Oh, poor coders. No one ever appreciates them. They work so hard and get no thanks. I guess?

I guess Randall just wants to shit on some businessy people (I guess he really wants to be hired by some university somewhere?) , because you could totally just reverse this: Academics you spend all this time trying to get grants and stuff and make your papers get published and it takes years and is totally thankless, and you have to deal with stupid students and stuff, and in business, you get paid and stuff and if you work it right you can get famous and invent ipods and stuff (simplified? perhaps. no, on second thought, no. not simplified). Anyway, the point is, this just feels so damn complainy, especially for a guy who has never been an academic, or even gone to grad school, or even tried to go to grad school (as far as I know). While we're at it, isn't a thesis basically what you write at the end of a doctoral program or some other sort of program? Don't you usually write only one? How is that different from a paper, besides the difference in who is writing it?

But whatever. Man, I knew that being an academic was awesome in the math/physics/comp sci fields. You know how I know? Because I read Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, which covered this topic last week. Just last week! Am I being crazy here, or is this a little suspicious?


I am going to try to do a better job of reading comments and occasionally replying...you guys are just writing far too many. Stop writing! only one person has to call me a douche for me to get the picture, not all of you!

I got my copy of the Achewood book in the mail today! woo. I will read it this weekend and write a review. In the meantime, large amounts of thanks to Aaron Colter at Dark Horse for sending it to me.

If there are any new(ish) webcomic products you want me to review (ie, you want me to try to get for FREE) let me know. I am a vast internet force now.

Because Carl's post is pretty much terrible, Rob emerges from his dark grave etc etc.

So, apparently Randall Munroe (whose corpse has been mummified and preserved, that he may be with us eternally) has heard of the Droid! This is exciting news, you guys. He has heard about it and now he is going to wax philosophical in the only way he way only he knows how to: by talking about meaninglessness, which is shorthand for existentialism! That's pretty deep.

Mostly though I feel validated. You see, before today, I wasn't sure if Randall Munroe (whose corpse has been mummified and preserved, that he may be with us eternally) approved of my purchase of the Droid. Now that I know it has his stamp of approval, and--oh, fuck it.

I think there's a hint of self-depreciation in panel 2. Randall Munroe (whose corpse has been mummified and preserved, that he may be with us eternally) apparently already had a G1 (which he just cold doesn't mention in the comic). He apparently bought or covets the Droid. And now he is aware of what he is become--the type of person who sedately consumes, as Randall Munroe (whose corpse has been mummified and preserved, that he may be with us eternally) once put it.

Then panel three is a snarky comment at how the iPhone is proprietary software. Ha ha ha, free software is great, will someone please love me? And that kind of ruins it. I mean, the setup for a really good joke is there. It could be really excellent, the kind of stuff that made up the golden days of XKCD. If only he'd just drop those last two lines of dialogue. It's not necessary. It's not clever.

Without those two lines, Randall Munroe (whose corpse has been mummified and preserved, that he may be with us eternally) could have ended on a succinct note, for once, but I'm mostly annoyed that he took what could have been a funny line--"Yeah, on both"--and followed it up with some snarky "haha the iPhone sucks" jab.

Now, I'm a man who likes his snark. I am guilty of it, oh, basically all the time, ever. Just ask anyone! (Or don't, usually they just say "We don't want any" and slam the door in my face, and it's cold outside and just once I want them to let me inside for a minute so I can be warm.) But this is just a poor example. There's no depth to it, no absurdity, no irony. It is utterly bereft of the je ne sais quois, as the Russians say, which makes snark (which is a Russian word, look it up) so beautiful. It feels, not even contrived, but obligatory. Like the sort of thing a free culture nerd would say if this had come up in conversation. And then the people who happen to like their women like they like their software (proprietary) roll their eyes and say "fucking freetards" and then everyone gets on with their lives.

It's not webcomic joke material. It's utterly expected. It's completely mundane. It lacks chutzpah (a Russian word). It fails to capture the zeitgeist (also Russian).

So I guess what I am saying is, Randall Munroe (whose corpse has been mummified and preserved, that he may be with us eternally) ruins everything, and fuck Carl and his stupid face.

I know what you are all thinking, and it's "My god, how can Carl Wheeler get any lazier?" and the answer is: by not even posting at all! I know I'm usually late, but today i am just not going to do anything. Is it that I am too busy? Maybe. Is it that I have nothing at all to say about this mediocre comic? Perhaps. Is it that I want to manipulate your silly emotions by depriving you of that which you most love, ie, my brilliant words? Possible.

In any case, take this opportunity to write your own brilliant critiques in the comments, and a promise that maybe in the future i will not be so damn lazy, and I leave you with this video that has been making me laugh all week:




oh and: needless to say, any of the fellows with postin' power can feel free to blog today, and those of you without postin' power can feel free to chant the name of your favorite guest blogger in the comments, in the hopes that it inspires them to write something.

Hey there, friends. This is Jay guest-posting, and we're going to do something different today. We get accused so often on this blog of not being constructive, I've decided to go over the latest comic with an editor's helpful pen, fixing what needs be fixed. Let's begin!




Dialogue has three purposes. It should be believable, it should convey something about the situation at hand, and it should be interesting to read. These purposes are often at odds with each other - for example, dialogue that was completely true to life, with all the ums and uhs left in, would not be very interesting to read.

With any piece of writing, you should use the fewest possible words to get your point across. Here, the word 'and' is superfluous. Randall is using it to tell us something about the situation - that the speaker is concluding a speech, that she said more before this. But we already know this. We can infer it from other clues in the panel, so the word is unnecessary.

It's not a good idea to underestimate your audience. Generally, people can figure things out pretty well from the context.




The passive voice is weaker than the active. It is more exciting for the subject of a sentence to do something than for something to be done to the subject. This would be snappier as "if you elect me." This would be stronger in a real speech too, as an appeal to her voters. Voters elect people - elections don't just happen.




This is more weak dialogue. Would any candidate promise to fix only 'some' of the problems? Would anyone vote for her? Randall is not thinking about what he's writing, and the result is dialogue that is boring on a cursory reading and completely falls apart under a closer look.




... which makes me notice the "try to fix" immediately preceding that. Even though this is a school election, the girl presumably wants to sound convincing. Maybe politicians should give speeches like this - "Uh, I'll try to fix the economy. No promises."




Italics are more distracting in handwritten text than in typed. You should only use them when you really need to emphasize a word. It's not necessary here - again, you shouldn't underestimate your audience. People are pretty used to talking and can usually tell what inflections a character is putting on a word without help.




Why?




This is petty, but Billy is such a cliche. I've never met someone who called himself Billy, but for some reason it's a stereotypical kid's name. If you think I'm reaching, watch for it, you can see it in other places. In this terrible strip for example.

Obviously this is a pet peeve.




Another unnecessary word.




"This is a school election" sounds better than "I'm running for class president."




The word political is unnecessary.




There are some writers who think that the exclamation point is an inherently weak punctuation mark, and that you should never use it. I don't agree - I think that because it's fallen into relative disuse, when someone does use it, it's jarring and lends emphasis to the sentence. But it doesn't work here. Why?




Most of the guy's dialogue ends with exclamation points. If it was just in the last panel, that would be OK. It would help deliver the punchline. But by the time we reach the last panel, we've become subconsciously dulled to it through overuse - it's not surprising anymore. We're not imagining anything he says with any particular emphasis. Notice how the girl's dialogue there takes center stage? There's a reason for that.




It's not that she's a girl that bothers me. I am fine with girls being shown as more intelligent than men, one-upping men in debates, whatever. It's that xkcd never depicts them in any other way. Can you imagine this comic if both of them were men? Or if their roles were reversed? Even the thought is bizarre. It's not how the world of xkcd works.

In the world of xkcd, men either act like women, or are inferior to them.




Despite what you may have heard, people's heads are attached to their bodies.




Just because you don't have recurring characters doesn't excuse your dialogue for being boring. This is utterly lifeless, substituting vanilla quirkiness for personality. These characters are not people, they are stage props with the single purpose of delivering the joke.

For an example of Randall doing this right, see this comic. He almost never does this right.

And then the dialogue in the last panel:




Not only is this not how people talk, it doesn't communicate the joke effectively. It does not flow from the rest of the comic - is the joke that he learned about politics from an inappropriate source (the internet), or that he was unprepared to give more than one reply (as people often are on the internet)? Both, apparently.




T-shirt money is not good motivation to make a comic. Without usable, honest feedback you cannot evolve creatively. Filler is never OK, especially if every comic is filler. It is insulting and a waste of the reader's time. Everything about this comic is wrong. This comic is a waste of your time.

Here's the revised comic, with my edits and Carl's punchline.




And here's what I think about the punchline.



Thanks for reading yo.

Oh lord. What are everyone's two favorite elements of xkcd? If you said "making everything about sex" and "ridiculously bad puns about science" well you are in LUCK! because today's comic stoops to both those levels, AND does it incredibly badly!

YES, the word "exclusion" starts with the prefix "ex-" which can, I will admit, be modified to become "sex-" and sex, as you may be aware, is hilarious. It is a guaranteed laugh, because everyone is so awkward about it! So you can always always always tap into that awkwardness for Laffs A Plenty. Obviously, xkcd does this very often. That's why it is so funny!

So what could be funnier than taking something not usually about sex - the Pauli exclusion principle - and making it be all about sex? It is perfect. It fulfills the XKCD Paradox Of Nerdiness - being about science, so it is nerdy, but being about basic high school science, so everyone can feel good about themselves for getting the joke. Heck, even I get the joke and I basically know nothing about chemistry.

God, seriously though, how lame was this joke? Don't we all talk about the concept of being "sexiled" when a roommate is having sex, forcing one to sleep elsewhere? I assume I am not the only one who has heard this word. "Sexiled" is a far funnier word than "Sexclusion" - for one thing, being kicked out of your room because of Sexy Times inside is much closer to being "exiled" than to being "excluded" - after all, how many people actually want to be included in the sex? Basically none, right? I mean, no one is like "Ugh, my roommate is having sex and excluding me from it" they are more like "ugh, my roommate has driven me into EXILE." Also, the word just sounds smoother - following the "ex" sound immediately with a hard C is much more awkward than following it with a long I. That just flows nicer. What I'm trying to say is that this comic is a pale shadow of a joke that everyone already knows and uses.

Not that that will stop Randall from making more jokes like these. That's why I want to help him out. Each of the following words has had the word "sex" cleverly added into it. Each one could be the subject of its own great comic, or even, if you work real hard, a 5 part series.

extra --> SEXtra!
extraterrestrial --> SEXtraterrestrial!
extracurricular --> SEXtracurricular!
extortion --> SEXtortion!
extraneous --> SEXtraneous!
exit --> SEXit!
ex-wife --> SEX-wife!
explanation --> SEXplanation!
exhibit --> SEXhibit!


God, so many great jokes here. Tell me some other good words in the comments.

A few quick thoughts

-Regardless of what anyone says, this comic is very, very impressive, and clearly took a lot of thought and care to produce. I don't want to think about how hard it is. This doesn't excuse any of Randall's earlier lazy comics, but it does show that when he wants to, he can do something intense like this.

-to the always classy sje on the forums: You are a moron, there is only one critic on this site who matters, and that is me, and I read it right, and have seen the movie like a billion times. That clever little "let the voice of one person stand in for the whole website" is lame, and if I were to use it, I might assume that all of the xkcd forums were filled with giant assholes that reveled in the mistakes of others.

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PS i thought of an xkcd comic today and I want to say it now, so xkcd fans can tell me is sucks and then will have to backtrack when xkcd inevitably makes the same joke - it would basically a twitter post version of Fermat's last theorem, saying that 140 characters was not enough to explain it fully. Math reference + Internet Twist = XKCD Gold.

also, how long before we get a logical journey of the zoombinis comic? Maybe Mr. Hat is playing the game and uses all sorts of practical, assholeish tactics to avoid the usual logical rules.

OK. Now it's time to get down and right about this comic.

This is an impressive comic. A lot of the usual anti-xkcd folks are impressed with it, and I fall into that category as well. Let's break it into two distinct parts, the charts themselves and the joke or jokes.

The charts are cool. Now granted, this sort of thing is not original; the most famous chart in the world (according to some sources), the Napoleon's Forces one, is of this style. It's actually a chart which xkcd has referenced before (incidentally, I could have sworn he referred to it twice. lots of cookies to whoever can find another example). Even the idea of doing it for a story dates at least to Slaughterhouse-Five, as many people have pointed out. But that's really not the point - I don't want to criticize him for that; unlike many other examples it's really completely fine that he's done this. I just want to make sure that all the fans who are like "oh wow he is so brilliant to think of using graphics to see where people move as time goes on!" know that they are dumb.

The Lord of the Rings chart, covering 1000 pages of novel as it does, is of course the most impressive. Particularly if it was done entirely freehand, as I suspect, it would have taken many tries and many drafts, and many consultations of the book. His blog post sheds a tiny amount of light on this (but I warn you - do not click on that animation link at the end....). The Star Wars graph, while clearly simpler, is also impressive on its own. And I guess Jurassic Park as well.

The presentation of the graphs leaves a bit to be desired - on the front page, they are just far too small to make anything of, and the "joke panels," discussed below, are shunted off in the bottom where the eye is not really able read them, let alone concentrate on them. But is there anyone out there who seriously doubts that this will not be turned into a poster, probably before christmas, and that Randall had this in mind when he made it? Any copyright lawyers out there who know if this would constitute fair use or not?

But of course, xkcd is a comic, and so it can't just show you something cool, no matter how cool it is. It has to make a joke. And this comic, I think, tries to make two. First, 12 Angry Men, a great movie but one where nearly the whole thing takes place in one jury room, so the chart version is comically simple. Ha ha, I guess. You wonder why he didn't go even more sparse and do a well known two-person movie, like My Dinner With Andre. Or a single line with The Cube. Whatever.

Then the real joke is the last graph, Primer, a movie so complicated that I've seen it 4 times and still have some key questions about just what is happening. It's not the crazy jumble that Randall makes it out to be (for one thing, like most time travel stories, the time travelers create duplicates of themselves when they go back in time) and it is, in fact, comprehensible. Nonetheless, that is how the movie feels, the first time you watch it. Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy the joke. So few people know this movie that to me it just felt like Randall the insecure nerd trying to prove that he's heard of this cool nerd movie. Most people who have just discovered it, like me, did so either directly or indirectly because The Onion AV Club brought it a lot of attention this summer. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that Randall just watched it recently, and wants to tell people - like he did with House of Leaves - that he is just as well versed in nerdery as they.

In comparison to the nearly overwhelming impact of the "serious" panels, these last two jokes ("12 angry men is simple" and "primer is complicated") seem pretty pathetic. Why not just skip them entirely and leave us with only the high quality stuff?

Of course, had he done that, there's a good chance I would have said "this is cool and all, but it's not funny. It's not trying to be funny. Isn't xkcd supposed to be a webcomic?" and I would have been right.

That's why Randall Munroe should stop trying to be funny, as I have said a thousand times. By trying and failing, he's just bringing down the quality of the good stuff, like the serious panels in this comic. That's why he needs to scrap the webcomic format entirely and move all his fans over to Randall Munroe's World-Famous Death Defying Amazing Picto-Blog and he should do it as soon as he possibly can.

This was a very cool installment of xkcd. But it only reinforced to me that Randall does have good ideas, and xkcd is not the best channel for them.

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PS here is something interesting - looks like xkcd is now overtly objectifying women for profit. I wasn't expecting that.

First off, sorry for being so slow with these posts, and not responding to e-mails etc as fast I would like. You know how life can be sometimes, that little bastard.

Anyway, let's do the best we can under the circumstances: Guy wants candy before halloween, so he dresses up as a well-known time traveler in order to justify asking for candy a day early. Mildly clever, but here is a case where Randall's terrible drawing just make life sadder for everyone. He can't just draw Doc Brown - because he is physically incapable of drawing a figure that people will recognize as the character. So he does his best - coat, glasses, wavy hair - and decides, no, that is really not enough for people to recognize (and he is right). So what can he do? He has the person in the house tell you: "NICE DOC BROWN COSTUME." There's another example of our favorite xkcd-unrealistic-dialogue, so stick that in your pipe and do it without a condom.

(update: some silly people seem to think that I am saying here that it is unrealistic for people to compliment a costume that a child wears whilst trick or treating. That's not what I'm saying, because yeah, that happens. What I'm saying is that in this case, Randall had to make the dialog far more stilted than would happen in real life, because otherwise we would not know what this person is dressed as, because the art is lousy. ok guys?)

Lastly we have the problems that only dawn on you gradually - if this person is clever enough to go and do all this, shouldn't he be old enough that "halloween" just means drinking excessively in costume? Is this really the most efficient way to use time travel to procure candy? Why has this fellow not been punched in the face yet? Etc.

In short, CANDY+BACK TO THE FUTURE does not always equal a great joke, SORRY RANDALL.

It's a guest post! Woo!!! In part because he ended up falling through the summer of MADNESS cracks (i think), and in part 'cause you were all like "uhhh, carl, stop SUCKING SO HARD" on the last post, everyone's best friend, dragon2041, wrote today's guest post. A few of my own thoughts follow. Dragon, GO!

I was hoping that today's strip would be either truly awful or surprisingly good. Unfortunately, it isn't. And that's a trend we see a lot in xkcd - a stunning mediocrity that leaves the reader with no feelings whatsoever about the comic.

Either way, I'll split this up into 3 sections : The Criticism, the suggestions, and the praise.

The Criticism:

To start us off, we have another instance of the head not being attached to the body in panel 1.

The setup for the comic isn't so bad - we see a man rock climbing, plenty of opportunities to go from there -... And then in the very next panel, we see pieces of someone. Please - don't give away what's going on in the second panel when you're aiming for a big surprise. I'm biased though, having already seen the fourth panel - it's entirely possible that someone reading it for the first time could mistake the leg and face for that wooden post that is the goal in kids' rock climbing course.

Speaking of a kids' rock climbing course - that's what this is supposed to be a picture of. This stick-man is using the almighty power of slanted photography to make it look like he's climbing a kids' rock climbing course. Who among you would be truly impressed by that? Why would anyone even want to post pictures of themselves climbing a kids' rock climbing course?

Admittedly, the fake picture would be made a lot more impressive by the fact that he's not using a belay (the device that clips to a rope/pulley system and supports your weight), except for the fact that professional climbers, the kind who climb Mount Rushmore [people climb mount rushmore??? -Carl], would still use a belay on a kiddy rock climbing course because most of them aren't fans of falling. I know I'm nitpicking, as it's supposed to be a falsely impressive picture, and, you know, the character isn't actually climbing.

And finally, we have the alt text. This alt text wouldn't be so offensive if the comic it follows was actually good. But it isn't - it's mediocre. And in the same way, the alt text itself is mediocre. It's a problem I feel we see a lot in xkcd - the alt text continues the already boring conversation. If the alt text is a followup to an interesting/funny conversation, that's great - but in this case, it would have been far better as a random observation - or perhaps a callback to some of the old alt-texts, with Mr. Munroe (Randall?) making a comment in the first-person about similar situations/what he would do in the situation.

Either way, it all wraps up with a mediocre punchline that doesn't add much to the comic - even omitting all the words and keeping just the "art" that's currently there would make for a better comic.

I'm worried that I'm criticizing just for the sake of criticizing - but I hope I've raised at least a few valid points.

The Suggestions:

Put the head on the body in the first panel.

Erase the girl in the second panel - although, admittedly, if she just appeared in the third panel, that would be a little weird. I stand a bit divided here, I guess.

Give some funny alt-text.

The Praise:

Well, I guess more effort was put into the first panel than Mr. Munroe (Randall?) usually puts in. Really, the first through third panels aren't that bad. They set up well for an interesting punchline or a funny wordless comic. Also, the situation presented is kind of funny-interesting, with someone faking rock-climbing to impress their friends.

I guess that's all I can say =\.

===========================
Carl again. My own take on the comic was that it was an exceedingly old joke (I recall it being in an old Mad Magazine batman parody...from the 50s. And I'm sure it was old then, too) rather blandly executed. To all those people who suggested that a far better joke would have been to have a guy who goes to rock climbing walls, sets it up so he is standing out from the wall, and thus makes real photos of rock climbers look fake - that is a great idea. That would have been awesome.

Who is impressed by pictures of rock climbing? I went rock climbing some times. I am not a sporty person. I went to like, rock climbing birthday parties when I was like, eight. Why would you be impressed by that facebook picture?

UGH xkcd is being stupid right now. Why is it so stupid? i don't know. this is just so i can let out a massive internet groan about what xkcd is doing right now. i know he is trying to be annoying on purpose but that does not make it ok.
----------------------------------------------

So a lot of people have been troubled by what I wrote up there, so now I'll explain why I didn't like his Geocities redesign, and then talk about the comic itself.

Visitors to xkcd on Monday were greeted with this (click for a big version):

You can see that something is a little...different, no? Eventually the scrolling red text informed you that this was in honor of the last day that Geocities, home to a myriad of crappy websites that middle schoolers made in the 90s, was going off the internet. Tear, tear. So, to honor it, Randall made a crappy geocities style website.

Lots of people thought it was funny, so I am going to go ahead and admit that maybe my hatred of xkcd is getting in the way of me enjoying this. But all I could think was "this is so OLD." Lots of people make fun of that style of crappy website. Strong Bad was doing it years ago, that is the example that I first thought of. Here, watch his explanation of how to make a website, or just see the website he made. Basically the same thing. You could also see H*R's april fools "under construction" page, which I feel is related.

Ultimately, this is just playing to his fans nostalgia for their own crappy old websites, or their friends'. But it's just annoying. The fact that you are being annoying on purpose does not make it not annoying. Not in the least.

Lastly, I would have, if not enjoyed this concept, at least appreciated it more if it had not been connected to Geocities' demise, just done as a random prank. Like when Pictures for Sad Children was sponored by Long John Silver's. (ps if you know of a better picture of that or even a whole mirror of the sponsored pfsc site, do send it to me).

Anyway, let's move on to the comic itself.

At first, I thought that this comic, the centerpiece of the crappy website redesign, was being deliberately obscure and strange. But I gues I was wrong. I thought it was supposed to be an unholy amalgam of all those xkcd tropes - megan, gaming, internet service, nachos - that we have come to love so well, but apparently not. Apparently "my wifi signal!" is how people react to losing their internet service in Randall World, and "She's gaming" is how you say "she is playing a game" or just "she is busy."

Anyway, I guess the idea is that she gets him to use the microwave in order to fuck with the wifi signal and beat her opponent. Clever, I suppose, if we were told how the hell she knew which ingredients he had and if a microwave in the other room would actually mess that stuff up, or if a serious gamer relied on crappy wifi.

The whole thing is just so obscure and random and concolvuted, and hard to figure out what is happening, that it really seriously fails.

That said, I am generally pleased with which comics Randall chose to put in the book. Only one of my "most hated" comics - 513 - made it to the book, but a few that I really like - 284, 285, 290, 487, to choose some at random - are there as well. Some choices are inexplicable (Journal 1 and 2 are there [next to each other, unlike online] but none of the rest of that story).

Now here is where we are going to get to one of the stranger aspects of the book, something I think is a fault and can't think of why they didn't change this: Though Randall is careful to mention in the book's description that every comic's alt-text is included ("discreetly," though i don't see why that is necessary), neither the title nor the date of the comics are included. The Penny Arcade and A Softer World parodies aren't labelled as such, so if you don't know those comics, you are just going to be confused. And then there are some - ok actually we're going to do this differently.

Read this comic. I've deliberately taken the title, date, and alt-text away. Now, if you happen to remember that key context, this next question isn't for you. But otherwise: did you think it was funny? Why? Just because it was a nerd playing a nerdy game?

The point I'm getting at is that this comic came out right after Gary Gygax died, and that's him in the comic (the alt-text is "RIP, Gary"). But without that information - which is not present in the book - how is a reader supposed to know that? (The same problem exists, to a lesser extent, with comic 500. did you get it?)

That is enough criticism for now, I think. The book is nicely printed, with the few comics that are in color looking pretty good. The "copyright" page is nice, though the introduction won't tell you much new beyond the "How I got Started Writing XKCD" stuff. And I do really like the back cover.

In short, it's a book that an xkcd fan - or even someone who used to be a fan - will like, but if you are expecting much more than what you can find online, you'll be disappointed.

(there is a small chance I will expand this review later)

(update: Hey, look which book review is on twitter. if you said "this one" well yeah, that was obvious)
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update: OH, and today's panel 5 utahraptor? I totally get your secret hidden reference. totally! but thank you for not using your obscure reference as a punchline, only as a throwaway line that people can ignore with no problems. thank you utahraptor, for all that you do.

So here is today's comic, and the majority response is an overwhelming "MEH." It's not a complete comedic miscarriage like Wednesday's strip, but it is pretty heavy with the "waaaah, relationship" overtones and the boring, grey feeling that it's been done before.

Basically, if comic 15 and 584 were biologists and went on a first date, this is what they might project their prospective offspring to be (SEE, I CAN MAKE LOADS OF AWESOME REFERENCES TOO, I am a comedy genius.) It's sort of clever/insightful-- really, who can't think of some mind blowing activity they'd rather do than lie on the couch with their S.O.? It's also got that typical xkcd emo vibe, as boy-stick seems to be really into the relationship, while girl-stick's head is somewhere else. Now, I may be reading more into the strip than what Randall really intended to put there, but given his track record for bringing the melancholy, I don't think it's too absurd an interpretation. Overall, this strip just feels like a warmed-over mashup of "DINOSAURS! SOOOO AWESOME" and the quirky/sad relationship theme.

So, with that lackluster strip, my guest week is pretty much done. Thanks to Carl for the awesome title suggestions and to everyone for the warm reception. See you in #xkcd-sucks!

So here boy and girl stick have arrived at the fires of Mount Doom in order to destroy the One Camera...

Er. So here boy and girl stick have filled the Grand Canyon with leaves in order to have a leaf pile-jumping session of of epic proportions...

Alright, I know it's considered impertinent to criticize the art in xkcd, and I suppose it's nice that Randall is putting in a little effort here. However, it took me more than a few moments to figure out what that huge orange blob was. Even looking at it now, knowing what it is, it still looks more like a giant pile of leaves to me than a mountainside covered with trees.

Sadly, the comic is nothing as interesting as even a shoehorned LotR reference. Stick girl wants to take pictures of pretty fall leaves; Stick boy, for some reason, feels compelled to ruin the moment by pointing out you could get the same effect in Photoshop.

So, who pissed in this guy's Cheerios? This basically falls into xkcd's standard pitfall of "Randall dreams up random shit no one in real life would ever say, hijinks ensue." Really, nobody would say this, even if just for the fact that the damned hue slider in photoshop doesn't work that way.

He also makes the classic blunder of putting the only thing approaching a joke in the alt-text. Seriously! Have the girl say that snappy little comeback IN the strip, instead of "hush." Then you can have the alt be "BITCH, oh no you didn't!" and then maybe in another panel they can do a dance-off, and he can pimp-slap her, and then she can fall off the cliff and he can scream "YOU GOT SERVED" and Kanye can be like "imma let you finish" and maybe some owls ooh they're cute and also...