Comic 805: Randall Tries Busking

[Alt: Take me down to the paradise municipality / where the grass is mauve and the girls aren't fromthisreality]

I have a confession to make. After reading this comic I experienced, not a GOOMHR moment, but a moment of bonding with Randall. I wanted to go home and visit paradise cities, also! There I could forget that there was ever such a thing as XKCD. There I could finally know peace. As I slept last night, I dreamt of this land. I cannot describe it to you here in a way which will do it justice, but it was a place where I was happy. I awoke to a bright cold Seattle morning and reality dawned. I had still read this comic. I had not escaped to a better place. I will never be free.

The narrative structure of this comic is a little confusing. The man is sitting on a box and singing, that much is clear. I'm assuming he's busking or something, but there's no real indication of that. A bench at a park or subway station would make it pretty clear, and it might even allow for some of that patented "it's better than the shit I usually put out" art that makes the ladies go crazy for Randall-brand loving. You could draw a whole scene if you wanted! And context might help the joke here. God knows it needs the help.

The joke itself--well, here I want to be careful, because it's one of those jokes that doesn't lend itself to summarizing nicely. Obviously it's a play on the song. It tries to create a narrative structure of a spree of violent crime being quelled by the Mounties, who I guess send the criminals off to Orwellian rehabilitation camps? All while keeping to the structure of "Take me down to X region where Y rhyming thing happens."

It's not the worst thing in the world. He manages to keep the meter moderately well. The rhymes mostly work, and only feel slightly forced. It is, however, pretty fucking terrible.

It's just--what is the point? It's not doing anything interesting. It's old enough that I'm not even going to bother complaining that it's not timely, but come on, Randy. Parodies should do something insightful, or at least interesting, with the source material. It should do more than draw a poorly cobbled together narrative using all the words you can think of that mean roughly the same thing as "city" that have rhymes. Or at least do something more than draw five panels of a stick man sitting on a box with badly drawn musical notes surrounding him.

Who else thinks Randy first thought of "counties" and "mounties" rhyming and just went from there?

EDIT: Oh yes, I'd like to thank everyone for their submissions on this one! Keep them coming. The hate has made you powerful.