tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30557056171654119092024-03-14T01:29:46.228-05:00XKCD-SUCKS presents: Died In A Blogging Accident"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." -- Mark TwainGamer_2k4http://www.blogger.com/profile/17079715817544544279noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-89107140254369180752015-10-25T07:19:00.003-05:002015-10-25T07:31:51.212-05:00DiaBA chapter 69 - Darkness ***FINAL CHAPTER***<div class="p1">
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THIS IS 100% THE CANON ENDING.</div>
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<i>“No matter what happens now</i><br />
<i>I shouldn't be afraid</i></div>
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<i>Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen”</i></div>
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—Radiohead</div>
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Rob Mason stood above his similarly-initialed counterpart. He was holding a sharpened plastic sword against Randall Munroe’s chest. Randy had started the fight with a similar blade, but it was currently stuff in a crater that had been left by a stray overvolted laptop battery.<br />
“I… win.” Rob breathed, panting from the effort of the incredibly dramatic and entertaining battle that had just happened. “And soon,” he continued, “XKCD won’t suck anymore, for XKCD will be no more.”<br />
It had been a long journey to this point, full of twists, turns, friends, enemies, celebrity cameos, and run-on sentences. Rob was almost sad to see it all end. Almost.<br />
With a tempered glee, the blogger prepared to stab the webcomic artist through the heart. Randy didn’t say anything, instead racking his brain trying to think of a quotable one-liner.<br />
The very air seemed to hold still as Rob drew his weapon back.<br />
“Wait!” a lone voice cried out, not quite distant but not yet close either.<br />
Both men turned their heads towards the source. It was a tall, unshaven male in a gray hoodie and jeans with dark, messy hair, making an awkward shuffle-run up the path to the summit of the mountain.<br />
“Wait! Don’t kill him!” he yelled, a northeastern accent slurring the latter two words together.<br />
After an awkward few seconds of stretching out the pause in the climatic death scene, Rob looked back at Randy, wondering if this was Mr. Munroe’s last resource. But Randy looked just as confused as he did.<br />
In another thirty seconds, the unkempt surprise had reached the circle that had been the battleground for the last three chapters.<br />
“It doesn’t have to be like this.” he said, pausing between words to breathe, heavier than would have been expected.<br />
The two men looked back and forth between the newcomer and each other, their previous characterization melting a little.<br />
“XKCD isn’t funny, that’s true.” The stranger began, stepping over and around the vestiges of battle. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Randy, you’ve come up with some really, really good comics this last month. I just want to see that happen more often.”<br />
The aforementioned ex-NASA employee slowly reached up with an uncertain hand to push the sharpened plastic sword aside. Rob let him. After a moment, the three were standing in a triangular formation within the larger circle.<br />
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Several weeks later, XKCD’s new editor had just woken up and was sitting down to read through a small stack of drafts. He wrote up his criticism and revisions, in a slightly kinder tone than usual, before sending them back to Randy.<br />
The artist of the internet’s most popular webcomic checked his email, noting the changes and arriving at a happy medium that would again be sure to please his readers, old and new. Below his editor’s email there was another list of t-shirt orders, enough to pay everyone’s rent for another month. He smiled contentedly and set out drawing the first figure of his next comic – making sure to connect the head to the torso.<br />
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XKCD was funny again.</div>
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<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/diaba-chapter-8-commitment.html">< Previous chapter</a> <span style="text-indent: 0em;">| </span><span style="text-indent: 0em;"><a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a></span></div>
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Like I say, this ending is completely canon. No take-backsies, pinky swear on my mother's life. Don't ask about the other 60 chapters. I never wrote 'em. Sorry.</div>
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Yeah, I basically got bored of writing this and gave up when I wrote myself into a corner, and didn't want to admit it. So... sorry. It wasn't even me who wrote this last chapter. It was actually Greg Greenwell of <a href="http://xkcdisntfunny.blogspot.co.uk/">XKCD Isn't Funny</a> fame who posted it a year ago. Please assign any praise/blame to him for this chapter, as well as flying the flag of XKCD hate well into the future. You should be mindlessly refreshing his page every day instead of mine. That is all.<br />
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Best wishes to you cuddlefish and now finally, I can die.<br />
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Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-5266205032185470312014-10-09T12:31:00.002-05:002014-10-09T14:03:53.762-05:00Family sickness<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">Hello there, dear XKCD-SUCKS reader</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">At this point you may be wondering why Died In A Blogging Accident is almost two weeks overdue for the next update. I' be honest, I was not looking forward to writing this, partly because theatrocious keyboard on my Nexus 7 cant seem to type without a second and a half of lag. I'd tell you the full story, but you probably don't want to hear it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">In short, my laptop broke down. After ruling out the RAM and the fucking SATA cable as the cause of the problem, we found that the culprit was a faulty SSD made by OCZ - go figure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">Since then, my laptop has been basically useless, as I can't get it running without a hard drive. And I'd left my backup drive in my parents' house, thinking I wouldn't need it anymore because all my backups are in 'The Cloud' - HUGE MISTAKE.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">My housemate actually has a laptop with two hard drives - dont ask me why - for some reason he just needs two. And he still wouldn't let me borrow one. What a prick.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">It took TEN DAYS for the new SSD to arrive, and when it did it was 32 gigabytes SMALLER than the one it was supposed to replace. That was my last straw with that company. I sent the drive back to OCZ, still in its original packaging, demanding that they pay me a cash refund. (Seriously, fuck that company.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">Dreck happens. And I was due for a new laptop anyway. But since I no longer need it for studies, I could not justify the expense to my (rich, Jewish) parents. That means I'll have to wait until Christmas* to have a working laptop again. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">Until then, I'm actually surprised that I can get by on a tablet+phone for like, 90% of the things I'd do on a computer (can anyone recommend a good DeviantArt client for Android?). However I'd be damned if I'm writing a novel on this thing. No matter what keyboard I install, my Nexus becomes a lag-ridden piece of dreck when I try and do any sort of long form writing on it. If you're reading this now, it's be ause I haven't yet thrown it against a wall in frustration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">To be honest, I kind of needed a break from DiaBA anyway. Rest assured though, Rob and friends will be back on the first Sunday after Christmas (28th December - mark your calendars), and I will update weekly from then on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">Thanks you for understanding, my patient fan. You're probably the only person who bothered to read this. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal;">*Yes, even yids celebrate Christmas.</span>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-59239820669493128982014-09-20T19:19:00.004-05:002015-10-25T07:20:52.143-05:00DiaBA chapter 8 - Commitment<div class="p1">
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<i>“And I make her prove her love for me</i></div>
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<i>I take all that I can take</i></div>
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<i>And I push her to the limit</i></div>
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<i>to see if she will break”</i></div>
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—Pink Floyd</div>
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Megan awoke in the ball pit, seething and sweating from the lingering terror of a nightmare where the radiotherapy machine refused to turn off. She was strapped down securely, too tightly to move. Everyone else had forgotten and left left her in there for what felt like hours, while the machine continued to turn round and round and blasted her with over 9000 times the lethal dose of gamma radiation, until her whole body became cancer. “It’s funny how a thing that causes cancer is also used to treat it.” someone said, probably Randall. Her darling Randall was mocking her, possibly calling to her from outside the dream. She tried to roll back over to muffle the sound, to try and keep it going a little bit longer, because no matter how horrible the dream was, it felt preferable to the reality of her waking hours. It was hopeless. In the end, she always woke up.</div>
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Megan slowly opened her tired eyes. She was still strapped down and unable to move, but instead of the tumours pressing on her abdomen there were just play pen balls. regardless, there were still two very real tumours in each of her tits. It was them that were making Randall upset. That was why he behaved the way he did. He was such a sweet man really. He’d only ever done these things because of the cancer. Naturally, she blamed herself for this; it was <i>her </i>cancer that caused the problems.</div>
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She hadn’t left the colourful confines for over six weeks, not even to go to the bathroom. After a while, she began to rationalise that it was her punishment. It also brought her closer to Randall when he needed her the most. Sometimes though she needed reminding that it was for Randall’s own good, and every time she struggled against her bindings, he would tie them a little tighter, cutting off the blood supply.</div>
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Megan’s hair was long and tangled, just the way Randall liked it. Her skin was paling from the lack of sunlight, and her already-slim body was wasting away. She was also naked. With every passing day she looked more and more like the stick figure that Randall kept drawing, to the point of obsession. But Megan knew if she got too much thinner, then she would no longer be able to feed him. For this reason, her husband fed her every day, sometimes forcefully.</div>
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Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Randall would stroll into the ball pit, his meat stick rock hard from the satisfaction of updating the comic on a timely schedule, and made love to Megan forcefully and rigorously, saying that it was the best way to cure her cancer. By this point she’d almost started to believe him.</div>
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Tonight however, something was different. At first she didn’t hear Randall’s hushed panicky tones, but when she did, she snapped to attention. Randall had waded deep into the ball pit with one hand wrapped around his 13-inch MacBook Pro. He pressed the hot metal instrument into her bony thighs, and she flinched involuntarily at the sharp edges. She was suddenly very conscious of the fact she was naked.</div>
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“Ni-ahh!” Randall said.</div>
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“Is something wrong, darling?” said Megan. Of course something was wrong, but still she had to ask.</div>
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“Ni-ahh! Ni-ahh!”</div>
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And he tapped the top-right corner of the screen. According to the menu-bar clock, it was 23:40 on a Sunday night. Missing a midnight comic deadline would usually put him on edge.</div>
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“It’s alright.” Megan said soothingly. “It’s all right... In the next twenty minutes, we’ll just re-hash an old comic idea and make a graph joke out of it, just like we always do.”</div>
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This idea seemed to calm Randall somewhat, enough so that he loosened one of her bindings, and allowed her to control the laptop for a while. He opened Chrome, and sent the address bar to <a href="http://xkcd.com/">xkcd.com</a>. Megan briefly considered the idea of sending for help via the internet, but the only other tab open was Twitter, and she couldn’t think of how to say it in 140 characters. Besides, Randall would see what she was doing. He was crouching next to her, knee-deep in balls, and resting his arm on her shoulder. It was Megan’s job to keep on clicking the ‘Random’ button until Randall found a comic he could use. After twenty or thirty clicks of the button, <a href="http://xkcd.com/631">comic 631</a> came up.</div>
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“How could I ever improve on that— that masterpiece?” Randall asked rhetorically.</div>
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“Doesn’t matter.” said Megan. “We’ll keep looking.”</div>
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A few presses of the Randall button later:</div>
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“That one!” he said.</div>
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Randall hurriedly picked up a pad of plain paper, and sketched out a wobbly graph axis, then tore the paper from the pad and scrunched it up into a ball. That one wasn’t so good. He tried again, but he still didn’t like the result. The graph axes still looked wobbly. Yet another page was scrunched up and discarded.</div>
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“I’m not distracting you, am I?” said Megan. But Randall wasn’t listening. He was now too busy drawing a man and a woman that resembled Megan, having quirky stick-sex in the server room. After all, their copy of the Kama Sutra had a few mistranslations.</div>
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Randall broke away from his fantasy to make one more half-arsed attempt at a webcomic. The laptop screen wasn’t visible from where he sat, which was fortunate for him at that moment, because if he’d have seen the clock that said 23:54, he’d have panicked and had a temper tantrum.</div>
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“There, finished!” Randall said like a proud toddler showing a drawing to his mother.</div>
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“That’s very good Randall.” she said to humour him, but she couldn’t stop her voice from sounding tense and scared. “Now let’s get it up on the internet for everyone to see.”</div>
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She quickly pushed the COMMAND and M keys together, and handed the laptop over to Randall.</div>
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“There’s no time to scan it!” he said. “I’ll have to use the Android.”</div>
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“Oh, alright.” said Megan. She knew exactly what this would involve. Obediently she held the drawing up to her chest, trying hopelessly to cover her breasts, but there was no way she could cover her tits and her snatch with just one arm free. They would no doubt be visible in the picture.</div>
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Randall whipped out his smartphone, and launched the camera app. He stood back, held still and snapped a picture of Megan holding the comic. It didn’t matter that the comic itself took up a tiny percentage of the photo, because this phone was packing a 20.7 megapixel whopper. And it blasted out a pulsing flash that cast Megan’s body in an eerie white light that captured all its beautiful decaying glory. He made sure to stand far back enough to get her snatch in the frame. Once he’d taken the photo five or six times, he grabbed the laptop. Like most of the recent XKCD comics, he would make it look all formal and professional through careful cropping. He was about to launch Adobe Photoshop CS6 to do this, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw a minimised window on the Dock that hadn’t been there before.</div>
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Megan must have opened it when he was drawing.</div>
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“What— what’s this?” he said.</div>
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“Uhhh...”</div>
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Randall clicked it, and the window expanded to reveal a half-written email from Megan.</div>
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<i></i><br /></div>
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<i>get me out of here before i die.</i></div>
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<i>randall’s place, 101 rogers street, 021</i></div>
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But she never finished writing the ZIP code.</div>
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“Who are you writing to?” asked Randall.</div>
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The recipient line was blank, but the subject line just one word in it: <i>HELP.</i></div>
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“None of your business.” said Megan weakly.</div>
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There was a long pause. Randall carefully closed the email and clicked on the ‘Don’t Save’ button. He then folded the laptop, and clutched it between his hands like a security blanket.</div>
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“I love you.” came the words in his trembling basso voice, and he started to stumble over his words. “And— and— and I take care of you! I— I feed you, and cure your cancer. There is— there is nothing I haven’t done to you— for you I mean. And now you’re asking someone for help? From someone who isn’t me?! Who doesn’t— doesn’t love you as much?!?”</div>
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“No.” she said, feeling a sudden burst of confidence. “There is someone <i>else</i> who loves me as much.”</div>
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“Is it someone I know?”</div>
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“No.”</div>
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“Oh, I think I do!”</div>
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“You don’t! You only know him as a 300-pound jerk from Seattle. If you <i>really</i> knew him, you’d know Rob’s actually a hundred times heavier, because his heart is just that big!”</div>
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Megan knew that her feelings of confidence came the memory of Rob’s love, and the hope that it might bring.</div>
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“You— whore!”</div>
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Randall slapped Megan on the cancer. He couldn’t bring himself to do it to her beautiful face, so he aimed his blow a little lower. He recoiled his hand from the blow, realising he’d have left a blushing red slap mark on his favourite milk pillow.</div>
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The XKCD creator was torn between a desire to kiss it better, and the need to punish Megan again.</div>
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“I’m so sorry!” he said. “Now look what you made me do! It’s not— it isn’t fair that you get hurt because of this. Just stop making me do this, you fucking bitch!”</div>
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Randall was already pulling his hand back to slap the other tit.</div>
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“Wait Randy, the comic!”</div>
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“Oh frakkin’ fuck! Unngh!” </div>
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Randall tried to slap himself instead, but missed. So instead he resorted to throwing a tantrum and kicking his balls around the playpen.</div>
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When he’d calmed down after a few minutes, Randall grabbed the laptop, cropped the photo and saved it as a PNG. Then he uploaded it to the XKCD server, and added an essay-length mouseover text to it. It was well past midnight when the comic finally went online. Thousands of confused fans were stuck refreshing the previous day’s comic for 45 minutes.</div>
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Randall stared at the forum thread for a few minutes, basking in the praise and appreciation that his loyal fans fellated him with. But it was not enough. He needed something more physical in that moment to make him feel complete.<br />
The forum thread was just enough to get him erect. From then onwards, it was all Megan. With one swift movement, Randall slid open his flies and jammed his meat stick into her withered pussy. He was harsh, shaky, unprotected. After twenty seconds of violent thrusting, against her pitched screams of terror, he spewed forth his man essence, planting his seed at the very back of Megan’s cave.<br />
<span style="text-indent: 2em;">Afterwards he held tensely on to Megan’s hair, shuddering and almost crying with equal parts guilt and euphoria. He just hoped that he’d done enough to stop her from ever thinking about escaping.</span><br />
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<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-chapter-7-incision.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <span style="text-indent: 0em;"><a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-mid-season-clip-show.html">Clip-show</a></span><span style="text-indent: 0em;"> | </span><span style="text-indent: 0em;"><a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a></span><span style="text-indent: 0em;"> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2015/10/diaba-chapter-69-darkness-final-chapter.html">Next chapter ></a></span><br />
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DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.<br />
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Trigger warning: people being mean. Please erase it from your mind if you already read it.</div>
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Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-63986147726589267812014-09-14T19:37:00.003-05:002014-09-20T19:21:09.993-05:00DiaBA - mid-season clip-show<div class="p1">
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<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><i>Previously on Died in a Blogging Accident...</i></span><br />
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“Randall doesn’t know how lucky he is.” Rob monologued. “She is too good for him. She deserves me, a man who truly appreciates her. It is a great cosmic injustice that she became Mrs Munroe, when she should have been Mrs Rob Mason. Believe me when I say that I so desperately desire for hot sweet Megan-loving, that I would go as far as to kill the man she claims to love.”</div>
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“But why now? Why not two years ago when people actually gave a fuck?”</div>
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“She had cancer. And Randall’s been playing it for sympathy.”</div>
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“The bastard!” sneered Carl.</div>
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“Well now it’s come back in <i>both</i> tits, and it’s terminal.”</div>
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“I’m sorry to hear that.” said Carl. “Megan is a truly special woman.”</div>
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“Yeah.” said Rob. “If I act fast, I may be able to get her while she still has hair.”</div>
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“Then I wish you good luck.” said Carl. “So tell me, has anything else happened while I’ve been gone?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Randall went public with his <a href="http://xkcd.com/858/">lactation fetish</a>.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I always knew he would.” said Carl. “Christ, I dread to think how that’s affecting Megan.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Woman who have had mastectomies don’t lactate.” said Rob. </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br /></div>
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
When Rob got to the front door, he realised he had forgotten something.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Mom!” he called out. “I’m leaving town for a while.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“For how long?” came a voice from the downstairs bedroom. </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Indefinitely.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Why, is someone is wrong on the internet?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes.” said rob, cringing at the reference.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You should just ignore them.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No Mom, Xkcd is a disease, and it's reached pandemic proportions.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Could you at least change my bedpan first?” the helpless woman pleaded.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Fuck no... thanks.” he said politely.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob squeezed his way through the front door of his crumbling suburban abode, leaving his bedridden mother to die.<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<hr />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 0px;">
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Is it not a magnificent thing that I, Randall Patrick Munroe, do?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Won’t that kill him?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Probably...” said Randall. “Anyway, pretty cool for something I made in my free time, right?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Don’t kill him.” Megan almost begged.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Why not?” inquired Randall.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
She choked up. Megan knew that if Randall went through with this plan, she would never feel Rob's burning member up against her wet pleasure-garden. But she could never tell him, so she invented a lie.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Because... you want him to be looking in your eyes when you kill him, knowing that you’ve won.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hmm, a face to face defeat is tempting. Alright then. I shall disable the explosives.” Randall declared.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Megan gave a quiet sigh of relief. That would buy her some time, but for other reasons her time was still running out.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Now will you please do one more thing for me?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What’s that, Megan sweetie?” he said, walking towards the door.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Will you let me the frak out of this ball pit?!” she screeched, rattling against the heavy chains that bound her arms.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall peeked in through the doorway. His ball pit occupied an entire room, the largest room in the house with tunnels and slides everywhere, and in the corner sat Megan, wriggling about within the two-metre radius that the chains allowed her. She looked so beautiful and vulnerable.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You know I’d never do that, my dearest darling danish.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Megan sighed with sorrow. Desperately, she reached for her usual sympathy card.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But cancerrrr!”</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And I vowed to take you in sickness and in health.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div>
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The prisoner was running out of insults, so he reached for his trump card, the one thing that would offend Randall the most.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You don't even look like Black Hat Guy with that thing on. You just look like a loser wearing a black hat."</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It's called a fedora.” Randall snarled “And it makes me look badASS.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He walked over and flipped a switch on the machine, and it began to make a whirring sound. Then walked over to his 13-inch Macbook Pro, hovered his finger above the keyboard for a moment, taking one last look at his captive, before slamming down on the enter key. Suddenly the program snapped into action and the machine began to work, executing thousands of lines of code.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What's it doing?" cried the captive as a strange white noise from the headphones filled his ears.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s filling your head with… romance, sarcasm, math and language.” Randall proclaimed.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You can't… no, NO! Turn it off! Turn it off!”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall tried his best evil laugh. “MWAhahahaHAhaHA!”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Ahh! Make it stop! RANDALL, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall took one last chance to gloat at his captive before his mind was wiped. He strutted over to the chair, and took the headphones off for just a second to whisper in his ear: “Who is your god now?”</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Do you know what else I hate about XKCD?” Rob postulated.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That you don’t anything better to do with your time?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The fact that some people claim it has characters. Black Hat Guy is not a character. He is a series of unrelated incidents linked by an item of clothing. And don’t fucking get me started on Beret Guy, or that godawful Megan ‘character’.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I AM that Megan character!”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob and Megan glared at each other, with mutual angry tension in their eyes. Silence. The whole room had gone quiet. Suddenly and forcefully, they kissed each other’s brains out in a passionate mutual embrace of rage-filled horny lust. It felt so awfully wrong. He knew she was already dating Randall. She knew he was an enemy of XKCD and everything it stood for. Yet it made their loins burn for each other all the more.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Suddenly an Android phone sounded out. Megan broke from the kiss and pulled it from her pocket. It was a text message, from Randall. It only said one word, and three punctuation symbols.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<i>Milk? :)</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Megan explained that she had to run, her boyfriend was hungry, and when he gets hungry he gets angry, and when he gets angry he gets... well, she didn’t want to say what the third word was. Hastily, Megan said goodbye, knowing full well that they knew that they would probably never be able to see each other again. Rob understood, and replied that he would always remember that moment they shared together.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Whatever happens.” he said “Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
And he meant every word of it. As he watched his precious Megan slide out of the doorway, every fibre of his being yearned so much to be the one suckling on Megan’s succulent buds, that he could think of nothing else.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob had cum in his pants. He took off the XKCD shirt, and wiped it up, then ate it.</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob stumbled back into a wall. A table was pushed into the window, breaking it. Rob made no effort to stop himself. The wall buckled under his weight, and then he rocked forwards. Android Carl readied itself into an attacking stance, but then Rob took two paces, and fell on top of the Android, crushing it. There was a dull crunching sound, and the twitching of a robotic limb. Rob pushed himself up, as the Android Carl spoke its last words.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The process com.xkcd.destroyRobMason has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
But Rob didn’t give it time to try again. He force-closed it as quickly and thoroughly as possible by stamping on its neck, several times just to make sure. Finally he picked up the remains of the robot, and ate it.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob looked around. People around him were gasping in shock. He’d already caused quite a scene in this cafe, but now he couldn’t see why they were still staring at him. Then he remembered.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
His fly was still open and his dick was hanging out. Remorselessly, he zipped himself up and made for the exit. But the people around him continued to stare disapprovingly. So he shuffled back to his table, wiped up the cum with a pair of ten dollar bills, and left them as a tip.</div>
<br />
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br />
<div class="p1">
“Wait, who’s <i>that</i> guy?” said Capn, pointing to the stranger behind them, who had a cropped haircut, and a red college hoodie with armpit stains. He had been standing there for a while, but Capn was the first one to notice him.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Dunno.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p1">
“I don’t trust him.” said Kitten. He took a few steps towards the man. “Oi, mate...”</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.” said the stranger.</div>
<div class="p1">
The five of them stared at him.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Ohhh, it’s this guy.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Eh, is it a video game reference?” asked Raven.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.”</div>
<div class="p1">
“STFU already.” shouted Kitten.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Don’t feed the troll.” Raven cautioned.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.”</div>
<div class="p1">
“...”</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.”</div>
<div class="p1">
“Is that all he says?” Ann asked.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chris Houli...”</div>
<div class="p1">
He never finished the sentence, because Capn had swung himself forwards and punched the troll in the face.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chr...”</div>
<div class="p1">
Capn aimed a flying punch at his chin, forcing the man’s jaw closed on his tongue. And still he didn’t fight back. Capn punched him several more times, then kicked him too the floor.”</div>
<div class="p1">
“Chris Houlihan’s...”</div>
<div class="p1">
“Shut the fuck up!” bellowed Capn, and he proceeded to stamp on his neck. </div>
<div class="p1">
“That’s enough, Capn!” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p1">
“Shut up the fuck piece of shit die die die!!!”</div>
<div class="p1">
Capn continued the assault until he broke every rib in the man’s body, and there was red stuff everywhere. The sight of blood seemed to calm him. “Sorry guys.” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve had a bad day today.”</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
</div>
<hr />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
A hook-nosed figure squatted on the roof of Inman Square Fire House, his beady eye pressed up to the sights of a sniper rifle. Through his magnified view of the plaza, he saw them scatter and regroup. He took great pleasure in firing the next few shots, though he only intended to scare them. One of them may have ricocheted and hit a pedestrian, but Capn was the only one he’d <i>needed</i> to kill. Then he relaxed the trigger, and checked the time a digital pocket watch. Not a second too late. He folded up the weapon, climbed down the ladder, and persuaded the security guard to look the other way with a sack of money. Then he slinked off into an alleyway.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It depicted a stick figure without a face, lying bloodied on the floor. There was a date and time written below it. He pulled out a lighter, and set fire to one of the corners, watching blithely as it burned away, before dropping it on the ground.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
From the same pocket, he took another piece of paper, and unfolded it, more carefully this time. It depicted a man and a woman as stick figures in a bed, having quirky stick-figure sex, with another date and time below them.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He pushed a few buttons on his pocket watch, and the digits changed. Now it displayed 31 hours, 41 minutes, 59 seconds, and counting down.</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Before the others could stop him, he rang the doorbell of a top-floor apartment directly above Randall’s. An annoyingly shrill female voice answered.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Who’s this?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hi,” said Kitten in his worst fake American accent. “Me homies an’ I recently acquired the flat downstairs. We wanna come take a look round yur place and intr’duce ah-selves.” </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Doesn’t Pat live in that apartment?” said the voice.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No he does-in’t. I just lost mah key so I gots to use yurs.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Um, I don’t think so.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“LEMME THE FUCK IIIN!” shouted Kitten. His accent had gone completely redneck.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m calling the cops.” said the woman.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
And her voice cut off.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Stop it, Kitten.” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Okay, let’s move on to plan B.” said Kitten. “I’m breaking in.” </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What...”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten shoved his fist through the glass door, and twisted the handle from the inside. There was blood on his wrist, but he wiped it on Ann’s ironic T-shirt.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“...the fuck?” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait, did she say Pat?” said Raven, but Kitten had already ran in.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“His middle name.” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh fuck this.” said Rob, and ran in after him.</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
</div>
<hr style="text-indent: 0px;" />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The world around Raven and Ann cascaded into an ebony nightscape. Shapes of the tangible world shifted in and out of extra dimensions to reveal a landscape with everything in the same place as before, but looked completely different, and was out of phase with reality.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Everything here was made of shadows.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The ground below their feet was seen as the floor of an endless empty chasm. The houses and buildings were delicately angular mountains of twisted darkness. Trees had been replaced by black dendritic skeletons, with skinny tendrils hanging from their brittle branches. Their heartwoods glowed with a cold red life force. This colour was mirrored by the cold red sun hanging low above their heads. The rest of the sky was a bone-white void, which was slowly crumbling apart. And there was a thin layer of grey ash covering everything around them.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
It was neither a fiery Hell, nor a cold world lost to sunlight. Raven and Ann did not feel hot and more than they could feel cold or room temperature, because temperature as a concept did not exist here. It was hard to even remember what heat felt like.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Welcome to the Nether World.” said Raven. “Try not to get too comfortable here.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<hr />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
At once, Ann started to glow brighter than all the cars on the freeway around them. Light from the heavens poured into him, and he hovered gracefully, six feet off the ground, arms outstretched. His T-shirt and jeans vanished, leaving him completely naked as his body re-shaped itself as female. His hips widened, butt tightened, and she began to grow breasts. Still bathed in that silvery light, her hair lengthened and became luminescently pink in colour. She stretched out her hands and began to revolve as clothing appeared in the air and wrapped itself around her lithe yet full figure. It formed into an overly elaborate nurse’s outfit with a low neckline to display the cleavage of her shapely bust, which was growing larger by the second, stretching the silky fabric. As a final flourish, the outfit gained frills on the sleeves, and a giant red bow on the back to match the two in her hair.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hali!” she screamed, the Japanese word for needle, and a giant pink syringe materialised in front of her. She grasped it in both hands, held it above her head. She touched down on the ground in a pose that showed off the curves of both her chest and her bottom.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I am Mahou Shoujo Ann Apolis M.D. And I am ready to see the next patient. Now Kitten-kun, what seems to be the problem?”</div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<hr />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Prepare for shujutsu!” said Ann Apolis M.D, waving her scalpel at Kitten, so quickly that her arm became a blur. Kitten flinched for a few seconds, but was apparently unharmed by her cutting until his clothes fell to pieces, having been shredded by the scalpel.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten stood before the busy highway, naked, missing an arm, and confronted with an angry magical girl doctor. Rob and Raven laughed haughtily at him. And from sheer embarrassment, his nose emitted a fountain of red blood.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Before the cold could kill his boner, Ann Apolis M.D. grabbed Kitten, and raped him there and then.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“This will only hurt... alot!” she promised as she pressed him against the cold hard concrete, and forcibly extracted his seminal fluid. Then she plopped a pill into his mouth, washed it down with a glass of water and started again, rocking back and forth on his sore genitalia.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Now, hold still while I make an incision.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The frenzy of limbs moved fast amid Kitten’s screams of pain as she opened him up, added to the incision with more. And because of the way Kitten squirmed, she kept finding new parts of him to cut with the scalpel. Every few seconds, she shouted something else in butchered Japanese, and picked up another surgical tool.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<div>
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-chapter-7-incision.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-chapter-8-commitment.html">Next chapter - Commitment ></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><br /></span>DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.</div>
<div style="text-align: start;">
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><br /></span>Author's note: Thank you for bearing with me so far on slow updates. I wanted to post a new chapter <strike>today</strike> yesterday, but I eventually made the difficult decision of delaying it another week to get it written exactly how I want it. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this recap, and chapter 8 will be posted on Sunday for the patient few who have stuck it out this far. You guys are the best. :))</div>
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Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-68938690894322750792014-09-06T16:53:00.002-05:002014-09-20T19:24:13.575-05:00DiaBA chapter 7 - Incision<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Let it all out, let it all out </i></div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>tsuyogaranakute ii nda ne”</i></div>
</div>
<div class="p2">
<div style="text-align: right;">
—Miho Fukuhara</div>
</div>
<div class="p3">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
For the last two minutes, Rob, Raven, Ann and Kitten had been running for their lives when they crossed a busy overpass. It was already starting to get dark. Boston’s Central Artery stretched out to the horizon on either side below them, clustered with the red and white lights of rush hour traffic. Raven was still carrying Kitten’s severed arm, because everyone else was too squeamish to touch it</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten slowed up and stopped, continuing to bleed heavily from his stump as he slumped down on the pavement.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m dying.” he choked.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No you are not.” declared Ann. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s no use, Annie boy.” said Kitten deliriously. “I’ve lost too much blood. You’re just going to have to live twice as hard, for... me...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Doesn’t anyone have medical training?” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes, I do!” said Ann overdramatically.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Don’t let us stop you.” said Raven, offering the bloodied and and mangled arm to Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well, I kind of have to transform first.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Transform?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yeah, it’s kinda like in an anime. When I say the key phrase, I transform into Ann Apolis M.D., a magical girl with the power to heal people.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait, you turn into a girl?” said Kitten, perking up suddenly.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I discovered this power through intense introspection, and anime.” </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Bet you anything that’s code for masturbation.” Rob whispered in Raven’s ear.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Ready?” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yeah!” they said in unison.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Okay, here goes.” he said. “Aisatsu, ika to kyuuban ga age rareru watashi ha Anaporisu M.D. gozen.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
At once, Ann started to glow brighter than all the cars on the freeway around them. Light from the heavens poured into him, and he hovered gracefully, six feet off the ground, arms outstretched. His T-shirt and jeans vanished, leaving him completely naked as his body re-shaped itself as female. His hips widened, butt tightened, and she began to grow breasts. Still bathed in that silvery light, her hair lengthened and became luminescently pink in colour. She stretched out her hands and began to revolve as clothing appeared in the air and wrapped itself around her lithe yet full figure. It formed into an overly elaborate nurse’s outfit with a low neckline to display the cleavage of her shapely bust, which was growing larger by the second, stretching the silky fabric. As a final flourish, the outfit gained frills on the sleeves, and a giant red bow on the back to match the two in her hair.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hali!” she screamed, the Japanese word for needle, and a giant pink syringe materialised in front of her. She grasped it in both hands, held it above her head. She touched down on the ground in a pose that showed off the curves of both her chest and her bottom.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I am Mahou Shoujo Ann Apolis M.D. And I am ready to see the next patient. Now Kitten-kun, what seems to be the problem?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten was so entranced by the sudden appearance of Ann Apolis M.D. that he forgot about his arm injury altogether. So to that he blurted out: “Well nurse, the problem is that I haven’t had sex with enough magical girl nurses.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Baka!” screamed Ann Apolis M.D. “I am a surgical doctor, not a nurse. Do the letters after my name mean nothing to you?” She pointed out the letters on the name tag pinned to her boobs, and brandished the giant syringe.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten stared at the name tag. Promptly, a gust of wind came along, which blew into Ann Apolis M.D.’s skirt, and made her boobs jiggle.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I wanna cum on those tits.” Kitten said, and he made a sudden step forward to rip the magical girl’s clothes off with his one remaining arm. But she was too quick for him. She leapt right over Kitten’s head, and promtly stabbed him between the shoulder blades with the massive syringe. Kitten’s eyes grew wider and his mouth grew smaller as pink liquid was injected into him. “What the fuck?” he said, turning round. But Ann Apolis M.D. was already wielding a shining scalpel.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Prepare for shujutsu!” said Ann Apolis M.D, waving her scalpel at Kitten, so quickly that her arm became a blur. Kitten flinched for a few seconds, but was apparently unharmed by her cutting until his clothes fell to pieces, having been shredded by the scalpel.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten stood before the busy highway, naked, missing an arm, and confronted with an angry magical girl doctor. Rob and Raven laughed haughtily at him. And from sheer embarrassment, his nose emitted a fountain of red blood.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Before the cold could kill his boner, Ann Apolis M.D. grabbed Kitten, and raped him there and then.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“This will only hurt... alot!” she promised as she pressed him against the cold hard concrete, and forcibly extracted his seminal fluid. Then she plopped a pill into his mouth, washed it down with a glass of water and started again, rocking back and forth on his sore genitalia.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Now, hold still while I make an incision.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The frenzy of limbs moved fast amid Kitten’s screams of pain as she opened him up, added to the incision with more. And because of the way Kitten squirmed, she kept finding new parts of him to cut with the scalpel. Every few seconds, she shouted something else in butchered Japanese, and picked up another surgical tool.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The traffic had slowed to a standstill on both sides of the road as drivers craned their necks to see the surgery. There were some crashes, but even the fatal ones died happy. The pileups continued for half an hour. Several hundred Boston commuters emitted in their pants at the mere sight of Ann. And the women looked on in awe, each wishing they had a little Kitten of their own to play with.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Once the painful bits were over, Ann Apolis M.D. sedated Kitten with a tube of laughing gas, which wasn’t difficult, given how much he was hyperventilating. She added some finishing touches to the internal organs, before patching up the arms.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The operation was a success; Kitten’s right arm had been reattached to his left side. And to preserve the symmetry, the left arm had been lovingly attached to his right. Kitten was sleeping now with a massive lollipop in his mouth.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Nice hentai.” said Rob. “Needs more tentacles though.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-6-secret-worlds.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a></span><span style="text-indent: 2em;"> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-mid-season-clip-show.html">Clip-show</a></span><span style="text-indent: 2em;"> | Next chapter - coming 21/Sep! ></span><br />
<div>
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.<br />
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><br /></span>Author's note: A list of storytelling conventions and tropes used by DiaBA may be found at <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/DiedInABloggingAccident">this link</a>. Feel free to add to it.</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-40343805716450868532014-08-30T17:24:00.001-05:002014-09-06T16:54:42.938-05:00DiaBA chapter 6 - Secret Worlds<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-indent: 32px;">“</span><i>Raven thoughts</i></div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Blacken your mind</i></div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Till you’re breathing in reverse</i><span style="text-indent: 32px;">”</span></div>
</div>
<div class="p2">
<div style="text-align: right;">
—Bright Eyes</div>
</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The world around Raven and Ann cascaded into an ebony nightscape. Shapes of the tangible world shifted in and out of extra dimensions to reveal a landscape with everything in the same place as before, but looked completely different, and was out of phase with reality.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Everything here was made of shadows.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The ground below their feet was seen as the floor of an endless empty chasm. The houses and buildings were delicately angular mountains of twisted darkness. Trees had been replaced by black dendritic skeletons, with skinny tendrils hanging from their brittle branches. Their heartwoods glowed with a cold red life force. This colour was mirrored by the cold red sun hanging low above their heads. The rest of the sky was a bone-white void, which was slowly crumbling apart. And there was a thin layer of grey ash covering everything around them.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
It was neither a fiery Hell, nor a cold world lost to sunlight. Raven and Ann did not feel hot and more than they could feel cold or room temperature, because temperature as a concept did not exist here. It was hard to even remember what heat felt like.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Welcome to the Nether World.” said Raven. “Try not to get too comfortable here.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wow, this place is...” said Ann, failing to to think of an adjective because the word ‘amazing’ did not exist here. “How did you find out about this?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Intense introspection.” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So how do we rescue the others?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We climb up to where they’re standing, and pull them into this world.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That sounds... whoa, what is that thing?!” Ann pointed at a shadowy black figure walking towards Them. Beneath its hood was a pulsating mass of twisted flesh, tubes, fluids and tendrils. Its life force glowed with the coldest of reds.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s a human.” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What’s that Smoke around it?” asked Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“He’s having a bad day.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But why don’t we look like that?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We do.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
And then Ann looked at himself. When he saw the raw hideousness of his body, he let out a high-pitched Scream:</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHH!!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
It echoed around the nether world for several days, becoming progressively amplified on the fifth day, before fading into shadow like everything else there, but not before several emo kids could jerk off to it.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
When they saw the similarly disgusting forms of Rob and Kitten, Raven explained that she could bring them into the Nether World by touching them with the note. But the non-geometric nature of the stairs blocked their way. She would have to fly to reach them.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I hardly ever use this power.” she explained. “Because every time I fly, a random person around the world gets cancer.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
She hovered behind each of their shoulders, and lightly touched Kitten with the little yellow square, then Rob. Rob lost his footing and Kitten, caught within Rob’s gravity, fell to the ground beside him. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Aww, am I dead already?” said Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Don’t worry, falling here won’t kill you.” said Raven. “You’re in the Nether World. We had to pull you out of existence to rescue you. That doesn’t mean you’re dead though. Now try not to get too comfortable here.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“OK” said Rob, who had been here before.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I didn’t need rescuing. I was three steps ahead of that bitch.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“She had a gun.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You forget though, I can dodge bullets faster than lightning with my cat-like reflexes.” boasted Kitten, punching the air for each of those last five syllables.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“OK” said Rob dismissively.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait, this doesn’t look like Neverland.” said Kitten. “Where’s Peter Pan?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Dead.” said Ann. “They’re all dead.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Aaargh, my childhood!” Kitten cried overdramatically.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh by the way.” said Raven. “Don’t eat any of the food here.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Too late!” said Ann, pointing at Rob</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob had already walked over to the apartment block, and started eating it. It was slightly tougher than his usual meal. His jaw opened into extra dimensions, but got stuck on the edge of the bony sky. Eventually, his teeth crunched down on the shapeless black mass, and he began to digest it, before he had even swallowed it. The shadowy forms seemed to be screaming as they disappeared into the unthinkably dark void of Rob’s throat.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Neither Ann, Kitten nor Raven had seen Rob eating before, and none of them could bear to watch, but since they were two Brits and a Canadian, they were too polite to criticise someone else’s table manners. So they waited until he had finished, and then Raven said:</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So, in order for us to leave the Nether World, I need to tear up the note. Be careful of where you’re standing. You don’t want to end up inside a wall. We need to position ourselves so we reappear inside Randall’s apartment.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“There’s no need.” said Rob. “I tasted the whole thing. Randall doesn’t live here at all.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Are you sure?” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob nodded solemnly, but they didn’t need to know if Rob was sure. The walls and floors and the apartment block were gone, and they could see now into they could see into the empty space where 101 Rogers Street would exist in the real world. And they knew instinctively with the dull despairing clarity of the Nether World that this was not where Randall lived, because they could see there was actually an old lady called Pat living there, who hadn’t answered the door because she was taking a shit.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You mean...” said Ann. “We came here for nothing?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
A moment of Silence washed over the group as realised that was indeed the case.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Fuck you Ann.” said Rob, as if the map directions he had given earlier made him somehow responsible for this whole misadventure.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Raven sighed. As she looked longingly at Ann’s fleshy tubes, she decided that this trip hadn’t been a complete waste of time.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Dammit, this is going all wrong!” said Kitten. If we don’t stop Randall then Capn would have died for nothing!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not this again.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
But Kitten had seen something. For the last few minutes, Ann had been absentmindedly brushing away the top layer of ash from the ground, revealing a dark black pit, where another human form lay hidden.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Is that... Randall?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s just a dead person buried in the foundations.” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That must be Randall’s underground base!” said Kitten. “Let’s get him!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The others could see what Kitten was about to do. Ann tried to hold him back, but Kitten was too strong for him. Rob grabbed him as well, but he was too strong for both of them. They were powerless to stop him if he dived into the ground and never came up again.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Raven, seeing what might happen, made a quick decision and hastily ripped up the post-it note.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
All four of them felt an uncomfortable sensation, as everything around them faded to white, then beige, then a dull piss-colored ochre, then back to the real world. Their ears were ringing.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Apart from Raven, none of them had taken the time to position themselves, but luckily they were standing in the alleyway next to the apartment block, which still looked very solid. Raven was standing in a trash can. Rob and Ann stood either side of Kitten, who had come very close to running into the wall of the building.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Did I... Did I really think Randall was down there?” said Kitten, looking at the concrete ground.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The Nether World can make you act irrationally.” said Raven. “I told you not to get too comfortable there. I once spent too much time in that world, and briefly thought that Penny Arcade is well written.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well it’s better than Real Life Comics.” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Praise God I haven’t been introduced to that one.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Imagine CAD, but worse.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Nothing could be worse than-” Raven started. “Kitten, your hand!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wha- Oh fuck.” said Kitten, realising that it was embedded in the brick wall of the building.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Do we cut it off or what?” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I think that might be the only way.” said Raven despairingly.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No, not Righty!” said Kitten. “We’ve had so many fun times together.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well it’s either cut off your hand or remain stuck there.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No, isn’t there any other way?” he moaned. “I don’t want to lose my hand.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m sorry Kitten,” said Rob. “But you kind of did this to yourself.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It wouldn’t feel the same wanking off with my left hand.” said Kitten. There were tears in his eyes. “Can’t we just go back into the Nether World and get me out?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m out of post-its.” Raven sighed.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Buy some more.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And leave you here? Need I remind you that the police are on their way, and you would not last long in an American prison.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I can try and eat around your hand.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Okay.” said Kitten. “Just be careful.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob extended his gaping maw beyond the third dimension, and munched vigorously on the bricks and concrete. The others were somewhat shocked that he could use this power outside of the Nether World, but they still didn’t say anything, because they were British and Canadian. Before long, Rob had taken a large chunk out of the wall.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Best I could do.” said Rob. Then he opened his mouth again, and spat out Kitten’s blood-stained arm.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“My arm!” shouted Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We’ll get you a new one.” said Ann. “First let’s get away from these police cars.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Then they heard it, faint sirens in the distance, growing steadily louder.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The beady eyed man was been hiding in the basement, waiting for them to leave. When he heard their footsteps, he got in position so he could casually tell the police that the unhinged woman in the attic had raised a false alarm. As he walked round the side of the building, he realised he would also have to distract them from the gaping hole in the wall and the trail of blood leading from it. What he never did realise was how close his family resemblance had come to giving him away to Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He checked his pocket watch again. Not long now, not long at all. But before that, he would cross paths with the four hate-bloggers. He’d just now wasted a perfectly good opportunity to introduce himself, but the blood and the wound had created an additional complication. He began to wonder if his influences would alter the time stream and create an entirely different future from the one he remembered. He doubted it though. Randall wouldn’t give up that easily.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He would reveal himself some time soon, but now he wasn’t sure how to do it. It could be so awkward. He was worried they wouldn’t like him.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center; text-indent: 32px;">
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-5-increased-risk.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-chapter-7-incision.html">Next chapter - Incision ></a></span></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="p4">
DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.<br />
<br />
Author's note: I have nothing to say.</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-23638337753804642772014-08-25T18:43:00.001-05:002014-09-06T16:42:27.550-05:00DiaBA chapter 5 - Increased Risk<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Don't keep me waiting here</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Lead me to your door”</i></div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: right;">
—The Beatles</div>
<br />
Rob, Raven and Kitten faithfully followed Ann’s directions to the subway station, and onwards to Randall’s house. After boarding the red line, they talked little as the train crossed the river and carried on underground. </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob stood and stared at the other passengers, noting their vacant expressions, and unassuming postures, and thought to himself:</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<i>Look at these people. Glassy-eyed automatons going about their daily lives, never stopping to look around and think! I’m the only conscious human in a world of sheep.</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He was the only one standing up, because none of the seats were big enough for him. After a while Kitten also stood up to look out the back window because he became convinced that “Some creepy guy is following us.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Still, there was no sight of him as the train carried on through all the downtown stops and back out into the suburbs.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not yet.” Ann said at another station, sensing a growing feeling among the others that they had gone the wrong way. Wrong way or not, Rob guessed they were well south of the turnpike by now.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
When they finally got off the train, they emerged into a suburb where most of the houses were clad in tacky wooden sliding. And unbeknownst to them, their pursuer slipped back into the shadows.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
They could not be far from Randall’s house now. Ann led them down the main road, and before long, they saw a little green sign for Rogers Street. Excitedly they followed it. They were walking down the very street that Randall Munroe lived on, and XKCD fan’s wet dream. They kept going, until they reached a three-storey apartment block at the end of the road.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
It was clad in the same wooden sliding as all the other buildings in the area, painted in a murky shade of green, and it looked quite newly built. They soon found the front door. Rob examined the list of doorbells, and saw that 101 was on the middle floor.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Without thinking, he pressed the doorbell with his fat finger.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Shit, what do we say to him?” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Does it matter?” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We could pose as fans and ask to look around.” Raven suggested.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“He’ll never believe it.” said Rob. “Shiiiit.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
They waited tensely for a few minutes, and no answer came.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Maybe he’s out.” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“In that case I have an idea.” said Kitten. “I got it from an Episode of Sherlock. All we have to do is befriend the guy who lives directly above, then drop right down from the balcony to Randall’s.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That sound like a terrible idea.” said Rob “You should totally do it.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Before the others could stop him, he rang the doorbell of a top-floor apartment directly above Randall’s. An annoyingly shrill female voice answered.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Who’s this?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hi,” said Kitten in his worst fake American accent. “Me homies an’ I recently acquired the flat downstairs. We wanna come take a look round yur place and intr’duce ah-selves.” </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Doesn’t Pat live in that apartment?” said the voice.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No he does-in’t. I just lost mah key so I gots to use yurs.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Um, I don’t think so.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“LEMME THE FUCK IIIN!” shouted Kitten. His accent had gone completely redneck.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m calling the cops.” said the woman.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
And her voice cut off.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Stop it, Kitten.” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Okay, let’s move on to plan B.” said Kitten. “I’m breaking in.” </div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What...”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten shoved his fist through the glass door, and twisted the handle from the inside. There was blood on his wrist, but he wiped it on Ann’s ironic T-shirt.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“...the fuck?” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait, did she say Pat?” said Raven, but Kitten had already ran in.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“His middle name.” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh fuck this.” said Rob, and ran in after him.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten rushed upstairs, and knocked on the door of the shrill-voiced woman. She opened the door cautiously.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Good morning, Ma’am.” said Kitten, trying and failing to sound Canadian. “Ah’m a plainclothes police officer and ah understand there’s bin an intrusion in...”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Get out!” she screamed.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Sorry, ah have to inspect yur flat first.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
At this point, Rob caught up with him, and forced the woman out the way, and they rushed into her apartment.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What now?” said Rob</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Now we go to his balcony.” said Kitten. “And... Shit, there’s no balcony!”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Don’t move, you assholes!” said the shrill female voice from behind them. She was pointing a gun.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Meanwhile, Raven stood next to Ann at the smashed entrance.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The police are gonna start arriving any minute.” he said to Raven. “And Rob and Kitten are still in there.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Tell me something I don’t know.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What are we gonna do?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We could make out.” Raven suggested.</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We were probably gonna do that anyway.” said Ann. “I mean how do we rescue them? Going in the front door is too risky.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well...” said Raven. “I could use my emo powers and teleport us into the Nether World, and we could pick up Rob and Kitten from there.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Whaaat?! Why didn’t you tell us you had this power?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Because every time I use it, a random person on the other side of the world drops dead of a heart attack.”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Awesome.” said Ann, before adding: “But only if you’re comfortable using it. How exactly does it work?”</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Most emos activate the power by cutting.” Raven explained. “I do it by writing a shitty poem on a post-it note.” She withdrew a little square pad of yellow notes from her coat pocket, took out a ballpoint pen, and slowly wrote:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<i>Wet pines stand watch</i></div>
<div class="p3">
<i>over silent streets.</i></div>
<div class="p4">
<i></i><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<i>Drowning worms die</i></div>
<div class="p3">
<i>beneath worn boots.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Now, we both need to be touching the note.” said Raven. She held it in her palm and Ann placed a single finger on it. “3... 2... 1...” she said, and then they were both sucked off</div>
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<br />
into...<br />
<br />
darkness.<br />
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3055705617165411909#editor/target=post;postID=2660113073930221581;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-6-secret-worlds.html">Next chapter - Secret Worlds ></a></span></div>
<span style="text-indent: 2em;"><br /></span>DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.<br />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="text-indent: 0em;">
Author's note: for those are are curious about what route they were taking, I have <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/dir/42.3739792,-71.1014463/101+Rogers+St,+Boston,+MA+02127,+USA/@42.3726459,-71.1003175,565m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x89e37a5ea473ce61:0x78ba5359f49bd058!2m2!1d-71.0552976!2d42.3285947!3e3">mappped it here</a>.</div>
</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-26601130739302215812014-08-18T08:52:00.004-05:002014-09-17T14:02:03.847-05:00DiaBA chapter 4 - Clumsy Foreshadowing<div class="p1">
<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Here we stand</i></div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Or here we fall</i></div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>History won't care at all”</i></div>
</div>
<div class="p2">
<div style="text-align: right;">
—Queen</div>
</div>
<div class="p3">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I thought I might find you here.” said Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh, it’s you.” said Rob, not even turning around.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Aren’t you glad to see me alive?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Eh.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
There was a pause. Carl pulled up a chair and sat down on the table opposite Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Rob, I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, including selling you out to Randall. I never should have done that. I’ve got your back from now on, buddy.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He was looking deep into Rob’s eyes now.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“OK” said Rob monotonously.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“God gave me a second chance on this earth.” Carl continued. “To help you to complete your good work.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
There was another pause.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You mean a religious experience is what it took for you to come to your fucking senses?” said Rob. Carl nodded. “Just how exactly do you plan to help me anyway?” </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I know where Randall keeps his server.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“OK” said Rob. “Tell me.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s at the end of the ground floor corridor, and on the left.” Carl said. “Right next to the room where he keeps Megan.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob’s eyes lit up at the mention of Megan.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What? Which house?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I don’t know.” Carl admitted.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“OK” said Rob. “You can go now.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait!” said Carl. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, you only need to ask. First tell me what’s our plan, and what are we gonna do when we find Randall?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Does it matter?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Carl sighed.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Look, Rob. I can understand if you’re mad at me. I haven’t done anything to earn back your trust, but if there’s anything I can say...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So why did you do it?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Do what?” said Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Kill yourself.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Because things are not the same as how they used to be.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No they’re not.” said Rob. “If anything XKCD sucks now more than ever.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Carl gave a deep sigh, and said: “When I first started Xkcdsucks, I was doing it out of a frustration I no longer feel. I felt that I was the only one who knew really how bad it was. Nowadays there are alot of people who openly admit to hating XKCD, and now I don’t have a purpose. So I made the logical decision to end my life with an M9 to the temple, and I don’t regret that decision.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You wanted to give up because people are agreeing with you? Are you fucking crazy?” Rob gesticulated.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Alot of the problems in the new comics are the exact same problems as in old comics, so to criticize them properly would be to merely repeat myself. I don’t want to beat a dead horse. Sometimes I think we criticize it <i>too</i> harshly.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I would have believed you.” Rob said coldly. “If it weren’t for that last bit. Now tell me, where is Carl?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What do you mean? I’m right...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Before he could finish his sentence, rob picked up a fork, and stabbed it into Carl’s jugular vein. He didn’t bleed. Carl only stared at Rob through dead eyes. All the emotion had vanished from his lifeless face.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Just what the fuck have you done with Carl?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Carl is in Hell. Care to join him?” Carl’s words came out in a robotic monotone, but the mouth didn’t move.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Did Randall send you? Tell me where the fuck is Randall!” shouted Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Sudo tell me where the fuck is Randall!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“robm is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported. robm@homebox ~$” said the Android Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
With a look of death in his eyes, Rob grabbed the robot’s arm, just as it tried to punch him in the gut with that arm. The immense force of the blow was absorbed by Rob’s gut. He placed his other hand on the robot arm, and attempted to break it off. But before he could do so, the machine levered itself off the arm Rob was holding, and kicked him in the face. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob stumbled back into a wall. A table was pushed into the window, breaking it. Rob made no effort to stop himself. The wall buckled under his weight, and then he rocked forwards. Android Carl readied itself into an attacking stance, but then Rob took two paces, and fell on top of the Android, crushing it. There was a dull crunching sound, and the twitching of a robotic limb. Rob pushed himself up, as the Android Carl spoke its last words.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The process com.xkcd.destroyRobMason has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
But Rob didn’t give it time to try again. He force-closed it as quickly and thoroughly as possible by stamping on its neck, several times just to make sure. Finally he picked up the remains of the robot, and ate it.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob looked around. People around him were gasping in shock. He’d already caused quite a scene in this cafe, but now he couldn’t see why they were still staring at him. Then he remembered.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
His fly was still open and his dick was hanging out. Remorselessly, he zipped himself up and made for the exit. But the people around him continued to stare disapprovingly. So he shuffled back to his table, wiped up the cum with a pair of ten dollar bills, and left them as a tip.</div>
<div class="p5">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob made his way to Inman Square, muttering something about ‘service charge’. He was the first to arrive, and sat on the big semicircular bench, waiting nervously for the others to arrive. For the next half-hour, there was nothing to do but hurl insults at random pedestrians, until eventually a young woman approached him nervously.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hello, satanic hell-bird.” he said to her.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh hi Rob.” said Ravenzomg. She sounded Canadian. And from the way her long straight black hair was combed across her face, she appeared to be blind in one eye. “Eh, wait a minute. How did you know it was me?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob Shrugged.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Have you just been saying that to every female who walks by?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Only the gothy ones.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So you really are Rob? You’re not not as fat as I expected.” said Raven, eyeing up Rob’s 300-pound physique.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m fatter than I look.” said Rob. “What were you expecting?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well to be honest I was expecting you would look like Randall.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Why, because me and Mr Munroe are <i>obviously</i> the same person?” Rob drawled sarcastically.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So you’re <i>not</i> the same person?” Raven asked.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not even his twin brother?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not related in any way?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Ah well.” said Raven. “There go most of my slash-fic ideas.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
There was a long uncomfortable silence.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m sorry.” Raven said in her Canadian accent.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Eventually, two men pulled up in a taxi, bantering to each other in English Cockney accents.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“This must be the place. Rob’s gravity is pulling me inwards.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Don’t get too close to him, or he’ll...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Suck, I know!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Arrrgh!” they screamed as they both ran into Rob’s bulging belly and embarrassingly fell over.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hey cuddlefish.” said Rob. “What are your names?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“We’re not cuddlefish. We have Blogger accounts.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Like I care.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m Ann Apolis and he’s Kitten.” said Lord_Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Nice try.” said Ann Apolis. “I’m Ann Apolis, and he’s Jon Levi.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Do I look like a Jew to you?” said Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“For all I know, you operate both identities.” said Rob. “So I’m calling you Jon anyway.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The one who called himself Ann Apolis looked like a lanky blonde English hipster, who used a feminine name online, and sometimes pretended to be a doctor. The one called Lord_Kitten was tall, dark and handsome, if not for the fact that he had the face of a 12-year-old caveman.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Out of curiosity, what are your real names?” Ravenzomg asked curiously.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No, don’t tell us.” said Rob. “You left your real names in Cockneyland. From now on, we go by our pseudonyms.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But my real name is Raven.” said Ravenzomg.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Doesn’t matter.” Rob said. “Rob is both my real name and my pseudonym.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I thought it was Randall.” said Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not this again.” said Rob exasperatedly.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“My real name is ENERGY PANTHER!” said Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Is Jon coming?” asked Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No.” said Ann. “He said he was too busy writing a slash-fic of Kitten and ALT-F.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Does he even know what slash is?” said Raven. “It has to be between two males.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Does ALT-F even have a gender?” asked Rob. “I always thought of her as more of a thing.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I would totally bone ALT-F, regardless of gender, race or species.” said Kitten.</div>
<div class="p5">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
They waited around for a few more minutes, as Rob said he was expecting Capn to arrive, until finally one more person came walking up towards them. He was a swarthy man who looked like he’d recently fallen out a window. This was evident from the way he walked with a slight limp, and the glass shards in his hair.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hey guys, Capn here.” he said.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hello Capn.” said Rob. “Why didn’t you respond to a single one of my emails?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Long story.” said Capn, brushing the glass from his hair. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Alright, so I think this is everyone.” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait, who’s <i>that</i> guy?” said Capn, pointing to the stranger behind them, who had a cropped haircut, and a red college hoodie with armpit stains. He had been standing there for a while, but Capn was the first one to notice him.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Dunno.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I don’t trust him.” said Kitten. He took a few steps towards the man. “Oi, mate...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.” said the stranger.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The five of them stared at him.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Ohhh, it’s this guy.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Eh, is it a video game reference?” asked Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“STFU already.” shouted Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Don’t feed the troll.” Raven cautioned.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chris Houlihan’s room.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Is that all he says?” Ann asked.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chris Houli...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He never finished the sentence, because Capn had swung himself forwards and punched the troll in the face.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chr...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Capn aimed a flying punch at his chin, forcing the man’s jaw closed on his tongue. And still he didn’t fight back. Capn punched him several more times, then kicked him too the floor.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Chris Houlihan’s...”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Shut the fuck up!” bellowed Capn, and he proceeded to stamp on his neck. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That’s enough, Capn!” said Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Shut up the fuck piece of shit die die die!!!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Capn continued the assault until he broke every rib in the man’s body, and there was red stuff everywhere. The sight of blood seemed to calm him. “Sorry guys.” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve had a bad day today.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Save some of that Anger for later.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
They stared at the bleeding man for a little while, until Raven broke the silence.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So... what do we do first?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Find his house.” Rob replied.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And how do we do that?” she replied.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hunt him out by scent?” Ann suggested.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Already tried that.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Sorry.” said Raven. “So what now?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
There was an embarrassingly long pause among the group, as if none of them wanted to admit they’d come here for no reason. Eventually, it was Capn who broke the silence.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I know where Randall lives.” he said through gritted teeth. All eyes turned to Capn, and he continued. “I’ve been round his house before, no big deal, I just... forgot to mention it. He lives at 101 Rogers Stre-”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
BANG</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
A bullet ploughed into Capn’s forehead, leaving a bullet-shaped hole, and stopping him from speaking immediately. The back of his head burst open from the exit wound, and he fell down backwards. Capn’s blood splattered on the paving slabs, mixing with the blood of the Chris Houlihan’s Room guy.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Dammit.” said Kitten. “Now we’ll never know where he-”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
BANG BANG</div>
<div class="p5">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
A hook-nosed figure squatted on the roof of Inman Square Fire House, his beady eye pressed up to the sights of a sniper rifle. Through his magnified view of the plaza, he watched them scatter and regroup. He took great pleasure in firing the next few shots, though he only intended to scare them. One of them may have ricocheted and hit a pedestrian, but Capn was the only one he’d <i>needed</i> to kill. Then he relaxed the trigger, and checked the time a digital pocket watch. Not a second too late. He folded up the weapon, climbed down the ladder, and persuaded the security guard to look the other way with a sack of money. Then he slinked off into an alleyway.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It depicted a stick figure without a face, lying bloodied on the floor. There was a date and time written below it. He pulled out a lighter, and set fire to one of the corners, watching blithely as it burned away, before dropping it on the ground.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
From the same pocket, he took another piece of paper, and unfolded it, more carefully this time. It depicted a man and a woman as stick figures in a bed, having quirky stick-figure sex, with another date and time below them.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He pushed a few buttons on his pocket watch, and the digits changed. Now it displayed 31 hours, 41 minutes, 59 seconds, and counting down.</div>
<div class="p5">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
When she heard the second and third gunshots, Raven yelled “RUN!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Everyone panicked, running in every direction, until Rob called out.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Everyone get behind me!” and he ran off before they could get behind him.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
They sprinted after Rob until he was out of breath, stopping to stand in a parking lot behind a hospital.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Randy... must have known... we’d be here.” Rob spoke in between pants. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Damn him!” said Kitten</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Shooting people with guns doesn’t seem like his style.” said Raven. “Maybe there are other forces at play here.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Does Randall have henchmen?” asked Ann.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“His fanboys... would most likely... do it for free.” panted Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes damn you, Randall!” Kitten screamed at the sky. “DAMMMN YOUUU!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Anyway...” said Rob. “We have to get to... 101 Rogers Street.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Already found it.” said Ann, looking at his smartphone. “Let’s go everybody.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Kitten sniffed. “We’d never have known to go there if it wasn’t for Capn.” he spoke sobbingly. “Oh! How could he be cut down in his prime like that?! Capn, you were too good for this sinful earth! My only hope is that you might-”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh shut up.” said Ann. “You barely knew him.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And there’s nothing we can do for him now.” said Raven. “We must accept his sacrifice and move on.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Capn would have done... the same for us.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s alright. Who is this ‘Capn’ anyways?” said Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“There never was a Capn.” replied Raven.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“How... ORWELLIAN.” said Ann.</div>
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/diaba-chapter-3-heartbleed-explanation.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-5-increased-risk.html">Next chapter - Increased Risk ></a></div>
<br />
<div>
<div>
DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Author's note: The following trigger warnings apply to chapter 4: gore, violence, sexual content, and eating disorders. If you are offended by any of these things, then you should not have read this far.Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-76355013947338642032014-08-09T18:25:00.000-05:002014-08-18T08:58:54.428-05:00DiaBA chapter 3 - Heartbleed Explanation<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“I think about you, but it's not the same</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>I won't be satisfied 'til I'm under your skin”</i></div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: right;">
—Maroon 5</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Before opening the three locks on the door to his interrogation cell, Randall grabbed his black hat from the drawing room, and proudly put it on his head. He stopped to admire himself in a mirror, and smile slyly. He was going to be such a classhole today, and he may as well look the part. Then one by one, Randall turned the keys, and slowly heaved the heavy door aside.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
It was dark inside, save for the dim light of a naked bulb, which swung from the high ceiling. His captive was a large swarthy man, who should have been able to beat Randall into a pulp, were he not tied by his arms and legs to an office chair. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Now, let’s try this again.” Randall said menacingly, trying to sound like he was on a cop show.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Let me go, you asshole.” said the captive.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh, of course I’ll let you go.” chuckled Randall, enjoying the sound of his own voice. “But only when you tell me where your friends are.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’ve already told you. I don’t know.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Liar!” roared Randall, echoing off the blank walls.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“How could I know? I haven’t been on the internet in over a week.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not good enough!” Randall screamed, and he pushed his phone’s flashlight against the man’s eyes. “Tell me everything! Now!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“All I know is that Rob wants to destroy the server or something!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And...?!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And we know about your lactation fetish. That’s all I fucking know!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall took a deep breath, and continued in a calm contemplative voice. “Hmm. If that really is everything, then I suppose I have no further use for you.” And he cocked an imaginary gun.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You wouldn’t kill me.” spat his captive.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No, I wouldn’t.” said Randall in the same contemplative tone. “But I might be able to use you for a certain... experiment.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall adjusted his hat, then grabbed the back of his chair, and wheeled him out of the room without another word.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Where are you going, assfuck?!” the captive yelled indignantly. “Hey shithead, where are you taking me?!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
His questions were implicitly answered when Randall stopped the chair in a room that had a brightly lit server, and windows replaced by computer screens.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall dragged another machine out of a dark corner, and plugged it into the server, while his captive continued to throw profanities at him. Unfased, Randall picked up a pair of headphones, and placed them on the captive’s head.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The prisoner was running out of insults, so he reached for his trump card, the one thing that would offend Randall the most.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You don't even look like Black Hat Guy with that thing on. You just look like a loser wearing a black hat."</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It's called a fedora.” Randall snarled “And it makes me look badASS.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He walked over and flipped a switch on the machine, and it began to make a whirring sound. Then walked over to his 13-inch Macbook Pro, hovered his finger above the keyboard for a moment, taking one last look at his captive, before slamming down on the enter key. Suddenly the program snapped into action and the machine began to work, executing thousands of lines of code.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What's it doing?" cried the captive as a strange white noise from the headphones filled his ears.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s filling your head with… romance, sarcasm, math and language.” Randall proclaimed.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You can't… no, NO! Turn it off! Turn it off!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall tried his best evil laugh. “MWAhahahaHAhaHA!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Ahh! Make it stop! RANDALL, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Randall took one last chance to gloat at his captive before his mind was wiped. He strutted over to the chair, and took the headphones off for just a second to whisper in his ear: “Who is your god now?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
That was his chance. The captive leaned back as far as the office chair would allow him, and butted his head hard against Randall’s. Randall was thrown backwards by the blow. With the conservation of momentum in full effect, the captive’s chair rolled back with an equal and opposite reaction force, careering over to the other side of the room.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
As it hurtled along, one of the wheels locked up, and it tumbled over. The impetus of the fall sent it flying, only to land squarely in the middle of one of the computer screens. The screen shattered like a plate-glass window. Shards of glass fell everywhere. And the captive fell two storeys to the ground below. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
The chair broke his fall, as the impact with the ground smashed it to pieces.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
And the man, with his legs no longer tied to the chair, was now able to escape, though they were still tied to each other. He opened his eyes, and saw the sun on the horizon for the first time in two weeks. He looked up and heard Randall’s voice from the broken window.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Send the Android after him! MwaHAHAha!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Capn pushed himself to his feet, and bunny-hopped his way to freedom as fast as humanly possible.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Hours later, Rob set his foot down on the hard concrete of a Boston parking lot. He paid the cab driver, and ate the change. Then he ate the cab driver because he probably wouldn’t be missed.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob scanned his surroundings. The early morning bird noises filled his ears and and the moist Boston air filled his hairy nostrils. He breathed in heavily through his nose, tying to sniff out Randall’s scent. It didn’t work, because Rob has no super smelling ability, except for the superhuman ability to produce smells, which is something Rob has in abundance.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
There were seven more hours to go until the arranged meeting time. To pass the time, Rob sauntered down to yet another coffee shop, and waited outside until it opened. He had been to alot of different coffee shops in his travels, but this one was special to him because it was the place where he first met Megan. He hoped vaguely that he would meet her there again by chance, but he was to be disappointed. Not a single one person that passed through the glass double doors that morning was the one he so desired.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Yet as Rob sipped his coffee and ate the paper cups, he remembered how it felt he laid eyes on her all those years ago...</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Is that an XKCD shirt?” said Megan.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
She was dark of hair, and fair of skin, just like the dark-haired stick figure that kept appearing in XKCD, but for the fact that she was clearly not a stick figure.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I uhh...” Rob stuttered nervously. “No, it’s not.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Um, right.” said Megan. “Except it quite clearly says ‘XKCD’ in big white letters. Not that that’s a problem of course.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh, it’s just that... I’m not a fan of XKCD. My friend just made me wear this because my roommate shrunk all my other clothes.” Rob lied. He didn’t really have a roommate, or a friend. She was now staring incredulously at the shirt, wondering if XKCD even made shirts in that size, and making a mental note to ask her boyfriend when she got home.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But you have heard of it, right? It’s the best and geekiest comic that there is.” she said with a smile.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob grimaced at the insidious ubiquity of most hated webcomic. XKCD was everywhere. Whether from coworkers loudly passing a comic round in a group email, or a tech blog re-posting XKCD comics and explaining the jokes in lieu of actual journalism, or even a TV show making a cringeworthy reference, it was impossible to get away from XKCD.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
But for a complete stranger to accost him about it because of the shirt he was wearing? That was nothing short of unfair, even though he’d only put on the shirt in the first place to troll fans.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well, it’s just...” Rob began awkwardly, before switching his tone to intense snark. “Literally everything that I have ever written, including the terrible stuff that I don't let anyone see from middle school, is better than the average XKCD.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Not a fan, I guess?” Megan said quietly.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I already said that.” Rob growled exasperatedly. “XKCD sucks so much, I even write a blog to that effect. If you’re sure that XKCD is so fucking great, then how is it that I am able to criticize the living fuck out of every XKCD ever?!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wow, jealous much?” said Megan, no longer holding back. “Aren't you just predisposed to hate every XKCD?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No! I hate every XKCD for all the right reasons, like the half-assed artwork.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It’s minimalist!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And yet he can’t even draw stick figures with necks.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Hey, he does that some of the time!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Alright, bashing the art is too easy. But everything else is wrong with it, like the post-punchline dialog, and using alt text to explain the joke, and references that no one can understand.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What is ‘post-punchline dialog’ anyway? It sounds like a term you made up to sound smart.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“As opposed to writing comics that express my smugness about science to sound smart?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And what’s wrong with intelligent humor?!” screeched Megan, her long hair billowing in the current from the ceiling fan.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The fact that it’s not funny.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Some comics aren’t supposed to be funny. They’re supposed to make you think!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No. XKCD is trying to be funny, yet failing. Even when what Randy is trying to say is patently obvious, the joke is so unconvincing that I feel like I must be missing something.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Maybe you are, you dumb fuck!” shouted Megan, who despite the current of air from the ceiling fan above, was sweating.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I never am. I only don’t get it when the humor consists entirely of references to Firefly and other nerdy shows that I don’t watch.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh, you did NOT just criticize Firefly!” said Megan, pounding her fist down on the table. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Indeed I fucking well didn’t!” said Rob, also pounding his fist on the table. “I’m just saying the comic is at its worst when its main purpose it to pander to the fans of a specific show, regardless of that show’s quality.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Megan took a few deep breaths, before launching into another verbal attack.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Why should I listen to you?” she said. “You’re predisposed to not like it because all you ever do is hate.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And that.” said Rob. “Is what a high school logic class would refer to as <i>ad hominem</i>.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What is?” said Megan.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What you just said. Just because I hate alot of things, doesn’t mean XKCD is somehow immune from criticism.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Oh, and what you do is TOTALLY not ad hominem.” Megan sniped sarcastically.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You’re doing it again.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Aaargh!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Do you know what else I hate about XKCD?” Rob postulated.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That you don’t anything better to do with your time?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The fact that some people claim it has characters. Black Hat Guy is not a character. He is a series of unrelated incidents linked by an item of clothing. And don’t fucking get me started on Beret Guy, or that godawful Megan ‘character’.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I AM that Megan character!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob and Megan glared at each other, with mutual angry tension in their eyes. Silence. The whole room had gone quiet. Suddenly and forcefully, they kissed each other’s brains out in a passionate mutual embrace of rage-filled horny lust. It felt so awfully wrong. He knew she was already dating Randall. She knew he was an enemy of XKCD and everything it stood for. Yet it made their loins burn for each other all the more.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Suddenly an Android phone sounded out. Megan broke from the kiss and pulled it from her pocket. It was a text message, from Randall. It only said one word, and three punctuation symbols.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<i>Milk? :)</i></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Megan explained that she had to run, her boyfriend was hungry, and when he gets hungry he gets angry, and when he gets angry he gets... well, she didn’t want to say what the third word was. Hastily, Megan said goodbye, knowing full well that they knew that they would probably never be able to see each other again. Rob understood, and replied that he would always remember that moment they shared together.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Whatever happens.” he said “Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
And he meant every word of it. As he watched his precious Megan slide out of the doorway, every fibre of his being yearned so much to be the one suckling on Megan’s succulent buds, that he could think of nothing else.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob had cum in his pants. He took off the XKCD shirt, and wiped it up, then ate it.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
That was what he remembered as he sat in that same spot, under the same ceiling fan, cherishing the memory of that moment. He didn’t need to work hard to reach orgasm.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob was just about to zip himself back up when he heard a familiar voice. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I thought I might find you here.”</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-2-blown-apart.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-4-clumsy-foreshadowing.html">Next chapter - Clumsy Foreshadowing ></a></div>
<br />
<div class="p4">
DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.<br />
<br />
Author's note: this chapter is dedicated to <a href="http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/guest-review-one-true-review.html?showComment=1407186571332#c1688568301138242883">Anon 2:09</a>, who is going through a difficult time right now and needs our support. Please show him this in the comment thread. :)</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-21118197564810384322014-08-02T06:47:00.000-05:002014-08-09T20:07:47.321-05:00DiaBA chapter 2 - Blown Apart<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Let me go she said, let me go she said </i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Let me go and I will want you more”</i></div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: right;">
—Cake</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
The room was dark. Its windows had been blacked out and replaced with computer displays. From each display, a trailing HDMI cable that routed back to a blade server in the middle, upon which red and green lights were flashing.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
A young man paced diagonally across the tiled floor, treading carefully to avoid the tiles that weren’t directly in line with the black ones. He caressed the server, before sitting down in his computer chair, staring intently at some moving code on one of the screens, until he saw it stop moving.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
A chuckle sounded out from of his pasty face.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Aha!” came his basso voice. “You see that, my dear? My enemy appears to have dropped dead without my intervention.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
A woman spoke from the other room. “Either that or he just disconnected from the internet.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Ah... well I did anticipate that would be a possibility. So... I built a miniature spy drone from an Arduino taped to a Raspberry Pi. And I programmed it with Python. It’s loaded it with explosives and it can track him with the GeoIP signal from his cell phone.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“I see.” Megan replied faintly.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Is it not a magnificent thing that I, Randall Patrick Munroe, do?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Won’t that kill him?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Probably...” said Randall. “Anyway, pretty cool for something I made in my free time, right?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Don’t kill him.” Megan almost begged.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Why not?” inquired Randall.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
She choked up. Megan knew that if Randall went through with this plan, she would never feel Rob's burning member up against her wet pleasure-garden. But she could never tell him, so she invented a lie.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Because... you want him to be looking in your eyes when you kill him, knowing that you’ve won.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Hmm, a face to face defeat is tempting. Alright then. I shall disable the explosives.” Randall declared.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Megan gave a quiet sigh of relief. That would buy her some time, but for other reasons her time was still running out.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Now will you please do one more thing for me?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“What’s that, Megan sweetie?” he said, walking towards the door.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Will you let me the frak out of this ball pit?!” she screeched, rattling against the heavy chains that bound her arms.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Randall peeked in through the doorway. His ball pit occupied an entire room, the largest room in the house with tunnels and slides everywhere, and in the corner sat Megan, wriggling about within the two-metre radius that the chains allowed her. She looked so beautiful and vulnerable.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“You know I’d never do that, my dearest darling danish.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Megan sighed with sorrow. Desperately, she reached for her usual sympathy card.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“But cancerrrr!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“And I vowed to take you in sickness and in health.” said Randall. “Besides, I’m still working on a cure.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
A silent tear began to roll down Megan’s cheek. She had trusted this man, NASA engineer, internet cartoonist, god of the nerds, and now the master of her every whim.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
It was a strange relationship that they had. While Randall continued to dominate her in every way, sometimes even threatening to take away internet access, Megan knew that he needed her. Thus he could be treating her like a slave on minute, and a surrogate mother the next.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Cheer up Megan.” he said. “I want you to be happy for your last few weeks alive... with me.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
As if on cue, a timer buzzed in the ceiling.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Ooh, milk time!” Randall squealed in excitement. He dived in and waded through the coloured balls to sit on Megan’s lap, and latched on to her.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Megan gently rubbed Randall’s back and ran her fingers through his hair while he suckled, for thirty rapturous minutes. Though she was sure he’d had enough, Randall asked for more, and continued to feed until Megan had no milk left to give him.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Licking his lips afterwards, Randall said to Megan:</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Okay, now it’s time to check on my captive.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Here I am.” Megan countered.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“Not you.” barked Randall. “The <i>other</i> captive.”</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Rob was heading east. The train stopped at some no-name town in Montana. It would only take him this far. Rob ate at a gas station, then walked until he found the interstate. He found a car, and hitchhiked east until he found a Wi-Fi hotspot. And along the way, he took a shower in a carwash.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
He didn’t find an open Wi-fi until Minnesota, sitting outside a busy truck stop as the sun began to set. He took his netbook out of a fat fold, and pointed his web browser at the <a href="http://client01.chat.mibbit.com/?server=irc.foonetic.Net&channel=%2523xkcd-sucks">IRC channel</a>, and began to type.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
<i>Rob has joined #xkcd-sucks.</i> said the text on the screen.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“i love you too juicy” said Lord_Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“i love you more kitty” said @jwc</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“did i miss something?” Rob typed nonchalantly.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“only the most touching piece of theatre ever” said Ravenzomg.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“was it touching?” said @jwc.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“i was touching myself” said AnnApolis.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“ok” typed Rob. “anyway i just had a stupid idea”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“was it an idea to lift your giant arse from the chair?” said Lord_Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“lol” said AnnApolis.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“stfu” typed Rob, mashing the keys with his fat fingers. “im actually going to suggest we start operation raptor”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“whats operation raptor?” asked Ravenzomg.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“we find randalls house and delete xkcd” Rob typed.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“k” said Lord_Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“bring lube.” typed Rob absentmindedly. “it will be a long and lonely journey”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“it might be dangeous out there. be carful my darling kitten” said @jwc, blowing a virtual kiss at Lord_Kitten.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“i would cum” said AnnApolis. “but im busy with college next week”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“this is more important” typed Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“yessir” said AnnApolis. “ill go book a flight to america”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“ok” Rob typed. “and spread the word. let it be known that anyone who considers themself an opponent of xkcd should join me on my holy crusade to rid the world of its awfulness”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“yay” said Lord_Kitten</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
“im sending you the coordinates now” typed Rob. “we will meet there at midday on the 31st”</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
The sun was now behind the horizon, staining the sky a brilliant red. Rob found a truck driver heading for the east coast, and threatened to eat his family if he did not give Rob a ride. So together they carried on eastward through another five more states, stopping only to refuel in Illinois. Rob also typed up an angst-filled short story about coffee, which he published to <a href="http://dreamersoften.blogspot.com/">his other blog</a>. Every mile of the journey brought him closer to Randall, and closer to Megan.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
The truck driver was reluctant to make conversation at first. But eventually Rob broke the silence. Once they started talking, they found they had alot in common. By the time they crossed the border to Ohio, Rob’s initial threats were all but forgotten, and over the next few days they became best friends. When he dropped Rob off in upstate New York, they shared a fond farewell, as he continued south on his route, while Rob would be carrying on eastward. It was then that he realised he hadn’t even exchanged names with this truck driver.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Rob sat down at a bench where pigeons were flocking. They all flew away when they saw him. Rob was feeling quite alone, but he also felt a strong itching sensation above his butt. He reached into his lower fat folds, and retrieved a molested hunk of metal. He didn’t know quite how long that had been there. It was hard to tell what it was, because he had been sitting on it, but it might have once been a model airplane, albeit a poor quality one. It was held together by lots and lots of duct tape, wrapped loosely around two circuit boards, and hastily soldered to something that looked like a battery. At least, Rob thought it was a battery.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
He sized up the wreckage in his hands, before deciding to take a bite out of it. It seemed safe, Rob thought as he chewed on the sticky metal, so he swallowed it whole. He didn’t even notice the explosive rounds as they detonated violently against his cavernous insides. All he felt was a slight tummy rumble, followed by a hot, smoky belch.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent:2em;">
Rob went to a coffee shop afterwards, where he drank a metric gallon of coffee and took out his netbook. He set it down by the huge pile of paper cups in front of him, and fell asleep with his eyes open. It had never been easier to score a free place to sleep.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/diaba-chapter-1-bored-of-internet.html">< Previous chapter</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-3-heartbleed-explanation.html">Next chapter - Heartbleed Explanation ></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.<br />
<br />
Author's note: This chapter goes up 11 hours early for the benefit of my readers who got linked here from XKCD Isn't Funny. *Waves*</div>Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-83842249541342801962014-07-26T17:16:00.000-05:002014-08-18T09:11:18.179-05:00DiaBA chapter 1 - Bored of the Internet<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“I cried myself to sleep last night</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>And the ghost of Carl</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>He approached my window</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>I was hypnotized</i></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<i>I was asked to improvise”</i></div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: right;">
—Sufjan Stevens</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Late last night, in Rob's bedroom...</div>
<div class="p3">
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<i>Veritably cuddly.</i></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
<i>Honestly, and I’m not saying this out of spite or anything, I don’t think you’re going to manage to convince anyone that xkcd sucks or is overrated through this blag.</i></div>
<div class="p3">
<i></i><br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Who the fuck wrote this?” said Rob, who was at that moment reading a <a href="http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/comic.html?showComment=1215729480000%2523c6723552365334808753">very old comment</a> on the xkcdsucks blog from his dusty computer screen.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You did.” said Carl ‘Ugly’ Wheeler, the former admin of Xkcdsucks, for no one knew more than Carl did that XKCD’s harshest critic was once an optimistic young fanboy, until the hate-blog corrupted him, transforming Rob into a disgusting cretin that spent his online life pouring derision on the comic he’d once loved.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But he even used the word blag. What a goddamned nerd!”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes.” said Carl, nodding his ghostly head. “You were.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Carl was visiting as a ghost because he died and went insane. But now he returned from the afterlife to give some advice to his cretin Rob before he set out on his long hard journey.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob saw the date on the comment and breathed a slow rattling sigh. 2008. Had it really been that long?</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Carl put a hand through Rob’s shoulder. “You don’t need to do this.” said Carl. “Can’t you see that you’re starving yourself?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I fail to detect your sarcasm.” said Rob, shaking one of his fat rolls at Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“It was a figure of speech.” said Carl. “You could still walk away from xkcdsucks with a shred of your dignity intact.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You didn’t leave me much choice.” said Rob. “No one else but me could review the new comics after you left.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What happened to the others?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I ate them to gain their power.” Rob confessed.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Right.” said Carl. “I mean, couldn’t you just find someone to replace you? One of the cuddlefish perhaps?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“HAHAHAHAHAHA no.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Cuddlefish was a term they used to refer to the anonymous commenters, because they did not have names.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Why not?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I don’t have permission to invite other people to the blog. Carl never gave me admin access.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And risk losing my ad revenue? I should think not!” said Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“So you see I have no choice.” said Rob. “XKCD could not be allowed to carry on unchallenged. And now I am its only challenger.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“What about Jon Levi?” Carl enquired.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No”<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Carl could see that Rob was getting tired of this conversation, as he was just clicking randomly on Xkcdsucks comment threads. Dozens of colourful avatars flash by as Rob scrolled ever downwards, and Carl felt nothing for them.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Okay, so let me get this straight what you are planning to do.” said Carl. “You’re going to go down to Massachusets, find out where Randall lives and personally put a stop to XKCD?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That won’t work.” said Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“OK” said Rob. “I’ll bring some friends.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You don’t have any friends!” exclaimed Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Lol, I mean them.” said Rob, pointing his fat finger at the comment thread.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Good luck getting those cuddlefish to do anything.” said Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“They’re not all cuddlefish. Some of them are actually smart enough to type in complete sentences and create a Blogger account.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m so happy for them.” said Carl sarcastically. “But that doesn’t mean they want any part in this.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“They will obey me when I give them a common cause to rally around. They too will come to the conclusion that eliminating XKCD at its source is infinitely preferable to hating it from afar.” explained Rob. “Xkcdsucks may have been created for this very purpose.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“That’s not why I created Xkcdsucks.” said the ghost of Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“And when it’s over, we might be able to leave behind this pointless hate-blog and get on with our lives.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But you could do that now. Why go all the way to Boston for that?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Megan.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Ah-h-h. Tell me more.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Randall doesn’t know how lucky he is.” Rob monologued. “She is too good for him. She deserves me, a man who truly appreciates her. It is a great cosmic injustice that she became Mrs Munroe, when she should have been Mrs Rob Mason. Believe me when I say that I so desperately desire for hot sweet Megan-loving, that I would go as far as to kill the man she claims to love.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“But why now? Why not two years ago when people actually gave a fuck?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“She had cancer. And Randall’s been playing it for sympathy.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“The bastard!” sneered Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well now it’s come back in <i>both</i> tits, and it’s terminal.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I’m sorry to hear that.” said Carl. “Megan is a truly special woman.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yeah.” said Rob. “If I act fast, I may be able to get her while she still has hair.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Then I wish you good luck.” said Carl. “So tell me, has anything else happened while I’ve been gone?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Randall went public with his <a href="http://xkcd.com/858/">lactation fetish</a>.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I always knew he would.” said Carl. “Christ, I dread to think how that’s affecting Megan.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Woman who have had mastectomies don’t lactate.” said Rob. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Be warned though, Randall will not give her up so easily. Chances are that he knows what you’re about to do, and he is already planning on ways to stop you.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Wait.” said Rob. “How do you know that?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“I have my sources.” said Carl.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Are you haunting him too?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes, something like that. Now tell me exactly how you plan on getting to Boston?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well I suppose I’ll take the... hey, why do you want to know?!? You only asked me that because you’re secretly working for him. Isn’t that right?” ejaculated Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Well sorry.” said Carl. “Ad revenue from Xkcdsucks ain’t gonna last forever.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Fuck you!” bellowed Rob. “I trusted you.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob swiped his pudgy arms at Carl’s ghost, but it was hopeless. Even if he had been able to touch Carl’s incorporeal form, the ghost had already faded away.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob looked up at the spidery ceiling. It was faintly lit by a glow from the window, meaning that the faint autumn sun had already stated to rise over Seattle. In a few hours it would be bright enough to make him see the reflection of his own face in the computer screen, which he hated. He would be gone before then.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob lifted his 300 pounds of rancid flesh from his swivel chair and dusted himself off. A week’s worth of lint, dust and Cheeto crumbs fell from between his rolls of fat. He would take a shower before he got there. Rob grabbed suitcase and packed provisions for a long journey. He took food, coffee, porn, socks, XXXXL sized shirts, his netbook and a breast pump. He zipped up the suitcase and stuffed it between his fat rolls. Rob went online one last time to book a train ticket. He was using his browser’s incognito mode so that Randall couldn’t track him. And then he ate his computer afterwards to destroy the evidence.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
He began by stuffing the stiff plastic keyboard into his mouth, without even bothering to unplug it. His teeth gnashed on the keys, typing up yet another XKCD review. His fingers slipped on the mouse, and accidentally posted the eldritch text to Xkcdsucks. But Rob didn’t see, as by now he had started to consume the monitor. The gaping maw of his mouth clenched against the plastic and glass until they gave way. The cables wrapped around his slimy tongue, causing him to retch. But now there was no going back now. He would have to swallow the whole computer. In a fit of electrically charged agony, Rob consumed the tower, his jaw extending into hitherto unknown dimensions, and the monitor. He would not be needing that computer any more.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
When Rob got to the front door, he realised he had forgotten something.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Mom!” he called out. “I’m leaving town for a while.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“For how long?” came a voice from the downstairs bedroom. </div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Indefinitely.” said Rob.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Why, is someone is wrong on the internet?”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Yes.” said rob, cringing at the reference.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“You should just ignore them.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“No Mom, Xkcd is a disease, and it's reached pandemic proportions.”</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Could you at least change my bedpan first?” the helpless woman pleaded.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
“Fuck no... thanks.” he said politely.</div>
<div class="p4" style="text-indent: 2em;">
Rob squeezed his way through the front door of his crumbling suburban abode, leaving his bedridden mother to die.</div>
<div class="p3">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/died-in-blogging-accident.html">< Back to index</a> | <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-2-blown-apart.html">Next chapter - Blown Apart ></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="p4">
DISCLAIMER: this story and its characters are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons or cuddlefish living or dead is purely coincidental.</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-1310712204790313322014-07-26T16:22:00.003-05:002014-09-14T19:41:27.480-05:00Died In A Blogging Accident<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">THE XKCD-SUCKS FANFIC IS HERE.</span></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b><b>The story of ONE MAN (and a whole bunch of others) on a mission to destroy the greatest threat mankind has ever faced: XKCD.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">CHEER as Rob throws his weight around in Boston!</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">GASP as Randall enacts a plan to KILL our heroes!</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">SCREAM as Ann Apolis shows off his feminine side!</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h2 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
Contents:</span></h2>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">~</span></div>
</div>
<h3 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/07/diaba-chapter-1-bored-of-internet.html">Chapter 1 - Bored of the Internet</a></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/diaba-chapter-2-blown-apart.html">Chapter 2 - Blown Apart</a></h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<h3 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-3-heartbleed-explanation.html">Chapter 3 - Heartbleed Explanation</a></h3>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-4-clumsy-foreshadowing.html">Chapter 4 - Clumsy Foreshadowing</a></h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-5-increased-risk.html">Chapter 5 - Increased Risk</a></h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/08/diaba-chapter-6-secret-worlds.html">Chapter 6 - Secret Worlds</a></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-chapter-7-incision.html">Chapter 7 - Incision</a></h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<h3>
<a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/2014/09/diaba-mid-season-clip-show.html">Mid-season clip-show</a></h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Chapter 8 - coming 21/Sep</h3>
</div>
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I will continue to post new chapters, every Sunday morning, at midnight (British time) until the story is over.<br />
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Don't miss an update! <a href="http://xkcd-sucks.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default">Follow the RSS feed</a>.</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-87455601668857586112014-07-15T10:03:00.002-05:002014-07-16T18:56:33.929-05:00Comic 1393 - Randall Feels Old<div style="text-align: center;">
<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/scary.png" />
Alt-text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Consolas, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm teaching every 8-year-old relative to say this, and every 14-year-old to do the same thing with Toy Story. Also, Pokemon hit the US over a decade ago and kids born after Aladdin came out will turn 18 next year.</span></div>
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Oh wait...that's Comic 647. Let's try again.<br />
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<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nintendo_surgeon.png" /><br />
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<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/startling.png" /><br />
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<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/actuarial.png" />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">References courtesy of <a href="http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/2009/10/comic-647-old.html">xkcdsucks</a>.</span></div>
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Nope, those aren't right either. Ah! Here's 1393:<br />
<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/timeghost.png" style="text-align: center;" />
<span style="text-align: center;">Alt-text: </span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Consolas, 'Lucida Console', monospace; font-size: 12px; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;">'Hello, Ghostbusters?' 'ooOOoooo people born years after that movie came out are having a second chiiiild right now ooOoooOoo'</span><br />
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While I can't be bothered to look up other instances of this <i>(<a href="http://xkcd.com/891/">891</a> and <a href="http://xkcd.com/1093/">1093</a> — ed.)</i>, I'm positive this isn't the first time Randall has turned around and made fun of the same premises he once used as jokes. Is it a big deal? It's tough to say. As these strips indicate, people DO grow older, and as they grow older, their feelings change (look no further than the primary audience of these hate blogs).<br />
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For now, I'm willing to accept this change of heart. Randall did a 180, sure, but he didn't do it with any sort of pretentiousness, and he didn't make "this thing is annoying" the entirety of the joke, as he's done <a href="http://xkcd.com/919/">before</a>. The joke at the end is actually a decent twist, and while I don't think it needed the buildup of three panels (this isn't a newspaper comic, after all - he can use whatever format he likes), there are worse ways of going about it.<br />
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That said, I don't believe this was a comic that needed to be made. Sure, Randall took an unfunny thing and made it funny (and as a cartoonist, that's his job), but it's not really what I'd consider xkcd subject matter. It's just him saying, "I want to tell people how I feel about this, so I'd better stick a joke at the end." There's nothing particularly intelligent or scientific about it, and nothing related to romance, sarcasm, math, or language either. It's just something Randall doesn't like with a joke at the end.<br />
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In other words, it's the sort of comic that made me stop caring about xkcd. Not nerdy enough to have niche appeal, not funny enough to have broad appeal, and not bad enough to have hateblog appeal. It's just unremarkable; nothing more.<br />
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P.S. - My favorite of these sorts of factoids is "Most kids entering high school this year were born in the year 2000."Gamer_2k4http://www.blogger.com/profile/17079715817544544279noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-75520037148641984862014-07-12T10:15:00.004-05:002014-07-13T06:09:21.195-05:00Comics 68 and 1390: About as Far Apart as Megan's LegsToday I'm going to do something a little different - a comparative review. Because my fanbase can't legitimately decide on which comic they want reviewed. That's alright. I'll review them both.<br />
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Comic title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800;">Five Thirty</span></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 8th panel is my favorite</span></div>
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Eight years later...<br />
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Comic title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">Research Ethics</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_ethics.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_ethics.png" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I mean, it's not like we could just demand to see the code that's governing our lives. What right do we have to poke around in Facebook's private affairs like that?</span></div>
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At first sight, these comics aren't really comparable at all, which would make this a very quick review, and I could go back to writing my slash fiction. But here at Xkcd-sucks we always strive to go beyond the call of duty, so I'm comparing them anyway.</div>
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Now that I think about it, they are both representative of their respective eras. 68 came from a simpler time, when xkcd.com was not even two months old, Randall was not put on a pedestal, and nobody <b>actually</b> expected him to be funny.</div>
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Similarly, 1390 is an archetypal modern XKCD. It comes from a time when Randall Munroe is a god among men, who turns everything he touches into <b>comedy gold</b>.</div>
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Normally I'd shy away from this kind of retrophilia, as I think XKCD nostalgia is for the most part mistplaced. XKCD was best before you started reading it, when you could flip through the entire archive, button-mash the random button and see a new comic every time. It becomes a lot easier to ignore the bad to mediocre comics and focus on your favourites than when they are reduced to the glacial trickle of a MWF update schedule. Far easier to be disappointed with a Monday comic when you spent the last <b>three days</b> waiting for it. But I do think 68 is legitimately better than 1390.</div>
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For one thing, it's actually funny. Why? It's funny because it's stupid. I can't explain why stupid things are funny (besides, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcl854gPJZk">Nostalgia Critic</a> said it much better than I could) but they are. It does lose a little of its impact by deliberately going out of the way to be stupid. But I it's way better than what XKCD usually does.</div>
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On the other hand, 1390 does what XKCD usually does - jumping on a popular topic, and stuffs it into a conversation. In fact it's more of a monologue than a conversation, but I'll overlook that detail for now. It starts by taking a popular opinion, and attempting to subvert it, and ultimately <b>goes nowhere</b>. And then people praise it as being original, even though it forgets to be<b> funny</b>.</div>
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One reason why 68 is funny has nothing to to do with its actual quality, or the fact that it came out closer to the release of <i>Jurassic Park</i> than the present day. It has <b>twelve panels</b>. So while the first panel does nothing for me, the second is actually quite funny, but I am irrationally annoyed by the third. I also think 'fuck the cosine' is brilliant, and so is 'stretchy death'.</div>
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Do you see what I'm getting at? 68 is more than just representative of early XKCD. It's representative of <i>all</i> early XKCD. When you read, it's like to being able to push the random button a few times until you find one you like.</div>
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1390 is similarly representative of recent XKCD. It's all buildup and <b>no payoff</b>. It's a point without a point. It's a phoned in piece of crap, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.</div>
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Alt text wasn't bad though.<br />
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LEGAL NOTICE: I should mention that my review of 1390 is in no way biased by the views of our parent company Facebook Inc, nor does it reflect the views of Mark Zuckerberg or associated persons. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-69751741268144000972014-07-10T05:02:00.001-05:002014-07-10T05:03:16.978-05:00Comic 1354: My Heart Bleeds for XKCD<div style="text-align: center;">
Comic title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">Heartbleed Explanation</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/heartbleed_explanation.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/heartbleed_explanation.png" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you still there, server? It's me, Margaret.</span><br />
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I've been stalling for a month because some idiot asked me to review a documentary comic, rather than an actual, y'know, comic comic. But alas, we all make mistakes.<br />
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Honestly, I'm scratching my head and trying to think of something. But I can't find any obvious mistakes in this comic. It actually explains the issue quite well. It explains Heartbleed much more concisely than anyone else, barring perhaps Wikipedia's diagram, which seems directly influenced by the comic.<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Simplified_Heartbleed_explanation.svg/500px-Simplified_Heartbleed_explanation.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Simplified_Heartbleed_explanation.svg/500px-Simplified_Heartbleed_explanation.svg.png" /></a><br />
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Looking familiar?</div>
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First of all, let me bemoan the fact that XKCD is literally <a href="https://twitter.com/atJonLevi/status/486568165619798017/photo/1">everywhere on the internet</a>, and you can't get away from it, ever. But this also raises the question: why not just upload the comic to Wikipedia servers and use that in the Heartbleed article (like certain XKCDs have previously been licensed for Wikipedia)? Maybe it's not as informative as we thought.<br />
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Now, Wikipedia's version dispenses with the stick figure, in favour of coloured circles. We can also see that how blue is good and red is bad (which I feel is unfairly racist against red people). I'm ambivalent to the loss of stick figures. At least the XKCD version had some human interest.<br />
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The Wikipedia version cuts down on the panels from six to just two. Again, I feel it lost something here. The XKCD version had four panels that built up to something that provides a payoff. Could it be... a punchline?<br />
<br />
Yes! So this is a 'funny' XKCD comic after all. Both of the changes that make the Wikipedia version more concise and informative make it less funny and entertaining. So surely the original had to be funny and entertaining in the first place?<br />
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Now that I see it this way, 1354 actually has quite a strong punchline, the joke being that this is actually how servers actually behave, in real life, at least until they're patched. This comic could have made the mistake of making it look like a wholly fictional situation. But it didn't.<br />
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The text at the top makes it very clear that this is "how the Heartbleed bug works" because this is what it says in big all-caps. You may argue that this is redundant, but keep in mind that the repostings of this comic around the internet typically don't include the title. Thus it was rather thoughtful of Randall to anticipate this.<br />
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Lastly, it had none of the preachiness of a usual XKCD. I know this shouldn't be considered praise, but when you consider the knee-jerk "END IS NIGH, CHANGE ALL THE PASSWORDS NOW" that the tech press ejaculated, this was remarkably restrained of Randall.<br />
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I fear I am losing my touch with XKCD. So please request a really bad comic for me to review. Or draw your own, and make me review them. I don't care. I just need something to haaaaaate.Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-5122401712250142512014-07-10T04:12:00.000-05:002014-07-10T04:13:04.868-05:00Nightmare of Randall - a short storyI have been taking creative writing classes lately. Here is the result.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Randall woke up on the pile of bones. It had been the 35th time in this dream that he had woken up so far, and yet his creative mind felt locked. He could not think of a witty Inception reference for this situation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">"Wait a minute. You haven't even seen Inception," cackled Carl "Ugly" Wheeler, sneeringly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Suddenly Carl turned into a velociraptor. Carl had always been a velociraptor. The Jurassic Park theme tune was playing out of key. Randall tried to run, but he just fell over. The raptor lunged, and snapped its jaws closed upon his head. Clever girl.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">He woke up again. Where was he now? In a ball pit, in his own apartment, right where he remembered falling asleep. Surely he was properly awake now. The morning light was shining brightly in his eyes, so everything in his apartment looked white. He crawled out of the bed and walked through the door into the bathroom, hoping to find Megan's milky nipples.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">But what he saw instead was a mirror, the mirror he usually saw above the sink. But it was not showing his usual reflection. Instead of his body, he saw a thin black line, extending upwards into his neck. Two more lines came out of his neck at angles, his arms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">And his head... His head was a big white circle, slightly larger than the head he was used to, but perfectly smooth, and somewhat elongated. Featureless. Randall had turned into a stick figure. Randall tried to scream, to open his mouth, but he couldn't, because he had no mouth. He tried to close his eyes, but he couldn't. Nothing could take away the hideous ugly sensation. He couldn't draw eyes.</span>
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To be continued...?<br />
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Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-40742062240704614252014-05-31T10:11:00.002-05:002014-05-31T10:27:39.103-05:00Comic 1374: WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?I'm honestly struggling to come up with words with which to fault 1374, because it was so devoid of humour and redeeming value, that any criticism I lay on it would seem petty.<br />
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Comic title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">Urn</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/urn.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/urn.png" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can this PLEASE be drawing with replacement?</span><br />
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It's a word play on the word 'urn'. Actually not even a word play, but more an acknowledgement that urns can be used for containing human ashes and for hypothetical probability exercises. I mean really?!? That's like if the teacher's question involved bottles, and the smart-ass student said "Herp. Is one of those bottles full of beer? If so, I drink it and get expelled from school and never have to do math class again." Or in a geography class, if a student was asked why a river forms meanders and says "Daaa. I pissed in the river. Lolololol." about If either of those jokes were told in one of my classes, it would amuse only the dumb kids. I mean, I'm all for making XKCD more accessible, but this is just <b>stupid for the sake of stupid</b>.<br />
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I know I've stopped doing alphabetical grades, but this comic gets an <b>F</b>, and a <b>U</b>, and a <b>C</b>, and a <b>K</b>.<br />
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Edit: explainxkcd.com has <a href="http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1374">pointed out</a> that this joke may have been in reference to the <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/left-pushes-trigger-warnings-in-college-classrooms/">recent phenomenon</a> of 'trigger warnings' in college campuses. If that is true, then that makes it 100 times better. It elevates the joke to something more like: "What's next, trigger warnings in high schools? No way man. The only way we'd need that is if students are emotionally retarded enough to be set off by stupid little things like this."<br />
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In case you can't tell, I approve of this alternate meaning. And I find it sad that there's <b>NOTHING IN THE COMIC TO SUGGEST THIS</b>. How typical of Munroe to spoil a good joke with piss-poor execution. He either thought of a funny situation to do with trigger warnings in schools, then forgot where he got the idea from and posted it without context, or he made the mistake of assuming that the news story would be so ubiquitous that everyone would know about it anyway.<br />
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Then again, I could be giving Randall too much credit, and it might have nothing to do with trigger warnings and simply be a bad joke. After all, it's unlikely that he would consciously write a comic where a female character is in the wrong.Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-48367991725522628512014-05-29T17:23:00.003-05:002014-05-29T17:23:38.575-05:00Comic 1370: Randall's Midlife CrisisSo it occurred to me that the 1366th comic milestone went unnoticed. As of three weeks ago, there are more XKCD comics than there are horizontal pixels in my 1366x768 monitor. Moving on,<br />
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Comic title: <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">President</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/president.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/president.png" /></a><br />
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyone who thinks we're all going to spend the 2032 elections poring over rambling blog posts by teenagers has never tried to read a rambling blog post by a teenager.</span></div>
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At first sight, we have yet another preachy XKCD comic that lacks a punchline. Right? Wrong! This is a harbinger of Randall's midlife crisis. Let me explain why.<br />
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1370 picks up on a few of XKCD's common themes - the passing of time. This is something that was picked up on as early as <a href="http://xkcd.com/354/">354</a>. He seems surprised that [insert name of movie] came out closer to the moon landing than today. Clearly this is something Randall thinks about a lot. It's like his mind was fixed in 1999, and the idea that time has passed since then comes as a shock.<br />
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This is something that he was bound to confront eventually: the idea that he, Randall, is no longer of the young generation.<br />
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Randall has long considered himself the voice of this generation. XKCD is quintessentially a young man's comic. It makes jokes about todays technology and pop culture. And it's read by an audience of high schoolers.<br />
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Eventually though, the unthinkable will happen: Randall's XKCD will cease to be culturally relevant. It won't happen suddenly. It will be slow. Arguably it has already started to happen. Randall can't bring himself to confront that fear, so in his usual style, he wrote a comic about it.<br />
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The comic is a sincere acknowledgement that the older generation are mistrusting of the new, and handing over the world to them is a scary prospect. The little girl is here to ridicule the older woman for having these views. Randall would very much like to identify with this girl.<br />
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But on a subconscious level, he identifies with the woman. She is older, and like Randall she has felt the cognitive dissonance of time passing when you don't expect it too. Randall refuses to believe this, which is why he drew her with the blonde ponytail, a character design he usually used for his straw-men.<br />
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But make no mistake about it: this comic is a cry for help, to which I say: <b>Randall, stop doing XKCD before it becomes culturally irrelevant</b>.Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-804808256601523152014-05-28T14:56:00.001-05:002014-05-28T14:57:14.406-05:00Comic 1357: Showing you the DoorFellows, it has come to my attention that I'm not posting reviews as often as I used to. Well today I'd like to change that. I don't know why, but I feel it's what Randall would want me to do. So here's a review for you.<br />
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Comic Title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">Free Speech</span></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.</span></div>
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Whoo, six panels! The aforementioned Mr Munroe must have spent a full ten minutes on this one. I jest, I jest. But you know what? The comic doesn't. Because in all those six panels he forgot to include a single joke.<br />
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"But Jon, you magnificent yid," I hear you say. "It's not supposed to be funny. It's supposed to make a point." Good point, I say, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make its point in the <b>most obnoxious way possible</b>. For those of you keeping track at home, that double-negative means it <i>does</i> go about making its point in the most obnoxious way possible, even more obnoxiously than the way I'm making this point right now, you schanda.<br />
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Public service announcement: prefacing your webcomic, or anything for that matter, with the words "Public service announcement" is a bad start, because those three words are shorthand for: 'This is something important that I think everyone really needs to know right now because I am a smug arsehole.' Thank God he went with the shorthand. The wall of text is large enough already.<br />
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The further you go through the comic, the less necessary each panel is. Consider that the comic would have still worked if you got rid of the last panel. In fact you could have cut it short at 5, 4, 3 or 2 panels and it would have made its point <b>just as effectively</b>. Even the first panel would work as a standalone, and that's because he makes the point in the first panel. The other five are taken up with <b>directionless ranting</b>.<br />
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Again, the artwork is awful because it <b>does nothing</b>. Aside from an unnecessary picture of a door, the other five panels are just Stick-Randall talking. And for some reason he zooms in and out every other panel, like it's a TV show that has multiple camera angles.<br />
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There's a reason why TV stations do the thing with multiple zoom levels. It's because <b>people on TV have faces</b>. You see more detail when you zoom into a face, but when you zoom into a white circle on a white background, all you see is <b>a larger circle</b>. Fuck.<br />
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I have often accused XKCD comics of being smug, but frankly this outclasses anything I've seen recently. It doesn't even try to make a joke by cutting off a guy's arm.<br />
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Finally, let it be said that free speech doesn't shield Randall from criticism either. If he truly practices what he preaches, then everyone is equally fallible and can be called out for their bullshit, except for me. I have been posting bullshit on this blog for over a year now, and no one has ever called me out for it.Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-3285550722769194532014-05-02T14:09:00.002-05:002014-05-02T14:09:45.606-05:00Comic 69: It's better if you imagine it with canned laughter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Comic title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800;">Pillow Talk</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pillow_talk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pillow_talk.jpg" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe I should've tried Wexler?</span><br />
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I don't think this comic was very good. It's not very bad either, which is why it took me two weeks to think of anything to say about it. Next time, suggest a more interesting comic, you schmucks.<br />
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Let's start with the joke. I'll give you that there is some mileage in the whole 'nerd in an awkward romantic situation' setup. But the more and more I think about it, the more find myself comparing it to a throwaway line in said on something like The Big Bang Theory. It sounds like something Leonard would say, or Howard, or Raj, or Sheldon. Ah heck, they're all the same character anyway.<br />
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If I had to say which is better, XKCD or TBBT, it's not a clear-cut decision. On one hand, you can read three panels of XKCD in 10 seconds, whereas an episode of TBBT has a run time of 22 minutes plus ad breaks. So with XKCD, the pain is over faster.<br />
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On the other hand, TBBT at least has the semblance of characters you can relate to and care about what happens to them. And they will at least try and work that joke into a storyline. So at least TBBT has that. Whereas XKCD presents only the bare bones of the joke, with only the most rudimentary setup.<br />
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Speaking of bare bones, the artwork in this XKCD is drop-dead awful. I know it's early XKCD, but oy vey! The only artwork is a faceless stick figure, who doesn't change pose in three panels. And Randall doesn't even do the thing he does in later XKCDs where he uses their arms to express body language.<br />
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In fact this comic is scarcely more than a tweet. Perhaps Randall could have just posted it to Twitter and saved us the bother (note to editor: did Twitter exist in 2006?). If only it was 11 characters shorter.<br />
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PS: I know I haven't been giving you much in the way of actual thought-out critique. If you still crave a timely review of the latest comics, I suggest you check out XKCD's newest hate-blog on the block: <a href="http://xkcdisntfunny.blogspot.co.uk/">XKCD Isn't Funny</a>Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-29127771779825753602014-04-15T20:39:00.001-05:002014-04-15T20:39:12.112-05:00Comic 169: Randall Hates Riddles<div style="text-align: left;">
Okay, Anon 8:26 has requested this review quite a while ago. Sorry it's taken me so long to get to it. Except I'm not sorry at all. I've been spending the last two weeks counting my money from the Facebook acquisition (<a href="http://www.eternalvaluesministries.com/resources/443081-Royalty-Free-RF-Clip-Art-Illustration-Of-A-Cartoon-Greedy-Manager-Counting-His-Money-And-Sitting-On-His-Employees.jpg">artist's impression</a>). Did I mention that we're owned by Facebook now? Good. We promise that not a thing will be affected by this.</div>
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Title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">Words that End in GRY</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/words_that_end_in_gry.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/words_that_end_in_gry.png" height="465" width="640" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fifth panel also applies to postmodernists.</span></div>
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So, we have another comic where it would be funny if it was just Black Hat being Black Hat. But instead of that, it has Randall's moral agenda strewn across it like a dirty towel.</div>
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But never mind that for now. I actually looked up the riddle in this comic. And it turns out that Strawman is saying it <b>WRONG</b>. What's that you say, a mistake in an Xkcd comic? Randall <b>doesn't get do-overs,</b> remember. Let me explain. It goes like this: </div>
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<b class="b" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Think of words ending in "-gry". "Angry" and "hungry" are two of them. There are only three words in "the English language." What is the third word?</b></div>
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Obviously you don't pronounce the quotation marks, unless you are a <b>schmuck</b>. Note that that version of the riddle actually has <b>"language"</b> as an answer. That wasn't so hard to research, was it? Surely Randall would never make an elementary mistake like this?</div>
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Oh, but there is <b>another</b> version of the riddle, which is a bit more like to what Strawman is saying. However this one has <b>"what"</b> as the answer.</div>
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<b class="b" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">"Angry" and "hungry" are two words in the English language that end in "-gry". "What" is the third word.</b></div>
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<b class="b" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></div>
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For the curious, my source for these can be found <a href="http://www.fun-with-words.com/word_gry_angry_hungry.html">here</a>*. </div>
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So, why would Strawman get the riddle so badly wrong, and still gloat about it to Black Hat? Easy, because he's being written by <b>Randall Patrick Munroe</b>. The guy writes straw men for a living. And no, I won't be PC and call them straw people, because all the straw men in Xkcd are men.</div>
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It was actually Randall's craft of the written word that caused Strawman to get the riddle wrong. Because if he makes Strawman dumber than anyone with enough intelligence to form the syllables to tell a riddle, he is therefore making Black Hat look smarter. Intelligence is relative, boys and girls.</div>
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Take a moment to consider this: Randall is trying to make a psychopath who cuts the hands off people that tell annoying riddles seem more reasonable than the teller of said annoying riddle. It's clear that he hates the annoying riddle tellers so much, he is going out of the way to insult their intelligence. And it comes at the expense of this comic actually, you know, <b>making sense</b>.</div>
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Furthermore, are we to believe that Black Hat constantly carries around a knife that is shark enough to cut bone on the off chance that he will meet an annoying riddle teller like this? This all but shows the further ways Munroe has distorted the universe to make this scenario possible:</div>
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The only way it would make sense for Black Hat to carry around this absurdly sharp blade is if he was harassed by these riddle-tellers <b>all the time</b>. But wait, what if he was? As soon as you believe this, Black Hat becomes a much more sympathetic character. With this interpretation, do you not start to see the riddle-teller as less of a victim, and more of an outright villain? But don't believe it for a second. Randall weaves elegant lies.</div>
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Panels 4 through 6 are just pure Randall rants, with a backdrop of screaming. Make no mistake about it, this is Randall's power fantasy. He would like to do this to all his enemies, such as the people who claim that his comic sucks (come and get me, big guy!) or for those who claim that women are any less than a master race. If you offended Randall in a dark alleyway, and he had a little more courage (okay, a <b>lot</b> more), then he would do this to you. In the alt text, he even points out panel 5 as a warning to postmodernists, as if to say 'you're next'. I ask you what kind of rational person would do this?</div>
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The worst part is that the whole thing is incredibly <b>smug</b>, and yet Black hat seems completely oblivious to the irony of calling someone else smug while doing this.</div>
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So there you have it. Once again, I have shown you the true horror of a seemingly 'innocent' 'comic'. I'll leave you to think about whether anyone would listen to me if I had just cut off their arm.</div>
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Oh, and since I haven't given it a grade yet, I'll award a grade based on the above points: <b>F+</b> </div>
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Try some subtlety next time.</div>
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*It's nice being able to cite a source for once without using the fucking Harvard Referencing System.</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-53549786650624770972014-03-31T18:00:00.002-05:002014-04-01T09:56:23.786-05:00Facebook AcquisitionSometimes when a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity comes along, you just have to chase it, drop everything, and pursue it as your ultimate dream. That is what happened when I joined Xkcd-sucks in 2011. And while I haven't been here from the very beginning, I have watched Hyphen grow for a blag that averaged only tens of views a day, to one that regularly reaches into the triple figures. And we couldn't have done it without you cuddlefish. We have been on an incredible journey together. And now we are ready to embark on the next stage of that journey.<br />
<br />
<b>I am proud to announce that Facebook has decided to purchase us for £5500 million</b> (or just over $9000 billion USD). Xkcd-sucks will become part of the Facebook family. This is a very big day for all of us.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tlFjOahVruw/UzoAB57GJ3I/AAAAAAAAA7Y/ilhC_h7gLzg/s1600/Mark+and+Jared.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tlFjOahVruw/UzoAB57GJ3I/AAAAAAAAA7Y/ilhC_h7gLzg/s1600/Mark+and+Jared.jpg" height="420" width="640" /></a></div>
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Mark Zuckerberg with our founder, Gamer_2k4, as we sealed the deal</div>
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Xkcd-sucks was purchased in the same round of acquisitions that included <a href="http://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-buying-oculus-vr-for-2-billion-1551486746">Oculus VR</a>, a startup that is building the next generation of virtual reality. We don't really have much in common with Oculus, or indeed Facebook for that matter. So naturally the purchase was a perfect match. Confused? Let me explain to you how it works. I won't go into every detail of acquisition process, because it's complicated, but I'll simply it enough for a goy to understand:<br />
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Facebook's board of directors all take it in turns to write the names of companies on different segments of a giant coloured wheel. Each of these is a company that Facebook could probably get away with buying if it wanted to. Mark Zuckerberg then spins the Wheel Of Acquisitions, and decides to purchase whatever company the spinner lands on. This method has been used before to purchase Instagram and WhatsApp.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L3isc8DRy-M/UzoCkF70OAI/AAAAAAAAA7o/EudURTq5vp8/s1600/Wheel+of+Acquisitions_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L3isc8DRy-M/UzoCkF70OAI/AAAAAAAAA7o/EudURTq5vp8/s1600/Wheel+of+Acquisitions_.jpg" height="412" width="640" /></a></div>
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I told you it was complicated.</div>
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I later got a phone call from Mark (whom I might add is a nice Jewish boy), telling me that first class flights were waiting to take us Facebook HQ in California. There we hashed out the deal over coffee and matzos. I was the one who negotiated the price.<br />
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The conditions of the deal were as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li>Xkcd-sucks to pay all of its profits to Facebook Inc.</li>
<li>£7.5 million (about $12 million USD) to be granted annually for the Xkcd-sucks division to keep producing its wonderful content.</li>
<li>Gamer_2k4 to join the board of directors at Facebook Inc.</li>
<li>Facebook Inc. to assume copyright of all thoughts, ideas and concepts related on this blag.</li>
<li>Remaining funds are to be paid to Xkcd-sucks founders in Facebook shares and long term bonds.</li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">FAQ (or what do these changes mean for you)</span><br />
<ul>
<li>What will happen to the Xkcd-sucks blag?</li>
</ul>
In short, not a lot. We have struck a deal with the big F that allows us to carry on as pretty much the same company we were before, only with more money :). Facebook sees our potential, and knows better than to mess with a winning formula.<br />
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<li>Will I be able to keep my anonymity?</li>
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Absolutely. Facebook values your privacy, and we all agree that it is something you shouldn't have to think about. You will always be able to post anonymously, but you may notice some new commenting options, such as Wordpress, OpenID, Blogger accounts, and more.</div>
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<li>Will we get any new features such as Facebook integration?</li>
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There are no current plans for integrating with Facebook. However, with Facebook's backing, we might have enough cash to bring back old favourites like Xkcd Forums Bingo, and more. Watch this space!</div>
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<li>Will there be an Xkcd-sucks page on Facebook?</li>
</ul>
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We are not sure if there is a market for such a product. Facebook will be carrying out market research to decide whether we will get funded for that. We'll let you know of any developments in that area.</div>
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<li>Wait, do you even use Facebook at all?</li>
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No.</div>
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<li>What about <a href="https://twitter.com/atjonlevi">Jon Levi's Twitter</a>?</li>
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Facebook understands the importance of our relationship with Twitter, and will allow this partnership to continue for the foreseeable future.</div>
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<li>What will happen to Died in a Blogging Accident?</li>
</ul>
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Facebook will hold the movie rights until a suitable director can be found. Our plans of a July release date for the original text remain unchanged.</div>
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<li>What does Randall think of this?</li>
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He remains in open negotiations with both Apple and Google for the sale of the Xkcd webcomic. At this point a sale is unlikely. He declined to comment on the Xkcd-sucks acquisition.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jY8iH9Ce5mU/UzoAd0bsIDI/AAAAAAAAA7g/qS8pf8QMw1Q/s1600/Jon+Levi's+Office.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jY8iH9Ce5mU/UzoAd0bsIDI/AAAAAAAAA7g/qS8pf8QMw1Q/s1600/Jon+Levi's+Office.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
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Gamer_2k4 and Zuck taking a tour of my new office</div>
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It's been an amazing three years. Here's to three more! Remember that every cuddlefish made it happen. Let us know what you think of this deal in the comment section below. And don't forget to share your favourite Xkcd-sucks moments.</div>
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Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-82721082310758379292014-03-30T07:11:00.003-05:002014-03-30T07:11:56.912-05:00Comic 1345: You're Wrong<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800;">Answers</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/answers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/answers.png" height="320" width="242" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stanford sleep researcher William Dement said that after 50 years of studying sleep, the only really solid explanation he knows for why we do it is 'because we get sleepy'.</span></div>
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Ah, here we have yet another instance of Randall trying overcome years of patriarchal oppression by having a girl prove that she is smarter than a guy by beating him in a battle of wits and generally making him look like an idiot. This is such a cliche in Xkcd. <b>D-</b><br />
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But what bothers me is not the fact that she's a girl, as much as the complete <b>falsehood</b> of what she's saying.<br />
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<b>No</b>, spending a third of our lives asleep does not make us any less curious. That's just something our bodies force us to do. Unless of course she is referring to the fact that we don't know why, in which case... <b>still no</b>.</div>
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Let us disregard the fact there a multiple theories on why we need sleep. Let us disregard what we know all animals with conscious minds needing sleep. Let us disregard <a href="http://io9.com/the-real-reason-why-sleep-deprivation-can-destroy-you-1447241194">this io9 article</a> that says that sleep is a necessary process to take out the brain's trash. Also disregard the fact that we can only hunt during the daytime, and every other thing that tells us <b>why</b> we need sleep. Then Megan's argument might start to make sense. <b>F-</b> for failing to think things through.</div>
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And the alt text? Just because one scientist is as clueless as Randall, doesn't mean they all are. <b>M-</b><br />
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'Touché' indeed. What a tool. I bet Randall says 'touché' in real-life. <b>R-</b><br />
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A shorter version of this review appears at <a href="http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/comic-1345-fencing-terms.html">no-hyphen</a>. And this is really exciting. After a five months absence, is no-hyphen coming back? Who knows. The liveliness of no-hyphen's comment threads were always something I hoped to reproduce. So enjoy that comment thread. But when it has died down, you know where to come to, right?</div>
Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-88883064806626304352014-03-27T20:48:00.003-05:002014-03-27T20:48:46.735-05:00Comic 322: Not Being Ironic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Comic title: <span style="font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800;">Pix Plz</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pix_plz.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pix_plz.png" height="640" width="459" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But one of the regulars in the channel is a girl!</span></div>
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So I don't see the problem this comic. It all depends on how you interpret it. With one interpretation, it's nothing more than a good example of Black Hat being Black Hat. It would be weird if he <b>wasn't</b> behaving this way. Allow me to explain:<br />
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Panel 1 sets up a situation where Black Hat is enacting a disproportionate response to a seemingly minor incident. He has already caused property damage. What will the maniac do next?<br />
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2nd panel, and Black Hat delivers a tirade about something that he pretends to care about. It's all part of the troll's masquerade. Black Hat doesn't really care about sexism. After all, this is the same guy who was shown just <a href="http://xkcd.com/374/">52 strips later</a> to alienate shy girls with his fake journal. This man has no moral compass. He just wants to troll people.<br />
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In panel 3, Black Hat forces the computer user to make a decision that he'll regret, and think that it's his own fault. He must stay off the internet for a year (a most unlikely proposal) and refrain from saying anything remotely sexist (whilst being near-constantly taunted by a hot girl), or else be vilified as a sexist asshole. Check and mate.<br />
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Notice how Black Hat finishes him off quickly, rather than playing with his prey a for bit longer. This is obviously not his first victim, or his last.<br />
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This is another interpretation however, which casts this comic in a much less favourable light. What if Randall was actually sincere about this comic?<br />
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But he wouldn't do that, would he?<br />
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If it was coming from any other cartoonist, I'd give it the benefit of the doubt, but this is Randall Patrick Munroe we are talking about. He has a hardon for gender politics (consider the implications of that sentence). If he is saying something about gender equality, of course he bloody well means it.<br />
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Allow me to introduce: Randall's submissive-male power fantasy, with <b>nerdy girls</b>.<br />
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You rarely see Black Hat as the mouthpiece. That would be bad enough. But Munroe has opted for something even worse. His mouthpiece is actually the 'asshole' in the office chair. Notice how he is sitting and the other two are standing? Clearly he sees himself as the sub here.<br />
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If you are familiar with what Randall's 'progressive' opinions, he obviously sees himself as the 'bad' gender, and women as morally superior in every way. It is obvious too how Randall projected all his own insecurities and self-perceived flaws onto the straw man in the computer chair. Notice how the punishment is administered not by Black Hat himself, but be a hot woman, the very object of Randall's derision. Notice how she has a name but never says anything. She is there to be described, not to describe. Notice the somewhat phallic weapon, which she carries at groin height.<br />
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The clue is in the alt text. It makes no fucking sense. Why would one of the regulars being a girl even be a problem unless Black Hat told him to stay away from girls on the internet? Black Hat didn't do that. He told him to stay away from <b>the</b> <b>entire internet</b>. This can mean only one thing: there was an earlier version of this comic where Black Hat only banned the guy from speaking to girls on the internet. He later changed this to include a much more harsh punishment, (because damn men to hell, amirite?) but he forgot to change the alt text.<br />
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Think about it. Aside from the comedy explanation, it's the only way to rationalise the hypocrisy of: "As someone who likes nerdy girls, I've hired this blonde chick to do my bidding." (in the words of Manacing Banjo)<br />
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Also, because I have to give grades: <b>A</b> for the first (unintended) interpretation. <b>F*-----</b> for the real meaning of this comic. I hope I have opened your eyes.Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-34149564670561820542014-03-22T18:28:00.000-05:002014-03-22T18:28:06.578-05:00Comic 137: Fuck. That. Punchline.<div style="text-align: center;">
Comic title: <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 800; text-align: center;">Dreams</span></div>
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<a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png" height="640" width="464" /></a></div>
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Alt text: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Menlo, monospace; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Connor's second thesis it is stated 'There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.' Does the routine destroy our creativity or do we lose creativity and fall into the routine? Anyway, who's up for a road trip!</span><br />
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Another one from Xkcd's early days, and it's a wall of text. So I might as well get the easy criticisms out of the... You know what? It's wall-of-text-ness doesn't matter. That wall of text is supposed to look like an angry rant, and it is. Let's move on.<br />
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This comic says something that really, really needs to be said. So here goes: <b>A*</b> for the message. This is an attack on the mundane, the normal, the path of least resistance. Most people are overly cautious in their day-to-day lives, refusing to snap out of the same old habits, because it's easy to do nothing, and because of what someone else might think if they broke with societal norms and just did something different.<br />
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This is a message that needs to be said more often. It is a message that I live my life by.<br />
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And yet, it's badly phrased, like really badly. It repeats itself in several places - "reliving a few days over and over" vs "each day a slight variation on the last". It's sloppy. It's heartfelt, but it falls over itself. The artwork around the text is weak too.<br />
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Yet those were only minor blemishes. This comic's defining flaw is the final three words in the final three panels. "Fuck. That. Shit." says Randall, as if what he said before that was somehow too profound and he had to tone it down a notch or twenty.<br />
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I get that "Fuck. That. Shit." is said in reference to the first panel's line about a future employer being able to read what someone wrote online. But by this point, the comic is not about that anymore. The angry rant has taken on a life of its own. It has said more about society as a whole than it has about mere online etiquette, and then it is undermined by <b>unnecessary comedy</b>.<br />
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It's not just forcing a punchline for the sake of a punchline. He is making this terrible forced punchline seem like the original point of the comic. <b>No</b>. <b>F*</b>.<br />
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And because of <a href="http://xkcdsw.com/693">this edit</a> by a forumite, the punchline sounds like a command to perform scatophillic acts. That is quite an achievement by Xkcdsw, because it somehow manages to make the original comic <b>even worse</b>.<br />
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137 is not so much a rough diamond, but rather a diamond smothered in shit. While, the execution is piss-poor (to mix metaphors), the message rings true. And for what it's worth, Randall did revisit this exact theme with the <a href="http://xkcd.com/264/">Ch</a><a href="http://xkcd.com/265/">oic</a><a href="http://xkcd.com/266/">es s</a><a href="http://xkcd.com/267/">eri</a><a href="http://xkcd.com/268/">es</a>. And in my opinion he did a much better job of it. I actually saw Choices first, and this one later, so 137 felt like a pale knock-off of that.<br />
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Anyway, those Choices comics have said something that really resonated with me, and this comic does at least try to say it: remember your dreams, take risks, and never resign to a typical life.<br />
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And for the record, not posting something online because of what a future employer might think about it might just be the stupidest thing in the world. After all, do you really think a risk like that would stop me from posting on Xkcd-sucks?Jon Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02982566251460262711noreply@blogger.com14