holy crap dudes, let's win this xkcd contest!

APPARENTLY there is a contest that some important computer people are having that involves completing the last line of an xkcd comic. Here it is:

Click it for a link to the site with the rules and stuff. The deadline is in like three days so enter, enter enter! How cool would it be if one of us won? It would be very cool, is the answer.

Comment with any ideas you think of / submit officially. I shall choose my own winner who shall win Fame and Pride and nothing else.

And if one of you gets to be a finalist I will work my ass off to get you thousands and thousands of votes so you win.

My ideas:
"I'm trying to figure out if your bitchiness is genetic."
"I wanted to tell her you were pregnant. By the way, you're pregnant."
"Why the hell isn't my hat black?"
"Oh, nothing...just warning her that her daughter's funeral was scheduled for next thursday..."
"AH WAS PROGRAMMMMIN' IN PYTHON!! PS WE HAVE QUIRKY SEX"
"Did you know that the Palm company makes thousands of high quality technology products, all available on their website, www.palm.com? It's true!"
"To remind her, once again, that you're the stupider sibling."
"Because the current state of mobile communications is....adequate."

Eh, these aren't all so good. I like #5. What do you guys have?

update: I forgot to write about how utterly stupid this whole thing is. How uncharacteristic of me. But yeah - the comic is basically finished as is, with no added punchline (and is actually better than most of the current comics). It is really, really difficult to imagine a winner to this contest that actually adheres to the rules being even vaguely amusing:

--It "may not be offensive" according to the details, yet it is fundamentally a your-mom joke. Good luck.
--You can't "invade upon the publicity rights or privacy of any person or otherwise infringe upon any person’s or entity’s intellectual property, personal or proprietary rights" so throw all those ghostbusters references out the window.
--"Use of the Palm logo or any intellectual property owned by or licensed to Palm is prohibited" and they're the freaking company sponsoring the contest.
--Most limiting of all, "it should convey...something about the state of mobile communications." Woo, lots of room for some kind of cell-phones-give-you-cancer joke, I guess.

And of course you need to have this HILARIOUS PUNCHLINE appeal to the judges that Palm hires.

OH ALSO the entries are judged as so: "(i) Humor/Originality – 25%; (ii) clarity of Expression including spelling & grammar – 25%; (iii) Relevance to broader Palm community – 25%; (iv) Appropriateness to Contest Theme" Good luck with number iii there.

(incidentally I did send in my maximum allowed number of entries, namely one, and I tried to make it actually fit their guidelines to actually try to win. But it's so stupid I am not going to write it here.)

Clearly, this contest is destined for total and utter failure, and I am very excited for it.

Contest Winners! Finally!

SO! more than 4 months after I announce this contest, I finally have me some winners! Sweet. The Finalists were, as you may recall, Jason, Way Walker, Dan, and Fred (click their names to see their entries).

About 65 people voted in the contest, which I think is pretty good. The winner was, by a fairly good margin, DAN!

congratulations dan. I will be e-mailing you about getting your prize. GUYS: do you remember what the prizes are? Dan won $100 at Topatoco, that is pretty good. I strongly regret promising people that much money.

The honorable mentions were JASON and WAY WALKER, who will each get $20 gift certificates to Topatoco. PS WAY WALKER YOU HAVE TO E-MAIL ME.

The loser was Fred. Sorry fred. I don't know what to say to make you feel better. It is really my fault for picking 4 finalists.

Here lets all look at the winning comic together!

I really like this comic. I think it makes fun of xkcd (not a requirement for the contest) but does it in the context of making a good joke. All the elements of the punchline are set up in the comic, but you still don't see the punchline coming (unless you are way smarter than me, I guess). It also uses a lot of comics that had just come out when this contest was around, which I think is nice. It heavily recontextualized them though, so it wasn't just "make fun of comic X using the art from comic X" it was more like "make fun of the whole xkcd process, using a punchline related to comic X and art from comics A, B, C, D etc."

The final panel, presented as an end result comic on its own, is of course lame, but that's the point. As the final panel of the whole thing, though, I think it's quite funny and a great, tidy ending to a massive comic.

WELL DONE DAN!

Did people like this contest? Do you want more in the future? What if I am too poor to pay for nice prizes, and just have cheap or nonexistent prizes?

Contest Finalists! Finally!

Remember how about two years ago I put advertisements on my website, in order to grow fabulously wealthy, and then I was like "IT'S OK I"LL GIVE YOU GUYS SOME OF MY RICHES" and decided I would do it with a contest? No? You don't remember? Ask your grandparents, they may be old enough to remember.

Anyway, now it is thousands of years later and I have finally gotten around to picking some finalists! YES.

First off, I was surprised by how many of the entries referred specifically to xkcd sucking. i made the requirements of the contest really broad, and I was expecting more general, non-xkcdsucks specific humor. That said, most of the good ones were in this category, so you'll see it well represented in the four finalists.

OK let's look at the people who could be winners! THEY ARE:

JASON, with this better version of the rock climbing comic,
WAY WALKER, with a far, far improved version of Stephen and Me,
DAN, with this comic about how to make a joke,
FRED, for turning xkcd against itself.

Remember, one of these four fine people will win a $100 TopatoCo gift certificate and two others will win $20 ones. One of them will win nothing. OH WELL. I could have made some more finalists, so that more people would feel bad about losing together, or fewer, so that every finalist would win something, but hey, look at that, I didn't.

To vote, send me an e-mail with the subject line "I KNOW A WINNER WHEN I SEE ONE, AND {blank} IS A WINNER" with the {blank} replaced by the name, as written above, of the person you want to vote for. So if you wanted Imaginary Finalist Bill to win, you'd e-mail me with "I KNOW A WINNER WHEN I SEE ONE, AND BILL IN A WINNER" and then your vote will be counted by the magical monkeys at gmail. Put whatever you want in the actual e-mail, i maybe won't read those.

You can certainly vote for yourself, tell your friends to vote for you, etc. You have till next sunday (may 9th, 2010) at midnight to vote. I'll announce winners soon after that, unless it turns out again that i am a terrible liar.

ALSO, I should mention some folks who came close but didn't make the cut - they win nothing but eternal fame and glory (but no money or anything):

Edison, for this,
David, for this.
Anonymous, for this. [this was not posted on the official contest page, plus i don't know who wrote it. otherwise it would have been a finalist. SUCKS TO BE YOU, anon!]

Also, the single worst comic entered was this one, from an anon who thought it was so good he posted it twice!


i hope that you enjoyed this contest, thank you

official xkcdsucks contest thread

HEY GUYS. It is finally here. I made enough money off this site's advertising to have a contest with SERIOUS PRIZES.

This post is where you should post a link to your entries. Also post your e-mail and whatever name you want to use (I'd say anything but "anonymous" should work fine). If you don't post your e-mail address I can't get in touch with you if you win, so you really should do it. Note: this post is just for contest entries. There's this thread for commentary. So don't post anything but entries! I will probably delete anything else (this is just so that it's easy for all of us to go through them all quickly.)

A rundown of contest rules etc:


What: Entries are remixed xkcd comics, using your own text (or xkcd text, whatever you want) and entirely xkcd art. No other limitations, so you should have plenty of material to work with. If it's not clear that your art is from xkcd, we may ask you to provide comic #s where you got your source material. Remember: The best entries will use the humor-sans font!
UPDATE: Just so you guys know, you can enter something you made a while ago, and even something you've linked to before here. It does not have to have been made expressly for this contest.

How to win: The finalists will be chosen by me and me alone, probably about 5 entries. After that, I'll make a poll and you guys can all vote in it and that is how we will choose the winner and runners up.

Prizes: The top winner will get a $100 TopatoCo gift certificate and the two runners up will get $20 TopatoCo gift certificates. Both of these are negotiable, so if you win, we can work out another prize if you want (but I retain the right to go "fuck it, man" and just give you the damn gift certificates).

Deadlines: This thread will stay open for 2 weeks (ie, until the end of Friday March 19th) until about March 28th or so. I'll take a little while to decide on finalists, and then I'll put up the poll for winners a little after that.

Sounds good? Remember: Post links here, post commentary on this thread.

xkcdsucks contest! finally!

GUYS! i promised you this like ages ago and I am finally going to do it. This is in exchange for putting ads on the site - it's something I still feel a little weird about so I wanted to give something back to you. I want to give you PRIZES. in exchange for WINNING MY CONTEST.

The contest itself is simple. We all love xkcd edits, so it's an xkcd edit contest. You enter the contest by submitting a comic you've made, using only already-existing xkcd comics as your material. You can't add any of your own art - only your own text. Probably, winners won't just be people who take generic stick figures and make them have a funny conversation, unrelated to the original work. After all, this is xkcdsucks - we like to make fun of xkcd. Doesn't mean you have to, but it does mean we'll have a soft spot for it. No length restrictions either. But if you make it long, make it worthwhile. Make it worthwhile. And enter as many times as you'd like.

How to submit entries: In 2 weeks I'll open entries for posting. There'll be an official post that I write where all comments should include links to entries, and probably a related post where we can talk about the entries. We'll keep that open for maybe a week or two - so get started now if you'd like.

Prizes: Prizes are contingent on google actually sending me the money it owes me. (UPDATE: this has happened, SWEET) If complications arise, I may not be able to offer Fabulous Prizes but rather Modest Ones. Hopefully this will not dissuade you. If google does what it promised, there will be three prizes, totalling $140. (probably that will be a $100 first prize and two $20 runner up prizes) (meaning, a prize worth that much, I will probably not just send you cash - probably some assortment of TopatoCo products). UPDATE: i changed the prize amounts slightly to be nicer round numbers. Prizes are TopatoCo gift certificates.

Pickin' a winner: This will work one of two ways: Either I'll set up a poll and you guys can pick finalists, and then I'll pick a winner and the runners up, or I'll pick finalists and you pick the winners and runners up. It will be one of those two. I haven't decided yet.

Questions? Please ask. I'll update this post as needed with clarifications.



AND REMEMBER - THE BEST XKCD EDITS USE THE HUMOR-SANS FONT!

crappy xkcd contest finalists!

Remember that crappy contest where you had to finish an xkcd comic? I sure as hell do! They've posted the finalists, and while mine is not among them, they are still very, very bad:

Let's see who could make the best tasteful joke about mobile communications:

Terral Artis: 80% of my calls are to your mom because the other 20% are to your sister! They both have Palm Centros and we always stay connected.

--This falls into the "no joke, just an ad for a palm product" category. I would also say it's so bad it's funny, and I like to think Terral meant it that way.

Aaron Williams: Those are all incoming, She thinks you're having some kind of medical emergency whenever you text her something like "OMG LOL ROTFL"

---This is a "ha ha, old people do not understand the slang that we young people employ!" joke, and it feels so very old. Again, with the terrible constraints of the contest rules, I do not blame Mr. Williams.

Chris Routhe: Well I would have texted her, but I ran out of monthly texts.

--With the joke being....?

David Brown: Because I was using her as a engagement ring consultant. Now it is all ruined! RUINED I SAY!

--One of the better ones, because of the evil-genius'-scheme way he gets that last sentence in there.

Dirk Joseph: 2 reasons 1) I’m showing her how to use her new Palm and every 10 minutes I remember something I forgot to tell her 2) Because 100% would be stalking.

--The saddest one of them all. If he had just said "Because 100% would be stalking" this would be by far the funniest of the bunch. It technically answers the question without answering the real question, and it stays as a "your mom" joke without trying to innocent-ify the comic the way the "oh well i was helping her, i am not actually having sex with her as you may be imagining" comics do. But 1) totally ruins the whole thing. Not funny, not trying, deflates the energy of 2).

Joe Tunon: Have you noticed the other 20% are your Dad? Mark may not be on to us, but your parents are!

--Eh.

John Murray: Um – you say I know nothing about you, well, I’m learning. Your profile says little, your blog says less, but your Mom said a lot, including about that ONE TIME in college – Did you really?!?!

--Eh

Jonathan Esten: Well, she's got some good advice for dealing with you when you freak out and she's the only person we know without a QWERTY smartphone and unlimited texting! ... And from the look on your face, I think I need to call her right now. Can I have my phone back?

--Too long. Some ok ideas but also some stupid unneeded words (what does unlimited texting have to do with any of this?).

Mark Zimmerman: Because she actually thinks my Treo is cool, and never scolds me when I take it out during dinner! There's nothing like a woman who appreciates hi-tech! Great lady, that mother of yours…

--If Mark is implying with "she actually thinks my treo is cool" that most people would not think such a thing - and I think he is implying that - than this wins lots of subversion points.

Rizwan Parvez: If you'd kept up on my Facebook profile, this wouldn't have been such a surprise...

--This originally said "If you'd kept upon my facebook..." which I thought was charmingly off grammar. As it is...it is pretty lame.

---------
If any of these strike your fancy, you can vote for them, I guess. Instructions here. And of course, I'm still waiting for submissions so I can pick my favorite of your final lines, which of course do not need to conform to any standard of taste or decency.

============
update, 1/1/2009: OK I picked my favorites!



Ramsey, with: "81%. I like square numbers. Isn't math awesome?"

Thomas, with: "The Palm Centros has the most powerful vibration on the market, so every night after 10..."

Vlad, with: "I'm trying to tell her not to to buy any Palm products, they're complete pieces of shit."

And our big super special winner...

DoubleBlackbird, with: "Oh man you just worked out that percentage in your head! You are the most perfect woman ever and can I have a bottle of your sweat because I want to sniff it and fantasise."

Maybe you will all win prizes! (ha ha, you will not win anything). EXCELLENT WORK PEOPLE i think maybe I will have to think of some clever contest to do on a somewhat regular basis.

Comic 689: Robo Trumble

Did this comic confuse you? Perhaps it is because you are not a high school student. I guess we should start with the explanation, which would be obvious to even the most simple minded high school student with an interest in robotics and a knowledge of robotics competitions.

The title, which you thought was just mis-capitalized, in fact refers to the FIRST Competition, though besides the title of the comic, which just has the word "First" which is a word that can mean many things, there is no other overt reference to the competition.

SO the idea is that the robots are competing in some type of robo-sport, and rather than create a robot which follows the rules, this robot destroys the others with water while protecting itself. It is cheating, or being clever about the rules, depending on your point of view. See the robot is really two robots in one; the tall one, which sets off the sprinkler conveniently located directly above the stadium, and the short one, which is basically a normal game-winning robot, but with an umbrella.

This could be any of a number of robotics competitions, but for the name of the comic, telling us it is a particular contest for high schoolers. Now why on earth would he choose a particular contest? Why limit it? I have one theory, with which you may agree or not, but here it is: some people, upon reading this comic, may feel a special bond with it, because they participate in that particular contest. These people are, of course, all high-schoolers (advanced mathematics my ass). But the point is that they wouldn't have that joy of recognition had a particular competition been named. even though there is nothing specific about the comic that relates to the FIRST competition! Astounding.

Moving on to the comic's idea in general, I liked Ar-Pharazôn's comment about it:

Well, I entered a few robotics competitions too (not this one) and by the end of week one, everyone on our team had shared a billion variations of this "joke" with the rest. Robots that get the other one wet, robots that flood the whole building, robots that carry explosive payloads for kamikaze attacks, robots that have guns to shoot the other team, blah blah. Then we figured that we should stop dicking around and get to work.

It's true. The idea of drowning other teams' robots is clever, but no more or less clever than any of a dozen other get-around-the-rules ideas (though many FIRST fans have, in fact, listed the numerous rules that this breaks). In that sense it reminds me a lot of the egg drop competition comic.

AND LAST, points to the anonymous commenter who suggested that "the law of FIRST robotics" would be a far more clever name for this comic.

Comic 713: Space Adventures

There are a lot of comics that xkcd makes that ask the bold question: What would happen if certain people were replaced by young, sarcastic, smug, leet haxoring people closely modeled on Randall Munroe's ideal view of himself?

For example, there was the time he did it with the princess bride, the theoretical traveling salesman, Faust, etc. There are many others, I am sure you can think of them.

Anyway, today's comic asks, what if this ideal sarcastic nerd figure were in space?? Clearly, the answer to this question is that they would mess around with their internet connection for a while, until they were able to get some advertisement to accidentally say something illogical. Right?

That is the point of the comic - these ads are clearly lying, and if you have an unusual IP address you can make them say silly things like this. What I don't see is how that constitutes "messing with advertisers". I imagine that behind every internet ad is a large greasy man in a small dark room, with piles of money everywhere. This man does not give a shit if some sarcastic 20-something astronaut figures this out. Why would he? The point is to get people to the website. Is this astronaut more or less likely to go to the website because of this? Who knows? Probably it makes no difference. Probably someone who knows these ads are BS is not likely to visit the website anyway.

Anyways, in my imagination, I see the guy from this comic being really proud of himself for the rest of the mission and no one else on earth or near earth giving a fuck ever or even thinking about it again.

=======================
GUYS: Perhaps you have forgotten that my CONTEST is still ongoing? I have decided to keep the contest open for entries for an additional 10 days or so, because I am arbitrary and cruel like that. But also so that I could remember to put in on reddit and hopefully attract some more competitors. so upvote it, you people.

=======================
I think boy wonder Person #1 is going to guest post in a week. Just so you are all aware.
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I love Kate Beaton's comics and frequently remind all of you of that fact, and I love her fat pony comics, as do all reasonable people, and so I was of course excited to hear that I would soon be able to buy one. But if that little dude actually costs $50 as some people are reporting, why, that is just crazy! I do not see how anyone would buy that unless they were really just trying to donate to the site. I know they are hard to make and are made by hand, but that doesn't mean people will want to pay large amounts for them! Well maybe I am wrong, maybe everyone will want to buy them.

ATTENTION MS. BEATON: If you send me a free Fat Pony, I will be more than happy to write a review of your product for this blog. It will get lots of attention and I will link to your store.

Comic 761: In Too Deep

This is one of those comics with a lot of little problems but nothing big. Whether the little ones add up enough to seriously piss you off is, of course, up to you. You can imagine my own feelings. I guess the only logical and appropriate way to explain is to just list the problems:

--One, terrible use of space. Just terrible. The huge amount of white space makes the comic extremely off balance and irritating to read. Panel 5 could easily have come at the end of a row. Yes, it's true that more time has passed between panel 4 and 5 than between any other panels, but that's not really a problem. If you are going to separate the last one out like that - and you can, that's fine - you need to figure out a nicer way to do it. At the very very least, center it. Probably you should make it a bit wider too, and perhaps taller to match. You could also have the first two panels on one row, the 3rd and 4th below that, and the final panel below that.

A smaller width for this comic would have the additional advantage of letting the caption - which refers, of course, to the entire comic's action - take up the width of the whole comic.

--the towel on the stick figure looks really, really weird. I assume it is a towel, actually, I should probably point out that they also might be pants.

--Here, I'll switch to saying something nice. People have pointed out that it appears the cut-off #4 on the first panel's list says "bee eating contest." I find this line quite funny. I think if I had been editing this comic I would have said to make Bee Eating Contest the first problem, and get into the funny sorts of situations that would bring up. Snake bite is irrelevant enough to be weird but not inherently funny enough to make for a good comic.

--It's another lame "what if a human mind was operated like a computer could be?" scenario. And the answer is: "it would lead to hilarious consequences, all of which would be hilarious!"

--dialog in the last panel. Both of them. There's no shock in the woman's voice - her question a about his preparedness isn't even until her second sentence - and her first sentence ("I'm here to pick you up") is one that in real life would be so obvious as to not need stating. Even "Wait - why aren't you dressed for our date?" would make more sense.

As to his dialog, "By LD 50" is needless nerdery. Toss it.

--Lastly, the art details. First, check out the classic example of xkcd floaty-head syndrome in panel 2 (did we ever come up with a name for this symptom? I have forgotten). But more importantly, notice that the hair changes between panels 3 and 4. Given the towel, the fact that he's preparing for a date, and the general mess that his hair is in, I assumed, as did many people, that the hair simply had been wet, perhaps in some kind of a shower, and then dried as the time went on. That's fine: Standard, presumably dry, xkcd hair is just to have nothing. By switching to that, the comic was, I assume, trying to show that time had passed. Good! That's a clever way to do so, without calling attention to it too much. I was almost shocked, actually, given how badly Randall usually does the telling and not the showing (see, for example, panel 5 of this very comic).

And then, as you probably know, something changed. Namely, the comic changed. Randall went and made some edits and reposted the "fixed" comic, never, as far as I know, admitting he has made a mistake (this has happened a few times with typos and such, usually updated on the sly and never admitting that things were any other way). Luckily, our own Ann Apolis saved a copy of the original that you can see above. The new one is, of course, on the xkcd site linked to through the image above.

Obviously, having to go back and update any comic is not a good sign - it's a sign of hasty work, not checked before it was published. But in this case, I think there's an even weirder problem, which is that the comic was better before.

Think about it - there are, in the revised comic, two options:
--Lots of time passed, and his hair is just always like that
(this is odd because almost no male characters in xkcd have ever had hair, and when they did, it was for a specific and clear reason, usually to identify them as unique)
--No time passed, and his hair is still wet
(this is odd, because the humor of the comic is supposed to come from the fact that he has wasted a lot of time on doing the wrong sort of research)

See, when I say things like "there are things about xkcd that are objectively wrong," this is what I mean. The way he's constructed his comic has clear and identifiable problems. It's not like it's impossible for him to do it right - after all, he did it right first, before he changed it. Yes, some people were confused by "what happened to his hair??" but those people should have thought harder.

Contest commentary!

I figured that because all of you are a talkative bunch, you'd want a place to discuss the entries, post ideas or critiques, etc. Enter the contest by posting a link on this post, don't post it here. Full rules and details are there also.

HAVE AT IT, FUCKERS

Comic 742: Horror Story

"The call is coming from inside the house!" is one of the most cliched lines in American scary story culture. How cliched is it? The very first Simpsons' Halloween Special features Lisa ending a story with it (Bart is not scared in the least). That's from nearly 20 years ago. Now I'm not trying to say that Randall is actually trying to be scary here - of course he's not - but I'm just saying that all he's done is take something incredibly cliched and add some nerd cred to it.

I actually think the easiest way to explain why this bothers me is to do it with a different medium telling the same joke.

This comic is nearly identical to the shirt which reads "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" (a slogan thinkgeek likes so much they sell not only the shirt, but a bumper sticker and a doormat too), which I dislike equally. All it's doing is taking a word, "home," and replacing it with a computer nerd phrase that essentially means the same thing. Wearing this shirt is akin to saying "I know that 127.0.0.1 means 'home' " -and nothing more- and laughing at it means saying "So do I," and no more. In short, it's a way to signal to others that you have a piece of knowledge. Nothing else. As such, I find it incredibly obnoxious.

[a quick note: contrary to what some people will say, you do not need to know exactly what 192.168/16 means in order to get this joke. the "it's coming from inside the house" line is so strong a cliche that any reasonable person, like myself, can figure out what 192.168/16 means exactly]

All that aside, this is the second comic in the last three that has cooler than usual art - it doesn't make up for bad jokes, of course, but it's better than the same thing with lousy art. I hope it represents a new direction for the comic.

i feel like I should link to this old comic but I can't quite say why, besides the fake-horror-story connection.

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Problem Sleuth review should be up later tonight.

Does anyone know if you can still buy gift certificates at TopatoCo? I know you used to be able to but I can't find it anymore. I am trying to get contest prizes but it is difficult. I may have to switch to some other form of prize.

Comic 620: Crashing Back To Earth

i still don't know if i will care enough to make this a regular thing. But - as long as I'm here -

1) i thought the newest SMBC Theater, "Ultimate Staring Contest" was better than the first four - I was astounded at how much they made the live-action skit feel like a cartoon (it was the labels on everything that made me think this, then, spoiler alert, the exploding head). But I thought it was funny, in cartoony, loony-tunes sort of way.

2) i took a picture for you guys. Specifically, for Amanda. Amanda: I don't know why you want to rebel against me but consider this picture a plea for you to stick around.

update: Hm, Dragon whatever hasn't sent me a post yet. Come on, Dragon whatever! I'm going to assume he is dead, and, rather than rely on the kindness of strangers, like last time, I'm just going to write the damn post myself. I'll add yours if you send it though. if you are even alive.

so what do we have today.

Those of you who read this blog regularly probably already reacted to this comic in the same way that I did: with the simple phrase, "picto-blog!" Click that link for a full explanation, but in short, we've noticed that sometimes, Randall Munroe has genuinely interesting ideas. But unfortunately, he does not run an Interesting Idea Blog, Illustrated With Pictures. He runs a webcomic, and so he takes these ideas and he jams jokes onto the ends of them, and it just ends up as a big old pile of fail.

And today is no exception. Testing out possible flight conditions on other planets/moons is awesome. I can see that easily. But like he so often does, the punchline is fucked up quite badly.

The joke, as I see it, is in the similarity between ancient greek guy Icarus trying to fly, and falling and failing, and Our Hero, trying to fly, and failing, and specifically, the physical humor of the modern day Icarus having his work (not to mention himself) come crashing down to earth. That the well read reader makes this connection in his head is the source of laughter, if such laughter occurs.

The issue is that this connection should come after you read the end of the comic. The punchline should not be in the third-to-last panel. For those people who did not get the reference to Icarus, the joke is merely in the "HEAT LAMP" shot, which is also not the last panel. The last panel that we get is the dude falling; which really is just a forgone conclusion after the two previous panels.

A much better - but still not best - variation would be Way Walker's edit that he links to below. I would still add one thing though - the Greek Mythology line (or some reference to Icarus, perhaps Randall's original phrasing was a bit awkward) should be added, by the off-panel woman, in the final frame. Then you get the joke at the end, and it makes sense. I also like the elegant concision of merging the top three panels with the wide white spaces of the big bridge shot.

Oh and come on: Icarus's problem was that he used wax, which melts at a fairly low temperature. Hot glue is hardly the same - sure, it can melt, but if you've ever used a hot glue gun and accidentally touched the hot part you know just god damn fucking hot it has to be, and how at that heat Our Hero has bigger problems than falling a few feet, like having his skin burn off. God knows how Mr. Hat is surviving operating what is essentially a small star. Mr. Hat appears to be less into greek mythology and more into being a giant douche.

Hypothetical question: If the main character had succeeded is flying, what would he have done with that power? Does he have a way to get to Titan and try it out there?

not related to anything update: You know what I just remembered? Back when I started reading webcomics, I could list the ones I read, all four of them, in a nice little rhyming couplet. It was -

Dinosaur Comics and xkcd
Perry Bible Fellowship and Married to the Sea

isn't that INTERESTING?

Comic 695: In Bad Spirits

Maybe NASA wouldn't have abandoned you on mars if you weren't such a whiny bitch.

Anyway, this is another of the "man+machine" comics, and to be fair, we haven't had one of those in a while. But that's still all it comes down to - what if the mars rover felt bad? HA HA, it would be just like a sad human. Cry, readers, cry! For you can feel sad for the rover.

But, to quote someone reading this comic over my shoulder, "you can't make me feel bad about leaving a rover on mars. I refuse to feel bad." Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of xkcd readers actually are that easy to manipulate, and are all sad about this robot having human feelings. Or again, there's this.

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guys I know I have been super bad at keeping up with comments and e-mails, and I still haven't written that post about the ads I put on the site and the SPECIAL CONTEST which i am still figuring out, but hopefully next week I'll be able to catch up on that.

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Also, guys, I was looking around the internet and I found a photo of Randall that I think explains a lot about his comic and style, anyway tell me what you think, it's here.

ok I just photoshopped that picture, and poorly at that. But still, i think it's a funny idea. has anyone here made that joke before?

Awful xkcd Parodies, Courtesy of The Internet

Perhaps these will inspire some more entries in the xkcdsucks contest! Feel free to continue mocking the comic's fetishes for superiority, Joss Whedon, programming, and general geek references.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/lnmc-xkcd-parody.php

Comic 732: Low Quality

Am I missing something here, or is Randall really trying to assert that modern TVs aren't that special? I mean, I don't know what resolution cell phone Randall has but if it's not the size of a huge TV (and I suspect it's not) and he doesn't stick it way up near his eye to look at it (and I suspect he doesn't), then the TV is going to look better, no?

This comic kind of feels like a guy who is annoyed that he can't have The Nicest Thing and is trying to justify it by complaining that it's not so special (is that cognitive dissonance? or is it more like a sour grapes thing? or both?). As far as I can tell, HDTVs are awesome (assuming you are playing a video or game or broadcast designed for them) and while perhaps computers can get a similar display, tvs are not computers. That's like saying that your watch has a cool calculator in it and some guys tells you "well woo hoo, except my computer over here has a way better one!" I mean it may be true, but that's not the point. Until it's as easy to hook up a video game console to a laptop as it is to a television, I won't care about the comparison.

update: I can't believe I forgot this! In response to the point from JWC that HDTVs are not just about resolution but about the whole experience, including, for example, sound quality etc, I realized this is the perfect place to embed one of my favorite youtube videos of all time! It is, in fact, the only David Lynch video I don't hate. I could go on and on about why there's clearly a difference between HDTV and phones, but we'd all be much happier if I just played the video.


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As is happening with increasing frequency, I am once more very behind on e-mails and comments on the blog. I feel terrible about it, and will try to catch up eventually but I may fail, especially as each day brings with it more and more mail to read.

I am still planning to announce contest winners finalists on Friday.

Weekend Party Mix #1

Welcome to a new irregular feature. I have a bunch of links and commentary relating to various comedic things or non-specific-comic xkcd things, and now you are going to read them.

The comic Abstruse Goose continues to fascinate me, alternating wildly between really good and utterly terrible. For example, 92 I liked. But 91 and 96 struck me as having really, really old and tired jokes. Also I just want to state this for the record: Given the interesting ways he's been messing with a traditional comic format (i particularly enjoyed this and this) I am predicting right now that soon enough we'll see a cubic comic. I don't know how, I don't know why, but AG is going to give us a 3x3x3 cube of panels (boxes?) and that will be his comic one day.

I know the shitty Palm contest is over (congratulations to MR. RIZWAN PARVEZ) but just so you know that I hate other things besides xkcd, have you ever seen anyone try so hard and fail so hard to appeal to young people as the folks at palm?

I hate it when people are like "well hey maybe xkcd is being serious today HUH how about that" and so I love it when chainsawsuit makes fun of that shit.

Oh digg. You suck when it comes to trying to out suck-up other xkcd fans, but sometimes that leads to humorous times.

I know there's no way I can show this to you but I have acquired a George Carlin daily calendar and despite the fact that George Carlin has said way more than 365 hilarious things, the calendar sucks so far. But I've only seen 9 days of it. It's pissing me off.

You really should check out The Hourly Comic. For one month only! Read about it here, and read about participating here. There is a strong chance I will do an hourly comic on hourly comic day, and if I think it's any good, I'll upload it and show it to y'all. It would be fun if a few of you did it too...


And lastly, it's always frustrating to see someone else express themselves so much more clearly than you, but in this case I agree so completely wholeheartedly with what Biff Boulder is saying that I can feel totally good about linking to it. A consice, intelligent, and scathing critique of xkcd: it's official

Comic 889: Turtles, Man

[Your Gamer "Gamer_2k4" was all like "I will show an XKCD comic to a hostage every thirty minutes until you post my review" so I was like "okay fine, you fucking terrorist," which I guess is letting the terrorists win but really. Here is his guest review. -Ed.]

I hate this comic. I hate xkcd. I hate Randall Munroe. I've been ticked off by xkcd before, but strip 889 just completely blows my mind. I'm not even going to reproduce it here; if you haven't seen it, just count yourself one of the lucky ones, because it's so numbingly stupid that reading it is akin to being smashed in the head with a backhoe. I'd rather get raped by a porcupine than read this balls-awful comic. I'd rather eat a box of thumbtacks, I'd rather swim in a septic truck, I'd rather use a wood chipper as a hat than see that complete and total piece of suck again.

It's just...it's BAD! It's not insightful, it's not funny, it's not well drawn, it's downright stupid, and it seriously sounds like Randall wrote this while on some heavy drugs. You know, normally I try to put in a few good words about each xkcd I review. It would be wrong to say I'm trying to find the hidden gems; it's probably more like searching for whole kernals of corn in a pile of manure. But this one has no such corn. This is just a big, sloppy, puddle of diarrhea.

I'm sorry, that was disgusting. Still, I'm not entirely sure it's inaccurate. The message of this comic is little more than "Turtles don't have worries. Boy, they're lucky!" What the heck are you talking about, Randall? You don't have worries, either! You spend 15 minutes a week scribbling on a sheet of paper, throw it online, and have thousands of people all trying to suck your nonexistent balls the next morning. You could put out anything and the masses would still be there, waiting expectantly, mouths open, panting like dogs. Teachers put up your comics in their classrooms. Blogs link to you regularly. Internet memes have been spawned because of your worthless excuse for a webcomic. It's just one big "find Randy's dick and suck it" contest on the internet, and you're the center of attention. You make more money than you have any right to with this strip, you're considered a guest of honor at conventions, you can probably sleep 10 hours each night, and you still have a 13 hours every single day (rounding down) to jerk off to fantasies of Megan. You've got it made in the shade, buddy! YOU'RE the one who's got it "figured out"!

A turtle doesn't have any worries? It's a FREAKING TURTLE! It doesn't have to brain to comprehend things like stress, it doesn't have a reason to comprehend things like stress, and it sure as heck doesn't have any files to delete! YOU are that turtle, Randall. You go on with your stupid, sheltered little life, completely protected from anything even close to stress, no worries in the world, just sitting there thinking, "hurp I'm a Randall." You know what? You ARE a Randall, and 50 years from now you'll STILL be a Randall, just sitting there, rock-stupid, oblivious to real people with real concerns, and thinking that your little world is all there is. I hate you.

Comic 730: Feel The Electricity

This comic, like others before it, is basically throwing everything possible out there and seeing what sticks. Don't like some of the jokes? Read the other 15, maybe you will like those better. I didn't really like that many of the jokes, while I have never taken electrical engineering, they seem like the sorts of things that a half-clever student would doodle in his or her notebook while bored.

Note well! While I am not an electrical engineer, this does not prevent me from understanding many, if not all, of the jokes in this comic! For example: I can tell that "place tongue here" is funny because while it would complete the circuit, it would also electrocute you. HA! Also, "open and close door real fast" is a hilariously cumbersome way to simulate the switching of the circuit from off to on (if my terminology is wrong, fuck you, i still get the idea). Many jokes based on the broad category of "electronics work by black magic" variety.

There's not much else there; it's not a comic that tells a story or has a punchline, just a long series of little (supposedly amusing) doodles. I did note with some degree of pleasure that there was only a single self-referential meta joke, and that was contained within the alt-text. We are not always so lucky.

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Three other notes- I shall vanish over the course of this weekend and may not post till very late, perhaps as much as a full day late;

I will post the finalists in the contest on Friday April 30th (i have still not worked on it yet but by promising that I will do this i make it far more likely that I will),

I know this is real late but if you aren't reading Axe Cop yet, then why the crap not? It is wonderful, unless you have no soul. Do you?

Comic 516: Ho Ho Hoax

remember to enter the wacky xkcd contest that we have to secretly win!

This has been an interesting comic, because people I talk about xkcd with seem to like it less than I do, which makes me feel all confused inside. It's not great, but I get the idea at least, which is that he set up an elaborate hoax and the woman didn't notice or care. I know, you are thinking that is obvious, but apparently it is confusing people. Perhaps the confusion is that people are confusing his hoax with the possible hoax that originally possibly befell the Mary Celeste which you can read all about on wikipedia, not that it's relevant.

Where was I? Oh yes. I was wondering why explaining the entire hoax so early on is supposed to be subtle. Because...yeah that's kind of the opposite of subtle. As is dumping a bunch of mysterious woodchips somewhere. So...maybe it is a little weird. But I will give him credit for at least coming up with crazy details of a crazy plan, and not just alluding to the idea that there is a plan, and trust me guys, it's crazy.

So anyway, after reading the whole thing several times, I am just happy that it doesn't make me as mad as usual, though I'm getting a little annoyed at the "everything is about me and my crazy habits" formulation.

And in my continuing fascination with Abstruse Goose, I found comic 90 to be utterly unsettling and not in any way funny, made worse by the children's book style of drawing the author uses, all in a way that reminds me of the worst of the xkcd romance comics.


Anyway, with that particularly uninspired post, I am perfectly glad to hand the mighty reigns of this blog over to Rob for the next week or two. I'm still not totally sure how all this will work out, but I think I need a break. I will of course still be reading and managing everything, and no doubt commenting. But I think a temporary change of voice would do the blog well.

Comic 720: Recipe for Disaster

oh my, denizens of the webcomic critique blogosphere! How I have missed you all. So much has happened in my absence - some terrible comics, some crazy rants from Crazy Rob, the new Wigu Comics page got started (this is a big deal and I will write more about it later), and more importantly, there was some kind of crazy insanity which has turned the whole xkcd forum into some kind of stanford-prison-experiment-esque collection of childish nazis (i will write more about that later too). I CHOSE THE WORST WEEK TO LEAVE THIS BLOG.

Oh my, and of course, the first round of my own contest ended! I'll post in a few days with 3-5 finalists and explain (once I make up my mind) how we'll pick a winner. Is that all for now? I think so. I'm getting caught upon all the comments that were left while I was gone. I probably won't be able to respond to most or even any of them, but I do try to read them all. I also have to take a few more days to get caught up on e-mails. Alright - are we done here? I think so. Let's get today's comic.

This comic reminds me of a joke. Here it is:

Q: How many Profession Members does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: X! 1 to change the bulb, and X-1 to act in a manner stereotypical of that profession.

(laughter all around).

I like that joke because it makes fun of actual, specific lightbulb jokes, most of which are pretty dumb (credit where its due: I forget where I heard that joke but it's pretty close to these comics). The point that lightbulb jokes are playing off of is, "what if people of a certain group acted in its stereotypical way while doing an ordinary activity?" Because obviously everyone changes a lightbulb the same way. And what this meta-joke is saying is, "hey, everyone who tells regular lightbulb jokes: You're all being pretty stupid."

That is, by way of very long introduction, my message to the author of this comic: you are basically being pretty stupid.

The joke is, what if computer scientists used computer science for everything? HA HA, it would lead to silly consequences.

--We had to stop inviting the medical school kids to our dinner parties, because they kept bringing us medicine instead of food!
--We had to stop asking the archaeology guys to come to dinner, because they tried to feed us on broken old shards of pottery which were gross and dirty and of historical value.
--We had to tell the graphic arts department not to come to our dinner parties because instead of food, they just brought crappy comics.

HA! it is so implausible!

It all reallly just reminds of the other dinosaur comic that my search brought up. Randall is like T Rex, and I am like Utahraptor. Does that make my point make more sense? I hope so.

Lastly, two words about the art:
-Look under the table. See all those lines? what the hell are they? You think they are going to be like the legs of the table or of the people at the table, but then they completely aren't.
-Why are there hearts coming out of the cup in the middle?


That is all the writing i am going to do for now, my new mission is to figure out what the HELL was happening on the xkcd forums while I was away!

THANK YOU ALL FOR READING MY WEBSITE.