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[Mite]

V-adore, if I ever meet you in person, I am so buying you a drink of your choice. Maybe two. I thought you'd know what I was trying to say there.

[misterqueue]

Speaking as someone who is in this sort of relationship, Q, it's less "I love you! Now change for me!" than it is "I love you, but your neuroses are crippling you and the relationship, and I'm not going to let you just wallow in them anymore." If being a good girlfriend means allowing a profoundly depressed dude to self-flagellate all the time about tiny things, well, then I'm a pretty bad girlfriend.

Oh sure, go and sound reasonable about it.

[littlefallsmets]

Yeah, I see it less as "I love you, now change" and a lot more as "I love you so, for Christ's sake, learn how to deal with at-least SOME things so that you can be happy once in a while and that we can be happy together too."

When a dude is a stable and mostly-happy dude and his girl is trying to nudge him into being something else, it is one thing and it is a bad thing.

When a dude is able to fieldstrip computers and defeat 2,998 bikers with only his wits and his insane friend as his weapons, yet he goes catatonic at the sight of dog poop and cannot carry a cellphone ever for fear of nut-cancer... it is another thing altogether.

Beef is a wonderful character for a comic strip but if he were real, he would be one of the most acute manic depressives on record. There is nothing wrong with his lady, who sees the real him shining through, trying to talk him out of a little of his madness.

Sometimes, my relationship with my girlfriend is like that too.

She's so helpful that I'll even occasionally go to bead shops with her.

Even though they are very very Boring Places.

[swinehund]

Speaking as someone who is in this sort of relationship, Q, it's less "I love you! Now change for me!" than it is "I love you, but your neuroses are crippling you and the relationship, and I'm not going to let you just wallow in them anymore." If being a good girlfriend means allowing a profoundly depressed dude to self-flagellate all the time about tiny things, well, then I'm a pretty bad girlfriend.

Yes, it seems more like 'change for yourself' than 'change for me'. Although I learned the hard way that it's a bad idea to be in the psychologist role to someone you are dating (particularly if you are not a professional!).Inevitably, they do not change fast enough, and you are just left feeling exasperated and trapped with a seemingly-helpless dependent (and they are all blubbering about how much they need you while resenting you at the same time).The best sort of nerd match is one whose neurotic 'quirks' approximately match your own in severity but cover a different set of things, then yay! You can both help each other out. Also professional help when necessary.

[theinevitable]

Worst Part about trying to fix an SO: once they are fixed, they don't need you anymore.

that is heartbreaking.

dude is able to fieldstrip computers and defeat 2,998 bikers with only his wits and his insane friend as his weapons

dude remember when he did that? that was awesome.

something about that phrase is really great. hm.

[wombat]

The cartoon cats evoke deep discussion of relationships.

And Paul: There is nothing simple about picking out toothpaste.  They are messing with our minds with all those irrelevant choices, the evil American toothcare-industrial complex. Don't even get me started on shampoo.

[theinevitable]

um wow. I cannot believe I didn't think of this before:

When I was a little bitty boy
my grandmother bought me a cute little toy
Silver bells hangin' on a string
she told me it was my ding a ling

My ding a ling, my ding a ling
I want to play with my ding a ling
My ding a ling, my ding a ling
I want to play with my ding a ling

And then mother took me to Grammer School
But I stopped all in the vestibule
Every time that bell would ring
catched me playin' with my ding a ling

Once I was climbing the garden wall
I slipped and had a terrible fall
I fell so hard I heard bells ring
but held on to my ding a ling

Once I was swimming cross Turtle creek
many snappers all around my feet
Sure was hard swimming cross that thing
with both hands holdin' my ding a ling

This here song it ain't so sad
the cutest little song you ever had
those of you who will not sing
You must be playin' with your own ding a ling
My ding a ling Your ding a ling, your ding a ling
We saw you playin' with your ding a ling
My ding a ling everybody sing
I want to play with my ding a ling

[littlefallsmets]

Let us not forget that Beef and Molly came together as many nerd-couples do... in a strange idealized situation where they were both operating at their very best and their very healthiest when they met, as well as being isolated from the things that most riled up their neuroses.

Which is very often how nerd couples hook up, you know, in a shared club or shared project or at a fan convention or some other place so removed from their mundane realities that they can be significantly more confident and less scared of romantical possibilities. I mean, that's the whole thing about people trying to make an internet hookup work out, right?

It's not because... its an easy hook-up or because its excitingly kinky... but because the situation is so divested from their usual screwed-up lives that they can actually get their macks on a little bit. Meeting in heaven is just sort of... the most extreme version of that, yes?

And, anyway, Beef also puts up with and tries to help Molly with her personal difficulties as well... her instinct toward being judgemental, her near-total unemployability, her old-fashionedness, etc. There's a line between co-dependence and just helping each other out, you know? Sometimes it isn't co-dependence, if both parties are aware of the pitfalls of allowing it to become co-dependence.

It can be just healthy mutual helping. Whether that's always the case with Beef and Molly, of course, is another matter... but it seems as though Molly is at least aware of the situation of trying to not be co-dependent about the helping.

Which seems good.

I have no idea if Onstad thought this all through in the beginning or not but it's actually a really well-painted picture of dork-love.

[Mr. Chord]

My first thought was "Great, now everyone at TOUAMB will be blathering on about how grand Molly is.. fuck that bitch."

Well, you hit that nail on the head. I just didn't feel until recently that much was being done with Molly. She's the only regular female character these days, but what purpose does she serve? I think it took Onstad a while to find sea legs with writing a female (the early Molly blog was so sex obsessed in comparison to the others that I had to cringe). Molly seems like the "straight man" character of the strip, much as Teodor is but without Teodor's insecurity. She needs something like this to define her, or else she's just there as background so Beef can blather about programming or vodka. I need a break from Ray and Beef.

[Fooker]

If they are stitched with copper wire, then they are in fact a little groin faraday cage and do shield his package from harmful rays.

Also, molly wears those sexy socks.

[Brien]

I find Molly to be very well-written especially in her blog. Reminds me very much of a colleague's main squeeze.

I am however surprised that this Walk Around Dong invention of hers is sincere, and not an attempt to attack Beef by offering a ridiculous solution to his neurosis (someone else had this ideas before me. I steal ideas). Then again, this is a Silly Place where you could say "Walk Around Dong" and be understood.