Comic 986: Water You, Stupid?

And we have yet another guest post! This one is from T-Jack.



Hi, it's me, T-Jack, and I'm back with another idiotic xkcd strip. Do you ever get in those situations, where you drink from a water fountain and then you're like "Oh my god, I have to pee like RIGHT NOW" and then you go and then you're like "Wow, that peeing sure made me thirsty, better drink from that water fountain again" and then you drink and pee and drink again? If not, then congratulations, you live in a real world. Unfortunately for all of us, Randall doesn't and he wants us all to know.

The biggest problem with the strip is its premise. Yes, it's true, drinking (or, for that matter, experiencing running water in any way) may make you want to pee, but it's not that simple. See, I'm not a physiologist, but even I understand that this only slightly amplifies your already present need to relieve yourself. So, unless your bladder is, shall we say, considerably full, this won't send you to the bathroom. (Geez, I'm explaining the mechanics of taking a piss. I hate you, Randall Munroe.) Of course, you could say that this is just some paranoid madman's fear instead of reality, but then said madman should seek help instead of drawing shitty comics for the internet.

Now, the main problem dealt with, we approach nit-picking. First, could you imagine worse drinking sound effects than "drink drink"? Well, of course you could, but still. Couldn't Randy use "slurp" or "gulp" or "I was too lazy to think of a good sound effect"? Or, better yet, how about not using anything and drawing the picture better, instead? Huh, how'bout that?

Then there's the word "WATER" just floating there next to the bottom picture. Maybe it's supposed to mean something, but I think Randall simply messed up and he's going to silently remove it later. Above, of course, is the original picture in all its shameful glory.

Just a minor detail, but why does the bathroom door stay open in the upper right picture? I don't see a knob on it, so it must be one of those closes-on-its-own doors.

The alt-text... the less said the better. All I'll say is that it transforms a relatively harmless piss joke into a disturbing venture into Mr. Monroe's mind.

Whoa, the paragraphs are getting shorter.

In short, my problem with the strip is that it has too much text, or rather that it has text at all. The situation depicted is kinda amusing on its own ("kinda" being the key word here) and coupled with a "sloppy programming" joke, it could've been an actually good strip. But Randall, being Randall, had to totally overdo it. Here, I'll show you ("WATER" left in out of nostalgia):



Tooltip: God must be a sloppy programmer if he left in an infinite loop.

Let it be known that I am not a master of comedy.

PS: No, I did not steal the title of this review from Not Always Right, I just borrowed it. Shut up.

Comic 978: Randall Makes Up Words for the Internet

First of all, let me clear up a few things. I missed the last two updates simply because I was uninspired and no one sent in any guest posts. I will not review those two strips now, because it's old news and if I didn't care about them when they were new, no one's going to care about them when they're old.

Now, this may cause some concern among you about the stability of this blog. To help ease those fears, let me make you several guarantees that will never change as long as I'm in charge here.

1. I will never find fault where there is none, and I will never write a review that is anything other than (what I believe to be) a legitimate criticism of the comic in question. We all know what happened to the other blog, and I promise you that will not happen here.


2. Unfortunately, if I have to stand behind my words, that means that there are going to be days when I have nothing to say. On those days, I will not waste your time. I will not post nonsense. You will either get a guest review or no review at all.


3. Unless it is absolutely atrocious, I will always post any guest reviews that get emailed to me. This blog was originally intended to be a collaboration, not a one man show, and I'll take all the help I can get.


4. Finally, I will never abandon this blog without an explanation. I may miss a post here and there, as you've recently seen. However, if I step down from running this blog, I will explain why and leave someone willing and capable in charge (if the community so chooses).

Well, that's a weight off my chest. On to why xkcd sucks!


Title: Citogenesis; alt-text: I just read a pop-science book by a respected author. One chapter, and much of the thesis, was based around wildly inaccurate data which traced back to ... Wikipedia. To encourage people to be on their toes, I'm not going to say what book or author.

I initially tagged this as "straw man," thinking that Randall was just making up a problem and assigning it a name, but a brief jaunt through the forums indicate that this has happened before. However, it's also clear that this is a small, isolated issue, and not the universal "Where Citations Come From" problem that Randall implies it is.

The truth is, Wikipedia is often an excellent resource for research. Obviously you should never cite it directly, but the fact that it's open to editing and that the more important articles get more attention mean that on a whole, Wikipedia is self-correcting. In other words, the information on Wikipedia is MORE likely to be accurate than any other source, simply because it remains current and errors can be removed.

It's also worth noting that this problem goes beyond Wikipedia (one poster mentioned Norse genealogies as an example). Randall uses the Wikipedia example because that's where he lives, but doing so presents the issue in a bubble and misdirects blame. The problem isn't Wikipedia; the problem is confirmation bias that cause people to call it good as soon as one thing backs up what they want to believe. That's a known psychological fallacy - well, known to people who have any interest in the "soft sciences," anyway.


P.S. Does anyone else find it hypocritical that Randall uses his webcomic to cry about bad citations, then offers us an alt-text with a claim but no citation at all? "To encourage people to be on their toes" is a retarded reason to withhold information (if said information actually exists, which several forumites doubt).

P.P.S. It's worth noting that there are two consecutive "was"es in the first panel right now. I expect this is an error that will get corrected, but if it was put in there intentionally (some people on the forums are using it as an example of an "erroneous edit"), that's stupid. You only don't see those things if they're separated as they are in the comic. On a Wikipedia page, the error would be obvious.

Comic 947: Compounding Issues

Title: Investing; alt-text: But Einstein said it was the most powerful force in the universe, and I take all my investment advice from flippant remarks by theoretical physicists making small talk at parties.

Oh look, another strip where Randall invents a false target and then attacks it for the sake of humor. Humor that - it's worth noting - would not exist if he was being honest in his subject matter.

Let's start with the obvious. 2% interest may not seem like a lot because it's NOT a lot. 2% is what you get if you put your money in a savings account. It's what a bank guarantees you for letting them hang on to your money. 2% is NOT investing. Furthermore, decent investments are going to be maturing for a lot longer than 10 years. If you have a low principle, a low interest rate, and a low time frame, of COURSE you're going to get a low return!

If we're being realistic, an investment is something that you're going to let grow for several decades, and you're going to get an average rate of return much higher than 2%. I'm no financial expert, but I understand that decent investments return around 8%, and great ones return 12%. Those numbers may be off (feel free to correct me in the comments), but it doesn't matter; my example is going to be much lower.

(All results are done here with a starting principle of 1000, no annual addition, and annual compounding.)

So, we start with our 1,000 dollars. I'm 23 years old; let's say I want to retire at 63. This money will be compounding interest for 40 years. At just a 4% return, that 1,000 dollars turns into 4,800 dollars. At 5% it becomes 7,040 dollars. At 6% it's at 10,285 dollars. See that? Even at below average interest rates, a principle as low as 1,000 dollars will increase tenfold if given the time.

Compounding interest isn't magical. No one said it was. But, under the right conditions, and given the right amount of time, it will offer a dramatic return on the original principle.

So why am I making such a big deal about this? Why am I running numbers that you guys probably already know about? Well, quite simply, it pains me that a webcomic about "math" can so callously disregard such an important application of it. It feels like Randall is saying, "Compound interest? Eh, it's basically meaningless." It's not! Compound interest is a big deal, and it should be treated as such!

What's happening to you, Randall? Why don't you like math anymore?


P.S. The xkcd forums are filled with people pointing out the flaws in the comic (low interest rate, etc.) Interestingly, the number that's in the strip right now for the result ($1,279) is wrong. No one can reach that answer no matter how they come at it. I've saved the image for now, as I expect that Randall will sneakily update it once he sees the flaw.

Comic 944: Hurricane Lames

Title: Hurricane Names; alt-text: After exhausting the OED, we started numbering them. When overlapping hurricanes formed at all points on the Earth's surface, and our scheme was foiled by Cantor diagonalization, we just decided to name them all "Steve". Your local forecast tomorrow is "Steve"

Hey guys, did you know that funny == random? Randall sure does! Just throw in some words like "eggbeater" (itself HILARIOUS, provably hilarious) and call it a day! Why waste time with a joke when you can just say, "Oh man, if there were too many hurricanes, the naming conventions would break down and suddenly become WILD AND WACKY"?

To be fair to Randall, Hurricane Irene is still around, so he's at least topical this time. (More like TROPICAL, right? Tropical storm? ...Guys?) Given his past record, I honestly would've expected a comic like this to show up sometime in December. Guess he's improving.

However, that doesn't excuse the flaw mentioned above, or the secondary flaw of just being too darn wordy. Happily, he's buried most of the superfluous text in the alt-text, because by the time you've finished reading through it, the joke has been murdered and dismembered. It's dead. It's like saying, "Why did the hamster cross the road? Because it was tied to the chicken! Ha! Haha! ...You see guys, this particular hamster had been the subject of an awful twine accident involving an underpaid farmhand, a jug of moonshine, and an excess of free time. It all began when..."

Great, we get it. It's not funny anymore. Just tell the joke and call it good, Randall. Quit while you're ahead (or at least not so far behind).


P.S. I've already received one "xkcd Sucks Less" submission for this strip, and, as expected, it does indeed suck less. Great! Keep them coming, people! If you've got an improvement to a particular comic, just email it to me or post it in a comment.

Comic 923: Elements of Fail

This is kind of a dull update for xkcd, but Randall manages to get so much wrong in a single panel and its alt-text that it's worth taking a look at.


Title: Strunk and White; alt-text: The best thing about Strunk/White fanfiction is that it's virtually guaranteed to be well written.

So, Randall's staying up late at night, racking his brain for ideas. I know this because, in my constant quest for timeliness and quality, I tried to stay up until the comic was posted so I could write a review on the spot. I gave up at 3AM. Anyway, sometime between then and the start of my work day, Randall came up with a brilliant (to him) idea: WHAT IF the people who wrote "Elements of Style" stumbled upon the internet and its often stone-age level of communication? Hilarity ensues!

Except it doesn't, at least not in Randall's inept hands. First of all, S&W's editors are NOT the police of the internet, or anything else for that matter. If I wrote "trash need to be taken out tomorrow" on a sticky note, I'm not going to step outside to find an editor sting operation in full force, ready to arrest me for my lack of subject-verb agreement. Likewise, the editors have no such compulsion to point out errors on the internet (which is a darn good thing for their sanities).

Next, of course, is the assumption that there's an official standard for fanfiction reference. I'm sure there's an UNOFFICIAL standard (Raven would probably know better than I {that's like saying there's an unofficial standard for trolling; it just does not exist and instead you have a full rainbow of unique kinds of awful =( -- R.Z.}), but I'm darn sure that you'll never find that standard in an formal writing manual. Probably, you know, because fanfiction ISN'T FORMAL WRITING.

The alt-text furthers this misconception. Since when has fanfiction ever adhered to its source material? I'm no expert, but it would not surprise me one bit if someone paired Chewbacca and Jabba the Hutt together in some awful Star Wars fanfiction. Why? Because they don't care about the source material beyond the fact that it gives them characters and a setting. Similarly, I don't think it's at all out of the question to assume that a Strunk and White fanfiction would be a miserable mess of the English language. You know how there are actual nerds, and then there are Randall's fanboys who just think they're smart but are actually complete idiots? I'm sure that there's a similar disparity between actual grammar and style geeks and the kind of tools who think they're smart but really just write Strunk and White fanfiction.

Finally, don't you think that ACTUAL "Elements of Style" editors would get their grammar right? Take a look at this sentence:

"Strunk and White" should be used for the style manual and "Strunk/White" for the erotic fan fiction pairing.

See the problem? The sentence after the conjunction is a fragment. "Strunk/White" for the erotic fan fiction pairing. isn't a complete sentence. It's missing a verb. This is the sort of mistake that proper editors of such a book WOULDN'T make, but of course, Randall would. Why bother to proofread things, and why bother to make sure your strip makes any degree of sense at all? That's for suckers who actually put EFFORT into their strips, not someone like Randall.

You know, I understand that you have to give a little leeway for humor sometimes. I know that not everything is going to be realistic, and sometimes that's what makes things funny. But that's not how Randall works! For his jokes to be "plausible" (and I use the word loosely), pretty much every aspect of the concept has to be turned on its head, and, on top of that, he gets things wrong that don't need to be gotten wrong. That's what makes this comic such a mess. I do think there's some distant potential for humor by combining style editors and the internet, but this definitely isn't it.


P.S. Looking closely at the text for errors made me realize something: Randall ALWAYS has his quotation marks backwards. Some early jumping around proved that this was a problem at least as early as #148 (incidentally, I now have a source for the retarded word "blag"). That just bugs the heck out of me. It's not just me, right? That's a stupid way to write quotes?

Comic 919: NFGYAH ASDFNAW PXCNDS WHYYYYY

What? What is it Randall? What do you want? Name it! Make it stop! How could you...what is...I don't even...

AUGHGHGHGHGGHGHGHG

Oh. Some of you may not know what my brain is melting for. Here.


Title: Tween Bromance; alt-text: Verbiage. Va-jay-jay. Irregardless.

The xkcd forumites (an apparently exiled people now that there's no forum link on the xkcd main page) have indicated that this strip is derived solely from a 30-page thread about words they hate. If that's true, that makes this the second worst comic Randall has ever made (beaten only by the infamous 631).

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, this comic was written ONLY to make the fans rage. Think about it! You have probably hundreds of people saying, "I can't stand this word, I can't stand that word," so what does Randall do? HE DRAWS A FREAKING COMIC STRIP WITH THE WORST OF THE WORST.

And he knows it, too! As evidenced by the reaction of Megan in the strip, this is an effort being made only to annoy, irritate, and liquefy the brains of whoever reads/hears it. Look. Sometimes Randall is just lazy. Sometimes he's so lazy that he'll just write out a sentence intended to bug the readers (one that doesn't even make sense, for that matter). But never, NEVER has he been so lazy and mean-spirited to take what HIS OWN FANS explicitly say they hate and just dish it up like that, with nothing else as context! (And if someone on the forums says "goomhr i hate those words too", so help me, I will rape that person with an angry porcupine.)

And when I say "nothing else as context," boy, do I mean it. If you don't know about the forum thing (and you probably don't, given that you CAN'T ACCESS THEM FROM THE MAIN PAGE ANYMORE), who can say what's going on? Was the stick man dictating something to Megan, changing up the words as a cruel joke? Was he quoting something he found on the internet? Does he just walk up to her and say that for no reason at all other than that he's Randall's avatar and Randall is a complete dick?

I couldn't figure out if Randall was trying to make fun of pre-teens and how they talk, or bad fanfiction writers, or furries, or if it was something else all together. Is he referencing something? Is there a precedent for this somewhere? Who knows?

My face started contorting in twitchy disgust by the time I hit the second panel. I haven't felt physical uneasiness from an xkcd since the milk strip (YOU MADE ME GOOGLE "XKCD LACTATION" TO GET THAT LINK I HATE YOU SO MUCH RANDALL DIE DIE DIE), but I did when reading this one. And then I get to the third panel to see Megan doing the exact same thing! Do you get what happened? RANDALL MADE ME IDENTIFY WITH ONE OF HIS CHARACTERS. I never want to be in an xkcd, and I especially don't want to be the stick representation of the girl he's stalking. It's bad enough when Randall includes the readers (me) in his strips unfairly (like here), but when I'm actually IN the strip, in anguish, that's all kinds of messed up. It's messed up that I'm there to begin with, and it's even more messed up that I'm there because Randall KNEW he'd be injuring he readers and put an avatar of us in the strip to prove it.

And the alt-text? What alt-text? It's just more words that we find offensive. Even after the strip is done, even after assaulting us with this supposed "joke" in the title and across all four panels, Randall still doesn't let up. It's like he doesn't even care about his readers! Then again, why should he, given that the original poster in this comic's thread said, "I understand every word but not the comic itself :(", following it up with "And thus my vexation has been alleviated," once the strip was explained. Really? You're okay with being reamed by Randall as long as you know why?

Luckily, not all of the forumites are like him. Most are confused, hurt, miss the point (attempting to sing the title to the tune of "Bad Romance"), or ask what happened to the forum link. Some speculate it's because Randall just posted a a bunch of personal information and wanted to dissuade discussion. He disabled comments for that particular post after all, so perhaps. But if so, that's just the feather in the hat of this awful, awful day for xkcd and xkcd fans. Randall's pulling the strings like a freaking puppeteer. "I'm going to say my piece, but YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT! Oh, here's something to take your mind off that: BROMANCE GUESSTIMATE FRENEMY YIFFED PREGGERS BARBARA STREISAND".

Seriously, Randall, CARE A LITTLE. I know you've got a fanbase who'll generally lap up anything you put before them, but don't abuse that! When they made the "least favorite word" thread, it wasn't subtitled, "Give Randall ideas for his next fan hate strip!" If your fans want to shove drills into their ears and pour bleach into their eyes, they'll do it. Don't give them a reason.


P.S. As I was reading the xkcdsucks comments, someone mentioned Megan's transforming chair. Chalk up another point of failure for this comic (lazy, mean, and now quite possibly the future recipient of a stealth edit).