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Title: X11; alt-text: Thomas Jefferson thought that every law and every constitution should be torn down and rewritten from scratch every nineteen years--which means X is overdue.
As you may have noticed in the short time I've been a guest reviewer on this blog, I usually try to build my reviews in such a way that they end with a general idea of why the strip in question sucks (or, rarely, doesn't suck) and set forth a sort of a guideline on how to make better comics. I don't have to do that here, though, because any reader will immediately know what the major message of this review will be: Graph comics aren't funny! They have never been and they never will be hilarious, funny, amusing or even fucking chuckleworthy. Unfortunately, there is still much more wrong with the comic, so let's get started.
Basically, what Randall is saying here is that the longer he can go without having to configure X.Org Server, the better he feels about himself, the joke (why bother with the quote marks?) apparently being that the configuration file is so mind-numbingly difficult that it saps happiness out of any poor schmuck who dares to work with it.
...
That's not funny. It wasn't funny the first time this joke has been told (it went roughly like this: "Ug hate banging rocks together to make fire. It make Ug want to kill himself.") and it's not funny now, no matter what the context. It's just nerd pandering.
Randall also shows his ignorance in the alt-text, where he characterizes X, which is a GUI development software, with laws and constitutions. Do I even need to explain how stupid that is? Software is neither a law nor a constitution and doesn't go away when you "tear it down and rewrite it". Instead you end up with two versions of a program, both of which are going to be used by people around the world. It won't get rid of your problem, Randall.
So what's the lesson today? I'll tell you: No graph jokes, no old jokes and especially no graph jokes ABOUT old jokes. That's all.
by T-Jack
