CALM THE FUCK DOWN, PEOPLE

seriously, guys, I leave for a weekend and this place goes all "mankind in a state of nature" crazy over here. Anyway I'm back now so RELAX and let's get back to our usual brand of xkcd-hating.

fun fact while I'm here: I think today's dinosaur comic is really bad.

Comic 540: Oh Is It A BASEBALL Metaphor?

Isn't there supposed to be some rule that baseball is, like, inherently anti-sexual?

Look, Randy, unnecessarily complicated charts aren't funny. Nor is being intentionally nonsensical. Sure, you had a few gags here and there that were okay. And I suppose, if anyone ever used the analogy anymore, ever, maybe it was meant to be useful? I mean, I sure as hell didn't know what the "base" analogy meant. Maybe that's why it's just not that funny?

But it's just--

okay i can't go on like this. WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THE ART. She is fucking HOVERING OVER THE TOP OF A CHAIR. And then she does this fucked up spidery thing, like she is coming down to DEVOUR HER YOUNG, and then she's BACK TO THE FUCKING HOVERING. WHAT THE FUCK RANDALL. WHY DO YOUR WOMEN HOVER. Is that how it's going to be? In your world women never come into contact with... chairs? Why do you hate Jesus? Why do you hate freedom? WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK

Moving on.

We have another nod at furries, which is, okay, creepy. And what the fuck? Napoleon's Forces? Random is not funny. Nonsensical is not funny. Anyone can do it, and you know what? It's not funny. There's a trick to it. You need to find something which is nonsensical but appears, at first glance, to make sense. It should be a "wait, what?" moment where you actually try to think about it. That's how you do random humor. You do not just randomly throw Napoleon into a sexual analogy.

Credit where it's due: I found the initial phases of conversation, apart from it being entirely unrealistic that I would ever have it with anyone, ever, kind of amusing. "I think that's... shortstop?" (Which is actually between first and second but I still liked it.) Then it took a dive into "I know, I will just THROW OUT A BUNCH OF RANDOM SPORTS TERMS" and then...

the hovering. the hovering. oh god the hovering

Comic 539: An Outlier, Indeed

Okay, I know you all come here to hear us complain about XKCD. But I can't find any fault with this one, though the alt text might make it fall under the "breakup comics" category. It wasn't even "not bad." I liked it. Like, seriously and legitimately.

I enjoy puns, it's true. Some people do not. But I feel like this is exactly the sort of "nerd meets romance" thing that Randall used to be so good at. What the comic used to be all about--not just referencing nerd culture or pop culture, but integrating it with real world scenarios. Oh, and the alt text carries along with the joke, and is funny! WHAT IS HAPPENING

Let me explore a few avenues of attack you might be able to take here. First, "your math is irrefutable." I think this very much depends on how much time he spends with the number of people he hangs out with! If he's hanging out with twenty people for an hour a week, and her for two hours, that's not very statistically significant.

If that number is five, and it's four hours per week for each one, eight for her, then she has a better case, but even then--that's only an extra four hours, easily explained by "you live closer" or "what we do when we hang out takes up more time." I've also spent a half hour with some people that was more worthwhile than six hours with other people. She would have to introduce a variable that accounts for the quality of time spent, and he could easily refute that by denying that it had any quality for him.

And it's not like you are required to give each person you're casually dating an equal amount of time.

But these aren't the sorts of nitpicks I can actually fault him for, they are just the closest thing I can find. I--I have failed all of you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me.

UPDATE: oh PS to all you useless people that are like "you guys just can't acknowledge when Randall makes a good comic you all suck" YEAH I ACKNOWLEDGED THAT I LIKED A COMIC WHAT NOW

OH WHAT'S THAT YOU CAN'T THINK OF A COMEBACK BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN

Comic 538: Insecurity

Hello it is Rob again, just stone cold guest blogging for the week.

In the interests of full disclosure: this one was not bad. I didn't laugh but I read it and was like "okay, kudos, Randall, this isn't horrible."

But then I started thinking about it, because that is kind of a boring post, right? And this comic just lacks verisimilitude. I'm not really sure what he's trying to say here. Is he suggesting that cyber encryption is useless because nobody will ever care about your secrets? Or that it's useless because you can still just beat those secrets out of somebody? Or that that's the modus operandi of people who want to break into computers? Or that people who encrypt their data are deluded?

But okay, there's lots of scenarios in which cybercrime happens. Obviously some are simpler than others--the dude who broke into Sarah Palin's emails just guessed her password question. But some people try harder. I mean, if you really want someone's data, and you know how to break in. I can't envision a scenario in which you would just drug and beat someone for their data, though. That's something random criminals do. Usually data theft is something you don't want them to be aware of ahead of time.

Maybe he's trying to say people go to unnecessary lengths for good encryption? But none of the crypto-geeks I know go very far. And the point, as far as they're concerned, is that it's easier to encrypt than decrypt.

And the more I think about it the more I end up thinking 'uh, Randall, this just isn't funny.' But it's not saying anything either.

Comic 537: Duck You, Randall

My first thoughts, on reading the latest gem from our good friend Randy, was simple confusion. "What is going on here? Is this a metaphor for some computer science process of which I am unaware? Is this the beginning of a hilarious new tale in which a kidnapped duck plays a role? Is it, as the alt text perhaps suggests, some bizarre way of duckrolling the reader and demonstrating, yet again, that he knows slightly more about memes than they do?"

Apparently there's nothing though, it's just tricking ducks into walking in a circle. Ducks! In a circle! And...that's all! wooooo? I am left just saying "so what?"

Oddly, a lot of people seem to enjoy this comic. I can't explain why. Commentor Jay, for example. But among other people, this comic created far more vitriol than usual - One e-mail to me said "I fail to see how this comic has any relevant value (comedic, serious, etc.)....Because a bunch of ducks are being made to run in a circle by two jackasses? Hillarious..."

I was thinking about it and while this comic didn't anger me like some do, it was indicative of a major problem I hadn't quite been able to express in words before: when it comes to what kinds of jokes xkcd makes, it is completely all over the map. Puns one day, topical humor the next, long format stories, charts, one-panelers, multi-panelers, something in between - and of course, the occasional example of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. You have no idea what you are going to get from one day to the next. This, I posit, is bad.

Few other comics are like this. In fact, none that I can think of has less consistency in terms of topics than xkcd (that is not to say that xkcd doesn't have an artistic style, which it obviously does. But in terms of what that art is representing, it does not). Dinosaur Comics limits itself in terms of characters and what they do, by having the same characters from day to day. Achewood nearly always uses the same characters that are fully developed that they make xkcd's one recurring character, Mr. Hat, look like - well, a stick figure. Penny Arcade is about video games, usually. A Softer World is pictures with depressing and tangentially related narration. Perry Bible Fellowship was usually about very dark twists on childhood things. Natalie Dee is all about putting faces on inanimate objects. I don't think there's anything you could say about xkcd that applies to even a majority of its comics, let alone nearly all.

Even some recurring characters would be nice - as it is, xkcd is freely roaming all over the intellectual landscape, searching for jokes anywhere and everywhere it can (and, as its desperation makes inevitable, usually coming up pathetically short). It seemed for a time that Randall was trying to introduce some continuity (remember Mr. Beret?) but that now seems abandoned. Perhaps one path to success for Mr. Munroe would be to try to stay consistent in some way with his ideas, at least most of the time, for a while.


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And with that, I am handing the blog off to rob for a week. I imagine it will be much like when I did this last december. I'll still be around, I'm just busy with the life some people accuse me of not having so I don't want to sacrifice the quality here just 'cause of that.