The Hurt Foot Locker

[Mr F.]

Shoe shopping with women has got to be the single most torturing experience ever devised.

I'd rather have by finger nails ripped out by a rather miffed badger than go shoe shopping.

I'd rather drill into every bone in my body, and replace the marrow with molten nightmares that go shoe shopping.

If you take me shoe shopping I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fuelled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins you will hear the sound of children screaming--as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.

I got the reference. Do I get a cookie?

OT:

I have... Three pairs of shoes. One pair is walking boots, the other pair is walking trainers and the final pair are incredibly well polished town shoes that I wear whenever I can be bothered suiting up. Which is most days.

Thankfully, most of my partners have been similar. My last GF had... I think four pairs of shoes. Roughly the same breakdown. The kind of person I date is not the kind of person to have a large selection of shoes. I find this whole shoe thing to be rather interesting: If you are dating someone who obsessively buys a huge amount of shoes, taking a fucking year to do so, and you do not like this, maybe you are dating the wrong person. Just saying.

Although if you plotted shoe ownership and "Willingness to date Mr F" on a chart, you would find that the fewer pairs of shoes you own the less likely you are to want to date me. So I guess I need to find some guy/girl who has a BILLION SHOES?

tldr;
Shoe ownership is directly correlated with love.

 

[Stomperchomper]

Shoe shopping with women has got to be the single most torturing experience ever devised.

I'd rather have by finger nails ripped out by a rather miffed badger than go shoe shopping.

I'd rather drill into every bone in my body, and replace the marrow with molten nightmares that go shoe shopping.

If you take me shoe shopping I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fuelled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins you will hear the sound of children screaming--as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.

I for one hail our new dark overlord. Are you partial to sacrificial goats at all?

 

[immortalfrieza]

If you take me shoe shopping I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fuelled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins you will hear the sound of children screaming--as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.

Actually... doesn't that sound pretty awesome? Wouldn't you secretly WANT someone to take you shoe shopping so this can happen?

 

[ImSkeletor]

I feel sorry for most of you. My girlfriend doesn't drag me anywhere. We go shopping and whatever else together because we actually like each other's company and opinions. If someone had to "drag" me to go shopping with them then I don't think I'd want to spend much time around that person..at the very least be an adult and go look in another store or sit on a bench and have a pretzel.

A few things. 1. 80% of guys don't care about clothes at all. So talking about them is the most inane bullshit in the world no matter who your doing it with. 2. You can't go get pretzel because they want your opinion and giving an opinion about something you have no opinion of is aggravating. I am not talking from experience but I do understand where people are coming from.

 

[Olas]

So why do girls insist on bringing their boyfriends shoe shopping with them exactly? Doesn't seem like a necessary evil to me.

But ya, the boredom of waiting for someone to shop for shoes is as close to physically painful as it can get.

 

[Grimh]

Hanging yourself?

Pff, amateur...

Just take a shoe with a stiletto heel and jab that sucker right in your eye socket.
It's quick and painful.

Man I feel sorry for Daystar...
These puns are rather painful, aren't they...
But what can you do aboot it?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Dear god if only we had shoe shops around here that had a good length of rope available.

But they do. They're called boot laces. Braid a few pairs together, it should do the trick.

 

[Farther than stars]

No! It's not even funny when a man kills himself. In fact, it's never funny when someone kills themselves. The fact that something like that could even be deemed as being funny shows a pervasive sickness in society.

So I'm not entirely sure if you are being sarcastic, but if you are, I apologize in advance. If not, then I strongly disagree with you. Anything can be used in comedy, so long as it is not designed to injure any one group of people (even then, it's technically 'ok', but is just wrong).

Obviously, this strip was not intent on mocking suicide victim's friends/families or what have you; it merely used a rather common exaggeration for comedic effect. You have every right to be offended by it, I suppose, but just because people like to joke about death does not display a 'sickness in society'.

I wouldn't call it sarcasm, per se. It's just a different way of looking at it. Zeetchmen was right when he said that this would be less warmly received if the image displayed a woman hanging herself. I can't think of how death is substantially different for men and women, so maybe it's not about genders, but maybe it's about how we should look at suicides in general. I don't think it's accurate to say that joking about suicide is entirely healthy. After all, there is a psychological aspect to consider. (See also: two paragraphs down.)
What I wanted to talk about was whether you can consider something to be right or wrong. What you call technically 'OK' can be more specifically construed as what is legal. And I agree that people should always be legally allowed to make whatever jokes they want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's 'right' for them to make those jokes. That kind of moral distinction can only be made informally, by a society.
And personally, I feel 'not designed to injure any one group of people' is not a sufficient boundary to preserve moral decency. First of all, what if the joke injures individuals; is that alright? Secondly, and more importantly, it also goes against the definition of a joke. If it's 'designed to injure', then it's no longer a joke, it's an insult. Jokes are never designed to injure in the first place, they're designed to amuse.
Consider some of those individual cases. Trivializing suicide can have a profound effect on a personal psyche. The idea that 'suicide isn't such a big deal' can be just enough to push some severely depressed people over the edge. That's why the more mainstream attention a medium gets, the more attention they pay to how they represent suicide if they represent it. Some TV stations will even go so far as to offer hotlines for people after a show that has included the matter of suicide. Then there's the hardship that some people might endure if they've lost loved ones to suicide.
So no, everything considered, I don't think it's morally justifiable to use suicide imagery for amusement. And in that respect I think Zeetchmen did a good job by highlighting that dilemma.

 

[Sidmen]

So why do girls insist on bringing their boyfriends shoe shopping with them exactly? Doesn't seem like a necessary evil to me.

But ya, the boredom of waiting for someone to shop for shoes is as close to physically painful as it can get.

For the politically correct we have to remember to use wishy-washy qualifiers like "some."

Some girls insist on bringing their boyfriends shoe shopping with them because it is an important part of their life, and they want to share it. Its the same reason some guys insist on getting their girlfriends to play some games (stereotypical "gurlz don't play games" statement) with them. It doesn't matter that the boyfriend has no interest in the shopping or the shoes; or the girlfriend has no interest in watching swearing 13-year-olds get shot at from 23 directions in COD multiplayer - what matters is that they're doing something together.

All this instead of figuring out what they like to do in common and doing those things together.

 

[Nosirrah]

Shoe shopping with women has got to be the single most torturing experience ever devised.

I'd rather have by finger nails ripped out by a rather miffed badger than go shoe shopping.

I love how the badger is a bit miffed rather than angry, what is enough to make angry badger torturer preferable to miffed badger?2

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

I'm immediately reminded of this:


Also the 'this is my youth' line had me cracking up.

 

[CleverCover]

Those poor bastards, but I admit shoe shopping is really painful. Trying to find something cute and functionable in your size in nearly impossible in stores unless you're willing to travel long distances.

That is one thing I learned from my father, get in, get the shoe, get out. Or just shop online. Easier and you don't have to wear pants/trousers while doing it!

 

[kannibus]

This is why I generally check into furniture department and take a couch for a test snooze when my wife goes shoe shopping.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I'm a male and I have no idea what this joke is about. Can anyone help with explanation?

I *think* it might be that the quality of shoes in the store is related boredness of the significant other waiting. The better the shoes or sales in a store, the more time that is spent in the store, and the more bored/suicidal the guys waiting for the shopper are. I didn't get it at first either because when shoe shopping at a mall you can go to more than one store so the guy that is mildly bored could have simply been at his first store while the hanging man could have been at his 5th or 10th or whatever. And also style is subjective.

OT: Definitely not only true for females. Everybody hates shoe shopping with me, but it's just so damn hard to find something that I like that is also the right price. That's why I hate shopping in general.

 

[Frostbyte666]

I'd laugh but myself and a mate were on holiday recently and he was getting souvenirs for his mum, sister and brother,4 hours...4 F*****G HOURS...after the 3rd there was serious contemplation of either throwing myself off the bridge or throwing him. Then the next day we had to still find something for his sister, another 2 and a half hours. The angel chorus after it was over had never been so beautiful...sniff.

 

[Tactical Pause]

-snip-

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I feel I should give at least a short explanation of my own. I disagree with you entirely because I believe that everything can be joked about, so long as it is done in a tasteful manner. I think putting restrictions on what can or cannot be included in humor is just downright silly, and I don't see my view on this changing anytime soon.

That is all.

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

With regards to the whole suicide thing, that's just down to the societal belief that a woman's life, leaving aside any details that may influence otherwise(such as career, wealth etc), has more inherent value than a man's. As a result having a woman die in any fashion is considered 'worse' than having a man die. But this is really not the place for that discussion.

While I may not have a SO, I've been shopping often enough with my sisters and mother to know that shopping *sucks* and that whoever decided to put benches outside the stores has my undying adoration.

 

[Grach]

Helping a woman shop for shoes is the closest to limbo a man can get.

 

[IamQ]

Not to be one to point out hypocrisy, but can you imagine the outrage over this comic if the genders were reversed?

With say a woman hanging herself in a sporting good store. Its 'funny' when a man kills himself, but I doubt the socail justice warriors here would be laughing the other way around.

Ok? Did you want something to happen? Pointing out that something is not fair that everyone knows won't do much you know.

 

[Farther than stars]

-snip-

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I feel I should give at least a short explanation of my own. I disagree with you entirely because I believe that everything can be joked about, so long as it is done in a tasteful manner. I think putting restrictions on what can or cannot be included in humor is just downright silly, and I don't see my view on this changing anytime soon.

That is all.

Fair enough. But, just to be clear, this discussion wasn't about what "can't" be joked about, but what "shouldn't" be joked about.