Thursday, January 27, 2011

Comic 853: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

vowelzzzz

[Comic title: Consecutive Vowels; alt text: But the windows! What if there's a voyuer (sic) watchi--wait, now I'm turned on too.]

Megan has another boyfriend. This has filled Randall with untold jealousy, and Randy will deal with it the only way he knows how: by writing comics in which Megan deeply desires to fuck him, but is also insane. She must be insane--what other reason could she have for loving a man who is not Randall Munroe?

"But my alt texts, Megan! Read them, and see how clinical, how stilted my love for you could be! MEGAAAAAN!"

This comic means a great deal to Randall. You can tell, because it has a chart in it, and also because it contains a swear in large and italic prints. But the most important way to tell is this: in the comic, Megan is rendered helpless before Randall's use of a word with five consecutive vowels in it. Yes, she is the one demanding that Randall employ his "Black Hat Guy" to "Install BSD" in her "ball pit," but he has all the power. The power of the word queueing.

In this fantasy Randy even pretends to be shocked as she flings herself at him. "Oh, no, we mustn't," he says. "No, don't, stop," he says.

"What's that? Don't stop?" she replies.

The chart is there, but meaningless, as Megan acknowledges in the first panel. This comic contains only two characters: Randy, and the unbridled lust-machine that is Megan.

Lesser men may read this most erotic of porns and assume that Randall forgot to put in an actual joke, or that he is too lazy to even bother with some basic spell-check on the word "voyeur," but they miss the point entirely. This is not a comic, but the fevered, inspired passions of a brilliant artist. It needs no joke--the burning passion of the characters, ripped directly from the tormented mind of the author, stands on its own as the greatest work of art since that one lady just sat there stared at a bunch of people in MoMA.

204 comments:

  1. What the fuck is a post doing here at this hour except proving the Robdall theory?

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  2. Randall was obviously jealous of the wildly famous success that was my slashfic of him, and so he asked himself, "How can I raise the bar of sexiness for my next update?"

    Voila.

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  3. Makes sense I don't see how you could NOT do a Megan joke on this one. I mean, it would be really, really hard.

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  4. Will someone please buy a 12" black dildo & shove it up this idiot's ass?

    Until this bowl-cutted loser gets laid, he's going to keep fantasizing that his "personality" and "wit", which are actually 2 of the most potent forms of birth control known to man, are actually aphrodisiacs.

    Anyway, Megan's a god damn slut. I saw her banging a gang of bikers who were trying to seal her eyes shut. Ever wonder why you hear an echo when that fictional stick figure cunt opens her legs?

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  5. What is this I don't even...

    Who is this chart about? Just her? All women? Everyone?

    Where did this guy find a database that links the number of consecutive vowels in a word to sexual arousal?

    Why is this funny? Because the guy makes a wildly unbelievable claim, and then it turns out to be true? Did it become true because he made a chart of it? Does Randall know someone for whom this is true?

    Why won't someone tell me in what way this comic can make any sense? Cause I'm not seeing it.

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  6. Its humour Sven. It doesnt HAVE to make sense.

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  7. Also, Randall reveals that he is turned on by Windows. Is this the day that he loses cred with the Unix crowd?

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  8. no way he was being ironic

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  9. Dudes, in the XKCD forum somebody made an excellent Monty Python reference and it TRUMPS ANYTHING THAT COULD POSSIBLY BE DONE HERE. I don't care if you link that horrible XKCD comic about Monty Python, it doesn't change anything.

    Should I maybe now start visiting the XKCD forum all the time instead of coming here?

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  10. Iunno, I lol'd at this one. The setup's surreal, yes, but the dialog is well-executed and the artwork, while of low-quality, is at least dynamic enough to help (rather than get in the way of) the flow of the comic. The ending's abrupt, and "queueing" is sort of a funny word in itself.

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  11. Dudes, he said "queuing is a woody sort of word." It really is a pretty good reference even if my silly hyperbole makes it sound like I'm employing sarcasm.

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  12. I actually really like the art in the last panel (especially considering the medium). The comic itself is no good, but hey, if Randy got everything right, what purpose would we serve?

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  13. Yes the dialog is very realistic. I myself have several women constantly saying "FUCK ME NOW!" to me when i show them charts. Or is it "FUCK YOU, MAN"? No matter.

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  14. I can't figure out the arms in the last panel. Is she choking him?

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  15. Is this supposed to be some sort of joke about French, and how women stereotypically find it irresistibly sexy?

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  16. thank you for keeping me sane, rob.

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  17. @10:41, my guess is that it's supposed to be she's grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him down to the floor.

    But considering the "neck" and "shoulders" of a stick figure share the same point, it's impossible to tell what's going on. Maybe she's into asphyxiation? Or maybe Randy's art just sucks ass.

    CAPTCHA: bathera, I take my camera in the bathera with me for some sexy pics.

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  18. NO

    NO NO NO NO WHY

    WHY RANDAL

    WHY

    NO

    Capcha: Saari. What Randal should fucking be.

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  19. Randall would probably insist that "it's an absurd scenario? Can you imagine? Hoo hoo hoo hoo"

    But honestly, this is a Megan comic. It appears to ultimately portray a potent and twisted form of mind control. To summarize, it is a creepy comic. The absurd scenario behind the chart (secret black-hat free-lance work, deadly ninja research team, sentient laser-raptors) is never explained, even though I think this is the joke. Or maybe the joke is, "Charts! Science! Victory!", but that is hardly less nauseating. Megan can tromp all throughout this review as far as I'm concerned.

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  20. Since people seemed to like the redone version of the last comic, I decided to check on today's to see if this was another effort that only needed minor tweaking.

    Ahahahahahaha no.

    http://s738.photobucket.com/albums/xx30/darthbobcat/?action=view&current=getfilephp-1.png

    Enjoy my efforts at damage control.

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  21. The Megan jokes stopped being funny a long time ago

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  22. Megan jokes are eternal. You cannot stop them. They will not be stopped by anything short of Universal Heat Death. Resistance is futile.

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  23. My problem with this comic is just how little effort was put into the chart. If you think about it for even a second it completely breaks the "joke".

    So, consecutive vowels are something which can be counted, right? The word "queueing" has five consecutive vowels. Now look at the chart, and look at the dots on the chart. Notice how there's so little space between dots on the x-axis? Yeah, that means five consecutive vowels is REALLY LOW on the sexual arousal scale. Things don't ramp up until around 20 or so. There is no such word.

    Isn't Randall supposed to be a smart person?

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  24. Anon 1:12 clearly those were words with fractional amounts of consecutive vowels.



    you moron.

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  25. So women will demand immediate sex if you can prove to them that you are aroused?
    Good to know.

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  26. @Anonymous 1:12 AM:
    Yeah, I noticed the same: apparently queueing isn't that good of a scale. But it never said it actually had to be a word.

    The graph is probably even true, but only the other way around: If people are having sex, some scream loads of consecutive vowels.

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  27. Mostly, I am just fixated on the part where the chart doesn't seem to have anything to do with factor analysis. I just can't get past that!

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  28. Why this comic is a little creepy: because you know Randall didn't even consider doing it with the genders reversed (and it wouldn't really make sense that way, since we all 'know' that men want to have sex all the time regardless of vowel sequences), part of the implicit premise is that women are unpredictable and the fantasy "wouldn't it be great if some geek discovered the secret formula to turning women on" (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_community )

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  29. Why, why all the Megan jokes when the comic has nothing to do with Megan? It is obviously her twin sister Dorothy, who, by the way, is a major nerd-fucker (thought it could be of interest.)

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  30. "The chart is there, but meaningless, as Megan acknowledges in the first panel. "

    That would be the third panel, would it not?

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  31. Anon 4:01: That's probably because the "joke" hinges on the information provided in the chart. He is trying to use this chart as evidence to support the 3rd and 4th panels... except it doesn't evidence anything. It's a completely random graph, with the axis labels "hopefully" pointing readers in the right direction. At least when he does a "Google results" graph, it's not outside of the possibility that the results are real, or at least have some kind of basis in reality. It's just... yeah, it's just sad really.

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  32. How is this comic utterly wrong? Let me count the ways...

    The setup makes no sense. What database would ever get Randall to reach that conclusion? Does someone actually keep a database of intensity of arousal related to words spoken right before the moment of excitation? I could interpret this as Randall making up bullshit just to show his graph to Megan(which is the Randallian equivalent to making up excuses to show his toned muscles, if he had toned muscles, that is), but I guess it'd be better if this was very clear in the comic... If that was the case, that is. I can't believe Randall would be even that little clever...

    The graph makes no sense either. Unless there is some sort of real count of vowels(is Y half a vowel? And W one third of a vowel? What the heck would be 0.01 vowel?), this graph is counting waaaaay too much consecutive vowels. Can you show me a word with 10 consecutive vowels? Because Randall's graph seems to go all the way up to 100!

    Oh, here's the kernel of the joke here, fellows(with nerd pun to pander to those nerds out there Randall-style! =D) Randall was surfing around Wikipedia and saw the word "queueing" and though "My, this word has too many vowels in a row! Isn't that quaint? I bet I could make a half-assed convoluted comic about that!" And thus, this comic was born.

    And then the gem in the last panel. Randall's "style" is fucking horrible to depict human interaction but, hey, this never stopped him before, did it? In utter obliviousness of the flaws of his "artistic choices", Randall tries to convey a sexy glomp by Megan, but it comes out more as a choking attack. Is Megan an asphyxiation fetishist? Is she having a breakdown, thinking the only way to stop the shame of being aroused by such a failure of a human being is by killing him? Fuck if I know.

    But I know this comic SUCKS. No big news!

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  33. Rinnon: Thank you :) I do get that the joke hinges on the information in the graph, and that the graph itself is random, what I meant was that factor analysis (first panel) can't have provided the information in the chart--factor analysis involves clustering variables, not finding a relationship between variables (which is what is depicted in the graph). Hence, it's the jump between the first and second panels that eludes and annoys me. I know I'm being overly picky, but so it goes!

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  34. Bobcat: Randall's original wasn't funny or made any sense in the slightest. YOUR version made me spill tea over my keyboard. I salute your salvation of this comic.

    It would be nice if one day XKCD hosted a comic where Randall doesn't adore his own brilliance and acknowledge Bobcat's fix is far, far more realistic and hilarious.

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  35. Guys.

    Can't you see?

    Randall just explained why his webcomic is titled "xkcd".

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  36. Is this a poor stab at a correlation vs. causation joke, maybe? Was the joke just supposed to be the absurdism? Or is this something that you're supposed to read at 2:00 in the morning and just go "haha what? ...what?".

    Honestly I do not even know.

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  37. @bobcat
    Made me lol slightly :)

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  38. I'm going to give Randy the benefit of the doubt, and assume yes - it's meant to be a correlation/causation joke. "Man graphs vocalisations during sex, deduces that vowel sounds correlate to sexual arousal, tries to seduce woman with the word 'queuing'".

    That's ACTUALLY an ok joke!

    But if that's what he's trying to say, then the execution is abysmal. Totally fucking awful. Almost impressive in how horrendously presented it is actually.

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  39. Fernie, I laughed out loud at your post.

    I'll admit that I've been missing your posts on the xkcd forums for the last week. Welcome back.

    Also, great thanks to Rob for the early review.

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  40. The reason that the chart goes up so slowly is because it was made in Hawaii. 5, 6 vowels in a row isn't a lot for them. It depends on the language.

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  41. The comic would've been better if, in the third panel, the dialogue was like this:

    Megan: "Huh? This chart makes no sense. You'd need, at an absolute MINIMUM, six or seven vowels in a row before arousal increases. It's probably closer to ten or twelve, really."
    Randall: "Oh? Well, drat. In that case, I hope those roofies I slipped you kick in soon -"

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  42. Hey Friends,

    Please. Calm the fuck down.

    Don't over-analyze. Don't make personal attack. Criticism is clearly not your forte, and seeing as how this went up within minutes of the comic I can see that its author has little more life than any of those posting here (true, I have no life either).

    Occasionally, I check into this site with the curiosity, "Hm... I wonder what they'll piss and moan about this time." I am never disappointed, because I know that each attack will only be more desperate and pathetic as the one preceding it.

    Now I see that you're trying to start another blog to rip on even more webcomics/authors? Good luck. Really. I have a feeling that the loyal followers here may not agree with your attitude on every comic, and your credibility will dissolve with an ever-diminishing group of people who actually agree with you until you're left with nobody.

    So I leave you this option. Either try to write proper criticism by finding flaws in the comic and not taking out your frustration on its author, or allow yourself to sink into oblivion in the deepest corners of a caustic, molten hell.

    Love,
    George W. Bush

    PS: Look at the alt-text. It's spelled correctly now. Not because of you.

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  43. Wow, you're... kinda late to stop the new site.

    Overall: 3/10, very poor. See me.

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  44. I would like to have Obama's opinion before deciding on the matter.

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  45. why would we want the opinion of an illegal immigrant islamofascist commie jew?

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  46. Someone ask Theodore Roosevel what he thinks about this.

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  47. Slowly xkcd sucks is turning into Randal fan fiction ...

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  48. Guys, here's the joke: You are initially supposed to think that the graph corresponds to sounds produced -while having sex- so, a girl who's a little aroused goes "ooh," a girl who's a lot aroused goes, "OOOAAAAAUUUUUUUEEEEEHHH" or whatever. Not that Randall knows this, but internet porn and 'anecdotes' from other virgin nerds has probably contributed to this belief. Then, in a reversal, he tells the audience that, no, it is the number of vowels in a -word- that will -lead- to sexual arousal.

    Agreeing with what Keep said, by itself, that is a funny joke, but the execution was simply terrible.

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  49. I don't get it, according to his graph wouldn't queue be near the bottom of the sexual arousal axis?

    Like this: http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww336/talligan/consecutive_vowels.png

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  50. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  51. This reminds me of one of those bad puns you roll your eyes at. Like the one that ends with "Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids." It's obvious they thought of the punch line first and then invented a scenario to make it end that way. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but in order for it to work, they had to invent a race called the Trids. It's too easy. It's cheating. It's like Dr Seuss.

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  52. The new Dinosaur Comics is really bad too. I guess maybe it's interesting if you didn't know about Tantalus, but a lot of people do and those people are forced to read through a bunch of recycled information that doesn't do anything interesting with the information. It is very much like a lot of XKCDs.

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  53. I offer a fair compromise G-dub, I only find 3/5ths of the rhetoric on this site deplorable.

    As for the xkcd forumites escaping to here, I will give you no quarter. You belong to the xkcd forum, and I will not hinder their efforts to collect you.

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  54. Fuck this noise! I want to hear what Andrew Jackson has to say on this!

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  55. I don't really care about what you wrote I just want to know why you're writing instead of murdering Indians.

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  56. @Millard Fillmore

    "I offer a fair compromise G-dub, I only find 3/5ths of the rhetoric on this site deplorable."

    Racist.

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  57. I do say, my good chaps. Shut the fuck up.

    Cheerio.

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  58. I thought the joke was that "Fuck me now" has no consecutive vowels, but who'd not be turned on by that?

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  59. "I thought the joke was that "Fuck me now" has no consecutive vowels, but who'd not be turned on by that?"

    Me, especially if the girl was choking me. ESPECIALLY if this whole sequence happened after I said 'queueing'.

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  60. I just want to see the youtube video of some guy yelling out "ooeeaoyeeooarick!" in a crowded mall, and subsequently being torn apart by a horrifying sexual frenzy of mall-going females.

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  61. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cueing

    Randall can't even pick a good word.

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  62. the xkcd forumites are all giving Randy "language is the bastard child of idiocy" Munroe credit for words in other languages that in some way could be connected to sex

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  63. Ian: Yes, but that's just raw data. It doesn't account for individual factors such as Megan being a total slut.

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  64. @2:05

    "Me, especially if the girl was choking me. ESPECIALLY if this whole sequence happened after I said 'queueing'."

    Who isn't turned on by a good Megan-Choke?

    http://xkcd.com/307/

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  65. The dynamics of xkcd fans vs Randy is an interesting one to watch.

    On the one hand Randy and other administrators of the xkcd community try many things to keep the idiots away:

    (i) the IRC channel used to punish (kick?) people who used phrases which had been used before verbatim, so as to avoid retarded exchanges of popular quotes, channel memes etc. In other words, to try and make you have something to say before you speak.

    (ii) quite a few comics denounce idiocy of the internet variety;

    (iii) on the forums there is (used to be?) filtering of text which replaced expressions usually employed in brain-dead fashion ("lol") with other, more amusing and nonsensical expressions.

    He could also

    (iv) introduce randomness into (iii);

    (v) whenever a new comic is released, lock down creation of new comic threads for a random amount of time, say between 1 and 6 hours, to force the thread-creation-race losers to get a life.

    However Randy thwarts his own efforts by publishing a comic which only appeals to idiots, so they are drawn in then pushed away.

    It's fascinating. I wonder if the idiots reach equilibrium or go on oscillating.

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  66. I just wanted to say that I whole-heartedly approve of Rob's work here (because he is fat).

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  67. i feel our boy randys obsession with megan is an extension of robs obsession with xkcd

    like the stalker who blames and hates his prey for being the cause of his own weakness

    yet the twinkle that shows in robs eyes on a dark winter night show that maybe rob and megan arent so differnet after all...maybe they are one in the same, and robs deep seated hate is a cover for the love that has grown through the years

    we're here for you rob, you gay mother fucker, we will always be here to laugh at you

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  68. At least there was no post-punchline dialog. And it was short. It really could've been worse.

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  69. Wait... gay mother fucker? How does Rob have a male mother? Is he actually a she? But how can a woman have man-boobs?

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  70. Ah, sweet normality.

    Rob: 0.5
    Idiocy: 2.5
    randall: (0, but this comic is closer than usual to scoring)
    ravenzomg: 1

    Nothing to say here.

    AA Signing out.

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  71. COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO ANYTHING PRECEDING:

    Do you guys have a consensus about The Daily Show as you do about xkcd? IT seems to me as though the only enjoyable part of the show is when Jon basically does a stand-up routine at his desk with AV support. I fast-forward when he brings on "correspondents" because they're almost never funny. The interviews are always shit because he is a terrible interviewer, and with each interview you can see what an inflated sense of his own funniness he has. (I.e., working without the input of his writing team.)

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  72. i like the daily show, though i don't watch it regularly

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  73. This comic is just a repeat of the famous Sudo comic, only this time the command is "have sex with me" and the code word doesn't make any sense.

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  74. I mostly agree with gyq514. The last good correspondent was Rob Riggle.

    I still mostly prefer it to the Colbert Report at the moment, since the Daily Show kinda gives actual news and Colbert's novelty wore off a while ago.

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  75. The problem with all of the Megan jokes, I think, is that when a comic shows up that actually deserves the Megan jokes; like this one; they've already grown stale and unwelcome.

    Rob is like the fat lard who cried Megan.

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  76. I like Louis Black out of the correspondents, if he counts. Anyway, the ABC dropped the Daily Show and Colbert Report about a week ago because apparently some pay tv provider licensed it so I haven't watched either in a while. Too much effort to watch online.

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  77. *Lewis Black, fffffffffff

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  78. oh, but the posts that actually deserve them are even more fun to write, since I know so many (read: like five anonymous posters and Gamer_2k4) people hate them so much. the only reason this went up so quickly is the insane glee I felt at writing something these people hate so much.

    though I admit, there wasn't nearly as much complaining about the post as I hoped. as far as I can tell, there are two possible reasons for this:

    one is that the complainers have finally gotten wise to my game and are giving up (unlikely, as they are all pretty fucking dumb).

    the other is that they don't actually dislike megan jokes when they are appropriate, and commenting on them would make their idiocy even more obvious (since their premise is, basically, megan jokes suck and rob sucks for writing them), so they have chosen to remain silent.

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  79. I love the Daily Show, but it has spurned me once too many times. Like a former lover, I can't stand to hear about it anymore. It seems like some times John is apologetic to me, but while he doesn't think I can hear he keeps cutting me down. I know if I went back, I'd just be abused again.

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  80. gyq514: I agree with you on almost all aspects. I find the most enjoyable parts to be his essential stand up routine at the beginning of the show. Probably because this part is the most grounded in real events. The Correspondents are more often than not very entertaining. They try too hard to be sarcastic, so it just comes across as juvenile (John himself doesn't often attempt sarcasm, to his benefit). One thing I disagree on is the interviews. It completely depends on the Interviewee. If it's an Actor or Singer or Entertainer, it's going to be boring as hell. If it's a political figure or author of a new political book, it'll probably be interesting. I get the impression John himself is more interested in the Politics than the Entertainers, so usually has better questions prepared.

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  81. I do always try to catch Louis Black. He is a more established comedian than the other contributors, and his segments on the show mimic his own stand-up routine.

    Okay, the truth is, I do sometimes watch the correspondents. I cannot for the life of me comprehend why they haven't fired Olivia Munn. It must be an effort to maintain a less imbalance of the sexes among their correspondent team, because she is rarely funny. There is even a segment where Jon had to interrupt her and tell her to pace her jokes better. (Basically she had a laundry list of laugh-generating material, but she was going through it too quickly. He said something like, "Hang on, give it a chance to resonate..."

    Rinnon, it really depends. I do watch it when he has on folks from teh politicks. I always feel as though Jon frames his points in kind of a naive way during interviews, and that the jokes he makes are predictable. For all the show's reputation, rarely does he truly hold an interviewee's feet to the flames.

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  82. they havent fired her because boobs

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  83. Ha, this comic fits goatkcd perfectly.

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  84. "It must be an effort to maintain a less imbalance of the sexes among their correspondent team, because she is rarely funny."

    But that's why she fits in so well! None of them are funny. She does make for a decent Michele Bachmann though.

    "(John himself doesn't often attempt sarcasm, to his benefit)"

    Really? He uses sarcasm in the opening segment all the time. For instance when he said on Thursday's installment, "There's only one way you can get elected over and over again with 90% of the vote... And that's to be a beloved leader."

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  85. Yeah obviously Munn is their hottest woman correspondent. With her various pregnancies Samantha Bee barely carries even milf status. I have to credit Munn, though, on being one of the few comedians in television who doesn't mimic Julia Lous-Dreyfus's Elaine from Seinfeld, since that seems to be the basis for Bee's persona as well as Liz Lemon.

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  86. sorry, I mean *one of the few woman comedians in television

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  87. Several months ago, I thought this blog was pretty mediocre, but worth reading. Yes, it provided some nice perspectives on why xkcd fails so often to be funny, but it focused too much on things that affected the quality of the comic, rather than the quality of the humor. The comments about typos, factual errors, whether or not he would go back and correct things and whether or not that was okay, and whether or not his joke was completely original made up the bulk of the blog, and were dull.

    Now, the blog has completely eliminated any interesting commentary on the humor of the comic at all. The ranting about quality control is still there, but the good part of this blog has been replaced with "there is no joke in this comic" repeated ad nauseum, and a bunch of quasi-libelous speculation on how the comic could have been written.

    It's a shame, because I used to like coming here. Despite the nerdrage, I felt like I occasionally, indirectly, learned something about writing and humor. Now, you've distilled everything bad about xkcd and put the resultant bile into this blog. Xkcdsucks has become a pandering, ignorant, repetitive, unoriginal, and BORING sequel to the pandering, ignorant, repetitive, unoriginal, and BORING xkcd.

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  88. Incorrect, but thanks for playing. And thanks for contributing!

    Captcha: Dandag you. Dandag you to heck and tarnation.

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  89. How dooes one think of new critisims for comics which continually has the same uninteresting flaws? As has been said before the reviews are just to organise the comments so we can have a bit of a rant, a bit of a laugh and, in your case, a bit of a troll.

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  90. The golden age of this place has ended, mostly due to Randy consistently sucking in the same ways and making no effort to improve (and perhaps a conscious effort to get worse). However, the comment threads are at least still fun.

    However, webcomics.me, in an effort to be "serious" completely lost everything it had approaching charm. And Carl is the only contributor there who can string more than two sentences together.

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  91. Yeah, screw webcomics.me. Bring back Websnark! We want Websnark! Without the shining vanguard of webcomic critcism, all is lost.

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  92. I thought you guys might enjoy my re-edit of this comic :)

    http://i.cubeupload.com/13Soc5.png

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  93. Technician Fry has good ideas. Hire this man!

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  94. gyq514: You're right, he rarely does hold feet to fire, no doubt about that. I can think of only one instance where he did that. A guy came on to talk about some kind of behavioral psychology theory that was pretty weak. Something like about Smiling curing diseases. Jon mentioned that in school he also did a lot of Psychology, and he ended up tearing into the guy, it was pretty good.

    But, I digress. I see what you say about his naive approach (not to say he is naive, but his interviews frame him as such, for the purposes of questions). I guess that's why it ends up depending on the interviewee, if it'll be interesting. A boring person on the show will lead to a boring interview, because Jon isn't going to put them on the spot about anything major.

    I don't know, in the end, I still watch the show on occasion when I feel like it. But since I never really watched it rigorously to begin with, nothing has really changed for me.

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  95. Made another re-edit

    http://i.cubeupload.com/EViaEY.png

    I like this one more :V

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  96. And I'm a bit late to the party, but here's one for #852 as well

    http://i.cubeupload.com/EKf73g.png

    Should I keep making these?

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  97. @10:07
    I'm still learning a lot about trolling though. I have a bit of a read here, get inspired to have a laugh at the expense of people who think they're above it all but can't resist reminding everyone that they are, most certainly, above it all, pick up a couple tricks, and off I go out into the wilderness of the internets!

    Still tweaking it so less people punch me in the face in real life, though

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  98. i'd like to point out that amidst the endless flame wars here on xkcdsucks, the real winners are the one's who don't comment altogether. the rest of you guys are losers, rob probably being the biggest.

    I mainly just wanted to give a shout out to those who (a) feel like xkcdsucks (and perhaps even the xkcd forums) is a cespool of idiodic banter making the world a worse place, but not being able to do anything because doing something would lower you as a human being, or (b) don't bother reading this shit in the first place [in this instance I suppose you're even too intelligent to need this sort of acknowledgement -- cheers to you if you happen to stumble upon this comment]

    and im perfectly aware that contributing this post makes me a fucking loser too, but you know, im okay with that. ive learned to accept my flaws. I am willing to make the sacrifice, if only to acknowledge those poor souls, too intelligent to get involved, but also deeply discouraged by the utter retardation that dominates the virtual world.

    to those lost individuals deeply consumed by this ever enticing force, i urge you to let go of your hatred (or for some of you, intense love) for harmless webcomics and get yourself a tan. enjoy the finer things in life, like hiking, or playing music, or reading a good book. i assure you this will make you feel less concerned about whatever it is that bothers you about xkcd.

    i love you all, even the stupid ones. enjoy your life.

    ReplyDelete
  99. Guy above me: Haha, wow.

    Technician Fry: I vote for yes! I always liked xkcd: You Can Do Better! but that kind of died. You and Bobcat can have edit showdowns. It would be cool. Xkcd OCCASIONALY has good ideas that only need a little editing.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Damn it anon 6:12, you almost had me there, but then you started talking about "harmless webcomics" and all that shit in your fourth paragraph.
    xkcd is not a harmless webcomic, it's too famous for that. It changes things in bad ways; for example every door of the institute where I work, Wikipedia, or excellent shows like "IT Crowd"... it's a virus, and there needs to be a counterculture antidote.

    Also, while I agree that xkcdsucks is a cesspool of idiotic banter, you really can't say that it didn't produce beautiful things. Like, really good slashfic.

    ReplyDelete
  101. 6:12 made my brain eat itself

    ReplyDelete
  102. Voyeur was spelled right...

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  103. But... but.. Randall has always been at war with East Asia!

    ReplyDelete
  104. has he really? how...
    ORWELLIAN

    ReplyDelete
  105. 6:12 has changed my life. I - just all the possibilities, out there, in the world ... I just ... wow. What have we become?

    ReplyDelete
  106. dude, if I had a dollar for every time I got in a traffic accident in my underwear because I was just going to the drive-thru

    I guess I'm not one of the smart ones 6:12 is talking about

    ReplyDelete
  107. people like 6:12 always make me sad. can they not see how much fun we're having? we have so much more joy than, say, the xkcd fans who find us.

    ReplyDelete
  108. The guy is busy doing REAL THINGS Rob. Like hiking and shit. He doesn't need FUN. Fun is for LOSERS. Also, it's not like we can read books AND post here. They are CLEARLY mutually exclusive.

    Captcha: wayins. I'm not making this shit up.

    ReplyDelete
  109. oh, true. i mean, if i didn't post here i would have gone to see Black Swan tonight, and then gone out to dinner with friends afterwards. but i couldn't because i am the biggest loser ever and post here instead :((((((((

    ReplyDelete
  110. rob your sarcastic argument is somewhat undermined by the fact you ARE the biggest loser ever

    er, not in this sense

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  111. My wife left me because I post here. "It's me or them" she said "You don't have time for both." "At least THEY didn't try to force an ultimatum on me" is what I said to her. I regret nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  112. We're on this subject again? Sheesh.

    I get that Rob does the stories because Randy keeps making the same mistakes over and over, so it'd be boring to read the new reviews, so that's fine. It's Rob making these stories almost always about Megan that's the problem. Even though people complain, he still does it because he likes trolling them.

    But wouldn't it work out better for everyone if Rob continued doing the stories, but made them about Megan less frequently? Sure, he gets a kick out of people not liking them, but you'd think he would want to write with more originality and come up with even funnier ways to make fun of Randy. It just seems like it'd be interesting to twist the comics into different stories, and highlight some of the problems too.

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  113. the thing is for most posts, there is, at most, one sentence about megan--usually it's not even that. this is apparently enough to convince most people that the entire post is about her, and try to say 'wouldn't it be more fun if the posts weren't about her?'

    i know this will blow your mind, but the posts already aren't about megan. in fact, the posts are already twisted into different stories which highlight some of the problems in the comics. they just happen to contain the word 'megan' sometimes.

    it's actually more of a challenge to write megan jokes into the posts. this is why it's usually just an intro sentence that is thenceforth not mentioned again.

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  114. LOL @ Ray for actually taking Rob at his word. Mr. "I'm nonplussed about being criticised, let me tell you at great length just how nonplussed I am"? Come on man, maybe a bit of cod liver oil in your diet will help get that brain of yours working right.

    He keeps doing it because he feels like he has to prove just how earnest he is. It's not a very persuasive act, but I'm sure he's thoroughly persuaded himself. The guy has a common blind spot in his self awareness: the conviction of being incredibly self aware.

    But he gets to maintain a small handfull of sycophants while I'm completely wasting spare moments that could be better spent as I wait for a computer game to install, so good for him I guess.

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  115. Tip: don't carry out psychological analyses of people or their motives when all you have to go on are trollish posts on the internet. There are a hundred theories like yours, based on the same evidence, but which come to the opposite conclusion. Your tirade has no more content than "I choose to believe that Rob is a dick".

    You'd think an xkcd fan would have more respect for evidence and not talk so much out of their ass?

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  116. er.
    in what way am i "earnest" or trying to be? i don't even see how that word applies in this situation. i don't think i've ever wanted people to think i was earnest about anything, ever, in my entire life. i usually use the word as an insult. but maybe you're using it different than me?

    and i'm pretty sure i've never claimed to be incredibly self-aware, just more aware of my self than you are (and also cleverer, but that's neither here nor there). this isn't really much of a claim! i wouldn't claim to know more about you than you do, even though i'm pretty sure most of you have the self-awareness of a root vegetable of some variety. it's based on two basic facts:

    1) nobody actually knows anything about people on the internet. at no point has anyone ever been correct when they assume that someone on the internet is doing something because they are angry, upset, have no life, know that they are wrong, etc etc. nobody is ever correct about various other personal assumptions about people on the internet, either.
    2) everyone is always wrong about everything. this kind of encompasses the first point, but it's worth repeating. that's literally everyone, literally always, literally everthing. just so we're clear.

    i'm surprised you people don't seize on the opportunity i present here. what i'm saying is that i am making megan jokes because i am basically an 8-year-old who has discovered that his brother gets very angry when he pokes him or calls him by a particular name, and thinks this fun--except i have a whole legion of siblings to piss off, and no parent to slap my hand and tell me to stop.

    and then i am, of course, in love with the sound of my own voice, metaphorically speaking, and have a personality that hates leaving ideas unformed or undeveloped, so when i am writing about something i write a lot about it to make sure it's complete, but it seems that you people think that "writing a lot about something" must mean that i am upset or care about it a great deal.

    it's kind of amusing, actually. i can have conversations about topics i've never given a moment's thought before and people will make comments such as 'i see you've given this a lot of thought' or otherwise note that i must have put a lot of time into it. really i just write (or speak) along with my thoughts. i'm easily entertained. i guess assuming i must be upset is what people who don't like me say about it.

    the best part about it all is the amusement is recursive. that is, your reaction to my repeated claims that i'm doing this for fun is also amusing. and if by some strange chance someone actually believes me, then i get something even better than amusement--you'd be restoring a tiny sliver of my faith in humanity.

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  117. Maybe he meant you were claiming to be NAMED Ernest.

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  118. The posts that get upset about Megan jokes or the pointless stories in general may amuse you. But for the sake of the health of the site, you ought to be aware that people who don't post to complain will stop coming here. It gets dull after a (short) while, and most people who get bored with a site don't comment on it; they just stop bothering to check here.

    ReplyDelete
  119. Well... here's Carl's reviews

    http://webcomics.me/2011/01/xkcdsucks-comics-851-853/#more-696

    I like them much more than Rob's (but Rob's are adequate).

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  120. well, what I have to go by for the health of the site is the number of comments each thread generates. the past several have breached 100 comments basically without my help (I only left about 3 or 4 one-line comments in this thread before it reached 100). so maybe when the comment threads start drying up, I'll worry about people complaining. and even then, if it keeps amusing me, why should I stop? it's not like I get anything besides amusement out of this site.

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  121. I don't actually know what the word earnest means. I've seen it before, so I have some idea of the context it's used in, but I really don't even know what it means.

    It hurts even more knowing that I had to read and act out parts of "The Importance of Being Ernest" in my high-school drama class, so I was capable of appreciating that joke, but not the actual meaning of the word.

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  122. Premise: XKCDsucks requires the existence of XKCD and the blogposts to live.
    Premise: XKCDsucks is a parasite. (Without a host, we would die)
    Premise: A parasite can only live off of one host.
    Premise: If Rob and Randall are autonomous beings, then we are not living.
    Premise: We are living.
    Conclusion: Robdall exists.

    HAVE AT ME, LOGICIANS.

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  123. "...because it contains a swear in large and italic prints..."

    I believe the noun form is "oath," as in "... because it contains an oath in large and italic prints..." Swear is the verb form; i swear an oath at thee! (pretty sure its used like that in fancy literature).

    Also, who else thinks Megan is actually Rob?

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  124. "Premise: If Rob and Randall are autonomous beings, then we are not living."

    I disagree with this premise. Rob and Randall being autonomous has nothing to do with us living. That is, in premise 3 you state that parasites can use only one host, and in premise 2 you state that we are a parasite. This implies that we can use only one host, and in premise 1 you state that we (XKCDsucks) are living off of XKCD and the blogposts. When you take into account that XKCDsucks and the blogposts are one and the same, you are left with the conclusion that XKCDsucks (the parasite) lives off of XKCD plus itself. There are no multiple hosts here, so premise 4 does not support the conclusion.

    If you reshape this argument, i think you can prove the existence of Robdall.

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  125. Eh, my preferred couple is Rob/Megan. Can someone please write a fanfic of that one?

    That's right, we are now shipping on xkcdsucks.

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  126. Rob i know you're having fun but won't you please think of the children?

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  127. Well what else is he going to tide himself over with before dinner?

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  128. Dear Rob,

    Your website is fucking awful.

    Unbelievably fucking awful.

    It's actually hilarious that you've jumped the shark in the EXACT SAME WAY xkcd did - you were good for a while and then descended into producing masturbatory, execrable rubbish.

    You used to actually dissect and analyse the xkcd comics and point out their many flaws, and leave the reader thinking 'yeah, good point, xkcd really does suck'. Your reviews were thought-provoking, accurate, funny, and most importantly, they fucking pointed out why xkcd sucked.

    But now, EVERY SINGLE one of your reviews consists entirely of some excruciatingly unfunny backstory as to how Randall supposedly came up with the comic, and omits to: i) analyse the content of the comic; ii) make any point whatsoever as to how the comic could have been written better; or iii) be entertaining. Your reviews are fucking terrible.

    You rightly criticise Randall for continuing to produce comics that are entertaining to him, but contain no humour. So what the fuck is up with all this fantasy backstory shit? Do you find it funny? Do you read over your reviews before you post them? If so, does it get funnier to you every time?

    I hate your site. I fucking hate you.

    I now read xkcdsucks because I love thinking to myself 'he has no idea that his site is ten times worse than the site he is criticising'. And your reviews are awful because they contain the very same flaws you used to identify in xkcd! Fuck you.

    Read your last fifty or so reviews. Read them. Then tell yourself your site is awful. Only then will you be on the road to recovery.

    I hope you die.

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  129. Rob am I right to assume 726 made your day?

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  130. Hear that Rob? Just think about all that emotion you managed to draw out of Anon 7:26. What powerful writing you must possess if based on nothing more than a few paragraphs a week, you can instill such hatred in a man.

    Well done.

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  131. Anon726 caressed the enter button before entering the captcha. This was the perfect masterpiece, paragraph upon paragraph of him pleading for Rob to crush him with his gigantic heaving mass of flesh and mount him from the backside.

    He pressed enter.

    Five minutes later there was a knock on the door, Anon726 perked up and set aside his single malt scotch. Waiting for him were 76 rolls of fat.

    "I hope you brought it Robdall, I tried to remain subtle in my post"

    "I did"

    "May I try it on?"

    "No, that is for me and me alone. But I'll be sure to wear it while I mount you from the backside. I'll wear the Megan mask."

    "Do me now"

    ReplyDelete
  132. actually 7.26 hasn't read any of xkcdsucks, it's just they're Rob's mom

    hence also of course Rob's display of love for her at 7.32, you see

    CAPTCHA: tingluse. you ting you luse

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  133. Rob sat down. Megan was crushed. The end.

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  134. I think anon726 will be happy with any position

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  135. > Read your last fifty or so reviews. Read them.
    > Then tell yourself your site is awful. Only
    > then will you be on the road to recovery.
    > I hope you die.

    Why go through all that trouble to get on the road to recovery, and then just die?

    You need to think before you wish things on people, this makes no sense.

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  136. Someone should really tell Randall that his flowchart comics stopped being funny around the time he published his first one.

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  137. 854 is funny because I feel superior to Randall.

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  138. I'm also flabbergast that his ingredients "cost more than a restaurant meal."

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  139. He must either eat at really cheap restaurants, or shop at really expensive grocery stores.

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  140. Oh, and I just remembered: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cook_home

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  141. A little something I whipped up.
    http://i.imgur.com/zRAQ7.png

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  142. Does... does Randall's mommy normally cook for him?

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  143. 854: further proof that just because something is true doesn't necessarily make it funny.

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  144. The joke in 854 is literally just that Randall is bad at cooking, and is presented in the least amusing way possible. The comic from theoatmeal above is the same exact joke except the artist told the story mainly through artwork, thereby "showing" rather than "telling". He also drew in amusing details instead of having an incredibly bland, unappealing flowchart.

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  145. 854...why do people declare Randy to be a genius? Because he writes down what your average young adult who lives by themselves thinks...in flowchart format? Fucking Helen Keller could have done that.

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  146. William Henry HarrisonJanuary 30, 2011 at 10:33 PM

    Wait... what? How does Randall live? Does he seriously eat out for every meal? Is this why Americans are fat in the modern era? Is it because they don't know how to cook?

    He probably only has leftovers (and problems not using up leftovers before they go bad) because he's sad and alone, with no one to eat with.

    Also, I think it's ridiculous that people still expect technical breakdowns of how and why incividual xkcd comics suck. It's not the xkcd of, say, 325ish, when it's not exactly good, but it's inoffensively bad, and can manage to scrape together a laugh or two every now and then.

    Recent comics? It doesn't require an argument to persuade people they're bad. You just have to read them. It's not a matter of needing to convince people anymore, if just reading xkcd doesn't make you want to literally vomit up shit until you die, nothing will ever convince you it's bad.

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  147. It was his mother who was sick before, so what happened is that one night he tried to cook for himself and ended up getting pizza with his hard-earned income instead. A few days later, as he threw out perfectly edible leftovers which just happened to taste too much like fresh food for his liking, he realised that there are people out there who don't have mothers cooking for them. Why, they must have pizza EVERY night!

    He's been saving a hilarious flowchart about it ever since, and decided that the time is now ripe to unleash its power upon the world.

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  148. Here, I fixed 853:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/steventhehawk/5403427229/in/photostream/

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  149. Man I'm loving all these edits. Dudes: keep editing.

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  150. randy why must you forsake me with your awful flowcharts?

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  151. What a shit graph. Taking the dispersion of the x-values literally, I come to one of two conclusions: either Randall thinks words can have fractions of a vowel, or he's found words with 10's of consecutive vowels in them.

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  152. I think 854 is an example of Randall thinking, "You know, if I suck at cooking, I bet all of my readers do too! They'll read my comic, think 'GOOMHR I suck too,' and many laughs will be had!"

    Problem is, he's wrong. His fanbase, if such a thing really exists, are probably all in high school and therefore get food made for them. The rest of us (who aren't Rob's level of fat) DON'T eat out all day and actually do cook. And yes, it IS cheaper than ordering pizza.

    Captcha: arydry. After I used the towel, I was arydry.

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  153. Holy fuck cooking isn't that hard. All of my recipes involve throwing shit in a pot and then walking away for 1-3 hours. The end product is always me getting laid.

    Here you go Randall, my primer on cooking: http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww336/talligan/Letscook.png?t=1296489721

    Don't forget the vegetables, as that will help ward off scurvy (which I'm sure you already have from eating Pizza every night)

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  154. Charles Augustus FortescueJanuary 31, 2011 at 8:05 AM

    The characters on television's "The Big Bang Theory" all seem to subsist on takeaways, so I assumed that a lack of self-catering must be something associated with American geeks. This week's XKCD seems to confirm the point, but I fail to see why cookery should pose an insurmountable problem to any intelligent person.

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  155. Oh, and that Chili recipe (assuming you already have the spices) will cost <$10 and feed you for like 4-5 healthy meals.

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  156. I recently got a cookbook because having the laptop in my small kitchen is a little dangerous for the laptop. All the recipes are at Ian's level of difficulty or below.

    Seriously, one of my favorites is: buy a few big-ass mushrooms (portobellos or whatever). Use them as little plates for diced tomatoes, cheese and bits of bread on them. Put that in the oven, wait 10 minutes.

    Holy crap, not only do you have a healthy meal, it screams sophistication, because that's the power of mushrooms.

    Get laid randomly in the streets.

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  157. I don't get the latest comic. It's not funny, obviously, but there's no GOOMH to it. Cooking ranges from retardedly easy to "I'm not going to try this because I'm not well trained." Restaurant meals are expensive? What? For example, a lb of chicken is like 2.50, an onion is a dollar, some rice is like a dollar a lb., any basic sauce will run you a dollar or two a bottle, and with that you're going to make 3 meals for your average person at a cost of less than 7 bucks with a fair bit of leftover ingredients, exponentially cheaper if you buy most of your ingredients in bulk and use a freezer. What restaurant meal will run you cheaper than 10 bucks? Does Randall actually eat nothing but frozen dinners and McDonald's? Jesus, he's even more pitiful than I thought him to be; no one more than a year out of college has any excuse for not being skilled at at least the most basic foods.

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  158. Jesus christ Randy sucks at cooking. Randy. Randy. Come over to my place. I'll teach you how to make a stir fry for like a 2 dollar cost. It's okay. Normal people all do this.

    I don't think I've ever seen an XKCD comic that screams "I am not a functional human being who understands how the world works" any louder.

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  159. @Jasper

    "Randy. Randy. Come over to my place."

    Are you signing up to be in the next slashfic written by Ravenzomg?

    ReplyDelete
  160. No it's not exponential, 9:26. It's linear.

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  161. @Booty, you seem to have forgotten the added factor of "leftover potential" which makes the linearly cheaper one-shot cost become exponentially cheaper over time. Please take your poorly thought out nerd pandering elsewhere.

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  162. If you buy the ingredients for X dollars for one dinner and throw out 9/10 of it every day, you spend X dollars a day. If you save them, you spend X dollars every 10 days. (1/10)X is linear, biotch.

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  163. oh, guess what, I just went grocery shopping today. it was 4 bucks for a lb of chuck steak. FOUR FUCKING DOLLARS FOR 16 OZ OF STEAK THAT WILL TAKE ALL OF 30 MINUTES TO TOSS IN A PAN WITH OLIVE OIL AND SOME WORCESTERSHIRE, GARLIC, AND SEASONING

    what the fuck are you doing with your life Randall

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  164. Not that i know much about american food prices but i can't imagine that was a very good steak...

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  165. Could be a Denver steak, those are usually about $4/lb. They aren't bad if you get them cut from a real butcher instead of the derps at supermarkets. Certainly better cuts out there, but nobody's gonna eat a porterhouse every day.

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  166. When I first read it I just figured he was drawing a distinction between things like steak or omelets and "real" cooking.

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  167. But there's no "order out" or "make bison fricasse" dichotomy.

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  168. > I don't think I've ever seen an XKCD comic that screams
    > "I am not a functional human being who understands
    > how the world works" any louder.

    I wonder how it will be when Randy is 35 and wants to date women who grew out of adolescence.

    The worst part is, this comic comes from a man who is upset about people who can't or don't bother to learn to use computers with reasonable skill.

    Computers have been a significant part of most people's lives for 15 years now. You have been EATING for 25. What the fuck is your excuse?

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  169. It was a supermarket chuck steak, Louisiana prices. Low cuts because I'm a poor college student. If I had 12 bucks to blow on just steak, or I lived in Wisconsin or Idaho, I would've gotten a nice sirloin.

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  170. It's parody. It must be, Randall is too much of a genius to be this stupid. He's parodying the wasteful nature of modern US society.

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  171. @Booty: I assume that you have never actually been required to feed yourself on your own dime. You've evidently yet to discover the beauty of "Scraps-in-the-Fridge Sandwiches", "Questionable-Who-Would-Just-Throw-Out-Old-Fruit Salads", and "Shit-I-found-in-the-Cupboards Soup", which give you more free meals with different groceries already at your disposal. After your first "grocery batch" you probably won't have anything useful for "remainder meals", but after your second you'll definitely be able to combine stuff at remarkably limited cost [water or bread] to make a new meal, thus retracting the need to buy the materials for it. And the more grocery rounds you make, the more TYPES of scraps you have, and the more meals each time you can "skip" in favour of "Remainder meals". Sheer univariate mass is irrelevant, and even though the leftovers in this case are too negligible to constitute a meal by themselves and, by someone who doesn't care about costs would be disregarded as "waste", by making loose vegetables into a soup [at the cost of water and spices which, for all intents and purposes, are good for a generation at $3 or so for like... 10 years, who are we kidding] or putting together old cheese and fruit at the price of a day-old bun [25 cents], you make a meal.

    If you are spoiled enough to never have to live through such destitution, all the power to you. But if you're ever there, tell me how it goes. =)

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  172. Uhh... that's still linear. Something doesn't stop being linear and become exponential just because it was linear on a longer scale.

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  173. Actually, I prefer the xkcd version to the Oatmeal one. You get through the flowchart in less time, and the joke isn't any more shitty.

    The xkcd forums about this are great. All of the people giving Randall a high five have either never actually been in a grocery store long enough to see the prices of fresh produce and don't realise that it's not ALL expensive gourmet stuff, or they live on a college campus.

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  174. Rob, do stop trying to present yourself as erudite and intelligent. You've been fooling only yourself.

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  175. I'd love to understand what shitty logic is Randall operating to say that buying his own ingredients is more expensive than ordering out. That's economically impossible! If that was true, restaurants would be doomed!

    You know what? Fuck it. Let's not care about the logic of this comic. I think the most amusing part of this is how Randall inadvertently paints himself like a functionally retarded human being and people actually relate to him. Next on xkcd: the "Going Potty" chart!

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  176. @Functionally incapable nerds: If the only relationships you have in your life as a result of cooking is the linear/exponential relationship between cost and output, you're doing it wrong.

    If you're dead before you have to buy more nutmeg, I'd consider that pretty exponential. And Exp + Lin = Exp, right? Anywho, that's for you F.I. nerds to deal with. Consider the bait laid down.

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  177. @Fuckwadzomg: Oh noes, the mighty, untouchable Raven has put his foot down and pwned the anons. When he opens his mouth, everyone listens, dammit. He is a god among men.

    Buying one thing of nutmeg and dying isn't exponential. Assuming the initial cost of buying spices and wasting them is linearly dependent on the number of years you live, which it is, your decrease is from a linear growth to a constant, which is not an exponential change.

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  178. Nutmeg is exponential in the same way that pi is 3. i.e. when it gets right down to it, it doesn't fucking matter.

    Cooking is a lot more efficient money wise, the time you save by eating out every day is negligible.

    Programmers meal:

    Step 1: Throw shit and nutmeg in a crock pot.
    Step 2: Wait ... go write some perl or something
    Step 3: It's Delicious!!
    Step 4: Leftovers!!

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  179. X^2 is exponential, what the fuck are you guys talking about nutmeg and math? There's no goddamn function where F = cos(x)*nutmeg^death

    Neither is there a fucking y = mx+ nutmeg

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  180. Crock pots are awesome. There's nothing like throwing in some meat and vegetables and just letting it SIT, and then coming home to a good meal.

    I agree with all of you that there's no way cooking for yourself is more expensive. Using half a bag of frozen beans ($1.50), half a bag of potatoes ($2.00), and a couple of pork chops ($4.00), I made a meal that fed two AND had leftovers. That's $7.50 for three servings, or $2.50 a serving. How in the world is that more expensive than a restaurant meal? Heck, how is the cost of the whole thing more than a restaurant meal? And of course, there's no "Yes" option for "Does it taste good?" Way to suck, Randall.

    As an aside, the leftover equation is indeed linear (unless you leave it long enough and consider mold to be edible).

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  181. Also, I have to question this matter of tossing out old ingredients. Spices and dry goods will last forever. Shit you've already had to cook, or stuff like dairy and meat, keeps flawlessly in a freezer for up to a year.

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  182. 1. Solve

    d^2 nutmeg/d x^2 + 5dnutmeg/dx + 7nutmeg = cumin(x)

    for boundary conditions nutmeg(0) = 0, nutmeg'(0) = 1

    [6 marks]

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  183. X² is not exponential; it's quadratic.

    That differential equation looks fun, Ann, but I just remembered I have to practice throwing all my possessions out the window in case of a fire.

    Captcha: coblair. Some strawbairry coblair sounds pretty good right now.

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  184. I ran that equation through excel solver a few times and this came out as the optimal solution:

    X: Add to Mulled wine
    D: Get high from eating nutmeg

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  185. @Ann Apolis

    Is this right? I haven't touched differential equations for a year now, so forgive me for turning to Wolfram.

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  186. you completely forgot the right hand side

    admittedly i did not provide a definition of cumin(x) but still it is probably something other than f:x->0

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