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| Alt-text: $1600 / 1386153BR 3BATH, MODERN SLIDING DOORS, GUEST ROOMS, GARBAGE DISPOSAL. FREE MANDATORY PARKING (ENFORCED). CONVENIENT TO ALDERAAN. |
Oh. for fuck's sake. Don't bother with artwork in your webcomic, Randall, just put up a list of fucking nerd references. That'll do great.
Fine. I'll play your shitty game.
- So the alt-text is the easiest - that's the Death Star. Hell, the little '3 bathroom' joke is almost funny.
- The first one is a cat lady reference, I guess? Not really nerdish, though. Wonder why he put that in?
- I guess the spammed square house one is a garage? Haha, you can't trust craigslist! GOOMH Randall, I was thinking that too!
- No floor and strobe light, with multiple exclamation marks? No idea.
- Viking one is a slave ship, I assume. The water and heat dispenser joke is probably the funniest one there. That's right, the piss and poop joke is the best one there.
- 'Klein stairs'? No idea again.
- Trimmed carpet one is a 'craigslist is for sex' joke. It's passable, I guess.
- Minotaur one is the Labyrinth on Crete. Hahaha! Mythology! I like mythology too! Hahahaha!
- Pripyat one is a Chernobyl joke, right after the Japanese earthquake. Classy, Randall, classy.
- Submarine joke is the worst of them all. Randall realised he couldn't suggest it was a submarine well enough, so he just fucking writes 'IS A SUBMARINE'.
- Last one is probably a Shining reference, or just generic horror. Dull.
So there's two I don't recognise. Let's pop into the forums to see if they've worked it out, shall we?
"Happy to see a House of Leaves reference."
House of Leaves? Not read it, but I'll guess it's the Klein stairs one. Klein geometry, maybe?
"Anyone else feel like half of these are houses in Minecraft? I mean, square house, door in front..."
Yes, of course! Everything is about Minecraft!
"what's with the no-floor apartment? You just enter and fall forever???"
Useful.
"The only one I don't get is the hammock one. The one about Pripyat got the biggest laugh out of me, but that's just because I've got the weirdest sense of humor ever."
Ugh.
"Aha! I finally get a chance to have a "Get Out Of My Head Randall" moment!
I just moved in to a new place."
...
"There's that "Get the hell out of my head, Randall" moment I've been wanting. I just moved into a new place last week and one was found through a friend, so I avoided the whole Craigslist nightmare."
...
Kill me now.
BINGO TIME!
Many thanks to Jon Levi for doing bingo this time!
A winding down after the bingo before, it seems...
The one with Minotaur is the House of Leaves reference, since the eponymous House was located on Ash Tree Lane and also(presumably) eternal, endless and containing some sinister presence nicknamed Minotaur.
ReplyDeleteI've read HoL and this reference is too dated to be so dull. Randall did (that is, tried) better in http://xkcd.com/472/.
Anyway, this comic is combining the laziest (absence of graphic) and the hackiest (shotgun jokes) concepts used in webcomics. It's like a failure SQUARED! Heh, get it? Math reference? POWERful, eh? Oh man, another one, I'm on a roll today! Gotta go sell some t-shirt with crude drawings on them...
Ah, okay. So I'm guessing Klein stairs (steps?) is something to do with reactors/synchotrons and quantum tunneling.
ReplyDeleteUgh, like I care.
I actually kind of laughed a startled sort of chortle about the Submarine one, because all of them were trying to be faux subtle, like they were bursting at the seams trying to nudge you into getting them... but the references I caught weren't funny and all the rest were incomprehensible.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the Submarine joke is just, "And it's a submarine", it's the only one that isn't excitedly grinning and saying, "haha! Get it? It's a reference to something! Bet you can't guess to what!"
Overall, this one rates about a 9.7 on my "Pissed off" scale though. It's ugly, hard to read, and is observational humor (already not funny) that is about an entirely made up situation.
Thing is, I wouldn't call this lazy... because he had to think of a dozen different types of homes that are absurd, then imagine how they'd be coached as if they were less absurd. That would take a lot more time and effort than drawing three stick figures and only telling one or two of them. What's weird though is how he never thought, "Wow, this is really not a very funny concept in the first place." and scrapped it, perhaps developing just one into an actual joke.
Why the hell do you people even read the comic? Wouldn't your day be altogether better if you were just ignorant about it? I happened to come by this website by chance when wondering about some of the comic references. I hope the time and money in this website is worth the effort to those who complain about something ultimately insignificant.
ReplyDeleteI guess more and more people are becoming cynical and would rather be destructive towards things that succeed (in whatever way).
By the way...your CAPTCHA is buggy. It took a few times just to load.
The time and money spent on this website are well worth it. XKCD doesn't simply annoy us, it brings the standard of webcomics in general down. By posting such lazy, pandering trash, Randy inspires a generation of artists to do the same.
ReplyDeleteWe simply wish that webcomics are taken seriously as a medium, and XKCD stands in the way of that.
@14:14
ReplyDeleteexplainxkcd.com is that way <----
it's there because xkcd is dumb
@14:14
ReplyDeletewould you say that this is a vitriolic and bitter collection of unwarranted nastiness about a silly and harmless comic?
I know I wouldn't, since there aren't enough megdall stories.
I was expecting a story about how Randy was finally kicked out of his mom's basement and had to go looking for a place.
ReplyDeleteGuess I'll just have to wait for Rob's review.
Well you're going to have to wait until Robdall finds a couch to crash on with an internet connection before he posts his guestpost ... I mean 'blog'.
ReplyDelete@14:14 The answer is simple. We hate xkcd because we ENJOY hating it.
ReplyDeleteCan't you see the haters are having fun. Just leave them alone. The way I see it, the more hate blogs and attention I have = the more awesome I am!
ReplyDeleteAnon 14:14 - Yes, of course. How foolish of us. XKCD is successful! How dare we try to criticize it. I forgot that all successful things are good, and should therefore not be criticized! You have opened my eyes today on wise and might Anon! But wait! Don't stop there! There are OTHER things that are successful too that might be being criticized right now. Lots of Video Games with needless reviews on the Internet. Lots of movies that made billions with people talking about what was wrong with it. We should warn them before they waste any more time. Quickly Anon! Before it's too late!
ReplyDeleteOn a different note. Some days I feel like I hate the fans of XKCD more than XKCD itself. If XKCD was just a bad webcomic, and everyone was like "Man, XKCD is so bad, I'm ashamed I laughed at this." or "Oh man, that was a groaner, it was so bad I laughed." That would be okay. I don't think any of us would really have a big problem.
But that's not the case. Instead, Emperor Randall struts out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to show off his new clothes, and somehow the entire empire of XKCD fans sing his praises for yet another wonderful outfit. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD" they cry in delight. "You know, he was in MY head this week." They turn to one another and say.
My question is, how can you NOT come to loath such a group of people?
"The water and heat dispenser joke is probably the funniest one there. That's right, the piss and poop joke is the best one there."
ReplyDeleteSo that's what that meant. I was thinking "hot springs? Because they have those in Scandinavia, right, and that's where the Vikings come from..."
I just realised the source it refers to is probably the sky, which is a lot duller but fits better.
ReplyDeleteI thought maybe it was the porthole of the oar myself. You mean Randall is either way too vague, or he blatantly spells it out.
ReplyDeleteI've never read House of Leaves, only heard of it, but after Slaador's comment I now have the impression that it's some sort of Borges wannabe.
ReplyDeleteThat actually makes me want to read it so I can have ammunition to arrogantly slander it at every opportunity.
Based on all the mindcraft references in recent comics, I assume we now have a clear understanding of what Randall does during the 23.5 hours a day he's not working.
ReplyDeleteYep, he builds digitised monuments to Megan.
ReplyDeleteThe Minotaur is not mythology!
ReplyDeleteIt's cryptozoology!
Actually, I'm somewhat dubious as to whether randall actually plays minecraft. From what he's said about it, it sounds like maybe he's just heard some vague things about it and is trying to capitalize on its popularity by mentioning it at every opportunity.
ReplyDeleteIf he were actually playing it, I have a feeling there'd by blog posts and he'd be sharing stories about it.
Could be wrong.
No, you could be on to something Pirate King.
ReplyDeleteHey, 14:14, you know who else was successful? That's right. HITLER.
ReplyDeleteI love how the "If you don't like it, don't read/watch it" argument is always contradicted by the fact that the idiot making the argument is in fact reading and responding to something they don't like.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the comic, I'd say it's a little better than his usual efforts, seeing as it does contain jokes (a rarity for XKCD nowadays). Even if it is somewhat derivative of the Tvtropes Darth Wiki page 'Villanous Travel Agency' http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DarthWiki/VillainousTravelAgency .