ABCD

[[Two humans are discussing science. They are interrupted by an off-panel shout.]] Human: The problem with scientists is that you take the wonder and beauty out of everything by trying to analyze it. Shout: Dude! [[A Scientist runs across the panel, carrying a microscope and a slime mold.]] Scientist: My plasmoidal slime molds have heightened pigment production! Check out that yellow color! That actually makes them zinc-resistatn. Amazing, huh? [[The slime mold is proferred to the same human who was speaking earlier. The close up hides the Scientist's face.]] Human: It looks like dog barf. Scientist: Hah, yeah! F. Septica is nicknamed "dog vomit slime mold." Cool, huh? Check out my slides! [[The scientist has set down the microscope on the floor of the panel, and the slime mold is jiggling.]] Human: Okay, never mind: What's wrong with scientists is that you do see wonder and beauty in everything. Human: Oh God, it's moving! Scientist: It wants to hug you! So cute! {{Title text: The best hugs are probably from hagfish, which can extrude microscopic filaments that convert a huge volume of water around them to slime in seconds. Instant cozy blanket!}}

[[Person is on the phone.]] Person: Hello? 911? I'm trapped! Person: It's dark and I can't see anything except these two distorted splotches of light! Person: Help! [[The 911 operator is in an office, wearing a headset.]] Operator: Splotches of light? Your ... eyeballs? Person (over phone): I think that's what they are! There's meat everywhere! Operator: ... so you're a brain. Person (over phone): Yes! Operator: Yeah, we all are. You're not trapped. Use your body to walk around and experience reality. Person: But everything's just signals in my sensory cortices! How can I be sure they correspond to an external world?! Operator (over phone): I'm sorry, but we can't send a search-and-rescue team into Plato's cave. {{Title text: Socrates could've saved himself a lot of trouble if he'd just brought a flashlight, tranquilizer gun, and a bunch of rescue harnesses.}}

[[Man is at computer. Woman is standing behind him, looking at clothes on the floor.]] Woman: Is this a three wolf moon shirt? Woman: Dude, 2009 called, and they-- Man: OH MY GOD! Man: DID YOU WARN THEM? Man: ABOUT HAITI AND JAPAN? Woman: What? No, I-- Man: You ASSHOLE! {{Title text: 2017 called, but I couldn't understand what they were saying over all the screams.}}

[[Person sits at a desk with a computer. There's a schedule on the wall next to it. Person is typing.]] The key to leading a productive life is time management. <<type type>> Choose goals, build a schedule, and have the WILLPOWER to follow it-- or be LEFT BEHIND by those of us who DO. <<type type type>> [[We see the schedule in closeup.]] SCHEDULE 7:00am Wake up 7:15am-8:00am Post on productivity blogs about my schedule 8:00am-whenever Fuck around {{Title text: I never trust anyone who's more excited about success than about doing the thing they want to be successful at.}}

[[Person is playing a video game.]] <<BLAM>> Game: He once built a treehouse. <<BLAM>> Game: She has 110 unread emails that she was hoping to get to tonight. <<BLAM BLAM>> Game: He was the only one who took care of the plants back at base. No one liked my FPS mod that gives you three-second snippets from the bios of people you shoot. {{Title text: Wait, that second one is a woman? ... wait, if that bothers me, then why doesn't ... man, this game is no fun anymore.}}

[[Woman is sitting in an armchair, reading a book.]] Woman: Are there eigenvectors in Cinderella? Man: ... no? Woman: The prince didn't use them to match the shoe to its owner? Man: What are you TALKING about? Woman: Dammit. [[Flashback. Girl is in bed, mom is sitting on the edge of the bed reading.]] My mom is one of those people who falls asleep while reading, but keeps talking. She's a math professor, so she'd start rambling about her work. Mom: But while the ant gathered food ... Mom: ... zzzz ... Mom: ... the grasshopper contracted to a point on a manifold that was NOT a 3-sphere ... I'm still not sure which versions are real. [[Present.]] Man: You didn't notice the drastic subject changes? Woman: Well, sometimes her versions were better. We loved Inductive White and the (N-1) Dwarfs. Woman: I guess the LIM x->inf (x) little pigs did get a bit weird toward the end ... {{Title text: Goldilocks' discovery of Newton's method for approximation required surprisingly few changes.}}

Gamer: I'm going to buy this $10 game I want, and I'm donating $10 for malaria eradication. Friend: If you actually cared, you'd skip the game and donate all $20. Friend: What's more important? Games, or mosquito nets and medicine for kids? Later: Gamer: I think I'm going to buy these two $10 games I want. Other Friend: Cool; which ones? {{Title text: I usually respond to someone else doing something good by figuring out a reason that they're not really as good as they seem. But I've been realizing lately that there's an easier way to handle these situations, and it involves zero internet arguments.}}

Mathematically Annoying Advertising: [[A ∪ B = {x:x ≤ 15 or x > 15 } = ℝ ]] [[line graph representing the above equation]] When discussing real numbers, it is impossible to get more vague than "up to 15% or more". [["FREE*" in large text, with substantial illegible fine print]] If someone has paid $x to have the word "free" typeset for you and N other people to read, their expected value for the money that will move from you to them is at least $(x (N+1)) [[graph representing inverse relationship between "amount you spend" on the y axis and "amount you save" on the x axis]] It would be difficult for the phrase "the more you spend the more you save" to be more wrong. {{Title text: I remember the exact moment in my childhood when I realized, while reading a flyer, that nobody would ever spend money solely to tell me they wanted to give me something for nothing. It's a much more vivid memory than the (related) parental Santa talk.}}

[[single blade in a server rack]] Server: Hi! I'm a server! Who are you? [[mobile device with a web browser]] Browser: I'm a browser. I'd like to see this article. Server:Oh boy! I can help! Let me get it for- ..whoa! You're a *smartphone* browser? Browser: Yeah. Server: Cooool! Hey, I've got this new mobile version of my site! Check it out! Isn't it pretty? Browser: Sure, but this is just your mobile site's main page. Where's the article I wanted? Server: What article? Browser: The one I- Server: Who are you? Browser: I- Server: Hi! I'm a server! {{Title text: They have to keep the adjacent rack units empty. Otherwise, half the entries in their var log syslog are just 'SERVER BELOW TRYING TO START CONVERSATION *AGAIN*.' and 'WISH THEY'D STOP GIVING HIM SO MUCH COFFEE IT SPLATTERS EVERYWHERE.'}}

[[diamond-shaped four-panel diagram]] [[top panel labeled "internet libertarians]] [[left panel labeled "Democrats, Republicans"]] [[bottom panel labeled "other"]] [[right panel labeled "baseball fans"]] [[axis increasing in the upper-left direction labeled "political opinions"]] [[axis increasing in the upper-right direction labeled "love of diamond-shaped diagrams"]] {{Title text: Also in the right quadrant are NFPA-compliant chemical manufacturers and Sir Charles Wheatstone. Sharing the top with the internet libertarians are Nate Silver and several politically-active kite designers.}}

Ornithology conference: [[graph showing a large tree split between amphibians and reptiles]] Ornithologist: As you can see, herpetology is a silly field; reptiles are actually more closely related to birds and mammals than to amphibians.It should really be broken up, with lizards folded into ornithology. Herpetology conference: [[graph showing a large tree split between nice people and ornithologists]] Herpetologist: As you can see, ornithologists are actually assholes. {{Title text: Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact.}}

I learned in high school what geometers discovered long ago: [[Geometer, holding a compass and straightedge, looks sad.]] Using only a compass and straightedge, it's impossible to construct friends. {{Title text: The Greeks long suspected this, but it wasn't until April 12th of 1882 that Ferdinand von Lindemann conclusively proved it when he constructed himself the most awesome birthday party possible and nobody showed up.}}

[[Scientist and commander are on a space station.]] Scientist: Commander! Come quick! Scientist: It's the nanobots--they've STOPPED! Scientist: They devoured 40% of the Earth, and then just ... quit! They're just sitting there! Scientist: Why?! Commander: It's a mystery. ... unless ... What's the volume of each nanobot? Scientist: A few cubic microns. Why? Commander: I think the year 1998 just bought us some time. [[Earth's surface, covered in mountains of nanobots.]] In the swarm: Nanobot: What do you mean, "Run out of addresses?" Other Nanobot: Look, we should've migrated away from IPv6 AGES ago ... {{Title text: I think the ITEF hit the right balance with the 128 bits thing. We can fit MAC addresses in a 64 subnet, and the nanobots will only be able to devour half the planet.}}

Person (on phone): It's 2011. I want my flying car. Friend (from phone): Dude. Friend: You're complaining to me using a phone on which you buy and read books, Friend: and which you were using to play a 3D shooter until I interrupted you with what would be a video call if I were wearing a shirt. Person: Can't I have a flying car, too? Friend (from phone): You'd crash it while texting and playing Angry Birds. {{Title text: It's hard to fit in the backseat of my flying car with my android Realdoll when we're both wearing jetpacks.}}

[[Student before a professor]] Student: How can I pick a major? I'm interested in everything! Can't I major in "the universe"? Professor: Okay. First, I'll need papers on every European trade summit that did not result in an agreement. Then, spend a year memorizing every microprocessor instruction set ever used in a production chip. [[Student scratches head]] Student:What I meat was I just want to read Malcolm Gladwell books and drink. Professor: We all do, sweetie. {{Title text: I hear Steven Levitt is writing a book analyzing A.J. Jacobs' quest to spend a year reading everything Malcolm Gladwell ever wrote. The audiobook will be narrated by Robert Krulwich of Radiolab.}}

[[reddit page]] Luke (thinking): I shouldn't be looking at Reddit. Why can't I stop? [[CNN page]] Luke (thinking): Refreshing CNN again. Do news stories so affect my life that I benefit from checking them more than once a day? [[shutdown screen]] Luke (thinking): I should at least check Faceb... no. Screw it. I can't do my job when I'm distracting myself every five minutes like this. [[two people before a battlefield screen]] Guy: His computer's off. Luke - You've switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong? Luke: Nothing. I'm all right. {{Title text: After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.}}

Guy, on phone: Hey! Know how you've been bugging me to play Minecraft for the past year? I'm game. Girl, on phone: But you said you didn't want to "get hooked and spend days on end moving virtual cubes around while sitting motionless." What changed? Guy, on phone: I'm having my wisdom teeth out, and I'll be useless and doped up on painkillers for the next few days, so that actually sounds like the perfect distraction. Girl, on phone: Oh. I'll set you up on our server! 72 hours later... [[Girl sitting at computer.]] Girl, on phone: Hey -- starting to feel better? Enjoying the game? Let's see what you've... What the hell? Where IS everything? [[View of a Minecraft screen showing a vast empty expanse of land.]] Girl, offscreen: ... You made the entire continent perfectly flat? Guy, offscreen: And sorted it into layers. Girl, offscreen: ... Guy, offscreen: I feel good about things. This is a good game. [[Guy sitting on the floor at his laptop, bleeding from the mouth, surrounded by bloody wadded-up tissues and holding a bottle of medication.]] Girl, on phone: ... What exactly is in the painkillers they gave you? Guy, woozy: I can't read the label because I'm a hologram. {{Title text: I heard the general anesthesia drugs can cause amnesia, so when I woke up mid-extraction I started taking notes on my hand so I'd remember things later. I managed 'AWAKE BUT EVERYTHING OK' before the dental assistant managed to find and confiscate all my pens.}}

[[Guy brings in a pocket microscope]] Guy: Check it out - a pocket microscope! Girl: Ooh! Let's look at stuff! [[Guy holds a pencil; girl peers at a quarter through the microscope]] Guy: The tip of this pencil is neat! Girl: This quarter is really scratched. Guy: Let's look at the skin under our fingernails! Minutes later... [[Guy and girl curl up in a pit of despair]] Guy and girl: oh god oh god {{Title text: I call Rule 34 on The Secret House.}}

(An unmatched left parenthesis creates an unresolved tension that will stay with you all day. {{Title text: Brains aside, I wonder how many poorly-written xkcd.com-parsing scripts will break on this title (or \;;"''{<<[' this mouseover text."}}

[[Couple sitting opposed, woman on couch reading book and man on a chair with a laptop]] Woman: The fact that I have breasts doesn't mean you could milk me now. I'd have to be lactating. [[a beat passes]] Man (thinking): Oh my god. She's psychic! {{Title text: It's not hard when you have the same thought like 40 or 50 percent of the time.}}

Guy: In the words of Archimedes, Guy: Give me a long enough lever and a place to rest it, [[Guy pulls out a gun.]] Guy: Or I will kill one hostage every hour. {{Title text: Give a man a fish, or he will destroy the only existing vial of antidote.}}

Girl: Robot ninja! Pirate doctor laser monkey! Narwhal zombie badger hobo bacon kitty captain penguin raptor jesus! Scientist (to guy): We'd been seeing this brain damage for years, but only recently did our linguists identify the pattern behind it. Scientist: The patients fixate on animals and types of people whose names are trochees (two syllables, with the accent on the first). The malfunction causes a rush of dopamine whenever these trocheese are heard or spoken. [[Chart shows "internet" and "brain," with arrows marked "trochees" traveling both ways between them. An arrow marked "dopamine" loops from the brain back to the brain.]] The warning signs appear in childhood: [[Child sits in front of TV.]] Child: Yeah! Mighty teenage morphin' ninja power mutant turtle rangers! Social reinforcement focuses the fixation on a few dozen words. Guy (off-panel): Is there a cure? [[Girl is reclining under a big machine pointed at her face.]] Scientist: We're about to try a radical trocheeotomy. Guy: Rip out her vocal chords? I'm in favor. Scientist: No, we're modifying her vocabulary* to erase the words she's fixated on. *Digitoneurolinguistic hacking! It's totally real! Ask Neal Stephenson. Scientist: Either the gap will be filled by normal words, or she'll just generate a new set of trochees. Scientist: Here goes. [[She pulls the lever on a large panel.]] <<kachunk bzzzZZZZZZ>> [[Girl is waking up.]] Girl: ... GzZhRmPh ... Girl ... banjo turtle! Girl: Jetpack ferret pizza lawyer! Dentist hamster wombat plumber turkey jester hindu cowboy hooker bobcat scrapple! Scientist (off-panel): Sigh. Scientist: Time for plan B. Scientist: Someone get a brick. {{Title text: If you Huffman-coded all the 'random' things everyone on the internet has said over the years, you'd wind up with, like, 30 or 40 bytes *tops*.}}

[[Inverted intro panel]] It's easy to forget, as we heap awards on The Social Network, That before there was Facebook, MySpace, or even Friendster... One website dreamed bigger than them all. [[Two guys talking]] Guy #1: People like doing stuff, so why not build a website that offers that? Guy #2: Offers what? What would I do there? Guy #1: Anything! The only limit is yourself! [[Guy runs in. Two guys are by a computer, one sitting at it wearing headphones.]] Guy running in: Hey, we need more-- Standing guy: Don't--he's wired in. Guy at computer: THE INFINITE IS POSSIBLE. Standing guy: Or baked. It's hard to tell. [[Two guys are sitting at a restaurant booth.]] Guy #1: It's time to monetize. We could make millions! Guy #2: No way. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Guy #1: A billio-- Guy #2: CIRCLES. [[View from booth of a guy leaving, turning back to say something.]] Guy: Hey—a tip: Drop the dot. Just "Zombocom". It's cleaner. {{Title text: 'Whoa, twenty-two in two hours!' 'Your site got twenty-two hundred hits in two hours?' 'No. Twenty-two. But still, that's like half the people on the internet!'}}

{{A flowchart.}} I should cook more! -> Buy ingredients -> Put some in a pan -> Cook -> Does it taste good? -> (arrows marked "Kinda" and "No" both lead to) Put leftovers in fridge -> (hours pass) -> Order pizza -> (days pass) -> Throw away leftovers -> (weeks pass) -> Throw away remaining ingredients as they go bad -> (months pass) -> (arrow leads back to beginning) {{Title text: And yet I never stop thinking, 'sure, these ingredients cost more than a restaurant meal, but think how many meals I'll get out of them! Especially since each one will have leftovers!'}}

He: I was running a factor analysis on this huge database, and check out what it found: [[He holds up the chart.]] [[It's a graph plotting "sexual arousal" against "consecutive vowels." The trendline is a smooth exponential curve.]] She: Huh? This chart makes no sense. What-- He: "Queueing" [[She grabs him.]] She: FUCK ME NOW. {{Title text: But the windows! What if there's a voyuer watchi-- wait, now I'm turned on too.}}

He: Did you know that because of centrifugal* force and the shape of the Earth, "gravity" can vary by nearly half a percent between major cities? *Yes, centrifugal. xkcd.com 123 He: That's not a lot, but it could affect, say, pole vaulting. In a 5m jump, it could make a difference of 2cm. She: Huh, interesting. He: I'm going to write an article reevaluating vaulting records to take this into account. Three days later: She: Good job. There's an angry mob of athletes outside. [[He looks off the balcony. The mob of athletes is out of frame.]] Athlete: That record was mine! Athlete: How dare you cast doubt on our honor? Athlete: Have you no respect?! Athlete: Make him pay! He: Hey, the math doesn't lie. Suck it, jocks. She: Dude, don't provoke them. He: Whatever. The building's locked. Let 'em vent for a-- <<crash>> Off-panel Athlete: GET HIM! He: Crap! He: How did the pole vaulters get up to our balcony? She: ... [[Beat frame]] She: That might be the stupidest question I've ever heard. He: Right. {{Title text: In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, the same jump will get an athlete 0.25% higher (>1cm) than in London four years prior.}}

{{A flowchart.}} Na->Na->Na->Na->Na->Na->Na->Na (branches to ->Hey->Hey->Goodbye and ->Batman!) ->Na->Na (branches to Katamari Damacy!) ->Na (arrow labeled "Land of 1,000 Dances) loops around to the last Na again) {{Title text: I hear that there are actual lyrics later on in Land of 1,000 Dances, but other than the occasional 'I said,' I've never listened long enough to hear any of them.}}

The World According to a group of Americans Who turned out to be unexpectedly good at geography, derailing our attempt to illustrate their country's attitude toward the rest of the world. ((One big panel, a map of the world. Fairly accurate. Annotated in several different scripts of handwriting. These are transcribed in approximately left to right, top to bottom order. Some are written paired and appear as such.)) Hey so what projection should we use? I'll aim for "Robinson." Alaska Canada Hudson Bay Québec Greenland (still too big!) Yeah but the Peters map is awful United States Did you know Maine is actually the US state closest to Africa? Baja California (Mexico) Mexico Gulf of Mexico Cuba Hispanola Bermuda (British!) Central America Jamaica Do we have to label all the Virgin Islands? Panama Canal French, and I think Dutch and English Brazil (Portuguese - speaking) Rest of South America (Spanish-speaking) Tierra del Fuego Iceland British Isles Ireland Gibraltar Western Europe Scandinavia Eastern Europe Black Sea Middle East Morocco Algeria Sahara Desert West Africa Sudan So this is one of those things where you point out our ignorance and stereotypes? Yeah - I mean I freely admit I don't know the African map very well, which speaks volumes in itself. Rainforest DRC Lake Victoria Somalia Angola Mozambique South Africa Cape Horn Madagascar Russia Kamchatka Peninsula but I admit I only know this one from Risk Aral Sea (Gone) Various former Soviet States Mongolia Afghanistan & Pakistan India Mostly Muslim Mostly Hindu Sri Lanka Tibet (informal) China Southeast Asia Koreas Japan, duh. Taiwan (actually called "The Republic of China" - it's complicated Phillipines Malaysia Boxing Day Quake Wait, "Boxing day"? There's no way you're American. I read BBC News, OK? Indonesia Sulawesi Paupa New Guinea Australia Tasmania New Zealand Shall we include Antarctica? Let's not - these guys are looking impatient. {{Title text: It's not our fault we caught a group on their way home from a geography bee. And they taught us that Uzbekistan is one of the world's two doubly-landlocked countries!}}

[[A teacher is standing at a whiteboard covered in equations.]] Teacher: Okay, anyone who's feeling like they can't handle the physics here should probably just leave now. Teacher: Because I'm multiplying the wavefunction by its complex conjugate. Teacher: That's right. [[Dramatic zoom. It appears the teacher is writing on the side of the panel.]] Teacher: Shit just got real . {{Title text: Fun fact: if you say this every time a professor does something to a complex-number equation that drops the imaginary part, they'll eventually move the class to another room and tell everyone else except you.}}

[[People are lined up to see a movie.]] Premiering Tonight: String Theory: An expose Presented In 3D! [[The people are in a dark theater, fiddling with their glasses.]] <<???>> [[The people approach black hat guy, who's sitting at a desk.]] Person #1: Your movie was a ripoff. Person #2: It wasn't 3D at all! Black hat guy: Was too. Black hat guy: It's just that the third dimension is tightly rolled up and too small to observe at normal energies. {{Title text: The LINACs in the glasses frames can barely manage one MeV. You should've gone to the screening at CERN.}}

[[Two white figures are silhouetted against a dark sky. They're sitting on top of a grassy hill.]] Person: I know things are tough right now. When I was going through some difficult times as a kid, I would go up on the roof and look through my telescope. Person: One day I found a tiny star in Ara that seemed friendly. Person: There were millions like it, but I decided that this one was mine. Person: When things got bad, I'd go find that star, and think of my favorite Tolkien quote. It's from Sam's time in Mordor. ((The next panel is diagonally downward to the right of the previous. The upper left corner overlaps.)) [[A star is above the highest peak in a chain of mountains.]] "There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing: There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach." - The Return of the King Companion: That's comforting! Person: It was rather undercut in 1987, when the light from my star's explosion reached Earth. The debris forms the Stingray Nebula. Companion: There's probably a lesson there. Person: "Never trust an unstable asymptotic giant branch star. Stick with main sequences and dwarfs." Companion: I'll, uh, keep that in mind. {{Title text: Eärendil will patrol the walls of night only until the sun reaches red giant stage, engulfing the Morning Star on his brow. Light and high beauty are passing things as well.}}

Woman: Dear Ke$ha, Woman: It's hard to describe the pain of a deeply infected dental nerve. (continuing) To get an idea, put your hands in a bowl full of ice cubes. Hold them there for 90 seconds. [[Panel shows speaker with her hands in a bowl of ice.]] Now imagine that pain in your jaw, every minute of every hour, bright and searing, washing out everything. You can't party all night. You can barely stand up. There's only the pain. Woman: So, some friendly advice: When you wake up in the morning, before you brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack, Woman: Brush them with actual toothpaste. {{Title text: WAKE up in the MORning and my BREATH ain't PREtty and noBODY'S gonna KISS me if my MOUTH smells SHItty so I ALways brush my TEETH before I START on the JACK sure, my DRINKing's out of HAND, but I'm conTROLLing my PLAQUE.}}

[[Two soldiers are talking. Behind them, rubble burns and smokes.]] First soldier: Will you please stop imitating everything I do? <<blam blam>> Second soldier: Will you please stop... <<kaboom>> My hobby: Real-time war reenactment {{Title text: During the week, I research my character by living in his house and raising his children.}}

((The comic is a flowchart. In order to explain this in text, follow the line numbers. Options follow on new lines without numbers.)) How to write good code. ((10.)) Start Project. ((Go to 20.)) ((20.)) Do things right or do them fast? Fast ((Go to 30.)) Right ((Go to 40.)) ((30.)) Code fast. ((Go to 35.)) ((35.)) Does it work yet? No ((Go to 30.)) Almost, but it's become a mass of kludges and spaghetti code. ((Go to 50.)) ((40.)) Code well. ((Go to 45.)) ((45.)) Are you done yet? No. ((Go to 40.)) No, and the requirements have changed. ((Go to 50.)) ((50.)) Throw it all out and start over. ((Go to 10.)) ((60.)) ? ((Go to 70.)) ((70.)) Good code. {{Title text: You can either hang out in the Android Loop or the HURD loop.}}

[[A teacher is standing in front of a board, holding a laptop computer and elocuting.]] Teacher: Okay, middle school students, it's the first Tuesday in February. Teacher: This means that by law and custom, we must spend the morning reading through the Wikipedia article List of Common Misconceptions , so you can spend the rest of your lives being a little less wrong. Teacher: The guests at every party you'll ever attend thank us in advance. {{Title text: 'Grandpa, what was it like in the Before time?' 'It was hell. People went around saying glass was a slow-flowing liquid. You folks these days don't know how good you have it.'}}

[[An adult and a child are talking.]] Child: What's that on your arm? Adult: The mark of a secret society. Child: If it's secret, why tell me -- Adult: Because I know nothing. I can't betray them because I don't know who they are. I was chosen by an agent 20 years ago. That was my first and last direct contact. It's safer that way. Narration: Six years later I found a piece of paper in the street with an address on it. The next day I found a can of kerosene in my garage that I'm sure I never bought. [[The panel represents these actions by highlighting the mentioned objects in a world of gray.]] Narration: I didn't know whose house it was. I just knew that I'd been given my orders. And I carried them out. [[A dark figure is silhouetted against a flame.]] Adult: I don't know who or what we're fighting. Adult: Maybe we're the bad guys. Adult: It doesn't matter to me. Adult: It's enough to know that there are forces working beneath the chaos of life, and I'm a part of them. Adult: That whatever this "pen fifteen" club is, Adult: I'm in it. {{Title text: I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I will not stop until I find out what.}}

[[Two people are talking by telephone. The first two panels are split diagonally. The first person is at a store, and the second is consulting with them.]] [[The first person has a small box.]] Person: Do we have an RCA-to-3.5mm female-female plug? I'm getting some speakers for the new xBox, since the monitor doesn't have any. Second Person: Are they crappy laptop speakers? [[The person is moving away from a sale rack. It says "Sale!!" several times.]] Person: Does it matter? I just want to hear if I'm getting shot at, not saor eery detail of a beautiful musical soundscape. Second Person: You've never heard a beautiful musical soundscape. You listen to 96kbps flv rips from YouTube. Person: Whatever. I'm just going to get these $20 speakers. Five watts will be plenty. Second Person: Five watts for a living room sound system? Is that a joke? Person: No, this is a joke: How many audiophiles does it take to change a lightbulb? Second Person: How many? Person: I'll tell you later - you wouldn't appreciate the punchline over this 12kbps cell phone codec. <<click>> {{Title text: For years, I took the wrong lesson from that Monster Cable experiment and only listened to my music through alligator-clipped coat hangers.}}

[[Someone is standing next to a table. There is a can on the table.]] [[The label on the can reads, "Serious Putty".]] [[The person is looking at the table again.]] [[They reach out to touch the can. The can speaks.]] Can: Don't touch me. {{Title text: Not to be confused with Serious PuTTY, the Windows terminal client where everything is in Impact.}}

[[A black bishop, Ba3, and a white knight, Nc3, are on a three by three chessboard. Both are on white squares. There is a heap of supplies at b2, also a white square. The chessboard is mounted on rockets and appears to be flying through the air.]] Ba3: Mission Control, come in. This is Ba3 on the capsule calling Ke5 on the home board. We're on track and approaching the Coast of Catan. Our ETA is -- Nc3: Control, this is Nc3. Bishop put all our food in the center so I can't get it. I demand -- Ba3: Control, knight will get his food back when he stops hopping around bragging about how comfy the black squares are. I swear to God, I'm this close to capturing him and completing the mission alone. {{Title text: We're going to have to work together to get over our hangups if we're going to learn to move on Catan's hexagonal grid. It's bad enough that we lost our crew of pawns when we passed within firing range of Battleship.}}

[[Someone is sitting at a computer. The computer's prompt is shown.]] robm@homebox~$ sudo su Password: robm is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported. robm@homebox~$ [[A second person approaches.]] Person: Hey -- who does sudo report these "incidents" to ? Second person: You know, I've never checked. [[Santa Claus is sitting at a desk supported by candy canes, with a red monitor. On the wall are two lists labeled 'naughty' and 'nice'. He is adding a name to the 'naughty' list.]] {{Title text: He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he's copied on var spool mail root, so be good for goodness' sake.}}

[[The panel shows an online shopping form.]] Shipping: $14.08 Total: $80.02 If you have a coupon code, enter it here: [[An empty form.]] Check out A person is looking at their computer. [[The empty form is now filled in - the rest of the panel shows the same page.]] Form: In 1987 you quietly took something from the house of a dying woman. You thought nobody knew -- you were wrong. [[The person is sitting at their computer.]] <<Click>> [[The form is updated.]] Shipping: $14.08 Total: $80.02 ---------------- Discount Applied: -$80.02 Final price: $0.00 Thank you - Your order has been placed - {{Title text: This also guarantees he won't be one of the ones to get a bobcat.}}

((The three panels are arranged diagonally, upper left to bottom right.)) [[Two people are walking past a tree. One has a hat.]] Hat person: So, has this sickness opened you up to looking for answers beyond science? Person: ... no, not really. [[The person turns to face the one with the hat.]] Person: We've groped for comfort before the slings and arrows of fortune for millenia, and I begrudge nobody their sources of solace. But Science provides tools . $100 billion a year in scientific studies and medical R&D has bought us some pretty damn powerful slings and arrows of our own. This world is amazing, and I'm going to live to experience more of it thanks to people who refused to gracefully accept the ineffability of reality. I find my courage where I can, but I take my weapons from science. Person: Because they work , bitches. {{Title text: At least, with p<0.05 confidence.}}

[[There is a binary Christmas tree, with each node a ball, and lights strung between parent and child nodes. Beneath it is a heap of presents - sorted with the largest on top, smaller presents connected to it with string. Next to the tree are a kid and his or her parents.]] Billy: It's a Christmas tree with a heap of presents underneath! Mother: ... We're not inviting you home next year. {{Title text: Not only is that terrible in general, but you just KNOW Billy's going to open the root present first, and then everyone will have to wait while the heap is rebuilt.}}

[[A black formal suit with no head is talking.]] Suit: We are Anonymous. We are legion We are no one and everyone. And we are here to fight for WikiLeaks. ((The panel is presented a the front page of WikiLeaks, in a browser.)) New Leak: Names, addresses, IPs, and phone numbers of everyone in Anonymous. Download Now Suit: ... Dammit, Julian. {{Title text: STUDENTS ARE CALLING PRESIDENT JOHNSON EN MASSE TO PROTEST THE BOMBING AND IT'S JAMMED THE WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD. COULD THEY COLLAPSE OUR CRITICAL PHONE SYSTEMS? HAS THE FIRST TELEPHONE WAR BEGUN? STAY TUNED FOR MORE ON THIS DANGEROUS NEW TECHNOLOGY.}}

[[A man and a woman are talking. The woman has a board.]] Man: I think we should give it another shot. Woman: We should break up, and I can prove it. [[The second panel is the graph. A series of points moves steadily downward.]] Our Relationship. [[The man looks at the graph.]] Man: Huh. Man: Maybe you're right. Woman: I knew data would convince you. Man: No, I just think I can do better than someone who doesn't label her axes. {{Title text: And if you labeled your axes, I could tell you exactly how MUCH better.}}

((The comic comprises two large square maps, each divided into nine sections, some of which are further subdivided in the same way. The subdivisions continue down for up to five levels, and the lower map has more tiny diagrams than the upper. The smallest divisions at every scale are completed tic-tac-toe games.)) [[Explanatory text:]] Complete map of optimal Tic-Tac-Toe moves Your move is given by the position of the largest red symbol on the grid. When your opponent picks a move, zoom in on the region of the grid where they went. Repeat. Map for X: ((The first square map)) Map for Y: ((The second square map)) {{Title text: The only winning move is to play, perfectly, waiting for your opponent to make a mistake.}}

[[A black dot on a weather radar screen.]] Dot: Sigh. Just a few clouds. [[The clouds develop into orange, to the left of the dot.]] Dot: Whoa! Huge storm out of nowhere! [[The orange becomes red, and the storm moves towards the dot.]] Dot: It's growing ! And headed right for me! Awesome! [[The storm splits in half.]] Dot: Hey! What's it... [[The two halves of the storm pass by the dot. Dot: Dammit! Again?! {{Title text: Ever notice how there aren't as many thunderstorms now as there were when you were a kid? Much like 'the shuffle on my MP3 player has a bias', this is occasionally true but universally believed. Brains are so interesting!}}

[[A man stands next to a woman holding a clipboard, she gestures to a comfy-looking chair.]] Man: Did my genetic tests come back? Woman: Yeah. Sit down. Man: Is it bad news? What are my risk factors? [[The man is now sitting in the chair awaiting her answer. The woman looks down at the clipboard.]] Woman: We can't be sure about this, but we've analyzed genes on several of your chromosomes and it's ard to avoid the conclusion: [[The woman puts down the clipboard and looks at the man as she delivers her news. The man puts his hands to his face in dismay.]] Woman: At some point, your parents had sex. Man: Oh God! Woman: Stay calm! It's possible it was just once! Man: I... I need to be alone. {{Title text: There's still a chance you were conceived via IVF. But we've checked your mom's college yearbook photos, and whether or not she and your father had sex, it's clear that ... listen, I know this is hard for you.}}

[[Three people, two women and a man, stand looking at a laptop screen, which is sitting on a desk. The woman with a ponytail is pointing at the screen.]] Ponytail girl: Our arsenic-based DNA discovery is cool, but these reporters are expecting life on Titan! Our press conference will be such a letdown! [[Ponytail girl turns around to face the other girl.]] Ponytail: Okay, we need to make it more exciting for them. How do you make an event entertaining? Girl #2: Dunno, I suck at parties. Music, I guess? [[Ponytail girl turns back around and leans over to start typing on the computer, while the other two look on. The other girl puts her hand to her chin.]] Ponytail: WikiHow says you can "serve cocktails and hors d'oerves that fit the theme of your event." Girl #2: Easy enough! [[Ponytail girl stands at a podium on a stage, the man stands amongst the audience with a tray. All the audience members are either dead or dying, having fallen onto the floor or slumped over in their seats.]] {{Title text: According to a new paper published in the journal Science, reporters are unable to thrive in an arsenic-rich environment.}}

[[A man sits hunched with his knees drawn up to him on a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. A friend stands by.]] Man: I'm sick and I'm scared. Friend: Well, remember - having a good attitude is the most important thing. Think positively and you'll get better. [[Darkness surrounds the man on the bed. The friend is off-screen.]] Man: So if I'm sad or afraid or feel like crap sometimes, then... Friend: ...then if you don't recover, it will be your fault. [[The man on the bed clutches his hands to his face and leans back.]] Man: Well that makes me feel even worse. Friend: See? You're doing this to yourself. Man: No! Friend: Stop it! Man: Argh! [[Close up on the man, holding up his hand, pointing to himself.]] Man: Okay, you know what? Screw this. My attitude isn't my problem. -- My disease is my problem, and I'm treating it. -- I'm going to be glum and depressed and pessimistic some days, and I'm going to get better anyway. [[The man sits on the edge of the bed, his friend still standing in front of him.]] Man: Wait, that ended up sounding optimistic. Friend: I guess you suck at pessimism. Man: Maybe I'll be better at it tomorrow. {{Title text: Having a positive attitude is almost tautologically good for your mental health, and extreme stress can hurt your immune system, but that doesn't mean you should feel like shit for feeling like shit.}}

[[A man is sitting at his desk, pointing at his laptop.]] Man: Dude! I had this idea like five years ago, and some company just got rich doing it! -- I want my cut. [[The man starts typing.]] Person off-screen: That's not how it works. Man: Sure it is. I'm applying for my share now. Person: Wait, what? [[A browser window with the title 'Department of Ideas'. It has a series of text boxes: Date you had the idea: "Like five years ago." Proof you had it: "I told my friend Mike -- you can ask him! I was all "you know what would make a great business idea? and he..." Their profit so far: $20,000,000 Share you deserve (be fair!): ((drop-down)) 25% *30%* 35% Mailing address: "137 Ash Tree Ln" [[Man still at the laptop, above him is a SUBMIT button, and it shows a pointing hand cursor.]] CLICK ((Last panel set slightly lower than the rest.)) [[The man is in front of an open box, with cash in his hand. A FedEx delivery guy is on the other side of the box with his little electronic signing thing.]] {{Title text: We didn't believe you at first, but we asked like three people who were at that party. They not only corroborated your story, but even said you totally mentioned wanting to start a company someday. Sorry! If this isn't enough money, let us know.}}

((This comic was drawn by Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It's a floor plan of a museum with five main halls. Each hall contains several exhibits. If you click on an exhibit's spot on the map, a comic pops up showing a view of the exhibit. The museum map is full of tiny stick figures, many of them characters from xkcd.)) [[Explanatory Text:]] In the spirit of xkcd I present a proposal for a new Smithsonian museum: The Smithsonian Museum Of Dad-Trolling An entire building dedicated to deceiving children for amusement (Click to view exhibits!) [[The top left room is 'The Hall of Misunderstood Science'. It contains six exhibits.]] [[Exhibit: A giant basilisk looms over children.]] Exhibit label: BASILISKS: Real, deadly, under your bed. [[Exhibit: Four magnets hang from a square arch. A child is touching two of them together.]] Text on the arch: Magnets only leap at each other when they're teenagers. Later, they lose interest. [[Exhibit: A child on his dad's shoulders looks up at a looming statue of Jesus behind a lectern. There are flakes falling from Jesus onto them both.]] Exhibit label: Snow is Jesus' dandruff. His scalp gets dry when it's cold. [[Exhibit: A child lies asleep, while hands and a scary face reach up around the bed toward him.]] Exhibit label: Sleep: Now you're vulnerable to the boogie man! [[Exhibit: An ice block sits on a stand in front of pictures of a wolf and rhinoceros looking frightened.]] Exhibit label: Freezing water: Expands to frighten predators. [[Exhibit: An insect on a stick is orbited by a small sphere.]] Exhibit label: Anti-matter: Matter that is more than 50% ants. [[Exhibit: A DNA strand with the letters T, A, C, and G hanging around it.]] Exhibit label: DNA only has four letters because the alphabet was smaller back then. Dad, to child: Told you so. [[Exhibit: A bunch of molecules hang from the ceiling.]] Exhibit label: Molecules? In my day, we only had atoms! [[The top right room is 'Regrettable Pranks: An Interactive Experience'. There are four exhibits.]] [[Exhibit: Five balloons float tethered to a table. A child is holding a sixth balloon. The Dad looks alarmed.]] Sign on exhibit: If this helium makes your voice go higher, it's because you're ten seconds from exploding. [[Exhibit: An alien face is shown above an outline of several hands next to a ruler. A child holds his hand up to it.]] Sign on exhibit: Measure your middle finger. If it's longer than the others, you're an alien halfbreed. [[Exhibit: Three cups are on a table. A child is walking away with a fourth cup, the dad's arm around the child's shoulder.]] Exhibit label: Has anyone seen my rabbit brain? It looks like a cherry, and I dropped it in a Jello cup. [[Exhibit: A monstrous set of jaws open upward around a bed.]] Sign on exhibit: Make your bed or monsters will know a kid lives there. [[The center right room is 'Concessions'. There are three booths.]] [[Booth: A concession stand is labeled 'KFP', and displays a KFC-style bucket. A dad and child are eating.]] Dad: The "P" is for "phoenix". [[Booth: A concession stand.]] Sign on stand: Ground beef: Beef we found on the ground. Dad, to child: Told you. [[Booth: A stand shaped like a giant eye.]] Booth label: EYES CREAM Subtitle: How did you think it was spelled? Sign on booth: Now with more of the goo in your eyes. Same as every other creamery. [[The lower left room is 'Conservatory of Poorly Remembered History'. There are five exhibits.]] [[Exhibit: A man is riding a dragon.]] Exhibit label: Genghis Khan: victory through dragons. [[Exhibit: A criminal in front of some windows.]] Exhibit label: The Crimean War: The first war against crime. [[Exhibit: A castle with flags hanging on it.]] Exhibit label: The Renaissance Subtitle: Long story short, the wizards were in control. [[Exhibit:A man in Jedi-style robes with a fake beard.]] Exhibit label: Star Wars is a documentary. No, seriously. Dad, to children: Kids, this man is a veteran. [[The lower right room is 'Rotunda of Uncomfortable Topics'. There are five exhibits.]] [[Exhibit: A wrestling ring, with a man and woman mostly obscured by the exhibit label.]] Exhibit label: Naked wrestling: perfectly normal. NEVER DO IT. [[Exhibit: a figure sits at a booth in front of a bowl of food. The dad is holding a bottle.]] Exhibit label: Alcohol is poison. I drink to save you from it. Dad: You're welcome. [[Exhibit: A large bird.]] Exhibit label: Mommies get big tummies before babies come because the stork likes chubby girls. [[Exhibit: A rocket ship.]] Sign on exhibit: Grandma's not dead. She just returned to saturn. For REVENGE. [[In the areas outside the rooms, there are two more exhibits and restrooms, all clickable.]] [[Exhibit: A dinosaur skeleton.]] Exhibit label: That's right. Dinosaurs were made entirely of BONES. Dad, to kid: If you think about it, it makes sense. [[Exhibit: A large image hangs on the wall. It is a dense squiggly jumble of lines.]] Dad, to kids: You gotta squint juuust right. Sign on exhibit: Magic eye trick that doesn't actually work. [[Restrooms: There are three doors, each with a sign.]] First door (male logo): Men & Boys Second door (female logo): Women & Girls Third door (unrecognizable logo): Korgmen & Spangs {{Title text: Guest comic by Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. When I was stressed out, Zach gave me a talk that was really encouraging and somehow involved nanobots.}}

[[Jeffrey Rowland and Randall are sitting together, with a globe between them. Mr. Rowland has a drink with a small umbrella over it.]] Jeffrey Rowland: But enough of my theories about Thanksgiving. The real reason we're here is to discuss my hypothesis that dark matter itself is what consciousness is made of... [[The frame focuses on Jeffrey Rowland.]] Jeffrey Rowland: Unobservable to anything that is itself conscious in much the same way the mail-man won't deliver your mail if you are watching the mail-box [[Mr. Rowland raises his drink.]] Jeffrey Rowland: Which brings us to my theory about ghosts -- Randall Munroe: Wait did you just say Thanksgiving was invented by the Turkey Voluntary Extinction Movement? {{Title text: Guest comic by Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating Wigu. Jeffrey is famous as the picture on the Wikipedia article on 'Necrosis'.}}

[[Jason from FoxTrot is sitting at an artist's desk with a pencil, holding a phone.]] Jason: Hi, Mr. Munroe? I have a great idea! Let me draw some strips for you! Mr. Munroe, through the telephone: Fat chance, kid. Jason: Sudo let me draw some strips for you. ((There follow three strips. These will be separated by double new lines.)) [[A man and woman are looking at each other.]] Man: I find you more attractive than usual. Woman: You do? Is it my new haircut? Man: Actually, I think it's all the weight you've been putting on. Your gravitational pull is pretty severe. [[The man is now alone in the panel.]] Man: Just sayin! [[Two people are in a living room. The woman is looking through a chest of drawers.]] At home with the Heisenbergs. Mrs. Heisenberg: I can't find my car keys. Mr. Heisenberg: You probably know too much about their momentum. [[A man is standing on a stage, holding up a hammer. A crowd is in front of the stage.]] Why mathematicians should run for Congress Man: All those in favor of the bill say "aye." Audience member #1: Aye. Audience member #2: Aye. Audience member #3: {{Square root symbol}} -1. {{Title text: Guest comic by Bill Amend of FoxTrot, an inspiration to all us nerdy-physics-majors-turned-cartoonists, of which there are an oddly large number.}}

[[Two people are leaning against each other, sitting on top of the moon. Trees are visible towards the bottom of the panel.]] [[The scene broadens.]] Woman: I've never been so happy. I -- Man: Hold on -- that guy used to dump my notebooks in high school. Give me a moment. Try to keep the moon steady. [[A rock hits someone on the ground on the back of the head.]] [[The person clutches the back of their head.]] [[The moon, again.]] Guy: I've never been so happy. {{Title text: Guest comic by David Troupes of Buttercup Festival, who is living in that lovely tree outside your window.}}

((This comic was written by Jeph Jacques, and follows the vertical panel style typical of Questionable Content. The art is more in the xkcd style, with stick figures.)) [[A girl is sitting on a bench, reading a book. There is a tree. Far away, a guy has a backpack on.]] Guy's thought bubble: There she is. The most beautiful girl you've ever seen. [[The focus is on the girl on the bench.]] Guy's thought bubble: Every day you take this route to class, she's sitting on that bench, reading. [[It goes even closer to her face.]] Guy's thought bubble: You'd introduce yourself, but you wouldn't know what to say. Besides, she's way out of your league. [[Back to the full panel.]] Guy's thought bubble: What chance could an average guy like you have with such a radiant - Girl's thought bubble: Hey. [[The girl looks up at her thought bubble with a question over her head.]] Guy's thought bubble: E-Excuse me? Girl's thought bubble: I said hey. You come by here a lot. [[The girl looks over at the guy, who is scratching his head at his thought bubble.]] Guy's thought bubble: Oh, uh, yeah. On the way to class. Girl's thought bubble: Wanna skip class and go get a coffee? [[The guy is pondering what's happening.]] Guy's thought bubble: Sure, I'd - I'd like that a lot. Girl's thought bubble: Great, let's ditch these losers. Girl: Hey! [[The thought bubbles are behind the guy now, moving away.]] Guy's thought bubble: Man, I gotta tell you, I'm SICK of being that guy's internal monologue! So whiny! Girl's thought bubble: Seriously! I swear, he and Little Miss Daddy Issues over there were _made_ for each other. [[The two look at each other silently.]] {{Title text: }}

Because of a family illness, instead of regular comics, this week I'll be sharing some strips that I drew as part of a game I played with friends. Each comic had to be written and drawn in five minutes. -- Randall (( The individual comics are arranged haphazardly. Once again they will be separated by double newlines, while panels will be separated by single newlines.)) Pearl Harbor. November 7th, 1941. [[There is a beach, with some ships floating in a crescent shaped harbor.]] [[The same bay, again.]] [[The boats continue to move about the harbor.]] [[The boats do their thing. A title explains.]] (We're going to be here a while, since the attack wasn't until December.) [[A man is sittin gon a bus, a woman in front of him.]] I know it's natural and all, but I really wish women on the bus wouldn't try to breastfeed me. Woman: C'mon, have some milk. Right here. Me: I'm reading. s I think that I saw a study once that said that g Instant persuasiveness multiplier! [[A newspaper front page. Billy Joel is between two policemen.]] Times Billy Joel Arrested for Arson [[One person has a cord leaving their mouth, the other is holding a handset on the end of it to their ear.]] Handset: Hee hee hee... *giggle* I hear that if you drink coke and eat pop rocks, you vomit up a corded telepohen handset on which you hear creepy little girls giggling. [[Three soldiers are holding a large integral sign, while a fourth points a gun at the Little Rock High School.]] 1957: Eisenhower orders the military to integrate Little Rock High School. [[A smartphone is vibrating across a table, towards a person.]] The smartphones got too smart... and developed a taste... for BLOOD! Fortunately, the only way they could move was by turning on their vibrate while on a sloped table. [[A person is reading to their child.]] Person: And the wolf went to see the 38th little pig, who had built his house out of strontium. Person: And the wolf was all, "Ok, what is with this shit?" The 119 Little Pigs [[Someone is holding up a gun.]] Person: Fastest gun in the west! [[The gun is galloping across the desert.]] <<gallop>> <<gallop>> [[There is a podium, with a gun in each position.]] Winner! [[A picture of a centrifuge dominates the panel.]] Centrifuges: They're what separate the men from the boys. [[A computer monitor is plugged in, and cables run into a closet.]] Lucy: Time passes differenly in Narnia, so by putting the CPU and storage for my machine there, I was able to run through the Folding@Home and Seti@Home databases in about an hour. Peter: There are _so_ many problems with that. [[Someone is talking to Alice.]] Person: One of these days, Alice... Wham, zoom, sploosh, fwoom, splash, gurlle, wheeeee, fwoosh, aren't waterslides fun?! {{Title text: Resulting in The Little Rock 9x + C.}}

Because of a family illness, instead of regular comics, this week I'll be sharing some strips that I drew as part of a game I played with friends. Each comic had to be written and drawn in five minutes. -- Randall ((A series of comics are arrayed haphazardly. They will be tackled top to bottom, left to right, approximately. Strips will be separated by two new lines.)) [[A ninja is hiding under a diving board as a man runs along it.]] [[The man jumps on the end of the board and hits the ninja in the head, knocking him into the pool.]] [[The ninja floats in the water. A bullet passes through the man's head.]] <<thwipp>> [[The man is lying bleeding on the diving board, the ninja is still unconscious on the pool.]] [[A sniper is at the top of a hill. The sign in front of the hill says "Grassy Knoll".]] [[Someone is pointing at the diagram of the previous panel.]] Off-panel voice: Wait, so what does this have to do with 9 11, again? Person: I said I'm getting there! [[A man is studying a woman.]] Man: You look different. Man: You have this... _glow_ about you. [[They stare in silence.]] [[A baby falls out of the woman.]] <<plop>> Woman: Cogito ergo cogito. Off-panel voice: Playing it safe, huh? [[Two ghosts are standing in front of a woman at a door, each carrying a bag. They are children dressed up.]] Children: Trick or treat! [[The woman doesn't move.]] Child: Um hi. Why are you just standing there? Other Child: Candy? [[Another silent panel as the children stare up at the woman.]] [[The second child looks in their bag.]] Other Child: Oh God, my bag of candy. Other Child: It's filling with blood. Child: We should go. [[A jet is flying across the panel.]] Pilot: Bail out! Bail out! Bail out! [[The pilot and copilot have buckets, and are bailing water out of the cockpit.]] The following is a dramatization of real events. [[A person is at a counter, with several jars.]] Person: AAAAAAAAAAAAA I'm making a sandwich! AAAAAAAAAA! [[Two people are carrying lightsabers and wearing robes.]] Person: Oh God. My eyes won't focus right! And your robe looks... really dirty! My blacklightsaber was not a success. [[A person is standing.]] Person: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Off-screen voice: It seems we happen to be all ladies, actually. Person: ... in that case, this defense is going to appear _extremely_ ill-advised. [[Darth Vader is sitting between two people, at a table.]] Person: Your sad devotion to that ancient religion hasn't hleped you conjur up the stolen data tapes, or given you -- Darth Vader: Hey. Wicca is a legitimate belief system! [[Darth Vader is drawing a pentagram on the table.]] Person: What are you -- Darth Vader: Putting a _hex_ on your family. {{Title text: Dear Wiccan readers: I understand modern Wiccans are not usually all about the curses and hexes. But Darth Vader was recently converted from Episcopalianism and he's still figuring it all out.}}

Because of a family illness, instead of regular comics, this week I'll be sharing some strips that I drew as part of a game I played with friends. Each comic had to be written and drawn in five minutes. -- Randall ----Comic #1---- [[A man and a woman stand facing each other.]] Man: Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in decades. [[The man points behind the woman, and the woman turns around.]] Man: In fact, here it comes now! [[Jupiter, about the size of the characters' heads, hovers into the frame at about head-height.]] Jupiter: Hey, guys. [[Jupiter continues to hover through the frame as the characters watch it go.]] Jupiter: Anyone need a gravitational slingshot? Woman: No, I'm good. Jupiter: Aight. ----Comic #2---- [[A man sits on a box, playing a guitar.]] Man: ...Now I don't blame him 'cause he ran and hid, -- but the meanest thing that he ever did -- was before he left, he went and named me "Trig." ----Comic #3---- [[A man looks down a well.]] Man: Oh God, a little girl is trapped down this well! [[The man runs off screen.]] [[He returns, leading a pony.]] Man: It's okay, we got you that pony you always wanted! [[He tries to cram the pony down the well with the aid of a large stick.]] Man: Get... in... there... -- Ugh! ----Comic #4---- [[A man and a woman stand in a server room.]] Man: I like to get back to nature by coming out here to the server room. -- The warmth, the whirr of the drives, the drone of the fans, the howl of the wolves... Woman: Wolves? Man: Yeah, we started a reintroduction program. ----Comic #5---- [[A man stands by himself in the frame.]] Man: Yo momma's so masculine that she... oh, wait, that's your dad. -- Is your mom the lady over by the door? Aww, she looks nice! ----Comic #6---- [[A man runs toward another man who is wearing a powdered wig, holding a gun in one hand, and a flute in the other. Behind him, someone is chasing him on a motorcycle.]] Man: Bach, activate the magic flute and teleport us home! Wagner's right behind me on his Ring Cycle! ----Comic #7---- Hotness Ratings: [[A close up of a woman with wavy hair.]] Incredily made-up girl on magazine cover. ((Inset of a man: "Meh." [[An average girl.]] Girl in your bio class. ((Inset of man: "Two stars.")) [[Girl with mussed hair in over-sized men's shirt.]] Girl in your bio class wearing one of your shirts. Girl: Want some breakfast? ((Inset man: "Four stars." [[Girl with another sort of shirt speaking to an older lady.]] Girl in your bio class wearing one of your mom's shirts. Girl: Thanks for the great night. ((Inset man: "Wat!")) [[Creepy-looking girl.]] Girl in your bio class wearing your mom's skin like a suit. Girl: Give Mommy a hug! ((Inset man, screaming: "AAAAAAAA")) {{Title text: The wolves thin the RAID arrays, removing the slowest and weakest disks to keep the average seek speed high.}}

Randall: Hey, everyone-- Randall: As I mentioned on the blag, I'm going through a rough time right now. I'm dealing with a serious family illness and it's become pretty overwhelming. Randall: We're still getting a handle on everything, and I appreciate your patience while we figure it all out. Randall: Thank you to everyone who wrote in with kind wishes and words of support. They've been passed on and meant a lot. Randall: I like drawing, and might find time for it in the coming weeks, but I'm not going to push myself to stick to a schedule. Randall: However, between my stacks of notebooks, scanner, and supportive sysadmin, I should at least have something interesting to share with yyou in this space each M W F. Randall: <3 {{Title text: <3 If there's anything you can do, I'll let you know. For the moment, any simple distracting online games sent to sick@xkcd.com would not be unappreciated.}}

[[A man and a woman are inside each others' thought bubbles.]] {{Title text: A universe that needed someone to observe it in order to collapse it into existence would be a pretty sorry universe indeed.}}

[[A woman is standing at a whiteboard considering a logical proof.]] Woman #1: Wow. I can't find fault with your proof. [[The woman is still looking at the white board, the frame expands to show a second woman walking away, rubbing her hands together in an evil manner.]] Woman #1: You've show the inconsistency -- and thus the invalidity -- of basic logic itself. Woman #2: Excellent, on to step two. [[The second woman sits down at a desk and begins to write.]] Dear Dr. Knuth, [[She continues to write.]] I am writing to collect from you the $3,372,564.45 I am owed for discovering 1,317,408 errors in The Art of Computer Programming... {{Title text: Dear Reader: Enclosed is a check for ninety-eight cents. Using your work, I have proven that this equals the amount you requested.}}

[[A man spins in circles on a chair next to a desk. A graph of productivity vs Coefficient of friction of desk chair shows a curve that drops off very quickly as the coefficient of friction approaches zero, with the productivity becoming negative at low values. It plateaus in the middle of the graph, and then begins to drop less steeply as coefficient of friction increases above the optimal point.]] Man in chair: Wheeeeeeeee {{Title text: As the CoKF approaches 0, productivity goes negative as you pull OTHER people into chair-spinning contests.}}

[[Man is talking to woman. Woman holds up a diode.]] Man: We need to talk. Woman: Okay, but first hold the end of this diode. [[They hold the diode]] Man: You hurt my feelings yesterday. Woman: You embarassedme with my family last weekend. [[They are still holding the diode between them]] Man: I'm sorry. {{Title text: And the worst part is you won't apologize.}}

Probability of phrases becoming action movie one liners: ((Panels are arranged from More Likely on the left to Less likely on the right)) [[A woman points a gun down at a man who is on the floor, his gun just out of reach]] Woman: You're going down the memory hole now, asshole. [[Man on ground points gun up at blade-armed man standing next to a board with science on it]] Man with gun: Hey! You forgot to carry the two. [[Woman on desk points sword at man standing on floor]] Woman: Looks like the fed just lowered the interest rate. [[Man with gun looks down at woman slumped on floor]] Man: Guess you should've scrolled all the way to the bottom before clicking "agree". [[Woman holds pistol to the back of the head of another woman holding a rifle]] Woman with pistol: Bangarang, motherfucker. {{Title text: 'Upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Flash player to view THIS content, bitch.' ::triggers detonator::}}

[[Woman is singing, man is staring at a flass of water on a table.]] Woman: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... Anything break? Man: No, but the water in the glass turned to wine. [[Man picks up glass]] Woman: Weird. Man: No, wait. This is blood. Woman: Okay, Physics, quit fucking with us. Physics: You stop looking for the higgs boson and we'll talk. {{Title text: I read in this one article that the breaking of electroweak symmetry is the reason we have SOULS. This guy with a degree said so!}}

[[Girl and beret guy stand under the stars]] Girl: The starlight falls on our eyes after a journey across trillions of miles - dying here at last, so far from home, all so we can see some pretty dots. [[Beret guy think for a moment, then runs away, comes back with a mirror, and holds it up towards the stars]] {{Title text: Don't worry! From the light's point of view, home and your eye are in the same place, and the journey takes no time at all! Relativity saves the day again.}}

[[A man is talking to a woman]] Man: Spammers are breaking traditional captchas with AI, so I've built a new system. It asks users to rate a slate of comments as "Constructive" or "Not constructive". [[Close up of man]] Man: Then it has them reply with comments of their own, which are later rated by other users. [[Woman standing next to man again]] Woman: But what will you do when spammers train their bots to make automated constructive and helpful comments? [[Close up of man again]] Man: Mission. Fucking. Accomplished. {{Title text: And what about all the people who won't be able to join the community because they're terrible at making helpful and constructive co-- ... oh.}}

[[Three stick figures stand in front of a few graphs and scientific looking pictures. One of them has hair.]] Los Alamos, 1945... Middle Figure: We have a decision. If we've done our math right, this test will unleash heaven's fire and make us as gods. Middle figure: But it's possible we made a mistake, and the heat will ignite the atmosphere, destroying the planet in a cleansing conflagration. Left figure: Wow. Um. Question: Just to double-check - although I'm 99% sure - Left figure: Is it "Soh cah toa" or "coh sah toa"? Middle figure: Oh, for the love of... can someone redo Steve's work? Right figure: I don't want to do the test anymore. {{Title text: The test didn't (spoiler alert) destroy the world, but the fact that they were even doing those calculations makes theirs the coolest jobs ever.}}

{{A table is labeled with three columns: "Crazy phenomenon," "If it worked, people would be using it to make a killing in..." and "Are they?"}} Remote Viewing, Dowsing - Oil Prospecting - Auras, Homeopathy, Remote Prayer - Health Care Cost Reduction - Astrology, Tarot - Financial Business Planning - Crystal Energy - Regular Energy - Curses, Hexes - The Military - Relativity - GPS Devices - X Quantum Electrodynamics - Semiconductor Circuit Design - X Eventually, arguing that these things work means arguing that modern capitalism isn't THAT ruthlessly profit-focused. {{Title text: Not to be confused with 'making money selling this stuff to OTHER people who think it works', which corporate accountants and actuaries have zero problems with.}}

[[A girl sits on a rock and a boy sits on the grass]] Girl: Seriously? I like that song too! I bet no two people in the history of the world have ever been so connected! Caption: I'm not sure why we romanticize "young love". {{Title text: Or love in general, for that matter. It just leads to the idea that either your love is pure, perfect, and eternal, and you are storybook-compatible in every way with no problems, or you're LYING when you say 'I love you'.}}

[[Person is on the phone, and holding up some networking hardware.]] Person: ... restart my computer? I know you have a script to follow, but the uplink light on the modem is going off every few hours. The problem is between your office and the modem. Person: My computer has nothing to do with ... okay, whatever, I "restarted my computer." Person: It's still down, and even if it comes back, it's going to die again in a few hours, because your-- Person: I don't HAVE a start menu. This is a Haiku install, but that's not import-- Person: Haiku? It's an experimental OS that I ... oh, never mind. Person: I'm sorry, but this won't get fixed until I talk to an engineer. Can you look around for someone wearing cargo pants, maybe a subway map on their wall? [[The tech support person on the other end is wearing a headset, and looks around.]] Tech: There's a chick two phones over with a stuffed penguin doll and a poster of some bearded dudes with swords. Person: Perfect. Can you put her on? Tech: Sure. [[Person is now talking to the engineer.]] Person: Hey, so sorry to bother you, but my connection-- Engineer: Yeah, I see it. Lingering problems from a server move. <<type type>> Engineer: Should be fixed now. Person: Thank you SO MUCH. Engineer: No problem. Hey, in the future, if you're on any tech support call, you can say the code word "shibboleet" at any point and you'll be automatically transferred to someone who knows a minimum of two programming languages. Person: Seriously? Engineer: Yup. It's a backdoor put in by the geeks who built these phone support systems back in the 1990's. Engineer: Don't tell anyone. Person: Oh my god, this is the greatest-- [[Person wakes up.]] Person: Wha-- Person: ... DAMMIT. {{Title text: I recently had someone ask me to go get a computer and turn it on so I could restart it. He refused to move further in the script until I said I had done that.}}

[[A stick figure sits on a box playing a guitar and singing]] Singer: Take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Singer: Take me down to the paradise village where the grass is green and the cute girls pillage. Singer: Take me down to the fire-charred counties where the law's restored by Canadian mounties. Singer: Take me down to Orwellian regions where they retrain girls using cortical lesions Singer: Take me down to the paradise borough where the grass is labeled 'cause the girls are thorough. Ohh, won't you please take me hooome... {{Title text: Take me down to the paradise municipality where the grass is mauve and the girls aren't fromthisreality.}}

[[Beret guy stands next to a pumpkin with a picture of a pumpkin carved into it]] Interlocutor: So what did you- BeretGuy: I carved a pumpkin! Interlocutor: ... [[Black hat guy stands next to a pumpkin and a box labeled "Nitro-glycerin. Do not shake."]] Interlocutor: Taking on teen vandals, I see. HatGuy: Heavens, No. My pumpkin simply has chest pains. In fact, I'll leave a note warning them not to smash it. [[Long-haired stick figure stands next to a jack-o'lantern]] HairFigure: My pumpkin's name is Harold. He just realized that all the time he used to spend daydreaming, he now spends worrying. He'll try to distract himself later with holiday traditions, but it won't work. [[Generic stick figure stands next to two pumpkins and a knife]] StickFigure: I carved and carved, and the next thing I knew I had two pumpkins. Interlocutor: I told you not to take the axiom of choice. {{Title text: The Banach-Tarski theorem was actually first developed by King Solomon, but his gruesome attempts to apply it set back set theory for centuries.}}

Handling a student who challenges your expertise with an insightful question: [[There's a picture of the cross section of an airfoil, with an arrow above and below, pointing from right to left. Layered on top of these arrows, pointing up and down at the cross section, are a larger arrow below and a smaller arrow above.]] ((This panel just contains text, and has a speech curlique hanging towards the person in the next panel.)) Teacher: So, kids, the air above the wing travels a longer distance, so it has to go faster to keep up. Faster air exerts less pressure, so the wing is lifted upward. Student: But then why can planes fly upside down? ((The teacher is standing, pondering the question. Three arrows point out of this panel, leading to each of the next three panels which are arranged vertically.)) ((This is a label at the top of the panel, not a character speaking.)) Right: ((This is the character speaking.)) Teacher: Wow, good question! Maybe this picture is simplified -- or wrong! We should learn more. Wrong: Teacher: It's... complicated. Teacher: And we need to move on. Very wrong: Teacher: Santa Claus is your parents. {{Title text: This is a fun explanation to prepare your kids for; it's common and totally wrong. Good lines include 'why does the air have to travel on both sides at the same time?' and 'I saw the Wright brothers plane and those wings were curved the same on the top and bottom!'}}

[[A giant, untranscribable map of the internet. Apologies from the transcriber, who did her best to include as much as she could without going nuts.]] ((Label in the center of main map.)) Updated Map of Online Communities Size on map represents volume of Daily Social activity (posts, chat, etc). Based on data gathered over the Spring and Summer of 2010 [[Two insets on the upper left-hand corner shows that this map is a tiny portion of the huge continent of Spoken Language, encompassing portions of the Internet, Email, and Cell Phones (SMS).]] [[The largest landmass on the map by far, which takes up nearly the entire northern half of the map is "Facebook" -- with large states in the southeast of the country labeled 'Farmville' and 'Happy Farm'. There is a much smaller state to the west of these called 'Farm Town'. To the north of these states is a large swath of unremarkable land entitled 'Northern Wasteland of Unread Updates.' This is directly north of the large Dopamine Sea. A peninsula on the southwest, just below the Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions, houses many tiny states, such as MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Bebo, & Hi5. It is bordered on the south by Buzzword Bay, which contains several islands of varying sizes. Among these are YouTube and Twitter (the largest), which are separated by the Social Media Consultant Channel. To the southeast of Twitter, across the Sea of Protocol Confusion, is another, equally large island. Most of it is Skype, with the north having two largish states called AIM and Windows Live Messenger. On the southwest part of the island are two smaller states called GG and Yahoo Messenger. The Island of Skype is extremely close to, but separated by the Great Firewall (a dashed line), the large landmass of QQ. It's north shore is the Gulf of China and Grass Mud Horse Bay. Outside of these bays, over the Great Firewall are two islands called Craigslist and 2Channel. In the Dopamine Sea, off the southern shores of Farmvile and Happy Farm, is MMO Isle. Its largest state is WoW, with Runescape, Lineage, Maple Story, Habbo, and the Mountains of Steam among its notable landmarks. To the southeast of the island is the Gulf of Lag, in which sits the CDC Games island, with Eve Online. To the east of Twitter is Troll Bay, with such islands as Reddit and Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicio.us, and Wikipedia Talk Pages. To their south are the IRC isles, of which one is the tiny island of #xkcd. East of these islands, and north of Skype island, is the Sea of Memes. In this sea, to the north of Craigslist and 2Channel, is an archipelago of tiny islands. There is an inset, labeled 'Forums.' (See below.) To the southwest if Twitter island, in the Sea of Opinions, are the blog islands. These lie south of the islands in Buzzword Bay, as well. The northernmost islands in this group are centered around the Bay of Drama, on which can be found Diary Blogs, Gossip Blogs, and Livejournal. Gossip Blogs share an island with Political, Music, and Tech Blogs. To the north of this island is a smaller island called Photo Blogs. South of Diary Blogs, and off the southwest coast of Music blogs is a smaller island called Fandom Blogs. South of Tech Blogs, off of which sprouts the small peninsula of Business Blogs, is the Spamblog Straits. On the other side of the straits is a large island made up of Miscellaneous Blogs, with two states demarcated as Religious Blogs and Blog Blogs. Southwest of the Blog Islands is the Sea of Zero (0) Comments.]] [[An inset of a group of islands in the sea of memes located on the lower right corner of the map, labeled 'Forums'. The largest by far is 4chan and b . Also found here are D2JSP, JLA Frums, Fan Forum, Something Awful, and many smaller ones, too numerous to list here.]] [[The northeastern third of Gossip Political Tech Blogs island is another inset labeled 'Blogosphere (Core)'. This can be found on the lower left corner of the map. Two peninsulas in Political Blogs bookend the Bay of Flame -- these are Liberal Blogs and Conservative Blogs. Between them lie several tiny islands such as Politics Daily, CNN Politcal Ticker, and Mediaite. Off the coast of Liberal Blogs lies the island of NYTimes, off the coast of Conservative Blogs is Libertarian Isle. Between the two lies The Talk. The northern peninsula of Tech Blogs contains places such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Joystiq, and Kotaku.]] ((Text found between the two insets, which are directly below the main map.)) ABOUT THIS MAP Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community's current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community -- that is, how much talking, playing sharing, or other socializing happens there. This meant some paring of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent. Estimates are based on the numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, nonrandom sampling, a 20,000-cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leafing reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up). Sources of data include Google and Bing, Wiipedia, Alexa, Big-Boards.com, StumbleUpon, Wordpress, Akismet, every website statistics page I could find, press releases, news articles, and individual site employees. Thanks in particular to folks at Last.fm, LiveJournal, Reddit, and the New York Times, as well as sysadmins at a number of sites who shared statistics on condition of anonymity. {{Title text: Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.}}

[[A man with a black hat is going through a door, a bottle in his hand. A voice speaks to him from off panel.]] Person: Seriously? This thing runs Java ? It's single-purpose hardware! [[The person is sitting at a computer, holding some device which is wired to a box, and pointing at the screen.]] Person: I bet they actually hired someone to spend six months porting this JVM so they could write their 20 lines of code in a familiar setting. [[The man with a black hat has a pair of bolt cutters in the hand that had been obscured in the first panel.]] Black hat guy: Well, you know what they say -- when all you have is a pair of bolt cutters and a bottle of vodka, everything looks like the lock on the door of Wolf Blitzer's boathouse. Person: I'm glad you had a nice night. {{Title text: Took me five tries to find the right one, but I managed to salvage our night out--if not the boat--in the end.}}

[[A person with disheveled hair stretches their arms. A sunburst indicating sleepiness is above their head.]] <<YAWN>> Person: I just woke up [...] [[The person continues speaking from off panel, to a second person who's sitting at a table with a laptop and cup. They've leaned their elbow on the chair, turning to face the first person.]] Person: From the most beautiful dream. Second person: Which was? Person: All the girls who read and follow The Rules and all the guys who swear by the techniques in The Game paired off with each other and left the rest of us alone forever. Second person: Mmmmmm... {{Title text: Lucky. In MY dream, all the people who grew up loving The Giving Tree paired up with all the students who had weird dreams after reading The Metamorphosis. That one was more confusing.}}

[[Stephen Hawking is facing a pair of people. His voice appears in a square machine readable font.]] Stephen Hawking: I thought maybe later we should go see a movie. [[The two people are running.]] [[The front page of a newspaper appears instead of a third panel.]] ((Name of the paper.)) The Times ((Main headline.)) Physicist Stephen Hawking Suggests We See More Films [[A picture of Stephen Hawking is in the center of the page.]] ((Picture's caption.)) Smartest Man Alive ((Secondary headline.)) What Does He Know That We Don't? ((Large quote in article body.)) Is this a warning? [[Stephen Hawking is sitting alone, looking depressed.]] {{Title text: 'Guys? The Town is supposed to be good, and I thou--' 'PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING DECLARES NEW FILM BEST IN ALL SPACE AND TIME' 'No, I just heard that--' 'SHOULD SCIENCE PLAY A ROLE IN JUDGING BEN AFFLECK?' 'I don't think--' 'WHAT ABOUT MATT DAMON?'}}

Frequency with which various adjectives are intensified with obscenities (based on Google hits) ((The legend above the plot reads:)) Red marker: "fucking ____" Blue marker: "____ as shit" ((Mathematical formula for scale next to the legend:)) Scale: ln(hits for intensified phrase hits for adjective alone) ((The plot itself lists a series of adjectives in approximately descending order. Each has a red and a blue marker corresponding to the scale described.)) ((Horizontal axis starts with none, then has a vertical dashed line, then 'rarely' at -17, increasing to 'often' at -5.)) ((Each adjective is listed with approximate red and blue values, in that order.)) Annoying -5 -5 Pissed -5 -6 Stupid -5 -8 Bored -6 -6 Sexy -5.5 -6.5 Adorable -6.5 -9.5 Disgusting -6.5 -12.5 Calm -7 -10 Delicious -8 -13 Obscene -6 -14 Prosaic -10 -13.5 Bemused -8.5 -14 Apropos -10.5 -16 Ambivalent -12 -17 Improper -12.5 -18 Evanescent -14 -14.5 Piquant -9.5 never Jejune -9 never Kafkaesque -10 never Stochastic -14 never Fungible -12 never Peristeronic never never ("Of or pertaining to pigeons") [[there are two small scenes in the bottom right of the plot. The first shows a pair of women holding wine glasses.]] Second woman: Yes, the Cabernet is piquant as shit this time of year. [[The second shows a person sitting at a computer desk.]] Person: Whoa, these commodities are fucking fungible ! {{Title text: 'Fucking ineffable' sounds like someone remembering how to do self-censorship halfway through a phrase.}}

<<AAAAAAAA>> [[A swarm of insects cover a computer and a person. The person is leaning back on their chair, flailing to get away.]] My package made it into Debian-main because it looked innocuous enough; no one noticed "locusts" in the dependency list. {{Title text: dpkg: error processing package (--purge): subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit 163: OH_GOD_THEYRE_INSIDE_MY_CLOTHES}}

[[Two people are walking. The first is wearing a white hat.]] Second person: It just blows my mind. She seemed so genuine. I had no idea she was such a serial liar. Second person: I just wish I had our six months back. [[The view focuses on the second person.]] Second person: Her exes say the same thing happened to them. Second person: Maybe what we need is a terrible-ex tracking and notification service. [[The second person turns, thoughtfully.]] First person: But after all the problems with sex offender registries, who would agree to run it? Second person: Maybe one of the state governments more willing to experiment could try it out... Soon... [[Two people are sitting at a table, on which sit wine glasses and plates. One has glasses and a goatee, and the other has long hair. A person approaches them carrying a clipboard and a license.]] License person: Excuse me, ma'am. Long hair person: Yes? License person: This man is known to the state of California to be a total douchebag. {{Title text: Since the goatee, glasses, and Seltzer & Friedberg DVD collection didn't tip you off, there will be a $20 negligence charge for this service.}}

[[Lightning strikes the ground, illuminating trees with a bright white light. Two people are standing near it. One has a walking stick.]] <<CRACK>> <<BOOM>> First person: Whoa! We should get inside! Second person: It's okay! Lightning only kills about 45 Americans a year, so the chances of dying are only one in 7,000,000. Let's go on! The annual death rate among people who know that statistic is one in six. {{Title text: 'Dude, wait -- I'm not American! So my risk is basically zero!'}}

[[Two men with beards stand at a crude wooden counter, one is wearing a turban. Behind the man without a turban is a woman kneeling on the ground and putting something into a box.]] Turban man: Nine silvers for a ham? That's too much! No-turban: Too much? There's a monk out back with a ladder! (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...) There's no reason to think that people throughout history didn't have just as many inside jokes and catchphrases as any modern group of high-schoolers. {{Title text: I've looked through a few annotated versions of classic books, and it's shocking how much of what's in there is basically pop-culture references totally lost on us now.}}

A man stands at a blackboard covered in equations and diagrams, an open laptop and scattered paper at his feet. His fists are balled in anger and there is a little angry squiggle over his head. A second man stands behind him, arms out in a shrug. ((Words in <> are gray.)) Second man: You're trying to predict the behavior of <complicated system>? Just model it as a <simple object>, and then add some secondary terms to account for <complications I just thought of>. -- Easy, right? -- So, why does <your field> need a whole journal, anyway? Liberal-arts majors may be annoying sometimes, but there's nothing more obnoxious than a physicist first encountering a new subject. {{Title text: If you need some help with the math, let me know, but that should be enough to get you started! Huh? No, I don't need to read your thesis, I can imagine roughly what it says.}}

[[A man is sitting facing a computer, Hat man is standing behind him.]] Hat man: Password entropy is rarely relevant. The real modern danger is password reuse. Man: How so? (Computer: Password too weak.) [[Close up on just Hat man.]] Hat man: Set up a web service to do something simple, like image hosting or tweet syndication, so a few million people set up free accounts. [[The man has now turned his chair around to face Hat man.]] Hat man: Bam, you've got a few million emails, default usernames, and passwords. [[Just Hat man.]] Hat man: Tons of people use one password, strong or not, for most accounts. Use the list and some proxies to try automated logins to the 20 or 30 most popular sites, plus banks and payola and such. [[A piece of paper containing a list with three columns, titled 'Email', 'User', and 'Pass'. An arrow branching out from the paper to the words 'Banks', 'Facebook', 'Gmail', 'Paypal', and 'Twitter'. [[Hat man is still standing facing the man in the chair, who now puts his hand to his chin.]] Hat man: You've now got a few hundred thousand real identities on a few dozen services, and nobody suspects a thing. Man: And then what? [[The same as previous panel, further back.]] Hat man: Well, that's where I got suck. Man: You DID this? Hat man: Why did you think I hosted so many unprofitable web services? [[Close-up on Hat man.]] Hat man: I could probably net a lot of money, one way or another, if I did things carefully. But research shows more money doesn't make people happier, once they make enough to avoid day-to-day financial stress. [[Another close-up, facing opposite direction.]] Hat man: I could mess with people endlessly, but I do that already. I could get a political or religious idea out to most of the world, but since March of 1997 I don't really believe in anything. [[Hat man facing man in chair again.]] Hat man: So, here I sit, a puppetmaster who wants nothing from his puppets. -- It's the same problem Google has. Man: Oh? ((This panel is indented.)) Google… [[A man stands, his chair behind him, leaning his hands on the edge of a boardroom table with the Google logo on it. Behind it sit a woman with a bun and glasses and another man.]] Man: Okay, everyone, we control the world's information. Now it's time to turn evil. What's the plan? Woman: Make boatloads of money? [[The man stands with his hand on his head.]] Man: We already do! Voice off-screen: Set up a companywide CoD4: Modern Warfare tournament each week? Man: That's not evil! Voice: Ooh, dibs on the lobby TV! Man: Okay, we suck at this. {{Title text: It'll be hilarious the first few times this happens.}}

[[A man looks down at a puddle on the floor and speaks to someone out-of-panel.]] Man: Hey, while you're out, can you pick up some spray cleaner that works on cat vomit? Voice: Can do! -- Bye! [[Man extends his arm and faces the leaving person.]] Man: ...Wait! Voice: Yes? Man: Uh. ...You are in my heart always. Voice: ...? Sometimes, when people leave, I'm seized by a sudden fear that they'll die while they're out, and I'll never forget the last thing I said to them. {{Title text: What'll I say -- "I was staring at some cat vomit when I got the news?"}}

A man looks down at his arm calmly, while next to him a woman is violently flailing around in terror. In the foreground, two scientists, one holding a clipboard, look on in puzzlement. Man: My rash seems to have shrunk by about 20% today. Woman: OH GOD SPIDERS Scientists: ??? {{Title text: Which, at one point, led to a study showing that LSD produces no more hallucinations than a placebo.}}

[[Two cowboys face off silently in the desert, the blazing sun beating down.]] [[They exchange steely glares, hands poised to reach their guns, as a tumbleweed rolls into frame.]] <<TUMBLE>> [[Close-up on the tumbleweed. It draws two guns.]] <<CLICK CLICK>> [[The tumbleweed shoots both cowboys simultaneously, and they fall backwards.]] <<BLAM BLAM>> {{Title text: The tumbleweed then tried to roll off into the sunset, but due to the Old West's placement north of the subtropical ridge, the prevailing winds were in the wrong direction.}}

[[The Grim Reaper driving a horse-drawn carriage.]] Because I could not stop for death He kindly stopped for me [[A woman wearing her hair in a bun grabs Death by the arm and pulls him off the carriage. There is a Y-button symbol in the lower left corner.]] The carriage held but just oursel-- Death: Hey! <<GRAB>> [[The woman takes off in the carriage, leaving Death in her dust, on the ground.]] Woman: Hyah! [[The Grand Theft Auto logo is shown, with the stamp "Emily Dickinson Edition" underneath. There is a picture of stick-Emily, arms crossed, and a scythe next to her.]] {{Title text: I learned from Achewood that since this poem is in ballad meter, it can be sung to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Since then, try as I might, I haven't ONCE been able to read it normally.}}

[[A man sits at a control screen, wearing a headset.]] Man: Okay, people. The orbiter is passing south of Iceland. The next scheduled check-in will be at 32.0°N 35.5°E, over the Palestinian territories. Voice off-screen #1: You mean over the State of Palestine? Voice off-screen #2: You mean over Israel ? [[The man looks up and says nothing.]] [[The man looks back down at his screen.]] Man: I've rescheduled the check-in for 35.2°N 96.6°W, over Oklahoma. Voice off-screen #2: You mean occupied North Texas? Man: Dammit, Frank. {{Title text: Normally, the Shuttle can't quite safely reach the orbital inclination required to pass over both those points from a Canaveral launch, but this is an alternate history in which either it launches from Vandenburg or everyone hates the Outer Banks.}}

[[Beret man runs into the room, someone is in bed under the covers.]] Beret man: Wake up! --- Wake up! Bed man: What is it? [[Beret man stands talking to person still hiding under covers.]] Beret man: We're alive during the time when they're first discovering other planetary systems! They're finding them as fast as they can build new instruments to look for them! [[Dramatic shot of just Beret man.]] Beret man: And if one of Earth's cultures advances its space program enough to start enriching uranium on asteroids, we'll lose the main barrier to restarting Project Orion and building nuke-riding City-ships! [[Beret man bends down to eye level with person in bed, who is peaking his face out from the covers.]] Beret man: The only known technology capable of fast interstellar travel could be operational within just a few generations, and we're discovering all these destinations to pick from! -- Come on! Bed man: Can I hit "snooze"? Beret man: Okay, but just once! {{Title text: I'm just worried that we'll all leave and you won't get to come along!}}

[[Woman on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.]] Woman: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... uh... um... hi? [[Hat man on stage, holding microphone.]] Hat man: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when yo mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's proud of. [[Man on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.]] Man: Yo, I'm M.C. Quine and I'm here to say, "Yo, I'm M.C. Quine and I'm here to say!" [[Beret man on stage, holding microphone.]] Beret man: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears? Audience member: Those are orcs. Beret man: Oh. {{Title text: Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?}}

[[A man gets into bed.]] It's so much easier falling asleep [[A woman is lying in bed, gripping her pillow.]] With you beside me-- [[The man is lying on his back in bed.]] All the incentive I need [[Full shot of the bed, the woman is on the left, gripping the pillow, the man is as far to the right as possible, nearly falling off, facing away from her.]] To leave the world behind. {{Title text: Sweet unintersecting dreams!}}

[[Full body shot of man on phone.]] Man: Looking forward to seeing your new place! What's the address? -- Mm hmm. Yes, I'm taking 495. But I have a GPS, so I really just need the street address. [[Close up.]] Man: ...then south on 18, okay, but I have a GPS, so if you just want to skip to the street address, I can... [[Full body shot, facing other direction.]] Man: Thanks, I'm glad to know Highland Road comes a mile after the big intersection, but I keep saying I have a GPS, can you tell me the street address? ... Technically that's just more information on how to get to your place, not the address itself. If you could-- [[Close up again, man writing on pad.]] Man: ...I appreciate that you want to help, but I'm ignoring you and just waiting for the... Listen, I just remembered I need to mail you a letter. What's your address? -- Mhm... okay... Great, Thanks! I'll see you in an hour! {{Title text: Yes, I understand that the turn is half a mile past the big field, but my GPS knows that, too. This would be easier if you weren't about to ask me to repeat it all back to you.}}

[[A woman runs up to a man.]] Woman: Rob! Rob! Man: You look terrified! What's wrong? Woman: We've made a huge mistake! [[The woman and man stand facing each other.]] Woman: Remember last week when we dug up all those Indian bones and made puppets out of them? Man: Sure... [[The woman holds her arms out for emphasis, the man puts his hands to his face in horror.]] Woman: It turns out they were buried over an ancient Indian burial ground! Man: Oh my God! {{Title text: It gets worse! You know that wizened old monk with the gypsy wife whose voodoo shop we smash up every every day after school?}}

[[Words are painted in white on a black road.]] BACKWARD. I READ THINK ENGINEERS HIGHWAY {{Title text: They actually started the reversed-text practice in 1973 -- not for ease-of-reading reasons, but because too many people were driving backward down the highway blasting the Star Wars opening theme.}}

HOW TO BECOME THE MOST HATED BAND IN THE WORLD: Record an album that's nothing but brilliant, catchy instant classics guaranteed popularity and airtime, [[A man driving in a car, hands off the wheel in sudden surprise and confusion.]] <<music: So far from hooome but I can't sto-HONK>> Man: AUGH! WHAT? With a sample of a car horn, cell phone, or alarm clock inserted randomly in each song. {{Title text: There are two or three songs out there with beeps in the chorus that sound exactly like the clock radio alarm I had in high school, and hearing it makes me think my life since junior year has been a dream I'm about to wake up from.}}

[[There is an airport security checkpoint where a queue of ten passengers is waiting to go through a backscatter x-ray scanner. Near the back of the line, Hat Guy is standing next to a stand which says "Viagra $20". One passenger next to him is drinking a glass of water; another is contemplating the sign.]] Security Guard (thinking): Oh god. {{Title text: Don't need any, thanks. I have a backscattering fetish.}}

[[Pizza guy enters through door; maid is dusting.]] Pizza Guy: Pizza delivery! Did someone order a hot sausag-- Maid: Mon dieu! Monsieur is home early-- Both: Wait, who are you? Pizza guy: Wait, this is the Jones', right? Their daughter was supposed to be having a party! Maid: No, I thought Mr. Jones was coming home early. [[Pizza guy is off-panel left as plumber enters from the right.]] Pizza guy: But I thought-- Plumber: Howdy, Mrs. Jones. I hear you need some plumbi-- Plumber: Who are you? [[The pizza guy looks in a cabinet; the others are off-panel right.]] Maid: Sorry, big mixup. Pizza guy: Hey, check out out--the Joneses have Agricola! Plumber: I love that game! [[Mr. Jones and Miss Jones arrive home. Pizza guy, maid, and plumber are sitting on the floor playing Agricola.]] Mr. Jones: What in the name of ... Pizza guy: Dammit, I wanted that grain. Maid: Hush, you have starting player. {{Title text: 'How about a little ... *family growth*?' 'Dude, that's not until round two.'}}