xkcd book EMERGENCY POST

Well it is about time. Or, to be more accurate, it is 87 days past time. No matter. The xkcd blog brings us news that they are finally about to release the xkcd book. Actually other than that there is no news; we knew it would have, as Randy writes, "strips chosen by me from the first 600 xkcd comics," along with various other little notes and things. That was all in the NYTimes article about this whole mess that we have known about for months.

Now here's what actually interests me - which comics is he going to pick? As I see it, he can hew mostly to the first 350 or so, and come up with a good book, or he can choose ones more evenly spread out (or, god forbid, have mostly later ones), and have a crappy book. The problem is that if he goes for the former, it's basically admitting that there aren't as many good comics later on, ie, the comic is getting worse. So I don't think he'll go that route - because I know that Randall doesn't think his comic is getting worse.

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So there are also going to be some release parties (In New York and California, the only states that matter) for the book, which will in part raise money for some good causes. But that's actually where things get a little weird.

The goal of the fundraising is to build a school in Laos. Good. I'm all for that. The school will be called "xkcd". Uhhhh....I'd like to say I'm kidding but the way they phrase it is:

The goal is to raise at least $30,000 to build a school named after xkcd in Laos. (Yes, the poor kids in Laos will have to pronounce that.)

As in, they are trying to make a joke, but it's about pronouncing the school's name, not the fact that they are doing this at all.

Luckily, they are not being idiots about the way they sell tickets.

Though by the way - if any of you are going to be at any of these events, please do send me an e-mail about it. I want to have a secret source on the inside!

God, the whole site is full of shit like "HANG OUT WITH RANDALL!" and "You’ll not only get a chance to meet and chat with Randall, but blah blah blah" those are actual quotes. talk about a cult of personality. christ.

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As Randy's blog post makes clear, there will be at some point some kind of interview thing, where they ask him the questions that are most popular on reddit. There's a whole reddit channel (is that what they are called? god I am so old) for this.

Guys. We have to influence that. I for one started my own reddit account just for this. You all should totally upvote my question, but go through the whole list of them, and vote for the ones that are way more challenging ("Are you aware that you have a very apparent need to tell people you're getting laid?") as opposed to the fucking idiotic ("Of all things on the internet that you influenced, which one that you're most proud of?").

1500 of you read this blog every day. We can do this.

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I guess this means that my "the xkcd book is ___ days overdue" clock can come down. Thanks again to John for making it; I am quite certain that its existence is what forced Randall &co to finally publish this book, even though they said it would be out in "mid june." I'll miss you, clock.


update: Oh god, it looks like the page numbers for the book are in binary. oh, fuck that.