 |
| Alt-text: You're a turtle! |
I'm almost at a loss for words.
Let's start with the 'artwork'. Rather shockingly, Randall didn't copy and paste five panels, he instead drew five appalling, tiny renditions of a turtle. And that is the entirety of the artwork. Five centimetre-long turtles.
The alt-text is another reference to an older comic, and the final panel seems rather reminiscent of this comic, only massively reduced in impact. What is up with the self-references recently?
As for the actual content, there's no hiding it at all – this is a stoner comic. There is no way to read this and not think 'Randall got toasted and stared at a turtle for two hours'. He desperately tries to cling on to the idea that this is a nerd comic by the 'I deleted a file!' line, but he's fooling no-one.
I think Red Dwarf sums up the message of this comic rather nicely, so it's quote time:
LISTER: At some point in their lives, most people wish they were someone else. This is going back years, years, before the accident. Kochanski had just finished with me, and I was feeling really pony. So I went for a walk in the botanical gardens, and I saw this squirrel, climbing up and down the tree collecting nuts. And it stopped, and it looked at me, and I thought: "You lucky little sod -- you like your job, you're your own boss, and you've got no woman trouble, so you'll never feel as bad as I feel now. And at that moment, I mean for a split second, I would have given anything -- _anything_ -- to swap places with him.BINGO TIME!
CAT: Ah, that's awful, man. When a woman screws you up so bad you want to become a squirrel.
Thanks once again to Jon Levi for covering for me!
I've done bingo for 888. But wait, Randall posted something at the end of the thread, which would have made it a double bingo! Sadly it was probably deliberate. What do you think Kitten, should I count them?
ReplyDeleteNo cheats, Jon, no cheats. It makes a mockery of the grand bingo institution...
ReplyDeleteHow did you know it was me posting as Randall? Get out of my head, Kitten!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, here's bingo.
Maybe I'm giving him more credit than he deserves but...
ReplyDeleteIsn't this comic about the futility of most of our everyday actions? The idea that we are so concerned with menial tasks and small problems like "Oh no, I deleted a file," things that aren't going to matter in 50 years. Things that won't even matter in 50 days most likely. That the turtle, content merely in it's own existence, has a better idea of the meaning of life than we do?
Or am I reading into this too much? ^^
I don't know if a turtle is really as content in its own existence as randall would have you believe.
ReplyDeleteI mean, they have to eat, you know, and mate. And they go places, albeit very slowly. Just because they can't voice them, doesn't mean they have concerns! It's very mammal-centric, to just assume that turtles are some kind of zen object for reflection.
@Rinnon: I suspect that that may have been Randall's intent. But the problem with that is, that particular point of view is hardly new.
ReplyDeleteFor example, let me quote the Hitchhiker's Guide: "For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."
That's essentially the same idea, and I don't believe for one second that that's the first time anyone made that observation either. Some Ancient Greek dude must have thought of this too, I'm sure.
That wouldn't be a problem if Randall's version brought some new aspect to the table, or was particularly well executed or funny. But it's not. All it adds to this tired concept is a badly-drawn turtle.
".....Five centimetre-long turtles....."
ReplyDeleteWould that not depend on your screen size?
They are 1.6 attoparsecs on my screen you smeghead
How long did it take you to work that out, Aquarians? That was mildly amusing.
ReplyDeleteStrange indeed, I found it to be 1.6x10^-19 parsecs, which as my SI prefixes inform me is ten times smaller than your gargantuan-yet-incomprehensibly small number. Now I daresay either you have misplaced your decimal point, or you were subtly exaggerating for comic effect, or you simply possess a very large monitor.
ReplyDeleteInnit?
An attoparsec is about 3 cm.
ReplyDeleteALT-F4, you suck at math (maths if you are British)
It took me about 10 microfortnights out which to work it.
Sheesh, avoiding ending a sentence in a preposition sure makes for awkward syntax.
As Lister would say:
ReplyDelete"Smeghead"
The real error is that I was alluding to five separate turtles, each a centimetre long.
ReplyDeleteWho is to blame here, I wonder?
My point being that 5cm was an exaggeration in the first place. It's actually closer to 5mm, unless you are using an archaic screen resolution like, say, 320x200. Are you?
ReplyDeleteWhen Randall originally drew the comic, before it was scanned, each turtle was approximately 1cm long. Kittens knew this because he watches Randall's creative process first hand in order to fully understand the inner workings of Randall's den. He braves the ankle-deep dust bunnies and unmistakable stench of residual masturbation discharge so that he may measure the size of the pictures at their source and bring you, the reader, accurate analyses of the truly mundane.
ReplyDeleteSven: Oh I wasn't suggesting the comic was GOOD or that it was worth the hard drive space it's written on. I was merely musing that maybe he was attempting at something grander.
ReplyDeleteKitten, get out of Randall's head! It's not safe there.
ReplyDeleteSo was I Kitten. So was I.
ReplyDeleteALT-F4,
My point remains.