Comic 536: Mind of Munroe

I need to start by saying that Randall and I clearly agree on one thing: Carlos Mencia sucks. He sucks donkey balls, in fact. He steals jokes like nobody's business. He pretends he's Mexican and not half-German half-Honduran. And mostly importantly, he's criminally unfunny. Unlike xkcd, I'm not aware of any good stuff at all that's come out of Mind of Mencia (though, to be fair, unlike xkcd, my hatred has kept me from trying to consume more of his work). So...yeah. SUCKS.

Anyway, I think this comic probably breaks the streak of "comics randall munroe draws that make me want to punch people in the face." That's not to say I like it, just that it doesn't fill me with rage. So...good job? I don't know. The set up line seemed to set up a more intelligent joke, and then the punchline reveals that it's not going to say anything special about science or space elevators or the wonderfully quotable Arthur C Clarke. It's just "Carlos Mencia Isn't Funny." Which is all well and good on its own, but even more so than the last comic this feels outdated. Wikipedia tells me that Mind of Mencia has already ended so I wonder why now we get a joke making fun of it. There's still unfunny stuff out there (for example, Will Ferrell is still making movies and Dane Cook is still talking) but I think of Carlos Mencia as being so 2005.

Lastly, for a humorist to make jokes about other humorists being bad seems like a really tricky line to walk. Who among the xkcd haters out there didn't change the last panel so that it suggested disseminating xkcd to stop laughter? I know I did. And Randall has been known to commit the occasional act of unrepentant plagiarism too.

Credit where it's due: I like the art in this comic. Could have used some in the second panel but whatever. Stolen-from-the-forums discussion question: Is the art supposed to be (yet another) tribute to Calvin and Hobbes? I say...no. But maybe you disagree?

PS- Randy has a new blog post up but it's so damn boring it took me three tries to read it all and I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Comic 535: xkcd is not a political comic, no sir

If I may quote Randy's endorsement of Barack Obama (and by the way Blogger, it's really time to add those two words to your spellcheck dictionary), way back when he was just Senator Obama - "I’m a political junkie, but I’ve largely kept that out of xkcd (other than occasional cracks about science and net-related issues)." And later: "I’m disabling comments because I don’t want xkcd to become a place for ongoing political argument, anger, and hurt feelings. The internet has enough political discussion threads."

Now I know that this is not the first time Randy has broken his own rule - for example, making fun of Sarah Palin, looking to 2012, and That Stupid Mr. Hat Goes To Washington thing. But this one is nothing more than plain old topical commentary. Nothing wrong with that in principle - the Daily Show and the Onion do it well - but a week of lag time is a little too much. The whole incident - which I don't think anyone, anywhere, considers a big deal - seems much too tiny to warrant making a joke off of. It's not like this comic says anything more than "ha ha, roberts fucked up in front of a whole lot of people." Oh sure there's all that "what if Randy had done the presidential oath" but that's not the point. The humor comes from Roberts fucking up (if you don't believe me, imagine the exact same comic had everything gone fine - or, for that matter, change "presidential" to "vice-presidential" and "john roberts" to "john paul stevens"). No humor there.

This is also another comic where we lose a lot by not having anything more than stick-figure art. I think that a nice picture of the Capitol and a throng of people behind them would have made the comic at least more interesting to look at, and would not have left us with the sense that these are just two (white) guys standing in a bleak room somewhere. However - I think that had Randall made Obama's skin brown but not had any facial features, it would probably have ended up just looking creepier. Are eyes really too much to ask? I can ever draw them if you want.

This is a textbook example of a comic that will not stand the test of time. It's topic is pettier than usual, more specific than usual, and quite frankly, makes me think Randall should just stay our of political humor altogether. People think that you can make fun of politics by going "ha ha, isn't this person stupid??" but it needs to be so much more than that. At the very least, "ha ha, isn't this person a giant hypocrite??" is a good place to start, but Randall "I'm not going to put politics into my webcomic" Munroe is hardly the person to start talking about hypocrisy.

Comic 534: A Fitting End to a Terrible Week

DON'T YOU GET IT? you don't get the joke, people? It's so obvious! Look! Skynet! 999999999! Fitness...something! Guys it's a brilliant joke.

Ok fine, I'll admit it, I went to the forums on this one. No idea what the hell he was talking about. But basically the idea is: There's this movie called Terminator. Maybe you know it? And in it, robots take over the world! But they did it by evolving from not-taking-over-the-world robots. So Randy tells us this important message: You should tell your computer programs not to take over the world! If one of your computers turns into Skynet, that takes over the world, you should say, "No! Bad computer. Do not take over the world and kill all the people. That is bad." But the way that you tell this to the computer is by using that big number, the one with the nines. In this case, that big number means "Bad!"

To top it off, he ends by caging his joke as advice, so we get to have some of that typical Randall Munroe "oh it's nice that you are trying but here's what I know, as an expert 24 year old programmer. I know what you should do."

also: HERE'S A TIP: WHEN YOU NEED TO HAVE A GIANT ARROW POINTING TO YOUR JOKE, MAYBE IT'S TOO SUBTLE!

Most forum people had no idea what was going on. Randall, when your audience is this confused, you are doing something wrong. Oh and to this commentor: Thanks, you are totally correct. But add a link here next time!

This has been one of the saddest, most terrible weeks in xkcd in about as long as I can remember. This comic plus the last three (ok, so week and a day or two) have all been unmitigated comedic disasters. Two of them are lazy one-panelers, two refer to old nerdy movies and don't say much else, one refers to a dumb joke, one is just complaining about how Randy wants this one computer they used to have, sounding like a grumpy old man telling you that when he was your age, a computer was really a computer.

But there is hope! I think this week may be the day when we look back and say that it all changed. Several ardent xkcd-defenders have told me that even they are starting to wonder what's wrong. Oh they just call it an off week, but at least they are seeing the beginning of a problem. The audience on the forums is upset. The number of people who are getting to the website by typing "xkcd sucks" into google is growing rapidly. Soon, soon perhaps we will begin to see more and more revolt against the terrible sludge emanating from xkcd.com. And when that angry swarm of disenchanted readers gets too big, perhaps xkcd will stop publishing, Randy will get a job in some office somewhere, the average comedy level of the internet will rise ever so slightly, and we can all sit back, relax, and have a toast to a job well done. Soon, I tell you!

Comic 533: Comic Hell

So super-commenter and guest blogger Thomas was very angered by this comic. His phrase, in an e-mail to me that I hope he didn't think was private, called it "pandering to the point of self-mockery" and I think I agree. This comic is Randy saying "boo hoo, I liked this product and now it's gone. boo hoooooo also sony suxors"

I really have nothing else to say. This comic is just simple and dumb. "My product was great, whoever stopped making it should go to hell." xkcd needs to stop being a website that just complains about technology products that Randy doesn't like.

And for anyone who laughed at the tired old "someone is pretending to be me ON THE INTERNET" joke just know that it's from here: Bash.org, # 5775. Remember when xkcd used to be about new jokes, not just copying another person's joke and going "hey, look, this funny thing happened to me also!" And seriously, how labored can you get? "I hope he doesn't get revenge by messing with what I type!" Why not just draw a cartoon bad guy going "Gosh, I hope a piano doesn't fall on my head today!"

Anyway, a trusted friend who usually likes xkcd a lot more than me has told me that the next comic is just godawful, so I am going to stop writing and read it now. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Comic 532: Stop me if you've heard this before...

OK so here is the thing with the dick jokes: I'm just going to write a post about the general concept and list the xkcd examples, which aren't a particularly common thing but they are just so pathetic, so totally-desperate-for-humor that they seriously piss me off, to use a phrase which I realize now is a bit unfortunate in this context.

So in addition to all that other dick joke crap, which I've written about before but not as thoroughly as I plan to soon, there are some serious problems.

Now I don't know how many of you understand the context here, which is an old joke that is told more or less well on this forum post. We know that the comic is referring to the joke, because if you don't know about the joke, the logical conclusion is that he asked for a "miniature pianist" and then received a "miniature penis" which would in theory replace the current one. That of course would make the final line, from the woman, very confusing indeed.

So we know that the point of this comic is to refer to the old "Twelve Inch Pianist" joke. And the problem that that leads to is the same one we had with the horrible Bill-Watterson-would-be-rolling-in-his-grave-except-that-he's-still-alive comic from last week: All it does is refer to the previous funny thing (assuming you think the piano joke is funny) without adding anything new at all to it. What's the point? That he went the other direction, asking for a pianist and getting a penis not the other way around? That's not the point of the Old Joke. That's basically just a pun - "pianist" sounds like "penis." The end. What's the joke here? Same thing. Worse though, because it's not original and isn't even pretending.

Also: Using the shot in panel two for scale, assuming a vaguely normal sized human head, that grand piano is maybe 6 to 8 inches long, and the person playing it would be maybe 2 or 3 inches long, tops. So if he asked for anything larger than 2-3 inches, the little fellow would not be able to play the piano, and if he were 2-3 inches or less that girl at the end would not be so impressed. This actually bothers me almost as much as that other stuff.

Anyway, there are so many things wrong with this comic in so many very different ways. It sucks in all sorts of interesting ways.