Sunday, April 3, 2011

Comic 880: APRIL FOOLS!!!!!!

headache

[Comic title: Headache; Alt text: I'm only willing to visit placid lakes, salt flats, and painting exhibits until the world's 3D technology improves.]

We can tell this comic is an April Fool's joke because Megan is asking Randy to do something with her. This has never happened, and you were all FOOLED. It is doubly foolish, because in such a situation, Randy would never turn her down--this is his attempt at pretending that, in such circumstances, he would "play it cool."

But the joke is funny even if you are capable of accepting a fiction in which Randy has ever been asked out by Megan and/or where Randy is capable of turning her down. You see, some people dislike 3D movies because they give them a headache, and, when asked to attend, it is very plausible that they would say something very much like Randy said in the comic here.

If you are a master of words like Randy, you'll notice that "movies" does not appear in Randy's dialog in this comic! This is a quirk of human conversation, where people will often assume that a certain noun is implied and avoid repeating it endlessly, instead using pronouns or nonspecific nouns such as "stuff" to refer to them. Randy has noticed this, and, as he is a cunning linguist (sluuuuurp), he has decided that, since "3D stuff" theoretically refers to the entire world, it would be extremely hilarious if someone were to reject Megan's amorous advances to do things like ride bicycles by saying "I'm not into 3d stuff because it gives me a headache, GET IT LIKE 3D MOVIES???"

This was accompanied by some sort of script which drew a bunch of extraneous lines around the comic for some reason, which sort of but not really reacted when I moved my mouse around.

48 comments:

  1. I dunno Robdall, when I moved my mouse around my computer's USB ports dispensed candy. Maybe xkcd used your webcam, detected your corpulence, and decided against it

    CAPTCHA: untslori. Describing a Daft Punk song to Lori.

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  2. Megan Jokes! What a f****** surprise!

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  3. oh dear, are they surprising? I had hoped they would be fairly predictable by now

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  4. Rob? Posting a Megan joke? Well, count me a fool on this fine April day.

    Captcha: reform. So lock the windows / And bolt the door / 'Cause I've got enough problems / Without creating more / I feel like I was born /For devastation and.

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  5. btw I am preparing to write a guest post AS WE SPEAK

    I was gonna do one for #880 but my April Fools gimmick was 'praise it to the hilt' and I just couldn't do it

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  6. Can we see more criticism about stilted delivery, bad comedic timing, awkward phrasing, recycled concepts, and blatant pandering, and less hamfisted forced criticism of the guy's personal life?

    The constant Megan jokes are even more repetitive and hackneyed than the comic itself.

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  7. Hey Ann, you could do 881. 'Cause I can't. I.... I just can't....

    Randy. =\

    Although I will say panel 4 is fucked up because it makes it look like Voidman's creature torso is actually narrow enough to wrap your hand around.

    @Anon953: It's called guest comics, because Rob sure won't. You're confusing him with Carl actually-has-integrity Wheeler.

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  8. oh THANKS RAVEN the fact that panel 4 looked stupid was the only thing I felt comfortable saying apart from "=\" and now I'm gonna look like a big fat copier

    (well I guess if I stood next to Rob I would look like a really thin copier)

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  9. Dunnit. So yeah Randall pretty much harshed my buzz on that one. Hopefully the NEXT one will be standard and shit and I can rip the piss out of it GUILT-FREE.

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  10. proper hate or gtfo =P

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  11. I expect Rob to post it with no fanfare in tiny font and then follow it up with something properly vitriolic, insensitive, and hilarious =D

    and probably attribute both to me, the fat bastard

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  12. haha, update: "proper hate or gtfo" was rob's position too, so my guest post is postponed AGAIN. BRING THE HATE ROB

    [it's the chinese democracy of the blog world]

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  13. More like the House of Bourbon, really.

    Captcha: illings. Miniature fits of sickness, like when you feel nauseous after eating a meal, but then it turns out to be nothing.

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  14. Someone's gotta do it, because Ann and Raven are too chicken-shit.

    OMG, cancer is so sad that it makes even math sad! Sad! Having shown a sensitivity to human emotions, I can hope that maybe Megan will stop calling me a soulless aspie robot and will finally return my awkward sexual advances. Thank god aunt Jennie caught the cancer, or I never would have thought of this!

    Was that so hard, you guys?

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  15. Anon 10.24 you forgot the bit about how awful panel 4 looks

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  16. Also, Raven is chicken-shit [hahahahaha....] and Ann just wasn't angry enough; get your facts straight.

    Captcha: jazompo. Where the impossible is possible.

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  17. I wasn't angry enough because I was raven-, er, chicken-shit so their point is still plausible

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  18. your FACE is pretty plausible.

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  19. your MUM's face is pretty plausible

    [not chicken-shit enough to refrain from pointing out that the alt-text is utter bobbins]

    CAPTCHA: bitiming. Determining the date by whether a friend is in their heterosexual or homosexual phase.

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  20. A couple of things to note with 881:
    1) Randall is referencing comic 55 in the title text.
    2) The graph is at 89% and 79% for 5 and 10, not 81% and 77%.
    3) The IV bag is MASSIVE, and apparently the person who needs it is lying on the ground.
    4) What are they sitting on?

    I'm going to pass on reviewing this one, too. Rob, make us proud.

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  21. Aha! Trick question: they're not sitting on anything, they're hovering slightly above it.

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  22. No Gamer_2k4, do a review. For Rob is just going to throw another Megan joke.

    DO IT. For the sake of intelligent and thoughtful reviews that this blog was once known for.

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  23. oh man, you had me right up until you said we were ever intelligent or thoughtful

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  24. This new comic is a piece of shit. Anyone can be sad and mopey and emo Randall. You know what's hard? Being funny for once.

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  25. You know what's really REALLY hard? My penis after reading the goatkcd version of 879.

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  26. My interpretation is that 881 referring to xkcd itself.

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  27. I've no idea what 881 is supposed to be saying.

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  28. Does gooney post here? He's pretty successfully trolling the forums over at xkcd.

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  29. he might, but not under that name

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  30. Just for you, Anon 11:22, I'll try to type something up at work today. Maybe Rob will have it up Monday evening if we're lucky. Just know that I can't promise rage.

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  31. 12:20 = gooney, self-advertising.

    sad but true.

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  32. At least he had the foresight to get my name a little bit wrong so that it looked like he was somebody else.

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  33. Life got tough after he left Herman's Hermits.

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  34. Why would they use a splitter to go from one IV bag to two lines? Maybe the same reason they're using what looks like it has to be a 5gal bag. I guess Randy's trying to show the hospital euthanizing the patient by fluid overload?

    CAPTCHA: Epeastr. Phenomena outside of easter that cause changes to the celebration of easter.

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  35. So, I'm just back from reboot, and here's something I don't get...

    Where the hell are you taking that 881 is about cancer at all? All I see in this comic is:

    1) A graph. Ha ha.
    2) A slanted table. That's Randall being "experimental", I suppose. Watch out, Randy, the angle might be too much for your fanbase!
    3) Some faux-nerdy/emo comment about SCIENCE, and an IV bag that's both huge and connected to nothing or no one.
    4) Two stick figures hugging. I'll give Randy the credit of giving the stick figures some substance instead of just drawing the lines crossing each other in a very jumbled mess like he did in the past... though, really, stick people hands are still creepy. Oh, yes, and this is supposed to be an "AWWWWW" panel or something.

    So, first of all, no reference to cancer here. For all I know, it could be AIDS, swine flu, or measles. Second, while this strip is obviously not meant to be a joke, obviously, it still makes little to no sense. There's no point following from this sequence of panels. I still have no idea where you guys take it that this has anything to do with cancer, really. It sounds more like Randall is giving up on cold, hard science because it doesn't offer him any comfort anymore.

    Which makes this comic an obvious hallucination. I mean, couple that with Megan actually reciprocating his feelings, and there you have it!

    Really, I can't hate this badly enough because it doesn't go anywhere. This is the xkcd version of mopey Livejournal posts.

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  36. (in regards to 881...)

    Didn't he just have some family sickness/deathness goings on recently?

    But great news! As far as Randall's research is concerned, you shouldn't ever have less than a 60% chance of survival! What a positively exhilarating real-world application of probability!

    P.S. is his alt-text just an admittance that his normal approach (comic-ing) is useless in this scenario? The first step is admitting it...

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  37. Doctors often don't share the data on chance of survival because statistics are really hard for people to grasp.

    But usually it's the other way around, with seemingly tiny survival rates really meaning things like, "It usually goes undiagnosed for too long" or "Most people who get it are immunocompromised, and that drives up the mortality rate" or something like that.

    77% chance to live at least 10 years is... well, it doesn't sound that bad to the layperson.

    So is the idea of the comic that understanding statistics led him to conclude that a survival rate that actually sounds pretty good is actually much worse than it seems? That he might be hopeful at hearing relatively high numbers, but because he understands the math behind the numbers, it's actually much more grim than it seems?

    Because I'm confused.

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  38. @Mole - Five/ten year survival rates are stats used most extensively for cancer. Of course, it could be some sort of organ transplant or other disease/surgery, but it's a lot less likely. If he had written 'OMG CANCER SUCKS' somewhere on this, that would have made it a lot worse.

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  39. 5 year survival Rate for xkcd: 15%
    10 year survival Rate for xkcd: 5%

    5 year survival Rate for xkcd-sucks: 3%
    10 year survival Rate for xkcd-sucks: 1%

    5 year survival Rate for xkcd-sucks-reboot: 0%
    10 year survival Rate for xkcd-sucks-reboot: 0%

    Reboot does a Redux countdown: 15

    50% Complete.

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  40. Damn straight I'm not doing this for five years. Even Carl and Rob only lasted just over two years.

    Captcha: Tiesu. The ancient art of killing opponents with neckwear.

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  41. The new comic is nonsense. You know those optical illusions where given just the shadows of letters you can read a word that isn't there?

    Yeah, we're expected to draw emotion from expressionless circle-faces. Good job. The third panel even had something like a punchline, but the comic kept going. Double good job.

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  42. @Acosta: No, you're expect to scream OH GOD HIS MASSIVE FOREHEAD IS EATING HER

    HE'S OUT TO INCREASE HIS OWN CHANCES AND HE'S NOT AFRAID TO FOREHEAD-EAT PEOPLE TO DO IT!

    Sheesh.

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  43. God, Rob, you're less interesting than Randal these days. That's some effort, right there.

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