xkcd sucks

Comics 1008-1009: One Of These Is Self-TItled

2012-01-29T15:26:00.000-08:00

1008.
alt="suckville" title="the tab for this comic says 'xkcd: Suckville.' I agree wholeheartedly." />
[Comic title: Suckville; alt text: Suckville is considered by the Census Bureau to be part of the Detroit metropolitan statistical area, despite not being located anywhere near Detroit.]

This comic opens with some banter that I've basically heard before, and then carries on in that Randally tradition of "LOL WHAT IF WE TOOK IT LITERALLY" for boring results. Honestly the joke in this one didn't bother me much, but there are two glaring flaws.

First: making fun of Detroit is like making fun of creepy white knight webcomic artists. It's obvious, predictable, and boring, and real comedians steer well clear.

Second: what the fuck is going on in panel 3? Why is she turning into some eldritch monstrosity? Apparently it's meant to be "motion blur" where she turns over or some shit but... what the fuck? It was sufficiently bad that one of the forumites made this. So good.

Finally, let's visit one of the echochamber's resident aspies to see how they feel: "I still don't get it, mainly because I don't get how this is possibly taunting in any way. Telling someone that they live in a ghost town doesn't sound so much taunting as plain old bizarre. A distraction, maybe? Rather than a taunt? Similar to 'I need a pee/beer/new hat'."

1009.

[Comic title: Sigh; alt text: "If you're annoying enough, you can get them to respond with an involuntary second sigh and get a rhythm going."]

This comic right here is why this blog exists. It's not enough for Randall to be plastered all over the internet, no. He has to subsume reality, and encourage his legion of cuddlefish to turn everything into an XKCD reference. And mark my words: there are even now cuddlefish out there who are now saying "girllookatthatbody" every time they hear someone sigh. Randall is actively trying to replace reality with an awful, XKCD-inspired hyperreality.

This is probably one of the more egregious examples, because he is encouraging them to simultaneously reference both XKCD and LMFAO. It's hyperreality at its worst: ultimately the objective is to make it so that people can no longer sigh, or hear a sigh, without thinking of this manufactured pop culture. This is what Randall does for all of his references. This is what his fans willingly do. They are trying to turn the world we live in into nothing more than a series of references to other things.

He's carefully crafted a following which eats up references. He makes a comic which relies heavily on reference-based humor, and creates punchlines which are easily used as references in certain situations. References are the lifeblood of XKCD, and given the nearly religious quality XKCD takes on in nerd circles, making something as common as sighing into a reference must be a goddamn spiritual experience for them.

This sort of thing happens all the time. Something pop culture happens and you can never do a thing again without people thinking you are making a reference to that thing, or, alternatively, making the reference for you if you don't. Previously, though, these acts have been avoidable--nobody will force you to drink White Russians, and you can work words you once used that are now catchphrases for popular television shows out of your vocabulary. But you still had to change yourself in some way in order to avoid the hideous creeping hyperreality.

Now Randy is trying to make it happen for something that is almost involuntary for most people. Maybe you could avoid ever sighing, but it's the sort of thing that happens without thinking. And you never know when an XKCD fanboy will be waiting to strike. A red mist will descend on you, and when you emerge, you're covered in cuddlefish blood and hear yourself screaming 'WHERE ARE YOUR NERD REFERENCES NOW?' at their lifeless corpse.

No jury will convict you. Maybe this isn't so bad after all.

Comic 1007: Unsustainable Humor

2012-01-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

[Comic title: Sustainable; alt text: "Though 100 years is longer than a lot of our resources."]

Oh boy, another graph comic! This one's got it all: Randy has done the same joke before, the graph implies that the average sentence is 100 words long (15-25 is more common), and Randy is covering all his bases to make sure he doesn't accidentally make any of his fanboys angry--not only does he complain about the word "sustainable" being overused (using a graph that does not reflect the actual source in google ngrams), he throws in a token comment in the alt text about how we'll run out of a lot of resources in 100 years' time anyway to appease the sustainability fans out there. I bet Randy was pretty pleased with himself for that one.

The forums seem to think the point of the graph is that it was badly made. I think Randy just hoped he could get away with cherry-picking data and presentation to make his point. It must be nice having fanboys who interpret everything you do as something incredibly brilliant.

Comics 1004-1006: Worse Than SOPA

2012-01-20T20:51:00.000-08:00

Here are two shitty one-sentence reviews and one actual review for you!

1004. I think this is Randy's way of saying he thinks he's finally outgrown superhero comics.

1005. This is not a comic.

1006. Every time I call Randy on bullshit like this some cuddlefish is all like "so, the strawmanner has become the strawmanned," even though I do not make "strawman arguments" (I just hurl "unnecessarily hostile invective" at Randy). But this is probably one of the best examples of his strawman smugness yet. See how he has created a fictional character to say something annoying, just so he can say something smug about him. And see how his smugness also isn't actually very accurate: an unlikeable character doesn't make a movie any less believable (cf. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?). And the dialog offered isn't exceptionally unbelievable (by XKCD standards, anyway), either. Annoying, sure. But unbelievable?

I always like to pretend that these comics are the result of some serious staircase wit on Randy's part--he was subjected to someone who said something that vaguely resembles what his strawmen say in the comics, and much later he thought of something witty to say. Of course, by the time he actually thought up a response, the original comment has been run through his brain so many times it's nothing more than a hideous caricature of what it once was--not something an actual human would say, but something that, in Randy's mind, the Other might utter.

Of course, the point here isn't to be accurate, but to be an AMAZING ZING at the strawman. "Ha ha, you are unlikeable!" Which, of course he is--he's a Randall Munroe character.

Comics 1001-1003: Back In Black

2012-01-14T16:45:00.000-08:00

Some shitty one-sentence reviews for you!

1001. Dear sweet Christ, Randy should never draw perspective.

1002. Has Randy compiled a list of facts to set up a handful of stupid and not-remotely-worth-it joke, or has he simply appended a handful of stupid jokes to the end of a list of completely uninteresting facts?

1003. Incest is funny!

So much news

2012-01-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

So, the big anniversary came and went, and all Randall gave us for comic 1000 was a shockingly self-congratulatory image that was pretty much entirely devoid of humor.

In contrast, I'd like to show you Dinosaur Comics #1000 (I know Dinosaur Comics is too often my go-to reference, but in this case I can't think of many other comics that even bother to number their instalments, so I'm somewhat limited here). It's a perfect contrast - it works perfectly fine on its own as a comic, but if you happen to realize that it's #1000, then you also realize that "kicking a kangaroo 1000 times" becomes a metaphor for "posting a comic with the same 6 panels 1000 times." This is particularly obvious if you read the alt-text. Comic 2000 similarly marks this new milestone (upping the kangaroo kicks to 2000 as well) in much the same way. I look forward to the next instalment at 3000. Whereas with the next big xkcd milestone, what can we expect now? Just a giant "2000" written out? At that point, why not just draw a picture of a neon sign and write "LOOK HOW GREAT I AM" ?

Now I suppose we could all be in for a surprise and there will be a suitable milestone marker at 1024, as this comic suggests. I guess I'll deal with that in a few weeks when we get there, but it seems like it would be a case of having his cake and eating it too - getting to 1024 is only marginally more impressive that getting to 1000, which he's already celebrated here, as it were.

In other, better news, there could be no greater christmas present than the news that Michael Firman will be updating Moe every weekday this year! This is fantastic. I've long been a fan of Moe and it was most difficult to trudge through the long months that went by with no updates. As he says, if he's going to succeed in this, he will also try to sell some stuff, so I strongly encourage you to go and buy that stuff when it comes out. No - I encourage you to read the comic. Then you will convince yourself to buy his stuff.

Truly, this is an exciting time for comics.

ps - i have like 1000 unread e-mails in my e-mail box! ha ha, I am almost certainly never going to read them, unless they are printed out for me and I am incarcerated.

One Thousand

2012-01-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

I see that at some point tonight xkcd will hit the big one oh oh oh and publish its thousandth comic (really the 999th, since he cleverly skipped #404, because, you know, it was not found).

This seems an auspicious time and one where I, the only good thing that has happened to this site, should comment on it. But I can't think of anything to say besides "hey guys come look at THAT" so perhaps I'll just have to wait until the comic itself comes out.

Meanwhile, this is exactly the 700th post on this blog. Weird, huh?

Happy birthday-ish thing,
Carl

Comic 997: Still Waiting On Those Tits

2011-12-29T21:33:00.000-08:00

[Comic title: Wait Wait; alt text: You can't stab Karl Kasell. He sounds all slow and stentorian, but he moves like a snake.]

Sometimes Randy makes comics that make me think he's just discovered those games you play where everyone makes jokes based on a certain snowclone, except he doesn't have any friends so he just makes a bunch of them himself and then uploads them as a comic. Now, I like those games. They can be quite entertaining and more importantly help to pass the time in a world where everything is tedium--a world where the closest thing I can feel to joy or happiness--indeed, the only thing I can feel at all--is smugness.

The thing is, those things are mostly only funny at the time. There might be one or two that are genuinely funny, but you need to set up the flow of the game first. Most people with good taste simply leave the conversation in the past and move on. But some people--the Randall Munroes of this world--decide that the world needs to hear all of these not-really-that-funny jokes that seemed great at the time, all for the sake of the one or two good ones. But this isn't building up to a punchline. It's setting up the necessary frame of mind so that the punchline is something that you have a distant hope of finding funny. And the best of them--"wait wait, don't speak its name," in my vaunted opinion--isn't really that great.

Does it seem to anyone else that Randy's doing a lot more shotgun humor lately?

Comic 996: SHOW ME YOUR TITS

2011-12-28T19:11:00.000-08:00

[We've got a special treat for you today here at xkcdsucks. First, a guest post by "Ann Apolis," noted awful person. Then, some more words by your editor. -Ed.]

[Comic title: Making Things Difficult; Alt text: "Favorite mastectomy breast prosthesis idea: a fake boob containing a spare rechargable battery, accessed via a nipple USB port. Complete with a ring of LED charge indicators in the areola!"]

1. CANCER CANCER CANCER (oh yeah I hope you've noticed that "Some context for the cancer comics". "GUYS JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT: CANCER. I KNOW I DON'T MENTION IT MUCH SO")

2. lol boobs

3. stick figures wearing clothes makes them look like creepy hunchbacks

4. "nuh-uh": why do nerds fetishise adults behaving like children? the ballpit thing is like this too. hence you have forumites saying "Anyways, I really hope Randall's wife does this in real life" and such. protip: maybe it would be easier to argue that liking animation and graphic novels isn't childish if they people who read them didn't tend to behave like children all the time

6. the alt-text is 'why can't women be more like computers amirite guiz' and 'lol boob' and 'mmmmm nipples' all at once

7. so yeah slitting my wrists see you all in hell

===

Hello, cuddlefish, Rob once again. I have a special request! I want you to remember this comic every time you are tempted to say that I'm making up Randy's creepy fetishes. One boob for milk, one for charging his Android.

That is all.

Comics 993, 994, 995: Christmas Edition!

2011-12-26T17:09:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, cuddlefish! I got you some shitty, one-sentence reviews. Sorry they're late (except not).

993. Randy has discovered minimalist design philosophy, and hasn't yet realized that companies already make a killing using it.

994. Randy is living proof that Zeno was correct: he is always halfway to a good comic but never actually gets there.

995. Wouldn't it be wacky if someone tried to feed chocolate coins to one of those Coinstar machines?

Your regular shitty two-sentence reviews will resume eventually, maybe.

Comics 991-992: Ten Years!

2011-12-20T00:52:00.000-08:00

991.

The going theory on this one is thatt itt is meant to be a reference to the imminent re-re-re-re-re-release of Star Wars (ONE LAST TIME), this time in 3D! WOO 3D! YEAH! I guess the joke is thatt these people have been waitting for sometthing like ten years? And are still waitting? Is this meant to be funny? I can't really tell how.

992.

Look att me! I'm making a list of LOLRANDOM humor, coupled witth various geeky mnemonics! This time the mnemonics are also slightly geeky! OOOO!

I have gone on record before saying thatt I hatte this fucking shottgun humor. Itt doesn't help his case thatt some of the existing mnemonics are already reasonably amusing--"King Philip Came Over For Good Sex?" Thatt's seriously the mnemonic you're replacing witth your boring alternattives aboutt Katty Perry and kernel panics?

Itt turns outt thatt if you throw enough jokes outt there, some of them will stick. WHO KNEW?

Comics 989-990: Frozen Humor

2011-12-14T01:01:00.000-08:00

989.

[Comic title: Cryogenics; Alt text: 'Welcome to the future! Nothing's changed.' was the slogan of my astonishingly short-lived tech startup.]

So basically this comic betrays Randall's true nature--that is to say, the fact that he is not an engineer but a passive consumer of goods, but he still thinks of himself as an engineer.

Engineers are, of course, the people who are working to produce new things--something Randall hasn't done in a very long time. The idea of an actual engineer, someone who is actually working with technology, deciding to go "eh, I'll just wait thirty years for the tech to become interesting," is kind of implausible. Why would you not want to be a part of that leading edge of innovation? Why would you want to just skirt along on its coattails? Certainly, we want to live in the future we're creating for ourselves, but to be a human, to be a creator, an innovator, is to want to be a part of that creation, however small.

Randall has, apparently, lost this. This isn't surprising, of course. I've mentioned that Randall is a creature who sedately consumes in the review for comic 662. But what is surprising is that he still considers himself an innovator although he is patently not one, and that he seems to believe that all other innovators are like him.

Everyone who is excited about the future, he suggests, would rather skip all the boring bits of "invention" and "design" and "innovation," and instead just want to live in the world where all that shit is done for us!

It makes me truly, profoundly sad to think that there are people out there capable of making this comic.

990.

[Comic title: Plastic Bags; alt text: The high I feel when I actually remember to bring my reusable bags to the store--and take them inside rather than leaving them in the parked car--can last for days.]

So, for some reason Randy is writing a comic about how he (a) doesn't ever remember to bring a reusable shopping bag (b) doesn't like how many bags the people at the grocery store use to bag his order. Okay!

Maybe it's because I have a giant messenger bag that I use for all my shopping, but I do not understand in the slightest why this is a comic. Maybe someone else can enlighten me.

Comics 986-987: Songs From Fiddler On The Roof

2011-12-10T20:22:00.001-08:00

[Hated Raven "Ravenzomg" sent this review, which, okay. -Ed.]

Hello, this is Ravenzomg of Ravenzomg fame here to give a very special double review because we're all tired of hitting the "next page" button!

Title: Tradition. Tooltip: An 'American tradition' is anything that happened to a Baby Boomer twice.

Title: Potential. Tooltip: Who even cares, that's why I won't fix the html reference.

Rather than talk about how generally uninteresting these comics are, I'm just going to quote comments on a forum post advertising xkcd.

"fuck xkcd

i've no problem with people liking it, but randall munroe is a lazy, complacent asshole. and that is my opinion about things.

first 200 strips are good, though"

"XKCD is pretty hit-or-miss with me. I really like the strips where he kind of pokes fun at his own interests, but in some of the others I just feel like he's trying to show off things he knows or believes in. Too much reliance on the "smart/right" character revealing something to the more "common" person, who's then like "huh, guess I was dumb". "

"Well it can't be helped that the kid has only been alive for 12 years or so, and hasn't even had a regular education! I mean, he was practically raised by hippies. It's not his fault for his lack of knowledge!"

"the only thing xkcd is good for is getting you to google shit you don't care about"

"I used to utterly loathe the comic with a burning passion; it was so offensively mediocre that I could spend hours extolling the sins of individual strips and the comic as a whole; I could froth endlessly about exactly WHY putting a heart under a radical was such trite garbage and why any individual should feel bad about appreciating it; I would eagerly await new comics simply so that I could be angry at them and wax vitriolic. Now though, I simply can't muster the energy or the desire. It's been bad in exactly the same way for so long that there's no point in it anymore. All the punchlines are the same. All the strips are the same. There are three or four premises that Munroe has, and he's realized that people will eat them up forever and there's no reason for him to ever try new things. So he doesn't! I would have a difficult time deciding if "complacency" or "mediocrity" would be the one word I'd use to sum up the entire comic, but either one would fit."

And my personal favourite:
"Also, just because one can draw a comic in 5 minutes doesn't mean that should be the update rate. Otherwise all we'd get is random thoughts and forced jokes."

I really. really. really. love this.

And on that note, I wish you all a very merry christmas. Oh wait, something's different--

It's this:

As we all know, Randall Munroe makes his income without the use of ads, and so relies entirely on Merchandizing income. And as usual, he's relying on nostalgia [hey remember that bobcat comic guys? remember how you loved it 3 years ago?] to sell stuff.

I won't comment any more on this fact. That's why you guys are here <3 -Ravenzomg <3 <3 <3

[The hated raven also wanted me to point out that the poster went down in price from $150 to like $95. Raven says this is only $35 more than it should be; in my estimation it is actually $200 more than it should be. -Ed.]

Comics 985 and 986: Something About The Time Cube Guy

2011-12-06T18:19:00.001-08:00

985. Randy has revealed that he has a superpower: he can detect ambiguity where none exists, as well as inventing problems that do not actually happen in the real world. He also lists several things that would be bad for a politician to do, and then lists some crazy people who support those things. It is extremely hilarious.

986. In this comic, Randall lets his readers know that he has a kidney disorder. This is a very hard time for him, as he can no longer satisfy his milk fetish for very long at all without having to interrupt himself to go urinate.

Comics 983 and 984: Privacy Issues

2011-11-30T23:01:00.001-08:00

983. Randall is showing considerable restraint here by writing a comic called "Privacy" and not going all Richard Stallman on us. We can forgive him for wanting to drink Megan's milk in a beaver's dam for this admirable restraint.

984. Black Hat Guy makes a return, this time pointing out that Werner von Braun worked for the Nazis. Apparently Black Hat Guy has given up trolling entirely and is instead pointing out basic, barely relevant facts at inappropriate points in conversation. In short, he has become the typical XKCD fan.

Two Comic Updates

2011-11-28T18:55:00.000-08:00

I'm just popping in to note that there are two great comics which just issued rare updates, and you should know about both of them.

The first is Moe, a comic I love that has not managed to break into the realm of superpopular webcomics, but it is still great! The newest comic just came out, and it's the first update we've had since August (and that, in turn, was the first update since May). Anyway, go, enjoy it, tell the author how much you love it, read the archives if you haven't yet, etc. Or you can read an interview with the author I did on that website I used to run.

The other comic to do much the same is Achewood, which is in fact extremely popular, but had apparently become too much for its author to keep up with, which is why he didn't post any new comics for nearly nine months. But now he has! Is it a sign of things to come? Goodness I hope so. I hope he can at least finish this story. He wouldn't start a story and not finish it, right? RIGHT?

Comics: they're the best.

Comics 981-982: Pure, Distilled Boredom

2011-11-27T13:55:00.001-08:00

981. Oh, how surprising, Randy is sexually aroused by filesystems. Anything to get it up when Megan isn't lactating, amirite?

982. ha ha ha what if in maths the elements had feelings and could be intimidated???? SO WACKY! also remember the axiom of choice? because i do.

Comic 980: Money Shot

2011-11-22T17:37:00.001-08:00

[Since the java reader for 980 is so fucking awful I can't be bothered to try, here is a guest review by hated raven "Raven". -Ed.]

This is Ravenzomg of Ravenzomg fame to review this monsjavaty.

Title: Money. Tooltip: There, I showed you it.

To demonstrate the absurd pointlessness of this massive... thing, I will review this comic using a single cropped but otherwise unedited screenshot and three sentences following it. I wish I edited the picture to make that juxtaposition, but look for yourselves (which I know you won't because that's why you're here).

(1)"fucking megan, keeping our kids from going to Hogwarts"

(2)It's a good thing his readers apparently aren't good at money, or they'd realize the absurdity of paying $15 for one 36"x24" poster, but $150 for four 36"x24" posters -- should i be yelling or laughing, what even is this.

(3)There are many things wrong with the java script (such as creating a new page every time it tries to reload the image or just being unintuitive), the graphic presentation (such as requiring us to follow it in what can only be described as an 'S' if it had fallen forward onto its face, drunk from all the colorfully named drinks it bought which it kept claiming made it "eccentric" and "interesting" in a way that you filthy plebes just wouldn't... ahhhh.... hold on [*throwing up noises*], or the fact that he presents sums on the order of 6000-8000 in thousands, and expects us to be awed at the fact that there is all of a 1-2 tiny boxes difference), and questionable factual issues/typological mistakes/general mistakes (such as... well, I'm not going to say anything because unlike the previous two criteria, he can actually ret-con these), but rather than make a ginormous list I'm going to let you all say what you disliked or found incorrect in this comic, because I know you are all just dying to post your individual fault that you have discovered and I wouldn't dare threaten your pride by stealing your stolen thunder using this stolen thunder which was itself stolen, mmk, so go nuts down there i know i might.

Comic 979: Old Problems

2011-11-20T20:53:00.001-08:00

[Comic title: Wisdom of the Ancients; alt text: All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...']

This is pretty much straight up GOOMH-bait. If you are disputing that you are dumb. The weird poem-thing in the left is sufficiently bad at being a poem that I can't tell if it's actually meant to be one, or is just some unnecessary nonstandard formatting. Who knows? The second panel is vaguely amusing, as far as GOOMH-bait goes. It captures the frustration described reasonably well, and in a way which isn't too boring. But GOOMH-bait is still GOOMH-bait.

Comics 977 and 978: Humor Needed

2011-11-16T23:38:00.001-08:00

977. I know someone was saying they wanted me to rage about this one but I really can't say anything I haven't said countless times before: Randall is pandering. He's pandering to map nerds. He's pandering to the sort of nerds who wear Vibram Five-fingers because they think of it as hacking for their feet--really, most of these are pandering to some category of nerd or another. It's a list of panderings. I don't personally care enough about maps to, you know, care, so whatever.

978. This one, though, is stupid. I've been making this joke for, oh, several years now--it's not difficult to use Wikipedia to create reality. It's not surprising that this happens, because, despite the fact that your garden variety internet moron will declare that you are really dumb if you link to a Wikipedia article to prove or assist a point, Wikipedia is broadly useful, though not, perhaps, good to rely on.

This is not a novel concept, and he doesn't really do anything interesting with it. "It turns out that Wikipedia cites authors whose source is Wikipedia sometimes!" Yes, and? Did you just now discover this potential?

The alt text is even worse. While I don't doubt that his claim is plausible, his refusal to identify which book and which author just makes it sound like he's making it up. To put it into perspective, it's sort of like if he said "yeah, I totally had this hot celebrity chick over and she let me drink her milk, it was totally hot. She's really famous and you all know her, but I'm not going to tell you which one it is because I value her privacy." Sure, it's technically possible that someone saying this is telling the truth, but it's far more likely they're just telling a lie that you can't go and verify.

Comic 976: I'm Sailing Away

2011-11-12T16:24:00.001-08:00

[Hated raven "Ravenzomg" wrote this guest review, apparently. I was forced to troubleshoot and remove problematic HTML just so I could post the fucking thing. -Ed.]

Hello, everyone! This is Ravenzomg of Ravenzomg fame here to review the latest XKCD!

Title: Sail. Tooltip: It only works a few times before you have to capsize the boat in the soap lagoon again.

I'm going to review this backwards. Rather than grudgingly admit a few things that are okay and spend the whole review talking about how awful everything is, milk, etc, I'm going to treat this comic as follows:

This is a pretty good xkcd comic. I'm not saying it's a great comic, but it is pretty good. How about a list? Everybody likes lists. That's why Cracked and The Oatmeal make money, right? And what is this, except a money-making instrument that Carl created a few years ago and still benefits from?

(1) No ppd. Hell, no dialogue at all. Let's do a quick calculation... oh right. The Ravenzomg Scale of Wordiness™ is ZERO. We always complain that Randall uses too many words. I was going to dive into the archives for you creatures, but then I hit the VERY LAST COMIC.

So many words! That's a 3.72 on the Ravenzomg Scale of Wordiness™, which is a full 372 infinities times as large! Goodness knows he's done even worse.

BUT NOT TODAY. Today we have no awkward monologuing or captions or anything. Just a simple art thing. Which brings us to

(2) The joke is actually appropriate to the medium! This joke relies on minimalist style. Which Randy employs. If the comic were any more detailed, the joke relying on the ambiguity of interpretation wouldn't work. So good job! Which leads into

(3) The absence of those usual art foibles. Sit back, reader, for Ravenzomg will do all the hard MS Paint work for you!

There are exactly zero (0) heads disconnected from bodies, zero (0) heads that have gaping holes in them. The head varies in shape and looks lumpy and weird, but that's what stick-figures are. ~~and who wouldn't have lumps stuck in their head at a time like this~~.

Also note that, at the very least, he continues his no-copy-paste rule. Every man is different, every boat is different, and while the scaling seems... wonky, we won't hold it against him. Well, I won't. You guys go ahead, 'cause you guys like that shit (you like that shit).

(4) The joke itself is okay. It's slightly reminiscent of classic XKCDs that would at the very least cause a slight rise in your lip, without the accompanying furrowed brows. It's just a cute aesthetic joke that we look at, enjoy, and move on. No source of rage.

Well, unless you're some kind of idiot who doesn't understand the comic. Here is what is going on, for those less educated/American of you:

[link, because Raven broke the goddamn blog -Ed.]

Let's all just appreciate the caliber of this video and the knowledge we have attained. Now look at the comic, and realize what Randall has done. He's one-upped the so-called Bubble Man!

If you aren't getting down on your knees now, you are a failure of a human being.

Comic 975: Occulting the Joke

2011-11-09T22:18:00.000-08:00

[Comic title: Occulting Telescope; alt text: Type II Kardashev civilizations eventually completely enclose their planetary system in a Dyson sphere because space is way too big to look at all the time.]

The most remarkable part about this comic is how incredibly boring it is. I don't mean that in the sense that this one is abnormally boring--God knows Randy is good at making mind-numbingly boring comics. No, I mean that this one doesn't feel like it's even trying to be interesting, even though he is working with such ripe source material.

Comics in the key of "the universe is huge" usually attempt to invoke a sense of something. Sometimes it's meant to invoke a sense of wonder, sometimes it's meant to invoke a sense of cosmic insignificance. Sometimes it's meant to invoke a Lovecraftian sort of terror--the universe is huge and could destroy us at any moment and we wouldn't even know why, etc. But it's always meant to invoke something.

This comic, in contrast, does not attempt to invoke anything. It sterilizes the concept. The character describes his fear in the vaguest, most boring way possible. But it doesn't feel deliberate in the least. It feels, rather, like Randy has decided to take it as a given that if you say "the universe is big," readers will just fill in the gaps and feel the appropriate emotions, and laugh knowingly along with the quirky scientist's attempt to hide from its immensity. No attempt is made to sell this point to the audience, anymore than you need to attempt to sell Randy on the virtues of breastfeeding (even if he is unclear on why there always seems to be a child involved, hogging all the good milk).

I'm also getting some deja vu on this one, but I can't remember the last time he did this. Anyone?

Comic 974: Pass The Humor, This Comic Is Bland

2011-11-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

[Comic title: The General Problem; alt text: I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight.]

This is another one of those comics which might have been okay if Randy had left it alone. It's possible this is just my "I hate when geeks do this" talking, but I am always happy to see the geek's tendency to spend hours trying to come up with a way to make a task that takes very little take time take even less time satirized. Which is what the comic is standing on its own!

Of course, we still see that Randy isn't quite sure what a beat panel is for. Apparently he thinks it indicates that twenty minutes have lapsed. Apparently, he also waits for twenty minutes before asking for the salt again when his request is initially ignored. Admittedly, whenever I ask someone to pass the salt it ends like this, so I may not be the best person to judge, but I feel that most people would have either repeated their request, gotten it themselves, or flung the salt shaker against the wall to make a point by the time twenty minutes had lapsed.

(This is as good a time as any to note that when people complain that a comic is not realistic, they are actually complaining that it lacks verisimilitude. The distinction is nontrivial: a fantasy adventure story may not be realistic, in that it contains wizards and elves and women who are not frivolous and weak, but it may contain verisimilitude. That is to say, when reading the story, the wizards and elves and women who are not frivolous and weak are believable within the context of the story. They behave in believable fashions. When reading about the wizards and elves and women who are not frivolous and weak, verisimilitude is never broken by someone saying "wait, that wouldn't happen." Randy, in contrast, can hardly go two comics without making people stop and say "wait, that wouldn't happen.")

I suggested in the opening sentence of this review that Randy didn't leave it alone. He usually fails to leave his comics alone by injecting an alt text that usually completely ruins it. In the alt text, he reveals himself to be the tortured genius that he is. No doubt he spent too much time performing a mundane task in recent memory and he was called out on it. "I bet you nobody called Einstein out for being a perfectionist when he was inventing the light bulb," he muttered, finishing his mundane task more quickly than he would like--but he swore then and there that he would exact vengeance by writing about it on his comic one day, oh yes.

I admit it is possible that a whiny alt text like this one could just be the product of Randy's imagination, but it nevertheless reads like Randy has problems with the fact that his so-called perfectionism annoys people when it makes him unable to perform simple tasks in a timely fashion. So he draws a false dichotomy: "if you don't let me focus on frivolous minutiae whenever I feel like it no one will ever look back on my works and proclaim me a genius!"

The sad fact is, of course, that Randy already has a legion of fans who are happy to proclaim his works a genius even when he patently spent no time on it at all. He has a persecution complex, but no persecution, even when that persecution would be richly deserved.

Comic 973: Talkin' About My Generation

2011-11-05T23:08:00.001-07:00

[This is the standard notification I put at the head of every guest post notifying you that it is a guest post. This one is written by noted archaic concept "the pirate king." -Ed.]

[Comic title: MTV Generation; alt text: If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you're now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.]

Oh look, it's white hat guy! Hello white hat guy! Does anyone remember white hat guy? He first appeared in this comic, and has since appeared in three others. His character has no consistency whatsoever! Even less so than black hat guy or beret man.

So apparently in this one, White Hat Guy is a crotchety old person. Or it seems that way. Randy is once again pointing out to us that time continues to pass even during the years you spend zoned out on the internet. Yes, the MTV generation is in their forties, blah blah, people get old. The conclusion of the comic doesn't seem to make much more sense than White Hat's initial premise.

"No, it's this NEW generation of kids who are spastic idiots!" Randy cries. So I guess Randall is really the crotchety old man here. This joke is tired and overused, and randall's delivery, as usual, lacks any and all creativity.

Ooh! But look at the use of perspective in the first panel! The tweenster is faded out, so you can distinguish him from a hovering midget! Or maybe they're in the future and that's a hologram, I don't know.

Also, I'd like to point out that the alt text is yet another chance for Randy to point out how dated movies and shows he liked when he was a kid are. He does this again and again and again. Face it Randy, you're getting old.

Comics 971 and 972: Alternatively Lame

2011-11-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

971. Randy is back to his old favorite punching bag of homeopathy in this one! Before I read the alt text, I didn't catch that it was meant to be a jab at homeopathy and figured it was meant to be a satire about anti-consumerism in the key of Cake's "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle", which I could have gotten behind.

Then I read the alt text. I don't think Randy has ever more explicitly spelled out what a comic is about, or why he is writing it, in the alt text before. That's a lot of text for an alt text. And then you go back through and read it and it becomes clear that this comic is just another boring, lazy strawman attack on proponents of homeopathy. I don't think this even counts as pandering, but that may just be because I can't bring myself to give a fuck about it.

972. Here's what's happening here. I had to get someone to explain to me why this comic exists, because originally I thought 'surely Randy can't think that being aware of your tongue is that annoying, can he? and even if it is, it's not worth a comic, surely?'

How wrong I was.

Anyway, what's happening here is Randy read this Peanuts comic and decided to copy the joke more or less in its entirety, then, as an Original Twist, he declared that November would be tongue awareness month. That way once you know that you'd spend the whole month being aware of your tongue, and then you'd forget about it as soon as December rolls around. Just like how during breast cancer awareness month, Randy's only thoughts were of breasts and the milky bounty they contain, during tongue awareness month, your only thoughts will be of tongues.

BAM! Month ruined! How d'you like that, you fuckers?

I don't think I need to explain how mind-numbingly stupid this whole 'if I tell you to be aware of your tongue for a whole month, you will be' thing is. It's dumb. It's very, very dumb. This joke is dumb. This meme is dumb. Even the forumites are calling this the worst one of all time. Why the fuck would you intentionally release this as a comic?

Comic 970: Finger On The Milk Buttons

2011-10-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

[Noted pirate king "The Pirate King" sent me this review, which is fortunate, because I didn't actually mind this comic that much. -Ed.]

[Comic title: The Important Field; alt text: I hear in some places, you need one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check. It's interesting who has what incentives to care about what mistakes.]

Oh my god this is a stupid one. I mean really, really dumb, in a lot of ways.

So we see some soldier (I guess?) using the "missile launch web interface". This idea is ludicrous. Randy knows it is ludicrous. It's likely that there are people out there who believe this is how the defense department actually operates, and this comic could become somewhat coherent as a jab at them (durr hurr the medias are so dumb hurr), but he doesn't really take it that way.

It's like he's criticizing the interface of a website that doesn't exist, and if it did, that he would never, ever see, and probably wouldn't look anything like how he portrays it. And even if this weren't atrociously implausible, one would assume that the soldier would have to provide some kind of login information to get on there, and logins are always tied to an email.

So maybe he's trying to mock a more general trend in account creation? You'd think he'd pick a more accessible example, like a bank site I guess? I suppose he's annoyed that they expect you to repeat your email twice? Well that's just stupid. The email is the only part of an account that you often can't change once you've created it, because that's how they send you your reset password, so it's the most important not to fuck up. I've lost newly-minted accounts to that accident on numerous occasions.

The alt text is stupid too, and doesn't make any sense in relation to the comic. "DURR HURR PEOPLE SOMETIMES CARE MORE ABOUT MONEY THAT THE SAFETY OF OTHERS!" Well no fucking shit, Albert McSherlock Picasso.