Comic 801: FUCK YOU, RANDALL

[alt text: Took me five tries to find the right one, but I managed to salvage our night out--if not the boat--in the end.]

I bet Randy was all sitting pretty on his little shrine to Carl and the rest of the loyal commentariat here at "We Aren't Exceptionally Fond Of The Webcomic XKCD." I imagine he said to himself (because he has no friends, and the silence has driven him to talking to himself), "That beautiful, sexy fiend Carl 'Randall Munroe' Wheeler has finally given up! Now I will produce the worst possible comic right after his final post, and he can't do anything about it!"

Well guess what, motherfucker? I AM NOT LETTING YOU GET AWAY WITH THIS ONE.

Now, I don't want to be unfair to Randy. Maybe he has a terrible fever which is warping his brain and will leave him with permanent damage. Perhaps Megan has finally started poisoning his coffee. I don't know what's going on in his personal life, and I don't want to just assume that psychosis hasn't started setting in yet. We don't have all the information.

But those are the only valid excuses for this comic.

My first reaction to this one went something like "uh, what the fuck?" I kept reading it, over and over again, trying to figure out what the hell he thinks might be funny about this one. I've come to a couple conclusions actually! There are multiple points where Randy thinks he's being funny, and the aggregate forms a sort of extra-terrible joke.

First, this is another attempt to tell a joke by suggesting that something funny happened, without actually showing us that funny thing. "Bolt cutters, Wolf Blitzer's boathouse, vodka, black hat guy. DO THE MATH, PEOPLE!!!" This is, of course, the paragon of laziness, but it works well for the Pavlovian fuckwits that worship Randy.

Second, he attempts to derive humor from the HILARIOUSLY INAPPROPRIATE play on "when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like nails." Get it? He replaced "hammer" and "nails" with different objects! GET IT??? IT WAS FUNNY.

Third, the punchline in no way follows the setup. Randy was here going for a hilarious nonsequitur, because all humor is unexpected and blah blah blah fuck you. It ended up with the shit you see now: two unconnected scenes. In one, a man is complaining about Java. In the other, a man is talking about how he stole Wolf Blitzer's boat.

Fourth, of course, we have references. Randy's author insertion character complains about Java, which many nerds will automatically laugh at. Black hat guy references Wolf Blitzer, of whom many nerds will have heard. The latter reference is of the "LOL THAT'S SO RANDOM" variety. The former is of the "OMG I ALSO HATE JAVA" variety.

The result, as you can plainly see, is just fucking stupid.

Was there really a time when Randy could write jokes with clever subversions? It seems so remote and distant now, like maybe my mind just made it all up. Is this really what Randy has become?

----

I said in the last comment thread that I could probably continue the blog here if the desire was there. I don't want to push the blog past its expiration date, though, so I'm content to let it be--but if you lot want the blog to continue under the far more talented and corpulent hand of yours truly, you need only say so, and I might pay attention.

I'd say it's been a pleasure but we all know that's a lie. I hate every last one of you and interacting with you is a godawful nightmare. It's bad enough reading XKCD all the time to bring you wretched monsters some cheap laughs. Reading your comments every day was very nearly intolerable. Since the blog is no more, I don't mind revealing that the only reason I continued to post here is as a punishment from the gods.

Fuck you all. You have no redeeming qualities. Good night.