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Friday, August 26, 2011

Comic 943: MAWWAIGE


Title: Empirical; alt-text: I'm as surprised as you!

Gee, this strip is small. It almost makes me wonder if it was a reused "five minute comic" like the juggling one was. When was the last time (besides 942) that you saw an xkcd only 144 pixels high? At any rate, I'm going to assume that this IS a five minute comic until proven otherwise.

This reminds me of the old xkcd, when it really WAS about "romance, math, sarcasm, and language." Empiricism is admittedly more in the realm of science than math, but if we let that slide, then this strip hits three of the four "classic criteria" (romance because of the marriage, language because of the analysis of "I will"). It's short, it's tight, it gets in and out and makes kind of a nerdy joke. I admit it, this strip isn't too bad. See what happens when you don't overthink your comics, Randall? (Oh who am I kidding; when has he ever spent more than five minutes on a strip?)

My main issue with this comic is that the woman is proposing to the man. That doesn't really happen. This isn't even like showing a female professor or a female CEO or something like that, which is a rarer but not unheard of occurrence. This, on the other hand, is more akin to a woman buying a man an engagement ring. It's just WEIRD. Randall is clearly going out of his way to "empower" women, and, as usual, he just ends up looking like kind of a dunce.

6 comments:

  1. he just married her for the breast milk

    he is a breast milk vampire --

    edboob

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  2. "....(romance because of the marriage,...."

    Oh dear, you are young aren't you?

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  3. I must admit that I didn't even register the fact that the woman is proposing to the man. You seem to be assuming that "he went out of his way to 'empower' women", perhaps he just forgot. It would certainly fit with the five-minute comic theme.

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  4. Maybe he thinks women are incapable of empirical thought.

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  5. I noticed that the woman was proposing. It registered as a bit of a distracting double-take. Kind of like when he attempts to illustrate facial features, like a beard, and it looks so unusual that it takes a moment to determine what exactly Randall tried to draw.

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  6. So what wrong with a woman proposing to a man? I proposed to my first husband. Of all the things that you'd find fault with in this comic, I'm surprised to find such an outdated expectation put up as an objection.

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