Hey hey, it's a your mom joke! God, I haven't seen one of these guys in....years? Has it really been years? Man, this is making me nostalgic. Crack open a can of your-mom jokes, toss in some that's-what-she-saids, maybe pass around a bowl of "....-in-bed!"s. Have us a real good middle-school night.
And it's not even a good your-mom joke. The first thing that would come to my mind for a Lincoln's Mom comic would be "A house divided against itself cannot stand? More like...YOUR MOM cannot stand!" But this is just...dumb.
I know that some people will say that's the point, that's why he says Douglas's skills "entered a rapid decline." But that's a pretty cheap trick: Just because you say your joke is lame doesn't make the joke any less lame.
Also: referencing a really good webcomic, namely Kate Beaton's Hark: A Vagrant (known to all as simply "Kate Beaton" or "Kate Beaton's History Comics") doesn't make you seem any more cool. Ms. Beaton, for her part, made this twitter in response to the mention, she soundsreal excited pretty annoyed about the whole thing.
Oh and fun fact randall, I know you said your joke is innaccurate but I would remiss if I did not point out that indeed its premise is also inaccurate; the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held in 1858 and were for Illinois's Senate election, an election which Douglas won, not lost. JUST SAYIN.
==============
Heads up: Next week, as a reward for putting together the xkcdsucks book, Person #1 will be guest posting on Monday and Wednesday, and then Kirk will be doing it on Friday. I will leave it to P#1 to post a copy of the xkcdsucks book so you all can read it.
And it's not even a good your-mom joke. The first thing that would come to my mind for a Lincoln's Mom comic would be "A house divided against itself cannot stand? More like...YOUR MOM cannot stand!" But this is just...dumb.
I know that some people will say that's the point, that's why he says Douglas's skills "entered a rapid decline." But that's a pretty cheap trick: Just because you say your joke is lame doesn't make the joke any less lame.
Also: referencing a really good webcomic, namely Kate Beaton's Hark: A Vagrant (known to all as simply "Kate Beaton" or "Kate Beaton's History Comics") doesn't make you seem any more cool. Ms. Beaton, for her part, made this twitter in response to the mention, she sounds
Oh and fun fact randall, I know you said your joke is innaccurate but I would remiss if I did not point out that indeed its premise is also inaccurate; the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held in 1858 and were for Illinois's Senate election, an election which Douglas won, not lost. JUST SAYIN.
==============
Heads up: Next week, as a reward for putting together the xkcdsucks book, Person #1 will be guest posting on Monday and Wednesday, and then Kirk will be doing it on Friday. I will leave it to P#1 to post a copy of the xkcdsucks book so you all can read it.
Oh well, at least more people will be reading Kate Beaton, which can't be a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteTornado comic: I thought it was cute, clever, although I'd be confused as fuck if I hadn't read the title first. Also: Seriously, Randall? An entire panel after the punchline? Half the dialogue is after the punchline. It's better than the Lincoln one, though, so there's that.
I really liked today's comic. It was a wonderful surprise.
ReplyDeleteAlso: glassmelter.com/bookfinal2.pdf
Is it just me, or is the art in #640 even worse than usual?
ReplyDeleteAlso, they're not tornado "hunters," they're STORM CHASERS.
ReplyDeleteYeesh.
While the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held in 1858, that doesn't kill the premise of the joke. His debating skills could have started fading two years later!
ReplyDeleteRandall answering all those questions people voted for on reddit: http://io9.com/5364862/xkcds-randall-munroe-answers-all-of-your-questions
ReplyDelete(thanks for the link, Justin!)
Anyone have the link to Kate Beaton's Twitter?
ReplyDeleteAdam: Beatonna
ReplyDeleteFUCKING. FURRIES.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think Kate Beaton's comic sucks. The artwork is awful, and while about one out of ten jokes is good, half of them are "Ha ha historical people speak gangsta!" and the remaining 40% are "Ha ha lots of swearing but no joke."
ReplyDeleteWhile today's XKCD is pretty cute if you ignore the last panel, there's definitely something weird about that art, like anon 12:14 said. Is is the fat lines and the squigglyness?
640 actually got a half-hearted chuckle out of me, which hasn't happened for a good long while.
ReplyDeleteStill as soon as I clapped eyes on it; I thought it was going to be a poor copy of the permafrost chasers comic. So it at least avoided that.
Capatcha: esses
I'm not quite sure that the newest comic is the kind of thing that works in xkcd; it only seems humourous if I already expected an absurd, nonsensical joke a la Cyanide & Happiness, and xkcd doesn't quite fit that style. Besides, the execution is not that good: it's as if the third panel, which IS the punchline, is not "supposed" to be the joke itself, so that extra panel tries to make something "intellectual" out of mindless humour. In short, it pretty much misses the point. It COULD have been a pretty great strip, though.
ReplyDeleteAlso, stop calling Kate Beaton "Ms. Beaton". It's as annoying as "Mr. Munroe".
ReplyDeleteIf you insist...
ReplyDeleteYo momma so fat, I burnt my ass on the lightbulb.
Holy crap you guys
ReplyDeleteI made a typo on the way here, and http://cks.blogspot.com/ is kind of REALLY depressing.
You should all check it out!
Haha, wow. Nice find, thomas.
ReplyDeleteTodays xkcd, well for one the art threw me off. I wouldn't call it worse, just unusual. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. I actually kind of like the smudgyness of it. Oh well.
The joke, I had a hard time figuring out what was going on, I realized they were tornado hunters, but I admittingly wasn't quite sure what happened in panel 3, because having already glimpsed at panel 4 I thought the person holding the tornado was the one they shot at, which confused me until I read the comic again, realizing what was going on for reals.
I didn't think it was funny, but that might just be because I had to read it twice
Tornado comic: First decent one since woodpecker?
ReplyDeleteMy coworker copypasta'd an xkcd comic in our chat session so I walked over a spare copy of the xkcd book that I had lying around. Perhaps I should print out more for such occasions.
ReplyDelete*xkcdSUCKS book. In my mind it is the only xkcd book worth mentioning. XD
ReplyDeleteI think Randall realized that drawing a tornado with a thin brush would take too many strokes, so he made it thicker, but because he's a lazy bastard he used the same thickness for everything.
ReplyDeleteAs for Kate Beaton, I don't know much about her comics, but she mentioned Fucked Up on her twitter, so that makes her cool in my book.
I assume it was her "talent crush" remark? That's a pretty good line.
ReplyDeletemost of these recent comics are so meh it's hard to feel strongly about
ReplyDeletewe need a rabid xkcd fan/troll to pump this up
YOU LOOZERS HOW CAN YOU MAKE THIS BLOG UNLESS YOU HAVE NO LIFES YOU SPEND ALL YOUR TIME CRITICIZING RANDALL MUNROE WHO IS A TALENTED FUNNY AND GENIOUS MAN WELL YOUR ALL JUST JEALOUS BECAUSE HE GETS TO HAVE SEX WITH MEGAN AND YOUR ALL STILL VIRGINS WHO LIVE WITH YOUR MOM AND JACK OFF TOO PORN
ReplyDeleteLOL!!! you guys must all be liberal arts majors if you don't think xkcd is funny. maybe you should be practicing how to say "would you like fries with that?" instead of spending all your time ragging on something you obviously don't understand.
ReplyDeleteYeah, because there's no way a liberal arts major would be capable of comprehending a historical references - they should stick to their physics and engineering and leave history to the science majors.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if they took time out from their "dadaism in cinema" and "feminism in 18th century russian poetry" to read a real history book, but it seems like they'd rather waste their time bitching on the internet
ReplyDeleteBESIDES, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, JUST DON"T READ IT< LOSERS< HM?
ReplyDeleteCarl is right
ReplyDeleteif you guys were real intellectuals you would understand what RM is trying to say, but obviously its WAY over your heads
oh and I am using this ID now because I saw how you guys try to discredit by faking posts, maybe if you could hold your own in a debate you wouldnt have to resort to such childish tactics
The Rephaimvir41
RM = Randall Munroe
ReplyDeleteRM = Rob Mason
ROB I HAVE REVEALED YOUR SECRET TO THE MASSES
Oh shit, I just realised that my actual name's initials are "MR".
ReplyDeleteD-Does this mean that I'm the reverse Randall?!?!
Heh, your initials are "Mister". That's okay. Mine are "JK".
ReplyDeleteyeah it sounds like kate beaton is pretty annoyed. she even misspelled "munroe"
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, Mr. Tough Guy? Let's see YOU do better.
ReplyDeleteOH WAIT, YOU CAN'T.
You're only allowed to criticize someone else's work after you've tried to do it yourself. That's the rule.
(Hey, Roger Ebert had a TV show... that's kind of like a movie.)
No wonder I couldn't find it when I used ctrl+f
ReplyDeletehey guys, I can be the fan if you guys want to?
ReplyDeleteRoger Ebert wrote a movie, you guys know, called "BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE FUCKING DOLLS." He gets it, you get it, XKCD does not.
ReplyDeleteRoger Ebert may not have made any good movies but he was smart enough to call out Ben Stein's ridiculous creationism video. He is fighting ignorance, all you ppl are doing is creating more of it. way to go
ReplyDelete@Dasafrak: my initials are JK, too! let's go get coffee sometime.
ReplyDeleteDidn't see it posted earlier, here's a direct link to the Twitter:
ReplyDeletehttp://twitter.com/beatonna/status/4144262744
another new low for xkcd, and it's fanbase
ReplyDelete@vir41
ReplyDeletexkcd goes way over our heads? Kinda like the way sarcasm goes way over yours? Agreeing with Carl is certainly an interesting way to troll. Maybe you should check again who this blog belongs to.
even a broken clock is right twice a day
ReplyDeletehahaha you're awesome
ReplyDeleteI'm not drunk enough to yell at you, vir41, but maybe if you don't like this blog you just shouldn't read it. Even Randall gets that.
ReplyDeleteYou are more of an idiot than Randall Munroe. This is coming from someone who regularly insults Randall. Do the Internet a favor and die in a fire.
not if it's digital
ReplyDeleteI could say the same about you and xkcd, The P, obviously you are too boneheaded to appreciate it, so maybe you should find something else to do like watch Family Guy.
ReplyDeletePerson 1 way to miss the point, its called an metaphor, maybe you should have payed more attention in school
If Randy is going to make fun of us dimwitted liberal arts majors, he (and his fans) should probably not be surprised when he gets called out for a glaring historical inaccuracy.
ReplyDelete"Even a broken clock is right twice a day" isn't really a metaphor so much as an aphorism.
ReplyDeleteOh give me a break, Randal Monroe travels the country giving speeches, he wrote a book, and draws a comic three times a week, of course its not going to be 100% accurate all the time. Maybe if you had even 1% of his success you'd have better things to do than pick apart every little detail of what he says.
ReplyDeleteI'm so jealous of his jetsetting ways! He's incredible!
ReplyDeleteI just started following this blog. Tell me, how long ago did XKCD's fans, such as vir41, descend into self-parody?
ReplyDeletei think the self-parody gets worse as the comic continues to not get better, they feel that defending it more will help somehow
ReplyDelete"of course its not going to be 100% accurate all the time"
ReplyDeleteThat argument might ring a bit more true if Randy weren't such a pedantic cunt all the time.
It's good to see there' somebody else here to fight the hate...
ReplyDelete-T_A
i don't use "t_a" anymore, so you know that is not me. stop trolling.
ReplyDeleteT_A 2:57, He know you aren't real because you didn't end your sentence like this...
ReplyDeleteMal, I had to look up aphorism in the dictionary you elitist asshole.
ReplyDeleteYeah man, what the fuck do you think you're doing using words some people may not know the meaning of?
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of xkcd:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lefthandedtoons.com/579
The tornado one, hasn't he already done a joke about tornado hunters? One that was actually good? It's like he is just going through his old comics to rehash new ideas.
ReplyDeleteHuh... it's been a while since I saw the last rabid fan comment... what, did the xkcdsucks book thing actually reach the fandom?
ReplyDeleteOh, and yes, comic 639 is still stupid. It's an overly long gag -- a "your mom" joke, no less -- with an inaccurate caption. Randall draws stick figures and not much else, for whatever's sake, it can't be that hard to do some research with the time he's not spending improving his art.
CAPTCHA: bultrim. I won't be doing that...
Pff, who cares about history? It's not science, so it's not a real academic discipline.
ReplyDeleteDouglas did lose to Lincoln in the 1860 election for president. Douglas ran on one of the Democratic tickets, Lincoln ran on the other. The premise is inaccurate in that Douglas was dead when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address and was not there to heckle, which he was clearly doing, which I guess is the final degradation of debating.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that he didn't present a debate, he presented a person who was terrible at debate heckling someone. So, their famous debates in the past are irrelevant to criticism of accuracy.
This did seem like a pretty transparent ripoff of the wikipedia protester. Same crowd, same no-speeching speech guy and a heckler in the crowd. It's nearly the same premise, except one is a your-mom joke, one was clever.
Jesus, Lincoln ran on the Republican ticket. I meant to say "some other history jackass" instead of "Lincoln."
ReplyDeleteSeward?
ReplyDeletethat left handed link = glorious. click it, everyone.
ReplyDeleteFrom the comments on that Randall answers your questions thing:
ReplyDelete"Every time I read an XKCD comic I feel like I just watched a guy masturbate to Kitty Pryde and then pat himself on the back for it. Alternately you can interpret this as a compliment and go "oooh, she said my work reminds her of Joss Whedon!" "
Ahahahaha.
Hey, I posted that lefthandedtoons on the IRC channel!
ReplyDeleteWHO IS STEALING MY MATERIAL
What did Kate say? What did she say what what what?
ReplyDeleteKate Beaton <3
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteShe said "man, anonymice who post at 7.31am make me so hot".
ReplyDeleteCaptcha: "bilicks". *snigger*
Third time's the charm.
ReplyDeleteAnn Polis, *gasp* she did?! I love her! <3
ReplyDeleteOh, now I see here in this page's comment list.
http://twitter.com/beatonna/status/4144262744
Ann Apolis, *gasp* she did?! I love her! <3
ReplyDeleteOh, now I see here in this page's comment list.
http://twitter.com/beatonna/status/4144262744
(please remove the previous message)
I just found this blog and have read through it a bit (and don't feel like making an account to comment), it seems that the biggest problem with this blog is one you deny in the very first question of your sucks hugely FAQ.
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly, you do not get the joke. I am not saying that this is the case in every one of your postings, however, I have repeatedly read joke interpretations that seem so foolish that it seems you must be trying to misinterpret the joke intentionally.
In this posting, for example, you suggest that the core of the joke is the your mom joke, while the caption underneath is simply to excuse Randall from actually having to write anything funny. However, what you fail to understand is that the joke is all in the caption. There could be any number of Gettysburg Address your mom jokes that could fill in Douglas's text-box. So yes, your mom jokes are for Middle Schoolers, but thats exactly the point.
This comic is simply diving into the absurd. It takes a ridiculous idea (from a standpoint grounded in both fact and simple common sense), and lets it play out. One of the key tenants of humor is the unexpected- and one would certainly not expect a famous debator to reduce himself to such juvenille (and period innapropriate) tactics. The other main comedic device used is understatement, as I would say Douglas had undergone something slightly more serious than a decline if he was reducded to shouting your mom jokes in the middle of a solem address.
And by the way, you might be interested in checking out who ran for president in 1860. You might learn something.
"This comic is simply diving into the absurd. It takes a ridiculous idea (from a standpoint grounded in both fact and simple common sense), and lets it play out. One of the key tenants of humor is the unexpected- and one would certainly not expect a famous debator to reduce himself to such juvenille (and period innapropriate) tactics. The other main comedic device used is understatement, as I would say Douglas had undergone something slightly more serious than a decline if he was reducded to shouting your mom jokes in the middle of a solem address."
ReplyDeleteWow! Are you a detective??
Learn what? That Stephen A. Douglas was the Ron Paul of the 1860 election?
ReplyDeleteIt was a less funny clone of the citation needed comic with a your mom joke. Period.
This wasn't a gem, or a genius comic. It wasn't horrible, but it was lame drivel. Just like your retort.
"In this posting, for example, you suggest that the core of the joke is the your mom joke, while the caption underneath is simply to excuse Randall from actually having to write anything funny. However, what you fail to understand is that the joke is all in the caption."
ReplyDeleteOf course it's a pretty convenient way to interpret the strip: "the joke is in the caption". The thing about Carl's reviews is not that he's trying to intentionally misinterpret the joke (I also had the same impression when I got here the first time -- now take a look at my posts!), but the scepticism that builds up as the strips get more and more mediocre leads you to see the comics differently. And knowing the recent history of jokes, it seems perfectly clear that it was the "your mom" joke that came first, not the "concept" of the comic. He thought up the joke, though it was worth using, created the (completely absurd and pointless) historical context for it and slammed the finished result onto paper.
And EVEN if I try to think the joke as a surreal commentary on Douglas, it's just pointless. There's hardly any relevance to it. It's not clever, there's no wit in it -- it's just a "hey, what if I take a very well known and common figure and SUBVERTED IT???" concept, which isn't at all novel and needs a VERY good execution. It's not too far from a "hey, what if I pretended Hitler didn't kill himself and actually became a 'cupcakes and puppies' pacifist after the war?" joke -- it's insubstantial, and filling it in with a "your mom" joke does nothing at all. Yeah, I also fell on Godwin's Law, I don't care.
Fernie, nice wall of text there. It has some yummy bricks.
ReplyDeleteSo, my pre-review comment on the comic of Wednesday... the joke is cool, not extraordinary, but not horrible, either. The alt-text is either a failed joke("F" = "EF", phonetically? Just... that?) or an unfunny lecture. Eyes rolled, but no bigger damage. My biggest complain: the art.
Randall actually manages to make some nice shots in 2nd and 3rd panels, but his art is actually getting worse. I mean... in that last panel the hunter is thicker and the lines are irritantly "squiggly". And there's more of it around, the truck on the second panel is strangely out of place. The depiction of the shot on the third panel looks good, but it's barely redeeming. Really, I didn't think a stick figure comic could look bad, but Randall apparently is taking his effort on doing the opposite of improving.
I must give my applause, it surely takes a lot of effort...
Anon: You might want to look up in what year the Lincoln-Douglas debates happened. You might learn something.
ReplyDeleteThe bbc did an audiobook of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
ReplyDeleteI heard they were pretty good.
Okay blogger does not like href links.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbcaudiobooksamerica.com/Trade/productdetails.cfm?PC=19126
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQes9dvCJ34
ReplyDelete"hey, what if I pretended Hitler didn't kill himself and actually became a 'cupcakes and puppies' pacifist after the war?"
Anonymous from before back...
ReplyDeleteYes Carl... I read the post I'm commenting on. I was simply noting that the joke works even though the debate occured in 1858. There is absolutely no reason we cannot assume (in the universe presented in this joke at the very least), that the humiliation of losing a national election to a person you had won a debate against two years prior, could cause someone to become increasingly juvenille in their tactics.
gettysburg, dude
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, you have opened my eyes.
ReplyDeleteNow, instead of seeing this joke as Randal trying to pass a yo-momma joke as original humor, I now see it as a failed emulation of Hark a Vagrant's mockery of historical figures.
Let me tell you a joke:
A man walks up to another guy and says: "Did you know that three Brazilian soldiers died in the war on terror yesterday?"
The guy says: "Oh dear, that is truly horrible. We should have national day of mourning."
The man is shocked at how much emotion the guy is showing. Normally, the guy is quite placid.
"Oh and by the way" says the guy "How much is a Brazilian."
Oh yeah, and the guy is George Bush.
As you can see, the joke falls flat on its face if you introduce the caricature after you tell the joke. If Randall had introduced Douglas before the yo-momma joke, the comic would at least be vaguely funny.
On the Gettysburg subject - Reunion and Finale = amazing piece!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlg5t11efcE
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou've explained what Randal was doing with the comic. Now can you explain the joke or why it is funny?
All I can say to that is that how funny something is is largely dependent on the person viewing it. If my first post is unable to show you why the comic was funny (or at the very least, was found funny by some people), then I can do little for you.
ReplyDeleteObviously it's found funny be SOME people. You just haven't demonstrated that those people are anything but mouth-breathing idiots, conditioned to like XKCD through a combination of rampant habitual conditioning and rampant pandering.
ReplyDeleteSounds pretty rampant.
ReplyDeleteNone of you get it. There is a joke in the comic. It's quality is subjective and therefore this blog is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteNo.
ReplyDeleteFor a start, you should have typed "Its", not "It's".
I'd typed up a lot more about intersubjective valuations of art, the possibility of aesthetic judgments on "purely subjective" qualities and primary/secondary qualities, but I suppose if you're not a liberal arts major, you wouldn't understand...
I am pretty sure Asher was being sarcastic?
ReplyDeleteHard to tell with the 300 post-count pledge.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be easier to tell tho, he's just Asher bein Asher. Always tryna stir shit up.
ReplyDeleteMr Cushtie: jesus, you are fucking thick
ReplyDeleteAmanda: thank god you have a brain
Mr Lostman: i came, i saw, i conquered
also jesus mr cushtie, i am a political science major, you fucking retard
ReplyDeleteNot sure if anyone else has noticed this (don't see any comments mentioning it), but in the original, the line is "fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers...etc. etc", which means stick-douglas just replaced "fathers" with "mom". either that's the point of the comic, or the your-mom joke is even more hugely sucky and unfunny.
ReplyDeleteHey, I hope that you were kidding when you wrote "Oh and fun fact randall, I know you said your joke is innaccurate but I would remiss if I did not point out that indeed its premise is also inaccurate; the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held in 1858 and were for Illinois's Senate election, an election which Douglas won, not lost. JUST SAYIN."
ReplyDeleteAbraham Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. HTH.
Also, you anticipated the right criticism of your attack on the 'your mom' joke, but you seem to have misunderstood how it applies - the fact that it's a particularly lame your mom joke is irrelevant. The reason the joke is that his skills entered a rapid decline is that he made a 'your mom' joke AT ALL.