Comic 787: Still Lost, Still In Space

[alt: Normally, the Shuttle can't quite safely reach the orbital inclination required to pass over both those points from a Canaveral launch, but this is an alternate history in which either it launches from Vandenberg or everyone hates the Outer Banks.]

Oddly, our second space-exploration comic in a row. Also, our second post-punchline-dialog comic in a row (unless you think "Dammit Frank" is a hilarious punchline. which it is not.)

While we all know that xkcd is not a political comic and doesn't like to talk about politics in its installments, we also know that this rule is frequently broken because, hey, Randall is out of other ideas! And you can only hit "random" on wikipedia so many times before you are just repeating articles you've already seen.

Anyway, this comic is of course calling attention to the mideast peace talks going on in Washington right now, given that one of the biggest discussions in the talks is over the future of the land in the West Bank and the people in it. And the fact that lots of people disagree, and strongly, about what should happen with it.

What I don't get is why this comic chose to portray that debate - which, like all serious debate, is ripe for comedy - in the form of NASA employees, because that makes no sense. OH WAIT yes I do, it's because the author used to be a NASA employee and wants to make sure we all know it! (i understand that some of you will argue: he isn't trying to brag to us about his former job! he never mentions it anywhere on here! to you people I say: read the goddamn alt text).

Anyway, good satire is a wonderful thing, but the point is to take a situation is society, in this case the israeli/palestinian conflict, and say something about it. Satire is a way of making a point about the issue at hand. The Daily is funny because it points out when people are being hypocrites. The Onion is funny because (among other reasons) it points out how most media is obsessed with trivialities. They're points you could make straightforwardly, but it's not as powerful.

So what point does this comic make? None - just that there is a debate and that someone wants to redirect a shuttle because of it. And that even then a guy named frank hates oklahoma. Is Randall trying to draw a parallel between the two locations? If so, I'd like to know why. I don't see any reason why one is meaningfully like the other. More basically, what is the point he is trying to make?

I don't, of course, think there is such a point. I think he just wanted to do a throwaway gag about how people get mad over the mideast, and hey! what's up with that??

From a technical standpoint, the punchline of this comic is really "I've redirected the flight..." because that is the outrageous and disproportionate response to the argument. The line about "north texas" is not 100% worthless though, but putting it afterwards saps energy from the real punchline. Perfect solution: Make it the alt-text. And delete "damn it, frank." Bonus: you can get rid of that shitty alt-text the comic has now!

Comic 786: Lost In Space

[alt: I'm just worried that we'll all leave and you won't get to come along!]

I am very tempted to go the xkcdexplained route here and just write the following analysis and nothing else:

"Mr. Beret is excited because of science. His enthusiasm is lost on a sleepy man."

Alas, my nature compels me to elaborate.

I guess the fun in this comic is supposed to come from his child-like enthusiasm - a common enough theme in xkcd. Often it seems to be set up in way which, like in the comic above, the message is that those who do not have childlike glee are missing out on something and the childlike person is happier and better than the other. They nearly all feel like ripoffs of Calvin and Hobbes, which perhaps was able to get away with this by having its childlike excitement come from an actual child.

I suppose another feature of this comic that is meant to be positive is that he is excited about science in the abstract, and not in any way that will affect him (note the "in a few generations" line). Are we supposed to feel the same way? I hope not. Future scientific discoveries are not always those which people expected several generations earlier, and some things, like travel to another planet with intelligent life, seems too remote to even consider getting excited about.

We are left to conclude that Mr. Beret is a figure to be laughed at for his naiveté. I guess that is starting to be a somewhat defining characteristic for him (finally!) - he is dumb and/or enthusiastic. I am guessing we'll have a few more of these comics which will get very boring very suddenly. Dumb people can be lots of fun but the "I am excited about silly things" trope is rather narrow.

Lastly, the ending to this comic is atrocious, with a print-comicesque line from the sleeping guy and a nonsensical response from Mr. Beret. All of it constitutes post-punchline dialog.

Comic 775: Psyche!

[alt: She's a perfectly nice lady from a beautiful city, and there's no reason to be mean just because she thinks a quarterback is a river in Egypt.]

I know in general I usually post about comics after you all are done talking about them, but in this case, I really couldn't wait. This comic is so weirdly confusing and terrible.

First, to get this out of the way - yes, the art is basically the same as yesterday's. It's not exactly the same - I checked, very meticulously - because as you can see in this comparison, the man is clearly raising his arm in one drawing and is not in the other. Let's look at the two with the dialog removed:

Anyway. The joke is, the boy says something about the girl's math skills. The girl think that he is saying "it's not your fault you are bad at math, evolution made women worse at math than men." So she gets offended. But then he clarifies, "No no, you are not bad at math because you are a woman, you are bad at math because you are a stupid fucking southerner and they are all inbred racist hicks. " So you see, he is not being offensive at all, ha ha!

Now, there was some confusion here, as I had not been previously familiar with the nickname "evo-psych." I knew it had to be bullshit, as the girl so helpfully reminds us, because it was not math or physics, and therefore, it is bullshit (there are only three categories). So I don't understand why he is teaching her "abstract math" is he is an "evo-psych" person. Surely a person wise enough to study math wouldn't sully his reputation with fake science? I AM CONFUSED.

I'm also confused as to why the girl didn't realize what he meant. If she was from Savannah, Georgia, and told enough people about it that her math tutor knew that she was from Savannah, Georgia, and he mentioned her "savannah ancestors," wouldn't she assume - given that it is her HOME TOWN or at least her ANCESTRAL HOME - that is what he meant? but of course i forget that she is an inbred southern hick like all of them so that is why she is DUMB.

I mean, this is like a person from Turkey hearing "well you are bad at math because of your turkey ancestors" and them saying WHAT, HOW DARE YOU CALL MY ANCESTORS TURKEYS! THAT IS SOME GRADE A BULLSHIT RIGHT HERE and then the guy is like, dude! I meant from the respectable nation of Turkey. You are dumb because your family is from the respectable nation of Turkey. And then, yeah. the rest of the conversation after that.

I also dislike this comic because it goes against the spirit of two other, far superior comics he's made in the past - there was "communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness" except that that's totally what he's doing here, and then there's "girls are treated to a different standard in math" one. That second one's a little different but the point of the comic is still, "you are bad at math because you are a member of a group that is stereotypically dumb" so i think it counts. (and thank you, gamer 2k4 for reminding me of that first one).

Also, series of years shouldn't have apostrophes in them. The apostrophe is not standing for a missing letter or letters, it's not signaling a possessive, and it's not part of a name like O'Reilly or O'Malley. For a guy who claims to like language, he really should know that one. Just because a lot of people make that mistake doesn't make it ok.

Moving along to your mom jokes, this comic ends with a your mom joke! HUZZAH! the highest form of comedy is once more, against all possible odds, achieved!

Unless, of course, you stop to think about it. Because, it's not a your mom joke at all, it's a guy saying, "your family is stupid and they raised you stupid." And she takes offense because he has mentioned her family, which does, it must be admitted, include her mom? i guess she's just so STUPID that she thinks that makes sense! And i guess randall munroe is just so STUPID that he thinks that's a good punchline!

Look - if you think that this comic has a good Savannah/savanna joke, ok, fine. You are wrong, but whatever. The point is, if that's the joke, make it the end of the comic! Make it have the emphasis that the end of the comic. But the last line as it is now, that's just a let down.

Don't even get me started on the alt-text. let's - let's just leave it at "makes no sense and when you finally understand that it's just a combination of two unrelated your mom jokes you wish for the time when it was something you assumed was a reference to a song or movie or some nonsense like that." Yes, let's leave it at that.

Comic 748: Block Busting

A lot of people have been saying they think this is an above average comic. I try to listen carefully when on-the-fence or mildly-anti-xkcd folks say a comic is good, because I know I will always see xkcd through the lens of running a blog called xkcd sucks. Basically, I know I can make mistakes because of my own biases, and I try to look for signs that I'm being unfair on a certain comic.

But in this case it's not enough. I just think people are being wrong, and I dislike it. I'll admit though, that that's because it plays into some of my own personal pet peeves from xkcd, and not the more general, more objective stuff.

The main one is his terrific hatred, his utter loathing, of the mainstream media. This is, of course, common on the internet, especially among people known to love reddit.

[actually, i have to make a quick interlude on the subject of the reddit store on xkcd: i fucking love that "ladies of reddit" and i shall tell you why it is the best thing ever: 1, it is quite literally portraying women as merely attractive things to be looked at, nothing more, and this comes from the King of Womyn-Defense and Master of the White Knight, 2, they are still selling a 2010 calendar in June 2010, 3, the description says there are still 11 months left in 2010 so you should buy it, meaning the description is four months out of date, 4, they say that the money is going to charities chosen by the women in the calendar BUT ALSO that 100% of the money is going to haiti, which is great but it doesn't make mathematical sense, 5, they say they lowered the price because they were giving money to Haiti (that doesn't make sense, "we are giving the money to charity but don't worry, we also are going to make sure we make less money") when really it's just because they didn't sell and it's already June, 6, the 17 photos of the calendar are full of repeats, 7, i am pretty sure one of the ladies isn't a lady. Not the guy looking at the calendar, one of the actual subjects. THAT IS ALL RESUME REGULAR BLOGGING NOW]

OK, we were talking about reddit or something? And the media? OH YES randall loves to talk about how he hates the msm. The worst example of this is from the comic about bailouts/AIG benefits that made me perhaps angrier than any other comics he's ever made. The driving idea behind more these comics is "media people suck at their job and i know better than all of them." It's actually not a terrible sentiment, the problem is that when you make a comic like this (or write a reddit comment about it...) you will generally come off like a dick. As today's comic does, if you ask me. Particularly panel 2, where Randall has his straw-correspondent shout down the Scientist Hero and her (her!) reasonable logic. The correspondent yells "crew this!" to a scientist?? How much more badly could he have portrayed them?

[update: In response to some comments, I'm going to explain a little more here: I'm not trying to say that the MSM is beyond reproach. The issue is that this comic is making them seem way, way, worse in this case than they actually are. The comic is trying to parody blockbuster director James Cameron's involvement in the oil cleanup process, but it's a really disingenuous parody, because his involvement wasn't the media's fault. read the article I linked to there - he offered to help because he actually has a lot of experience dealing with tons of underwater robots (thanks to Titanic). So it's weird to think of the director of Avatar as being useful here, but a) it's true anyway, and b) Cameron was the one who started it, not the media. They may be doing things badly but turning to hapless directors for sensationalism is not one of them]

Then he gets to his second Theme That Bothers Me, the mocking of big budget action movies. Most clearly stated in this comic, which even uses the very same director. It's not like there's only one joke to make on the subject, but at the same time, xkcd didn't exactly explore all the possibilities here. The plot is creative, yes, I can grant that. But does that alone make it funny? I'm not sure. The story doesn't get comic emphasis (it's not the punchline) and is only funny in a sort of incidental, "hey he will exaggerate it in some crazy way" way. way way way.

Lastly, the comic does another thing that maybe pisses off me and me alone: the not-so-subtle subtle political name drop. Randall pretends that he keeps his "interest" in politics out of his comic (it's not true, as any number of examples can demonstrate) but then includes these irritating little reminders of just how closely he follows politics. There was the fivethirtyeight.com namedrop, the Ben Bernanke one, and that inauguration one, and now, James Carville. Each one makes me want to say "congratulations on knowing about that random thing, and for telling us you know all about it." It may not bother you, that's ok. It bothers me though.

I guess I haven't really talked much about the general substance of this comic. As far as it goes, the structure is ok, there are some inventive ideas, and at least a little effort at art and color. But I can't get around the little problems. If you can, I won't disagree with you. let us see what the next comic has in store!

Comic 744: It's All a Game

Guys, remember how xkcd used to be super obsessed with sex? I had almost forgotten, it had been so long. Luckily the theme's absence has now ended. This quirky character was so nerdy that he has confused sex with video games! How is that even possible??

The humor begins with the fact that this character is going to be uneducated about sex. You see, that will lead to awkwardness and if there is anything funnier than sex, it is awkward sex. So we know, simply because he says he'll need instructions, that he will have some hilarious troubles.

And then he can't even do that right! He gets the video wrong, and so he had even more awkward sex! I haven't laughed this hard since middle school when a teacher farted.

My goodness. How much lamer can you get than this comic? It's like a machine was told to look at all the previous xkcd comics and figure out how to make new ones, and it spit out "SEX PLUS VIDEO GAME. COMBINE THEM. THINK OF ONE IN TERMS OF THE OTHER." Does it matter that there couldn't even be a speedrun of sex? That it doesn't make sense as an idea?

I guess there will always be adults who are still amused by this sort of thing. Look: I have no problem with jokes about sex and stuff. It's just like reference-based humor: There's nothing wrong with making jokes that reference other works, and there's nothing wrong with making jokes about sex. The problem is when there is no real joke, and instead you are supposed to laugh merely because sex was brought up at all, and ha ha we are all still nervous about that.

That's really all this joke is: there's sort of a pun thing about video games and speed runs but it makes so little sense that i think we can all agree that the only reason anyone laughs at it is because: sex. and that is just lazy, when you get down to it.

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as long as we're talking about speed runs, this comic always made me really happy.

Comic 733: Code Words

short post today as I am seriously going to try to catch up on all e-mails, comments, and that nearly forgotten contest I started.

This is a comic that asks you not to think too hard. As Sepia put it in a comment, the phrase used in this comic is really a) not all that similar to things biologists would actually say, and b) if it is ever said by biologists, is probably the only phrase for which this "hobby" would make any sense. Most of the time, you could just used the tried and true method of replacing the caption of any "my hobby" comic with "My Hobby: Being Annoying" and it would make just as much sense, or more.

I think that this actually points to a really big change xkcd has made over the years: This comic is only funny if you look at the concept within the very narrow field of "the eagle has left the nest" but few other phrases, in other words, the phrase used in the comic is one of the few points that lie in the intersection between "phrases biologists use" and "phrases cliched secret agents use." If there were more points in that intersection, and I would love to hear suggestions, the comic would be better. Because you would read the one example, laugh, maybe, and then think of other examples, and laugh more. But there are no other examples!

Compare this to one of the old My Hobby comics:

The example in this comic, "sweet ass-car" is actually not great. But the great thing about the comic as a whole is that this actually is funny for most examples. "Big-ass douchebag," "lame-ass umbrella," "dumb-ass job" etc. You keep thinking of examples - when people keep saying the right phrases - and it keeps being funny.

But today's comic does not. There will be no people in biology class laughing inadvertently as they realize that whatever sentence was just said could double as secret agent code.

I say i am going to write a short post but i am always lying.

Comic 721: Falling Flat

There's so many little things about this comic that bother me. No one problem stands out, but together they make me pretty annoyed.

#1, the game hasn't come out yet. It's not even testable in beta form. So either Randall hasn't played this game and is just having his characters talk about it by estimation, or, more likely, he got a chance to play it and is writing this comic based on that experience. Perhaps he got to play it at PAX East last weekend. In the end, what this comic is saying is "I got to play this awesome nerdy game that isn't even available to anyone." A few months ago I complained when he made a comic about Scribblenauts on the day it came out, but today he's outdone himself, and made a comic about a game that hasn't come out at all yet (unless you were at PAX East. but were you?) In other words, what he said.

#2, the comic forgot to tell a joke. The first panel establishes that they are in flatland, the second, that the author has played a certain game, the third, that the game can be related to the book Flatland, and the fourth, that the dude has drawn around the square to make him look like a popular children's cartoon character.

Now that may ordinarily be enough to be considered a joke, and, in many ways, it takes the form of a joke: It comes at the end of the comic (though not the very end - see #3), it is irreverent and suddenly changes the topic, and includes a person being humiliated, perhaps without their knowledge. Usually, these things are good ingredients for a joke. Today, they just don't add up. I've read the first (and as of now, only) 65 posts on the xkcd forum and NONE of them expressed amusement at the spongebob concept.

#3, "Yes it was" = post punchline dialog

#4. Some people are going to point out that there are two puns in this comic, and that perhaps they are worthy of note. I disagree. The first, "what's up?", could be a pun because a resident of Flatland should have no notion of what "up" is. Of course, that's not true; just like you could look at a map of the earth and say "Alaska is way up by Canada" even though you really mean Alaska is way North by Canada, and not that it is "a certain distance away from the ground." In any case, "What's up?" is an idiom, and is rarely meant literally (unless you need to know what is high off the ground). Flatland has plenty of uses of "up" in other senses (I just checked). So I guess it may count technically as a pun, but it's a silly one (especially as A Square is the one resident of the land who actually knows the answer).

The other pun is in the last panel, "That was out of line." Because, you know, things in flatland...are lines! Sort of, at least. But that's the extent of it - usually a pun will have a second meaning, but this doesn't. To say something is out of line means that it was not cool or perhaps not allowed, or insubordinate or something, which sure, the stick figure is saying he was. But what's the second meaning? Nothing. It'd be like if the last line were "well I guess we've come full CIRCLE" or "this adds another DIMENSION to our relationship" or something like that. Yes, you worked a word related to the topic into a phrase - so what? That's not enough on its own.

#5. The drawing. Look at the square in panel 3. Just look at it! someone just took perspective 101, I see. On the other hand, there is a horizon in this comic - I'd like that more often.

#6. The alt-text. Apparently, this was a joke that Randall made at a convention last weekend (see these two posts). Not just any joke, a joke he said he wouldn't put online! Apparently Person #1 got to see this comic a while ago too? tell us more! Anyway, I think the fact that he went and ran it anyway shows that he is as desperate as we all thought. Anyway, it doesn't make sense, apparently touching someone = having an orgy. I'd hate to see what a packed flatland subway looks like.

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Update: Randall had to push his "color name survey" off the front page to bring people this message: "Note: People searching for Miegakure are finding malware. The real site's here.
Any claimed downloads are fake. It's presently only playable at expos." (incidentally, is the last line barely visible for other people? did randall fuck up the formatting or is it just my browser?). Anyway all I have to say about that is maybe your readers wouldn't be searching for playable copies of that game if your comic hadn't implied that there were playable versions of it out there.

Comic 644: Lobotomy

It's time for a guest post from Kirk! Kirk kirk kirk krik kirk. woo!

Let me start off with a disclaimer of sorts. I have found that over the last few weeks I have kept a constant expression of ambivalence to all the new xkcd comics. I believe this is a result of two different factors at play at once. On one end, after being on xkcdsucks for so long, I believe I’m so ready to see the bad in xkcd that it prevents me from laughing at jokes I might have otherwise found funny. On the other end, whenever I question how bad a comic is, I ask myself “is it really that bad, compared to the verminous, soul-tainting badness of 631?” and the answer is always going to be a resounding “No”.

That in mind, here is my review.

The Art

Since this is xkcd, it is impossible apparently to say the artwork is bad, because as the cuddlefish have yelled oh so many times, “the art is just XKCD’s style!” So I am going to judge art on two different questions: 1. Does the art enable the audience to figure out the setting of the joke? and 2. Does the art add any more humor to the joke?

1. Yes. You can clearly see that the first person is a surgeon and the second person is patient, it isn’t like some of the earlier xkcds where an anchor chair could just as easily be a bathtub. I mean, sure the surgeon shouldn’t technically have the mask on while talking to the patient, unless the patient had SARS oozing out of his arm, or something. But we most associate the mask with a surgeon, so it is an acceptable break from reality.

2. No, the art does not add any humor to the comic at all. This whole thing could have been written in IRC conversation form and no humor would be lost.

The Joke

As I said in the top, I would have trouble laughing at new xkcd comics even if they were of top quality. But this one feels more like a paid ‘comedic’ endorsement of Linux than a joke. I may be the only one here, but this comic has the structure of a ‘comedic’ commercial, you start with a silly, outrageous situation then you plug whatever feature could cause that outrageous situation to occur, then you name the product. Here you have ‘controlling USB ports with your mind’ -> ‘there will have a patch for everything eventually’ -> LINUX. In a good joke comic, everything is supposed to build up to a punch line, but here the only thing that is funny is the beginning of the comic, and everything leads up to the message “Linux is great” which is kinda annoying and not really funny at all. [Carl again: I think this is a good point and I am going to rephrase it: The humor of the situation comes from the idea, tired as it is, of making humans like machines. That is a vaguely unusual concept. But it's introduced in the first panel - the last panel, the joke, is just a run of the mill Linux joke. It feels like a letdown. Sorry for interupting, Kirk.]

Randall has already had a few comics that are more a plug of a product than a comic, but he usually goes at it from the other direction: Product -> Feature of that product -> wacky thing that occurs because of the feature. Here are a few examples:

Smarter health care -> Digital prescriptions -> Bad handwriting becomes bad font

Google Latitude-> Show locations ->Megan is one kinky girl

Kindle -> Lets you check Wikipedia everywhere -> secretly Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy

So yes, this isn’t the first time where xkcd is used to plug things Randall likes, but I feel like the change in order weakens the current comic, because in the three examples I’ve linked, if the joke is strong enough on its own, the comic can still be funny. Of course, the punch lines of the three comics I posted range from terrible to alright, so the comics aren’t great, but the potential is there. But as I’ve said before, the current one’s order makes the message of ‘Linux is great’ come across as the true theme.

Oh and I guess I could talk about how the dialog in the last panel is fucked up nine ways to Tuesday, and we have another Humans as Robots comic. But you know, you get enough of that on the blog normally, and I am not guest posting to say exactly what Carl would.

The Alt text

Ok, the alt text made me laugh. I’ll admit it, I like the alt text here a bunch. The suturing of a vista sticker reminds me a bunch of early black hat, and was unexpected after the ‘Linux is great’ theme of the comic. And a lot of humor is derived from the unexpected. I only wish he took the same wacky situation and looked at from the surgeon’s perspective throughout. Then the comic would be making fun of people who take Linux too seriously, which I would have enjoyed heartily.

Kirk out.