let's all take a break for two seconds

Hi guys, I thought I might distract you all with something vaguely related to our purposes here - recently it was brought to my attention that a writer for The New Republic had taken to critiquing the jokes in Thomas Friedman's New York Times column. Obviously, that column is not nearly as important as the humor we talk about here, but still, it is rare enough that someone in the famous popular media attempts some humor criticism, so go, read the article, and tell me what you think. Myself, I like think most of analysis is pretty good, though the few jokes this author liked I would have been less forgiving with. But most were judged to be poor, and well, they deserved it.

Go! go forth and decide for yourself.
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In other news, I got a ton of people who want to guest post, so it looks like what we'll do is just have a different writer every day for like 3 weeks! maybe more. This is going to start possibly as early as next monday. Maybe it will be a huge failure - but maybe not. Who knows? Anyway, they can't all IM randall and change their minds...

Comic 610: Independence

SO, as you know, Dr. Horrible has been guest posting here. But then a funny thing happened. Apparently, he decided he would send Randall Munroe some thoughts on xkcd, and ended up chatting with him on IRC, and then Randy made him feel so bad about this blog that he decided he couldn't keep posting on it. So that's....weird.

He did have something he wanted to share with you though, which was his proof that I am not Randall! Can you believe it? Finally! See what happened was that he was IMing both of us at the same time. And then to prove that we weren't just the same person switching between computers or accounts or something, I just started typing numbers in increasing order, just so he knew I couldn't be typing anything else at the time. Anyway, he took a screenshot of both of our conversations, here it is: FINAL PROOF. Hope that's good enough for you, you skeptical bitches.

Dr. Horrible did also send me his IRC chat log with Randy, but I don't really want to post it. Eventually I will (so don't let me forget I have it) but not right now.
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OH HEY WHAT there's a new comic! I guess as long as I am here I should talk about it.

For some reason this comic seems to give off major Ron Paul vibes. Well, I guess I know the reason, it's that all the people have that same awful condescending way of thinking and existing. Of course, this comic is making fun of that, I suppose, so that's good. It still makes me feel irritated the way anyone who talks about "sheeple" does.

I guess the problem is that they are all just sitting on a subway (speaking of which - recognize it?). That's not the place I usually think of this sort of thinking happening. I tend to sit on subways and think about the other people there as being actual people with actual lives. Sure, they might be just sitting there doing nothing for a while but that's because they are on a freaking subway, what they hell are they supposed to do? Start shouting "9/11 was an inside job" right on the train?

So what I'm saying is, this comic would be better if there was there was this idea that that's what people on trains were thinking, and then this would be a clever comment on that. I suppose that you could say "well, he just chose a train because it's a simple example of everyday life" but I think it's a pretty bad one, because again, there's not much to do if you are alone on a train but sit there, and perhaps read or listen to music or something.

The alt-text does, however, help a lot.

This comic is better than some. That's good to see.

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And, with Dr. Horrible retiring after one post, who else wants to write for this blog? Anyone? I just assume people are super sick of hearing me all the time. It's super easy to do and it's pretty hard to fuck up Send me an e-mail - czwheeler@gmail.com.

Comic 609: Contrivance: noun

welcome to exciting guest week with guest poster doctor horrible! woo

Man, you guys will like Dr. Horrible. He sent me this post 30 minutes after the new comic went up. Let's see if it's any good.

Okay. First off, hey guys, I'm Doc. Tor Horrible. I go by Doc. Now, let's get this done! Today's xkcd, 609, is a lot of things. Funny isn't one of them. If you guys have ever read Ctrl+Alt+Del, you know that Tim Buckley has a habit of using contrived dialog, saturated with unnatural references, to explain his jokes. "Haha! Oh wow! Man this deathmatch game of Halo 3 is fun. Oh, hey, gayman4245 is challenging me to a match! No hilarity could ensue there, I bet." Stuff like that. You wouldn't walk up to someone and go "Hey, who linked you to TV TROPES, the website that explains tropes you might see on TV?" It's really symbolic of xkcd dialog today. Did Randall forget how to talk after not having a real job forever?

Hey, can you do me without a condom?

"Aww, what an adorable stuffed giraffe!"

THE ENTIRE SECOND PANEL!

*CARL: THIS NOTE IS FOR YOU! MAKE SURE THOSE LINKS WORK WITH BLOGGER, A-HREFS OR NOT! IF YOU DON'T DELETE THIS FROM THE POST, YOU'RE AN ASS TURD!*

Aside from that, the joke isn't incredibly good; while it's better than Randall's average jokes as of late, it is still his routine. "Hey, this is something everybody knows about but not too many people comment on! I bet this could go on a shirt."

Also, WHAT IS UP with the layout? It's (4*6)-2=22 panels of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING followed by the half-joke made of gut-wrenchingly fake dialog! That's wasting our time. And yeah, it's free, so I can't complain, right? I'm tempted to buy a shirt so that I can say I "invested" in xkcd and that it should be good, damnit. MAKE IT LIKE THE OLD DAYS, MR. MUNROE!

http://www.isowantone.com/randy.jpg (This took me 10 minutes or so to put together.)

-DH

(Also, you guys, I'm not the ass turds troll. But I am going to hide "ass turds" in Wednesday's post; see if you can find it. If you like my posting, fuck you. If you hate it, thanks! I mean....)

-DH

((Carl's a really nice guy, but I'm pretty sure he's William Monty Hughes, Randall, AND the ass turds troll. Watch out for him. Randall's a nice guy too.))

-DH

(((William Monty Hughes can suck my Horrible dick.)))

-DH

((((I would mention that this joke has been used before, but it looks like the comment threads are already showing signs of this; discuss away!))))

-DH

Comic 608: Breaking the Rules

Oh my goodness! The stick man is writing where he was told not to! And there are crazily extreme consequences for this minor action! Get it? Because they are disproportionate! Oh my, I am struggle to type through my tears of laughter and soon I will have laughed so hard that my body will be lying on the ground, twitching, in a joyous state of pure humorous glee.

My first thought, not counting the simple "ughhhhhhhhh" was "god, this seems similar to comic 499." Seemingly harmless action -> crazy violent consequence. They also have the same rhythm - panel 1 sets up the apparently simple situation; panel 2 and 3 show that the character has violated some basic rule, and panel 4 is the awful, awful reaction. In both cases the actual reaction is somewhat vague - we know that there are dudes with helmets and guns, but not what they are doing or why or anything like that. In 499, we just know that it is scream-inducing and involved blood.

That's ok, Randall, you don't have to think of funny things to happen! Just things that might be around if something funny did happen, and we'll fill in the rest!

But here's what really gets me: Click that link to my post on comic 499. When that comic came out, I made the exact same criticisms of it for being so derivative of comic 292! In other words, even the comic this is basically a copy of is a copy of another comic! fuck you, Randall. fuck you.


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Anyway, that's it for me for a week. Dr. Horrible will be writing the posts for the next three comics. I'll still be around (posting them as he e-mails them to me, for one thing) but hopefully he won't suck. Also hopefully he won't turn out to be the ass-turd troll.

Comic 607: Panic

Not a lot to say today, I'm afraid. Today's comic presents us with a joke based on a situation that is not happening, and if it were happening, precious few people would care. Perhaps people should care that the Unix time problem would destroy the world, but they wouldn't. So I see this as little more than a dog whistle comic for serious computer nerds, using the tried (tired?) and true xkcd formula of "Maybe if I reference something that most people don't know about, the ones who do get it will think it is funny JUST BECAUSE OF THE REFERENCE!" It's a style xkcd has gotten super duper good at.

In other news, I tire of my own voice and so next week you will all get to hear from Guest Poster Doctor Horrible. I do not believe that is his real name. I do not believe he is related to any other Horrible Doctors you may have heard of. Anyway, god knows what he'll say or if he's any good at this but I guess we'll all find out next week, huh?