That is the molecular formula for caffeine. Cute.
I had to look it up, too… coundn’t make out the “H” number. It’s “C8 H10 N4 O2” according to Wikipedia.
And it’s the reason why drinks with a lot of caffeine are refered to as “high octane” (which is C8,H18)
Well, maybe so, but using the gasoline analogy, it is still intended to give you “better performance”… For years I’ve been referring to caffeine-free cola as “unleaded” and the regular caffeinated stuff as “Ethyl” (for us old farts who still remember what “Ethyl” was!)… XD
Who pumped Ethyl?
Double Ewe Tee Effin’ Eff! That’s messed up right there… :^/
Ewww.
Possible ploy to justify the foreboding feeling and distract/ease M?
Actually, now that I’ve re-examined all the facial expressions, etc. of the strip a few times, that makes more sense to me. Seems like Amanda doesn’t take a liking AT ALL to any suggestion of supernaturalism. I get the feeling that if Amanda ever found out what is really going on with Tina, Phix and the GGs, that would be the end of their friendship, period.
Huh. It never occurred to me that it could be anything else…
I agree, though that seems a bit extreme. She could have just fainted or some such. Maybe throw in a bit if foaming at the mouth.
I don’t know if Tina could achieve foam. Probably only smoke…remember the spider?
Okay… what was that all about? To see if she could still feel? Evidently so…
What… the… ?
…that’s a coffee container????
Yep! 🙂
I have a Thermos about that size.
Distraction.
Diatraction distraction.
Why did Tina want to distract M. and co.?
Why did Tina want to distract them quite that badly?
Did Tina’s eyes change, there?
I think Cause and Effect have switched sides – seems Tina wants Amanda to believe Monica might actually have Jedi – I mean, ESP powers.
Just noticed – there’s tears. Part of the overal appearance illusion Tina generates – or real?
Hmm… Does Tina even feel pain? It seems with her otherwise total ‘absence’ of physical wear/tear (aka not needing to sleep except out of habit) and that we’ve seen her face ‘literally’ spark fires…
Tina didn’t even feel that… did she Mr. Narrator?
To quote Jurassic Park: “… clever girl…”
Maybe Kaitz and Kaiser are onto something?
Hey, I’m pretty sure she can feel pain, judging by this comic:
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/01062005/
That’s the era of Tina giving actual advise, not the new era of mopey, cryptic Tina.
That… and with this new Tina.. the whole ‘fire on her face doesn’t even phase her’ makes me still question if she can feel pain.
Since… you know… fire hurts, especially on your face.
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/the-smell-of-burning-spider/
It’s true that Tina’s character and personality have changed a lot since then, but I assumed her physiology had to be pretty constant since we’ve known her…? Although it’s true that her eyes are drawn differently now. Anyway, I was arguing that if her actual physical body is the same now as it has always been, she appears to feel pain as indicated not only by this strip but by the one I linked to before.
Unless her growing awareness of her own “undead-ness” caused her to realize that her sense of pain was a fabrication based on expectation. Or something.
Also if we’re going to be really nitpicky I wouldn’t have said her face was ON FIRE in that strip. That is, I wouldn’t have called it physical like-in-a-fireplace fire, more of a laser-like zap from her body itself, but whatevs. We’ll probably find out tomorrow and I might be totally and utterly wrong.
I think this is a case of Tina covering for Monica, by “validating” her bad feeling.
She’s not just covering for Monica. She’s also trying to conceal her little confrontation with Phix.
Not for her own good, I don’t think, except that Phix would want Tina to help Monica.
I meant that I don’t think she would have overreacted like that if she wasn’t worried about Phix. But, yes, Tina wouldn’t want Amanda to know the details, either.
I would think that as well, except that Tina just broke her arm while standing ten feet directly in front of the both of them.
So, unless we’re going by old saturday morning cartoon logic (where someone who is hiding from someone else can loudly and dramatically narrate their hopes at not being found, and indeed… not be found) then I’d have to assume something else is happening here.
Her back is turned, and their attentions are directed at one another. Tina’s chances of being noticed are quite low (I pull the “out of nowhere” stunt far too often 😀 ).
She apparently hit herself hard enough to bruise herself at least. Given the size of that container she’d have had to swing it pretty high and hard to do that. Even if they were in the next room it’s likely they’d hear it and know it happened right now, not a little while ago.
It’s weird. If she wanted Amanda to stay in the dark the easiest way to do that is just to let her go as she was. Amanda’s pretty judgmental at times and it would be trivial for Tina to convince her that she’s just some irrelevant emo chick with out resorting to blunt-force trauma. Monica doesn’t want her involved either so that would work out. If she does want her involved then there are easier ways to get that then whacking herself in the arm.
There’s something else going on here, something Tina’s got in mind but I haven’t the foggiest idea what.
Awwww, Tina’s not having herself a good day. I wanna give her hugs and muffins. T_T
aww
trying to stop an argument is always bad.
distracting people by making them focus on helping someone is possibly the best way.
next time might be best to just get a splinter in the finger but i spose after the meeting with phix, tina might still not be thinking right 🙂
So…
Did ‘Tina’ just do that?
OR is this another example of Nudge doing something without conferring with the rest of the committee first?
Well, that’s one way to get attention…
Tina, demonstrating what a REAL “bad feeling” is actually like.
I am wondering if the Death Doll in the basement is part of how Tina’s demons can stay around. Maybe having M find it has had an effect on TIna.
Good old Tina…validating Monica is nice and all, but how does she explain breaking her arm in easy to accept “Amanda” terms while letting Monica know she has nothing to worry about? I’m willing to bet that the average barista couldn’t do that with a coffee container.
You know, it’s weird. My initial impression (before reading other people’s comments and re-reading the comic for a second opinion) was that Tina was trying to convince Mon that Phix did something to her. It took me a while to realize that Amanda had already seen her unharmed and would communicate that to Monica. *sheepish grin*
True, but maybe monica’s bad feeling was that this would happen, but not necessarily that it had happened before they showed up (as I’m typing I’m coming to the realization that my theory is quite thin indeed…)
If you want this mug, try this link: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs/3820/
..Yeah, smashing one’s arm with that would hurt like hell.
The first thing that came to mind when I read this wasn’t that Tina just broke her own arm (which is disturbing in it’s own right, I admit), but the fact that she’s yelling sideways… We’ve seen Doubt talk backwards, so I’m wondering if talking sideways is the same kind of disturbing unnatural sound…
We’ve seen sideways text before. This is the only one I remember off the top of my head. Both cases were a little panicky. She didn’t talk sideways in front of Phix, though. Perhaps it means she was talking without talking to anyone? Have other characters done the same?
I doubt it sounds different.
Nope I dont think she broke it…. 🙂 ( unless she is *way* strong enough!! )
– Take good sized container, and bring it down hard on your arm – its gonna hurt!! its gonna swell up to a nice big bruise, depending on how much muscle got in the way…. 🙂
Take another look. She laid her arm down across the edge of the counter, supporting her elbow on the surface and striking the wrist. And the arm shows a perceptible distortion.
Also, CRACK. Not thump.
That “distortion” is her elbow. I’m still not convinced she broke it.
Either way, judging be the wry twist to Tina’s mouth in the second panel, she knew it was going to hurt.
At first look, I thought the wood behind her arm was the counter top, but second look shows it is raw wood. Perhaps it’s a stud framing the stairs into the basement? If it’s a vertical, then perhaps Tina stepped around the corner into the stairwell, out of line of sight, before she hit herself.
FWIW, you can see a corner in the 6th panel. I thought it was the counter top, too. Now I have no idea where she is, but I doubt it matters, as long as she is out of sight.
Frankly, possibly broken is probably about as good as broken in this case.
Actually, a thought just occurred to me. (That happens, occasionally.) Could a secondary goal for Tina be trying to set up a situation where Amanda would drive Tina to a doctor’s office for x-rays, thus leaving Monica free to do as she pleases? In a sense, I hope that doesn’t happen. I’d like to see Monica quizzing Tina about the doll soon.
Didn’t see the corner; good catch.
Perhaps one of the small private tables in the shop? The counter top looks almost like etched stone; I don’t recall ever seeing one of the tops to the tables.
I tend towards opining she’s broken her arm, because this is a technique for breaking glass: etch a line and snap the pane at that line, by bending it at that line over a pencil, dowel, or the edge of the workbench. I’ve done it a hundred times.
I swear, when I saw that, I could hear the snap. It nearly turned my stomach.
ahhh, did not really notice the counter…. she must be mega strong!!
What if Monica’s “bad feeling” was picking up on a sudden shift in Tina’s essence? Something that Tina herself has just become aware of, and performed the “owwie” test to confirm?
This was the source of Monica’s “bad feeling”. Monica doesn’t want to tell Amanda that Phix is a sphinx and Tina is a collection of demons, so she is being vague about it. Having learned her lesson from Phix, Tina is now trying to help Monica get away with not telling Amanda exactly what’s gong on.
Well, you were probably aware of that. I don’t see why there would need to be anything extra going on, though. After all, keeping Phix happy and out of her coffee shop is no doubt worth a broken arm to Tina.
And for what it’s worth, striking one’s arm on the unprotected bone with a metal canister would hurt like hell, even if it wasn’t broken…
Ok — so, Tina breaks her arm, goes to the doctor and the doctor says…
1. So, how long have you been a zombie? (I am not a zombie…)
2. These nice men in the pretty white suits are here to help you.
3. Ah, something is really really messed up here.
4… ?
She said she’s been to a dentist before and if I recall correctly had her face or at least mouth reconstructed after the accident.
Of course, given her family’s connections, the doctor who worked on her might have been very good at not asking questions.
Good point. I had wondered about that as well.
” … feed those demons on short’nin’ bread…”
This seems… excessive, on Tina’s part. Validate Monica’s excuse, yes (would Tina necessarily realize that Monica’s true cause of panic was the belatedly fear Phix might be a demon-killing Sphinx? Maybe, Tina has supernatural perceptiveness, after all). But breaking her own arm? what about dropping something on her foot, or claiming that a fire almost started in the shop but she put it out in time, or something less incapacitating? It’s going to be a bit difficult making coffee fast with one arm.
(I’m a bit dubious about the mechanics of this, too. Bone is VERY tough. With a heavy enough weight, sufficient momentum, and a willingness to hit yourself hard, yes, it’s POSSIBLE you could break your own arm the way Tina did. But it might be difficult. Maybe Tina has greater than human strength.)
One thing this will do, is determine if Tina is alive in a conventional sense. Take her to a hospital to have her arm set and a cast put on, and someone will surely notice if she’s not breathing, her heart’s not beating, she has no blood pressure…
Remember she is being driven by the Phear of Phix™. It’s not surprising that she would go a little overboard.
She broke her arm across the edge of the counter.
IS her heart stopped? Does she breath? Can she simulate these things at will? I don’t believe any of these things have been established one way or the other. Though I could be wrong.
“Death Becomes Her” tends to spring to mind at times like this.
I’ve got to watch that movie one day …
“Death Becomes Her”? totally different – no pain, just a bit confused your arm was bent un-naturally, or broke off like porcelain, and pick it up saying ‘erm, got some glue???’
definitely worth watching, good comedy / tragedy.. 🙂
Well, even though the previous occupant in Tina’s body died, that doesn’t mean that the body is necessarily a corpse in the medical sense. If the collection of demons can animate the body to walk, talk ,slip and fall on the ice etc. Surely they can fake a medical exam complete with heartbeat and BP.
This distraction must be for Amanda’s sake. I doubt Monica would fall for it. After all, Amanda is clueless about who or what told Monica to return to the coffee shop.
Still, makes me wonder if they’re being nudged.
Lord. Tina is willing to go the extra mile to cover Monica’s back, isn’t she? And this tends to confirm my suspicion that Tina is not willing to say anything about Phix or what Tina perceives to be any business of Phix’s.
I can’t really work out how she could come up with an explanation for Amanda that wouldn’t open a can of worms. I mean, “Monica’s friend scared the pee out of me” would tend to beg questions best not asked.
As a distraction, a broken arm works well, stops the argument, keeps everyone occupied, and not so incidentally adds street cred to Monica’s bad feeling. It’s drastic enough that Amanda certainly isn’t going to think she faked it, or did it on purpose to stop the argument.
Might be too drastic. But then, she’s in a hurry, and used what was to hand.
So, Moni found Tina’s Hispanic Shabti, and then things get odd at the coffee shop?
How can you have New Age if it all comes from Old Knowledge?
maybe the new age comes after the age where no one believes any of that old knowledge stuff.
The new age usually comes from looking at (and using) the old knowledge in a different way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age It became a fad in the 1970s and 80s. Of course, adherents wouldn’t consider it to be a fad.
It’s just bugs me that what a lot of the New Age-ers latch on to (and sometimes use wrongly) is stuff my people have known and done as a regular matter of course.
Then again, I have an amazing amount of info floating about in my big ol’ noggin, but the actual breakdown of it looks like a photomosiac crossed with a difference engine mixed with the reference library of Jeopardy! It tends to color my worlds-view.
A lot of people have a need to think that they are privy to special knowledge that is unavailable or unappreciated by the unwashed masses.
For the low, low price of $29.95, I’ll send you my book: Secrets of the Stock Market, which will tell all of the secrets about making a fortune on Wall Street that the brokers don’t want you to know. But wait, there’s more! You will also gain admission to the innermost and most trusted circle of my Cult of the Inter-terrestrial Desert Shark. Yes, many people know that the answer is 42, but only a few have been trusted by the Inter-terrestrial Desert Shark with the ultimate question. Will you be one of those few?
No.
eschmenk, be careful!
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Odd. Nudge was just trying to goad Monica into taking Amanda to the annex right before Phix showed up, and now Tina is breaking her arm to confirm Monica’s bad feeling and keeping Amanda out of the loop. I’m guessing that it was Nudge who was most affected by Phix’s visit…
Oh, and Paul’s comment the other day about hearing Alex Kingston’s voice whenever he imagines Phix speaking just made her 100x hotter…
I hadda go look Alex Kingston up,
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=alex+kingston
But, on seeing her picture, I agree 100%…
If you want to hear her voice, YouTube has a few clips. Here is a short one. It’s not too hard to imagine her saying “Bollocks, Monica! The poor girl passed out!“
I think i mentioned her as a perfect choice to play Phix, too.
Wait, Tina’s demons can feel?
That was … disturbing to say the least. We’ll have 2 days for Paul to let us in on what’s going on, at least.
Once he gets Amanda out of there, I think. “Hey, Amanda! I don’t mean to be rude, but will you get the hell out of there so we can find out what’s going on!”
It could be that it becomes impossible to hide things from Amanda and we find out that way. As Fatuncle said, Tina may have accidentally painted herself and Monica into a corner if she can’t come up with a good explanation of how she broke her arm.
Aha! My evil plan is bearing fruit! Speculate wildly about everything, and sooner or later you are going to be right about something… or confuse people about what you said to the point they think so.
What. The. Hell?
Best articulated statement thus far with the least conspiracy theories besides the obvious one that was hidden on the side.
Does Tina think she has hurt someone … again?
She is hurting herself to punish herself?
There is more happening here than I can describe.
I can’t think of a better reason for this than that Nudge is trying to get Amanda in on the supernatural aspect of Monica. I would like to think I could find a better way of doing that if I were Tina, but then again, Tina IS run by a committee.
Maybe thats a glass decanter and she shattered it, would be a more fakeable injury as opposed to cracking her arm hard enough to break it with an aluminum one. Also note Tina speaks so she pretty much has to breath.
I’ve heard of taking a break from work, but this is NUTZ!
Desperate measures… blimey, Tina….