ABCD

[[Anchorman sitting at newsdesk.]] Anchor: (to camera) And for more on the summit, we turn to trade expert Dr. Steven Berlee. Steven? [[Dr. Steven Berlee is sitting to the right of Anchor at newsdesk.]] DSB: I'm not actually a doctor or a trade expert. I'm just a programmer who lies to get on news shows. [[Close-up on DSB.]] Anchor: (off camera) What? Why? DSB: To share a message with newscasters. [[Pull back to shot of both men.]] Anchor: Which is? DSB: Every time you say "backslash" as part of a web address on air, I die a little. {{Title text: I mean, it's been almost twenty years. Now, it's possible you're simply embedding Windows directory paths in your URIs, but in that case you need more than just a short lecture.}}

[[A seat selection diagram from an airport checkin kiosk is shown.]] Select desired seat by clicking on the above chart. [[A woman in a scarf with some suitcases is standing in an airport, contemplating the kiosk.]] [[The cursor indicates the cockpit of the plane.]] <<click>> [[The woman is in the cockpit of the plane, holding the yoke, with the pilot looking horrified behind her.]] Woman: WOOOOOOO {{Title text: Don't click on the wing.}}

[[A person is talking to a friend.]] Person: I was literally glued to my seat through the entire-- Off-Panel: HAH! Off-Panel: YOU MEAN "FIGURATIVELY"! [[The off-panel voice came from a scary guy with wild hair and a big beard.]] Person: Who are you? Scary Guy: Eighteen years I've watched you! Scary Guy: Waiting! Ever since that day in seventh grade when you humiliated me. [[We see the scene from seventh grade. Younger, normal-looking scary guy is standing with a girl; the younger version of the person he's addressing is standing with a friend.]] Young Scary Guy: I told him and he literally EXPLODED! Young Person: Uh, unless he physically BURST, you mean "figuratively." Friend: Hah. Remember? Scary Guy: I knew one day you'd slip, and I vowed I'd be there to see you fall. HOW DOES IT FEEL? Person: You are literally the craziest person I've ever met. Scary Guy: You did it again! Person: No, I didn't. {{Title text: The chemistry experiment had me figuratively -- and then shortly thereafter literally -- glued to my seat.}}

[[A basic Tetris screen is depicted, with a next piece indicator, score and top score, and level listed as 01. The bottom of the pit is curved into a semicircle. A square and L piece are sitting crookedly in the pit; an S piece is falling.]] Hell {{Title text: There's also a Katamari level where everything is just slightly bigger than you, and a Mario level with a star just out of reach.}}

When an earthquake hits, people flood the internet with posts about it--some within 20 or 30 seconds. [[A room with a desk, chair, and computer are shaking. The person in it is on his phone, using Twitter.]] RobM163 Huge earthquake here! Damaging seismic waves travel at 3-5km s. Fiber signals move at ~200,000kh s. (minus network lag) This means when the seismic waves are about 100km out, they begin to be overtaken by the waves of posts ABOUT them. [[There is a geographical border on a map; the front edge of the wave of the quake is shown, with the front edge of the wave of tweets surpassing it.]] People outside this radius may get woord of the quake via Twitter, IRC, or SMS BEFORE the shaking hits. [[A man and woman are standing, holding cell phones. The woman is looking at hers.]] Woman: Whoa! Earthquake! Sadly, a Twitterer's first instinct is not to find shelter. Man and Woman (on phones): RT @RobM163 Huge earthquake here! {{Title text: The USGS operates a really neat email SMS earthquake notification service (earthquake.usgs.gov ens ) that allows fine-grained control of notifications.}}

[[A man and a woman are looking at his computer, on the desk.]] Man: You know this metal rectangle full of little lights? Woman: Yeah. Man: I spend most of my life pressing buttons to make the pattern of lights change however i want. Woman: Sounds good. Man: But today, the pattern of lights is ALL WRONG! Woman: Oh god! Try pressing more buttons! Man: IT'S NOT HELPING! {{Title text: This is how I explain computer problems to my cat. My cat usually seems happier than me.}}

[[Person encounters a square on the ground.]] Person: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland? A. Square: Still flat. What's up? Person: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure. [[A character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.]] Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain. Person: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now. A. Square: It's okay. Person: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like Spongebob. That was out of line. A. Square: Yes, it was. {{Title text: Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.}}

[[Three people, one woman and two men, sit along a table with dishes and drinks in front of them. A fourth man is walking in, a plate with food on it in one hand, a laptop in the other.]] Woman: I've got... Cheerios with a shot of vermouth. Man #1: At least it's better than the quail eggs in whipped cream from last time. Man #2: Are these Skittles deep-fried? Man #3: C'mon guys, be patient. In a few hundred more meals, the genetic algorithm should catch up to existing recipes and start to optimize. {{Title text: To be fair, the brazed and confused newt on a bed of crushed Doritos turned out to be delicious.}}

[[A woman sits at a computer desk, and a man stands near her holding a book.]] Man: Weird--this parasitic worm infects the brain, damaging the areas responsible for spatial reasoning in dreams. Signs of infection include dreams about not fitting in your car comfortably, driving from the backseat, or veering all over the road. Woman: (thinking) Oh God. My Hobby: Taking advantage of the fact that some specific dreams are weirdly common, but not everyone who has them realizes this. {{Title text: Hey, it says here that if you dream about your teeth falling out, it means they're spreading.}}

((Panel consists of a large equation with call-out text indicating what each variable indicates)) P = Wp x (Cr + Mi) x Tk x F0 + F1 x Dt X Au ˜ 100,000 Wp (7,000,000,000) World Population Cr (1 10 000) Fraction of people who imagine an alien encounter because they're crazy or want to feel special Mi (1 10 000) Fraction of people who misinterpret a physical or physiological experience as an alien sighting Tk (1 10) Probability that they'll tell someone F0 (10) Average number of people they tell F1 (10) Average number of people each friend tells this "firsthand" account Dt (9 10) Probability that any details not fitting the narrative will be revised or forgotten in retelling Au (1 100) Fraction of people with the means and motivation to share the story with a wider audience (blogs, forums, reporters) Even with conservative guesses for the values of the variables, this suggests there must be a huge number of credible-sounding alien sightings out there, available to anyone who wants to believe! {{Title text: Statistics suggest that there should be tons of alien encounter stories, and in pracitce there are tons of alien encounter stories. This is known as Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox.}}

[[A man in a trench coat and hat stands mid-frame.]] [[The man turns his head, looking to his right.]] [[The man stands alone in a wide expanse.]] [[The man finally speaks.]] Man: Go go gadget two lesbians doing it. {{Title text: ... go go gadget video camera. Go go gadget cup.}}

[[Rob is working at a workbench. Future-Rob appears out of nowhere with a baseball bat.]] Future-Rob: Hi, Rob. Rob: Whoa, you're me! Future-Rob: You're about to have an idea for a time machine. Rob: I am? [[Future-Rob hits Rob over the head with the baseball bat.]] <<WHAM>> [[A friend approaches Future-Rob working at the workbench. The baseball bat is stashed behind it.]] Friend: Hey, Rob. What's up? Future-Rob: Nothing. This happens somewhere roughly once a month. {{Title text: We never see any time travelers because they all discover it's a huge mistake. This is also why your friend at the lab suddenly looked about a year older recently.}}

Google Result for Various Phrases: {{Each panel is a scatterplot of the described X against the number of Google hits, with trend lines. The scales vary.}} <X> Bottles of Beer on the Wall [[There are peaks at 1, 49, 73, and 99. A dip in the middle is marked "They lose steam at 66." After 99 is a steep dropoff. The largest peak is around 100,000 hits.]] I've Had <X> Boy Girlfriends [[Both lines descend at roughly the same rate from 1 to 10, although the boyfriend graph is smoother; the girlfriend graph has a small peak at 4 and a small dip at 6. The peaks are between 100,000 and 1,000,000 hits.]] I'm in <X>st nd rd th Grade [[The curve is a bell peaking at 7th grade and about 500,000 hits. A second line labeled "Including Junior, Senior, etc." follows the bell curve until the peak, then dips only slightly for 10th grade and resumes climbing.]] I Have a an <X>-Inch Penis [[The line ascends shallowly from 100,000 hits for 3 inches to a peak of 180,000 for 9 inches, then descends steeply to 20,000 for 13 inches.]] I'm a an <X>-Cup [[A has a few hundred thousand hits; the graph dips to a few thousand for C, peaks again around 100,000 for E, and then tails off.]] I'm <X> and Have Never Had a Boyfriend [[The graph is mostly a simple bell, starting and ending around 300,000 hits for 13 or 21, but there is a sharp peak of 700,000 at 18 (well above the trend line).]] Drink <X> Glasses of Water a Day [[There are barely any hits below 4 or above 12; between the two it rises steeply to about 1,000 hits, with a steep, narrow peak of 10,000 at 8.]] There Are <X> Lights [[The graph descends smoothly from several hundred thousand hits for 1 to about 10,000 for 10, except for a peak of about 1,000,000 for 4.]] I Got <X> Problems [[The plot is extremely jagged, with the largest peak of 10,000,000 hits at 99, another of 10,000 at 96, and 100 and 88.]] My IQ Is <X> [[A smooth curve starts and ends at a few thousand hits for around 85 and around 170, with the peak at several tens of thousands for 140, but there are several prominent outliers: 100, 110, 133, and 142 are all around 100,000 hits, and 147 is around 1,000,000.]] {{Title text: The typical internet user (who wants to share) has an IQ of 147 and a 9-inch penis. Well, better than the reverse, I guess.}}

[[A woman sits at a desk, typing on a computer with a fairly large flat-panel display.]] Woman: To the authors of Porn for Women : Your book features pictures of hot, clothed guys cooking, doing laundry and vacuuming. [[The woman continues typing.]] Woman: The idea seems to be that my deepest fantasies, like the rest of my life, likely revolve around housework. [[The woman continues typing.]] Woman: So I wanted to write in to clarify: in my porn, [[The woman leans forward in her chair.]] Woman: People fuck . {{Title text: Yes, there are a lot of longing looks across the bridge of Galactica first, but that's beside the point!}}

[[External view of a satellite orbiting Earth. Dialog comes from within.]] Person 1: Yes! Person 2: What? Person 1: I got our downlink into a GeoIP database. [[Internal view of the satellite, a man and a woman are floating about, the man is at a computer mounted to the wall.]] Woman: Why? Man: To mess with our advertisers. Check it out. [[An ad reads "Meet local girls in Low Earth Orbit tonight!" and has two photos of girls in sexy poses, one captioned "Tanya, 18" and the other "Amber, 19". Below them is a button that reads "CHAT LIVE".]] {{Title text: 'Meet hot young singles in your mom's basement today'? Man, screw you, GeoIP.}}

[[Sauron is sitting at a bar with a drink, beret guy is his bartender, wiping a glass.]] Background music: All the single ladies, all the single ladies... Beret guy: Hey, Sauron. Why so glum? Sauron: Gil-Galad saw through me and threw me out of Undon. Galadriel, too. I'll never rule anyone at this rate. [[Close up on Sauron, waist up.]] Background music: All the single ladies, all the single ladies... Sauron: Eru created such beautiful creatures -- elves and men and dwarves -- and all I've got are these stupid Orcs. [[Full body view of Sauron on barstool, arms raised.]] Background music: 'Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it... Sauron: I mean, I-- [[Same view, arms lowered as realization dawns on him.]] Background music: 'Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it... {{Title text: Using a ring to bind someone you covet into your dark and twisted world? Wow, just got the subtext there. Also, the apparently eager Beyoncé would've made one badass Nazgûl.}}

[[A man is standing over another man, who is strapped into a chair with wires attached to his head and arms. The wires lead to a large lie detector on a stand next to him, which has jagged lines drawn across it.]] Standing man: IS THERE AN EARTHQUAKE HAPPENING?! Sitting man: No! <<SCRITCH SCRITCH>> Pro Tip: In a pinch, a lie detector can double as a seismograph. {{Title text: The reverse only works if the subject has a nervous twitch.}}

[[A person sits in a chair at a desk, papers piled on top, writing furiously. Depicted above are apparently the writing, a series of nodes in various Collatz sequences (starting with 7, 21, 24, 29, 106, 176 and 256), all eventually leading back to 1.]] The Collatz Conjecture states that if you pick an number, and if it's even divide it by two and if it's odd multiply it by three and add one, and you repeat this procedure long enough, eventually your friends will stop calling to see if you want to hang out. {{Title text: The Strong Collatz Conjecture states that this holds for any set of obsessively-hand-applied rules.}}

[[The Burning Bush of Exodus fame speaks to Moses, who is shielding himself with his arm, as if a great gust of wind is overtaking him.]] Bush: I AM THAT I AM, THE *LORD* YOUR GOD AND THE GOD OF YOUR FATHERS, OF ABRAHAM, OF ISAAC, AND OF JACOB. [[A droid comes into frame, Moses looks down at it.]] Bush: AND THIS IS MY COUNTERPART, R2-D2. <<BLEEP BLOOP>> {{Title text: Great, LO-M. Do you speak Bocce? I'm supposed to find one that speaks Bocce.}}

[[A man and a woman kneel on a bed, the man is shaking a cup of dice.]] Man: All right, baby. Get ready for... <<Shake shake shake roll>> ((Between the first two panels.)) [[Two dice have been rolled, the first has five dots, the second says "BREASTS".]] [[The man and woman, stare at the dice.]] Man: I really need to organize the game cupboard. Woman: Wait, so where's the other sex die? [[Two men and two women are sitting on the floor around a game.]] Man #1: I... fondle the castle guard? That doesn't seem right. Woman #1: It did 6 damage, though. {{Title text: You roll for initiative, and ... [roll] ... wow, do you ever take it.}}

[[Two men converse.]] First Man: So, is the new project going forward? Second Man: I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you! [[The men laugh cautiously.]] [[The men resume conversation.]] Second Man: I mean, kill you even sooner. {{Title text: You'll be moved up from 49 of ~7 billion to 31 of ~7 billion.}}

[[Two men face each other, conversing.]] First Man: Sometimes I'm shocked to realize how many options I have. Second Man: Oh? [[First Man shakes his fist.]] First Man: Like, at any moment in any conversation, I could just punch the person I was talking to, and all these potentially life-changing events would unfold. [[The two men converse.]] First Man: It's only my mental rules that stop me from punching you, or stripping naked, or getting on a plane to Fiji. Sure, rules have reasons. But shouldn't you exercise that freedom at least once before you did? <<WHAM>> [[First man is knocked down on the ground, dazed and bruised.]] First Man: Okay, I should have seen that coming. Second Man: But you couldn't ! That's the beauty! {{Title text: Sometimes I'm terrified to realize how many options other people have.}}

[[A terrorist is holding a gun and talking on a cell phone to the boss.]] Terrorist: We took the hostages, secured the building, and cut the communication lines like you said. Boss: Excellent. Terrorist: But then this guy climbed up the ventilation ducts and walked across broken glass, killing anyone we sent to stop him. Boss: And he rescued the hostages? Terrorist: No, he ignored them. He just reconnected the cables we cut, muttering something about "uptime." Boss: Shit, we're dealing with a sysadmin. {{Title text: The weird sense of duty really good sysadmins have can border on the sociopathic, but it's nice to know that it stands between the forces of darkness and your cat blog's servers.}}

[[Two men appear, conversing with one another]] First Man: If you assume contradictory axioms, you can derive anything. It's called the Principle of Explosion. Second Man: ANYTHING? Lemme try. [[The second man writes on a piece of paper on a counter.]] [[The two men appear again, the second man holding his paper and a mobile phone.]] Second Man: Hey, you're right! I started with P∧¬P and derived your mom's phone number! First Man: That's not how that works. [[The first man holds the piece of paper, while the second man is now talking on the mobile phone.]] Second Man: Mrs. Lenhart? First Man: Wait, this IS her number! How-- Second Man: Hi, I'm a friend of--why, yes, I AM free tonight! First Man: MOM! Second Man: No, box wine sounds lovely! {{Title text: You want me to pick up waffle cones? Oh, right, for the wine. One sec, let me just derive your son's credit card number and I'll be on my way.}}

[[A student sits at a desk, while a teacher or counselor out of frame advises]] Student: Wait. I should join this honor society to show colleges I'm honorable, and I'm honorable because I'm in an honor society? Teacher: Basically, yes. [[Tighter shot of student]] Student: Sounds like I could save time by joining the Tautology Club directly. Teacher: That's not a real club. Student: Then I'm starting it. TAUTOLOGY CLUB [[Seven individuals appear: a blonde girl, a man, a shorter male with glasses that bears a striking resemblance to Jason Fox, a taller man with a buzz cut, a brunette woman with curly hair in a ponytail, a brunette woman with straight hair, and finally our student, standing on a box.]] Blonde Girl: So how'd you learn about us? Man: From your Facebook group, "If 1,000,000 People Join This Group, It Will Have 1,000,000 People In It." Student: LISTEN UP! The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club. {{Title text: Hey, why do YOU get to be the president of Tautology Clu-- wait, I can guess.}}

BACKYARD SNOW TRACKING GUIDE ((Each panel contains an overhead view of tracks through the snow, with a caption indicating the apparent source)) [[Standard paw prints through the snow]] CAT [[Large split-toe tracks and smaller rodent tracks]] MOOSE AND SQUIRREL [[Cat prints, but with more space between the pairs of prints]] LONGCAT [[Two similar careening tire tracks]] MOUSE RIDING BICYCLE [[Longer rodent tracks, with a large melted ring surrounding a point in the middle of the frame.]] RABBIT STOPPING TO USE HAIR DRYER [[No visible tracks]] LEGOLAS [[Single deep holes with cratering]] BOBCAT ON POGO STICK [[Round prints that suddenly turn to the right halfway into frame]] KNIGHT [[Human footprints up to a square melting pattern, turning into animal prints]] KID WITH TRANSMOGRIFIER [[Human footprints up to a rectangular melted area, which are then doubled to another rectangular area, which are then doubled again up to another rectangular area, which are then doubled...]] KID WITH DUPLICATOR [[Right curve on a road, with tire tracks careening out of frame]] Out of Frame Garden Owner: MY VEGETABLE GARDEN! [[A series of spiraling and outwardly traveling lines extend from a point in the middle of the frame.]] HIGGS BOSON {{Title text: I suppose that's more accurately a hare dryer.}}

I wanted to make you a science valentine with charts and graphs of my feelings for you [[A graph shows romance and happiness. Romance cuts off, indicating a breakup before the meeting of the narrator and his current SO, and happiness dips accordingly. A line indicates where the couple first met; romance is jagged thereafter, initially upwards but later down. Happiness climbs slightly more steadily and then dips again. More lines indicate a period of dating and then one of engagement.]] and the happiness you've brought me. But the more I analyzed [[The narrator works at a computer]] r_0 = 0.20 r_1 = -0.61 r_2 = -0.83 the harder it became to defend my hypothesis. In science, you can't publish results you know are wrong and you can't withhold them because they're not the ones you wanted. So I was left with a question: do I make graphs because they're cute and funny, [[The narrator sits, looking at a sheet of paper.]] or am I a *scientist*? Enclosed are my results. I hope you can find somebody else [[A jagged, declining graph is superimposed over a red heart.]] to be your valentine. {{Title text: You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.}}

I get frustrated trying to judge whether acne creams are having any effect. In the spirit of a controlled trial, I used one on just half my face for a few weeks. [[A graph shows pimples vs. time, with two lines--one remains one steady, and one is declining.]] It was cool seeing the effects so clearly, so I got some friends to try different treatments in an impromptu study. [[The narrator looks in a mirror, sees a half-pimpled face, and applies a treatment.]] [[The narrator is talking to a blonde and brunette friend, each with some pimples also.]] Narrator: Okay, you try the saucylic acid first. Blonde: Wait, we should randomize the trials. Got a coin? Narrator: Okay, call it. Heads, she gets the-- (Off-panel): YOU! [[Batman runs into frame and punches the narrator. The coin goes flying.]] {{Title text: Why do all my attempts at science end with me being punched by Batman? (P.S. benzoyl peroxide soap works great.)}}

[[A man in a lab coat is talking to a woman who's sitting on an examining table.]] Man: Well, until the second trimester, the baby hasn't decided which opening it will exit through. Woman: *What?* Man: We'll hope for one of the lower ones, so it won't be fighting gravity. Did you know you can just BUY lab coats? {{Title text: Also, it's not like anyone actually calls up the Nobel committee to double-check things.}}

[[Man is sitting on a bed, on the phone.]] Man: You hang up first. [[Women is lying on a bed, on the phone.]] Woman: No, *you* hang up first. Man: No, *you* hang up first. Woman: No, *you* fucking hang up first! Man: You hang up first, or we're OVER! Woman: Then I guess we're fucking OVER! Man: FINE! Woman: ... Man: ... Woman: *You* move on and find somebody else first. {{Title text: No, YOU stumble past a series of post-breakup hookups in a daze as you slowly realize what you've lost and how unlikely you are ever to get it back first.}}

[[A banner flutters in the breeze, evidently attached to the elevator it mentions in its text. It reads "SPACE ELEVATOR" "GRAND OPENING"]] [[A space elevator occupies the height of the frame, consisting of a bass, a ribbon extending out into space, and an elevator unit with standard elevator features such as sliding doors and up down buttons.]] ((The following lines appear split across the elevator itself, the rhyming portions of the text separated from the others.)) AFTER COUNTLESS ENGINEERS SPEND TRILLIONS OVER FIFTY YEARS, A MODERN BABEL DISAPPEARS BECAUSE SOME FUCK BROUGHT PRUNING SHEARS [[Five individuals stand at the base of the elevator: a brunette woman, a man, a blond woman who has recently opened a bottle of champagne, an alarmed man, and Hat Guy, who has smuggled the aforementioned shears into the ceremony and unceremoniously turned it into a ribbon cutting.]] <<SNIP>> {{Title text: Although really, the damage was done when the party planners took the hole punch to the elevator ribbon to hang up the sign.}}

Frequency of Strip Versions of Various Games n = google hits for "strip <game name>" google hits for "<game name>" (at the time of this writing) Frequent (n > 1%) - Poker - Spin the Bottle - Beer Pong - Never Have I Ever - Truth or Dare Rare (1% >= n > 0.01%) - Chess - Blackjack - Tennis - Settlers of Catan - Pictionary Extremely Rare (0.01% >= n > 0) - Cricket - Magic: the Gathering - Stickball - Agricola - Jumanji Nonexistent (n = 0) - Poohsticks - Podracing - Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma - Chess by Mail - Conway's Game of Life {{Title text: HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF STRIP GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?}}

Day 1 of 90 [[The Spirit rover is on the surface of Mars.]] Spirit (thinking): 89 days to go! Day 88 of 90 Spirit (thinking): Two days until I go home! Day 91 of 90 Spirit (thinking): ? Day 103 of 90 Spirit (thinking): Maybe I didn't do a good enough job. Day 127 of 90 Spirit (thinking): Maybe if I do a good enough job, they'll let me come home. Day 857 of 90 Spirit (thinking): I thought I analyzed that rock really well. Spirit (thinking): It's okay, I'll do the next one better. Day 1293 of 90 Spirit (thinking): Sandstorm. Power dying. Spirit (thinking): But a good rover would keep going. A good rover like they wanted. Day 1944 of 90 Spirit (thinking): Oh no. <<whirrrr>> Spirit (thinking): I'm stuck. <<whirrrr> Spirit (thinking): Did I do a good job? Spirit (thinking): Do I get to come home? Spirit (thinking): Guys? [[Spirit rests in the middle of a vast Martian landscape.]] {{Title text: On January 26th, 2213 days into its mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station', expected to operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.}}

[[Dude is using a computer.]] Dude: Argh, this is frustrating. Friend (off-panel): What? Dude: This windows box has a virus and I can't get regedit to-- Friend (off-panel): Haha, cleaning viruses? Man, what a blast from the past! Friend: Check it out! Dude's cleaning win32 viruses! Remember that? Girl (off-panel): It's like we're back in 2003! Dude (small): Hey, XP's still the most-- Friend: Did you get the virus from Kazaa? Girl (with laptop): Guess what I just read on Howard Dean's Friendster!? Dude (head in hands): Guys ... {{Title text: He says this is the year of Linux on the desktop! The world of Windows will fade any moment now!}}

[[Kid is sitting on the ground with his chin in his hand.]] Kid: I'm such a loser-- <<POP>> [[Princess sticks her head through a portal.]] Princess: Come quickly, young one! Kid: Holy crap, a portal! Princess: My kingdom needs you! [[He falls through.]] Kid: AAAAAA [[We see him on horseback, helmeted wielding a sword. There's a castle on the horizon and two moons in the sky.]] [[Kid, with helmet and sword, stands before King, Princess, and another warrior. Princess is holding out a ring.]] King: You've saved our kingdom and found your self-confidence. Now it's time to return home. Goodbye, young hero! Princess: Take this ring to remember us! [[Kid stands alone, holding the ring.]] Kid: Well, I guess I spend the rest of my life pretending that didn't happen or knowing that everyone I love suspects I'm crazy. Kid: This'll be a fun 70 years. {{Title text: I was going to be a scientist, but that seems silly now. Magical worlds exist. I've learned a huge truth about our place in the universe. I'm supposed to care about college? I mean, FUCK.}}

[[Detective "Dirty" Harry Callahan stands near a wall, pointing a revolver at another figure, presumably a suspect, reclined on the ground. A shotgun is on the ground next to the reclined figure.]] Harry Callahan: I know what you're thinking--"Did he fire six shots or only five?" In all this excitement, I-- Suspect: Six. Definitely six. Harry Callahan: Shit. Dirty Harry Meets Rain Man {{Title text: Sci-fi has energy weapons because otherwise the people like me who watch it get distracted counting shots.}}

[[Two figures approach a table]] Figure 1: Hey, what's up? Figure 2: Shhhhh. Figure 1: Hrm? Figure 2: There's a microSD card on your table. [[A microSD card sits next to an assortment of coins for size reference.]] Figure 1 (out of panel): So? Figure 2 (out of panel): I dunno, high storage densities freak me out. A whole aisle of library shelves on something smaller than a dime. [[The two figures stand near the table, the second figure peering at the coins and card on the table.]] Figure 2: Libraries are unnerving enough--millions of ideas surrounding you, towering over you. These cards fill me with that same reverence, that same intimidation. [[The first figure stands alone]] Figure 2 (out of panel): ...that same faint arousal. Maybe I'll just touch it. Figure 1: If you lose that card I'm _NOT_ helping you find it. {{Title text: That card holds a refrigerator carton's worth of floppy discs, and a soda can full of those cards could hold the entire iTunes store's music library. Mmmm.}}

[[A person is holding up a pointer to a screen with an image of the World Trade Center towers mid-disaster.]] Person: Based on my analysis, I believe the government faked the plane crash and demolished the WTC north tower with explosives. Person: The south tower, in a simultaneous but unrelated plot, was brought down by actual terrorists. The 9 11 truthers responded poorly to my compromise theory. {{Title text: I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims.}}

Team Member 1 (out of panel): Wow, this is a much better design. Team Member 2 (out of panel): Let's build it. [[A blue print depicting a robot design for the FIRST competition. It consists of a standard mobile platform, with a pusher blade at the front. Additional parts include an umbrella on top and a trailer unit consisting a telescoping pole with a matchbox and match on top.]] Referee (out of panel): Go! <<CLICK>> [[A FIRST competition field, with teams at opposite ends. Various robots appear on the field, and the team whose design appears above activates their robot.]] [[The robot's trailer unit detaches as the telescoping pole begins to extend, and the mobile platform with umbrella rolls forward.]] <<VRRR>> <<CLICK>> [[Telescoping pole extends further.]] <<VRRRR>> [[Telescoping pole extends further.]] <<VRRRR>> [[Telescoping pole extends further, approaching a sprinkler head fixture.]] <<VRRR>> [[Telescoping pole stops extending, placing the matchbox and match very near the sprinkler head fixture.]] [[The mobile platform stops moving.]] [[The umbrella deploys, extending beyond the dimensions of the mobile platform.]] <<FWOOMP>> [[The match box and match are lit beneath the sprinkler head.]] <<FWOOSH>> [[The heat from the match triggers the sprinkler's valve, and water sprays out of the sprinkler into the room below.]] <<PSSSSHH>> [[Water pours from the sprinkler onto the competition field, causing the electrical components of the opposing team's robotics platform to short and malfunction. The opposing team appears distressed and confused.]] <<FZZZT>> <<BWooooooo!!!>> [[The initial robot, still protected by its umbrella, pushes along the balls toward the goal zone without any difficulty.]] {{Title text: Pool on the roof must've sprung a leak.}}

[[There is a pie chart, mostly white with a black slice. The white is labeled "Fraction of this image which is white." The black is labeled "Fraction of this image which is black."]] [[There is a bar graph labeled "Amount of black ink by panel." Bar 1 is medium height, Bar 2 higher, Bar 3 lowest.]] [[There is a scatterplot labeled "Location of black ink in this image." It is the positive quarter of a coordinate grid with the zeroes marked. The graph is, of course, the whole comic scaled to fit the axes, including a smaller version of itself in the last panel, etc.]] {{Title text: The contents of any one panel are dependent on the contents of every panel including itself. The graph of panel dependencies is complete and bidirectional, and each node has a loop. The mouseover text has two hundred and forty-two characters.}}

[[On a blackboard.]] (Plank energy Pressure at the Earth's core) x (Prius combined EPA gas mileage Minimum width of the English Channel) = pi [[A teacher indicates this equation with a pointer in front of a class.]] Teacher: It's correct to within experimental error, and the units check out. It must be a fundamental law. Student: But what if they build a better Prius? Teacher (italic): Then England will drift out to sea. {{Title text: Or the pressure at the Earth's core will rise slightly.}}

[[The text is over a white-on-black terminal showing a bit of output from ps -el, with processes running from root and sam.]] When a user dies, their connections time out, but their screen sessions linger. [[The end of the command line is a |grep sam.]] The server's uptime grows because you can't bring yourself to reboot and wipe out their last earthly presence [[The processes listed are screen, zsh, irssi, and grep sam.]] the ghost in zshell. {{Title text: And every day it gets harder to fight the urge to su to the user and freak people out.}}

A study published in the journal of sexual medicine suggests that the g-spot may not actually exist. We go live to the researchers' press conference: [[Reporters stand below a researcher at a podium.]] Reporter: Is it true you've been unable to find evidence that the g-spot exists? Researcher: My research is in solar cells. I think you have the wrong press conference. [[Pause]] Researcher: But ... yes. {{Title text: The BBC lead was 'The elusive erogenous zone said to exist in some women may be a myth, say researchers who have hunted for it.' I couldn't read it with a straight face.}}

[[Two people are talking.]] Person 1: Avatar? Yeah, I saw it last week with ... [[Person 1 walks out of the panel.]] [[Person 1 returns with a ladder.]] [[Person 1 stands on top of the ladder, shouting through a megaphone.]] Person 1: ... MY GIRLFRIEND. Person 2: You know, if this phase of your relationship lasts more than a week, I'm legally allowed to stab you both. Person 1: What phase? Person 1: So, did I mention I'm seeing someone? {{Title text: The most brutal way I've ever seen someone handle this was 'Oh, you have a girlfriend. Are you going to get married?' 'I, uh, don't know--' 'Well, do you love her?' '...' 'Anyway, what were you saying about the movie?'}}

Movie Science Montage [[One scientist passes a test tube to another, who's sitting at a machine. They're both wearing lab coats and goggles. Lights and screens are shining, and there's a hamster ball and a Newton's cradle on a shelf behind them.]] [[There's a glowing sample next to a rat in a cage. One of the scientists is holding a glowing implement; she has another rat in her hand and one on her head. The other scientist is on the phone.]] Caged Rat: Squeak! [[One of the scientists pulls levers on another machine, which is shooting some kind of ray downwards a a sample.]] [[The other scientist is operating a machine with a scope, flasks, coils, and bubbles.]] Scientist (in panel): Paint flecks from the killer's clothing match an antimatter factory in Belgrade! Scientist (off panel): Let's go! Actual Science Montage [[Two scientists in lab coats and goggles place a sample into a machine. There's a clock on the wall.]] [[Time has passed.]] Machine: <<...whirrrrrr...>> [[Time has passed. One of the scientists has removed his goggles.]] Machine: <<...whirrrr...bing!>> [[They examine the sample.]] Male Scientist: Okay, we've determined there's neither barium nor radium in this sample. Female Scientist: Probably. {{Title text: The rat's perturbed; it must sense nanobots! Code grey! We have a Helvetica scenario!}}

[[Two EMTs are rushing Darth Vader away from a front door on a stretcher.]] [[There is a room with a desk in the foreground and a full-length mirror in the corner. On the desk is a laptop displaying the Wikipedia page for autoerotic asphyxiation.]] {{Title text: Force-choking the chicken.}}

((A schematic of the depths of the gravity wells of each planet in the solar system and several moons. At extreme left, an arrow pointing down and to the left, labeled "To Sun, very very far down". From left to right the gravity wells depicted are: Mercury; Venus; Earth, 5,478 km; Moon, 288 km; Mars, 1,286 km; Ganymede; Io; Jupiter; Europa; Titan, with two small bumps captioned "WEEOOOEEOOOEEEOOO"; Saturn, with its rings depicted as various-colored horizontal bands; Uranus; and Neptune, with a figure exclaiming, "An even more glorious dawn awaits!" Inset below Earth, the Moon, and Mars are three panels depicting Mars', Deimos's, and Phobos's gravity wells. The Mars inset shows Mars' gravity well, 1,286 km deep, in relation to its moons, Deimos and Phobos, and a NASA Mars Exploration Rover. The Deimos inset shows Deimos' gravity well and a person, labeled "to scale"; the gravity well is approximately two thirds the height of the person, and the caption reads, "You could escape Deimos with a bike and a ramp." The Phobos inset is similar, except that the gravity well is approximately three times the height of the person included for scale, and reads, "A thrown baseball could escape Phobos." To the right of Jupiter's gravity well is a diagram of a well. The height of the well is labeled "very deep"; at the bottom is a figure labeled "your mom"; and three figures, labeled "local football team", are shown falling in head first. Beneath that, the text reads, "Jupiter is not much larger than Saturn, but much more massive. At its size, adding more mass just makes it denser due to the extra squeezing of gravity. If you dropped a few dozen more Jupiters into it, the pressure would ignite fusion and make it a star." At the right of the panel is an inset diagram detailing Earth's gravity well, which is labeled as being 6,379 km deep. Also depicted are the altitudes of low Earth orbit, the ISS, the Space Shuttle, GPS satellites, geosynchronous orbit, and the Moon's gravity well, 288 km deep. A figure standing on the Earth's "surface" says, "This is why it took a huge rocket to get to the moon, but only a small one to get back." Beneath that, the text, "It takes the same amount of energy to launch something on an escape trajectory away from Earth as it would to launch it 6,000 km upward under constant 9.81 m s² Earth gravity. Hence, Earth's well is 6,000 km deep." )) Gravity wells, scaled to Earth surface gravity This chart shows the 'depth' of various solar system gravity wells. Each well is scaled such that rising out of a physical well of that depth -- in constant Earth surface gravity -- would take the same energy as escaping from that planet's gravity in reality. Each planet is shown cut in half at the bottom of its well, with the depth of the well measured down to the planet's _flat_ surface. The planet sizes are to the same scale as the wells. Interplanetary distances are not to scale. Depth = (G x PlanetMass) (g x PlanetRadius) G = Newton's constant g = 9.81 meters per second squared {{Title text: This doesn't take into account the energy imparted by orbital motion (or gravity assists or the Oberth effect), all of which can make it easier to reach outer planets.}}

[[On one side, a family of four gathered around a Christmas tree, the daughter and son looking excitedly at the presents under the tree; on the other, a character wearing a party hat, sitting dejectedly before a birthday cake. The panel edges are decorated with holly and a wreath.]] Happy Birthday to those of you born on the 25th! Sorry you get kinda shafted by the overlap with Christmas. {{Title text: If you're turning 27 and were born in the Northeast, maybe you were conceived in the blizzard of 1982. Imagine: snowed in, candles, massage oil, your mom sporting nothing but her early 80's haircut and a smile ... aren't you glad you read the title-text?}}

[[Character A is standing behind Character B, who is sitting at a computer.]] Character A: Hey, will you be in town the day after Christmas? Character B: Couldn't say - I'm Jewish. Character A: But.. how does being Jewish keep you from knowing your plans? Character B: I know my plans - I just don't know when Christmas is. Character A: Really? Why not look it up? Character B: Well, I'm also a physicist. Character A: So? Character B: I believe that since I don't observe Christmas, it can't have a definite date. {{Title text: Physicists who want to protect traditional Christmas realize that the only way to keep from changing Christmas is not to observe it.}}

((A table showing two columns. The left column is labeled "If a researcher says a cool new technology should be available to consumers in...", and the right column is labeled "What they mean is...")) [[The fourth quarter of next year - The project will be canceled in six months.]] [[Five years - I've solved the interesting research problems. The rest is just business, which is easy, right?]] [[Ten years - We haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome.]] [[25+ years - It has not been conclusively proven impossible.]] [[We're not really looking at market applications right now. - I like being the only one with a hovercar.]] {{Title text: A technology that is '20 years away' will be 20 years away indefinitely.}}

[[A couple watches Beret Guy drive by in an SUV.]] Man: Look at that asshole in his SUV, thinking he's so badass while he guzzles gas driving around suburbia. Beret Guy: Oh no! Am I an asshole? I hope not. [[Beret Guy trades in his keys at the dealership.]] [[Now he is driving by in a hybrid sedan.]] Man: Look at that smug asshole thinking he's better than us because he drives a hybrid. Beret Guy: ... [[He trades in his keys again.]] [[The couple is standing.]] Off-panel: <<RUMBLE>> [[Beret Guy drives a backhoe in and smacks the couple out of the panel with the digger.]] [[He drives off, whistling.]] {{Title text: [Shortly thereafter, at a nearby bakery] ::CRASH:: ::RUMBLE:: ::VRRRRRR:: '... I don't know, officer. It just scooped up an entire rack of scones and drove away!'}}

[[A person is sitting at a computer.]] An x64 processor is screaming along at billions of cycles per second to run the XNU kernel, which is frantically working through all the POSIX-specified abstraction to create the Darwin system underlying OS X, which in turn is straining itself to run Firefox and its Gecko renderer, which creates a Flash object which renders dozens of video frames every second because I wanted to see a cat jump into a box and fall over. I am a god. {{Title text: If I'm such a god, why isn't Maru *my* cat?}}

Person: Yes, science is an open process in which a good idea can come from anybody. Person: Yes, widely-believed theories are on occasion overturned by simple thought experiments. Person: And yes, your philosophy degree equips you to ask interesting questions sometimes. [[The person is talking to a philosopher with a goatee, who is sitting at a computer.]] Person: But you did not just overturn special relativity, a subject you learned about an hour ago, with your "racecar on a train" idea. Philosopher: You just don't like that I'm turning a rational eye to your dogma. Hey, what's the email for the president of physics? {{Title text: I mean, what's more likely -- that I have uncovered fundamental flaws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more? Hint: it's the one that involves less work.}}

[[A man and woman are standing with a baby in between them.]] Man: Oh man, we made a baby. Woman: Don't panic. Don't panic. Baby: Baby! Man: Parenting can't be that hard. Let's just do what comes naturally. [[Beat frame.]] Soon: [[There are now two babies in between them.]] Woman: Aw, crap. {{Title text: On one hand, every single one of my ancestors going back billions of years has managed to figured it out. On the other hand, that's the mother of all sampling biases.}}

Coming this March from the makers of The Core ... [[A woman is looking through a telescope in an observatory. Two men are nearby.]] Woman: The sun's fusion is failing! Man 1: (small) Does that make sense? Man 2: (small) Whatever. Woman: If we don't send a ship to restart it, it could go out completely! Man 1: Call NASA! Man 2: (on the phone) Assemble our hottest astronauts. [[Four astronauts stand at the other end of the phone. The one holding the handset has the helmet of a space suit under his arm.]] Astronaut: The earth bathed in eternal darkness? A night without a dawn? Not on my watch! Astronaut: Saddle up. [[The four astronauts are shown in silhouette on gray, casting huge shadows towards the bottom of the panel from the sun in the center.]] It's DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME. (caption) Never fall back. {{Title text: Obligatory bad guy: This operation is sheer foolishness, and it's not happening on my watch! Mainly because I can't figure out how to adjust the time.}}

[[A man is sitting at his computer. Facebook sidebar messages appear on the top of each panel, with a user photo and a few lines of text.]] Facebook: Susie Reconnect with her (phone icon) Send her a text Man: Come on, Facebook. I know I shouldn't. Facebook: Susie She'd come over (bed icon) You don't have to fall asleep alone. Man: It's been so hard to stop. But she's falling for me, and I can't keep getting her hopes up like this. Facebook: Susie Life is complicated (icon of stick figures embracing) She's so warm against you. You both want it. Man: (pulling out phone) Maybe if I just make it clear it's not going to be a thing ... Man: Yeah, we'll just have a talk. Facebook: Susie Oh yeah. Mmm ... (webcam icon) Leave your webcam on so I can watch. Man: Okay, this feature is getting creepier and creepier. {{Title text: An hour later: SUGGESTION: LICK HER NIPPLE MORE.}}

[[Beret Guy is speaking into a mic in front of a sign that says Volvo Cars. A woman is filming him, and another is walking by with a briefcase.]] Beret Guy: I'm documenting my quest to meet with the CEO of Volvo. Businesswoman: Get lost. [[Security guards are attempting to restrain Beret Guy and the camerawoman.]] Beret Guy: Wait! I've come so far! Just let me see him! [[They've reached the CEO's desk, which has the Volvo logo on it.]] CEO: All right, you've reached me. What is it you want to talk about? Beret Guy: Do you realize how much your company's name sounds like "vulva"? CEO: Security? {{Title text: Hey, let go! We were all thinking it! Someone had to speak truth to power!}}

[[Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap is showing off his amplifier to a person, who varies.]] Nigel: These amps go to 11. Person: Is that louder? Nigel: It's one louder. Normal Person: Normal Person: Why not make 10 louder and make 10 the highest? Engineer: Engineer: But 11 doesn't have any units. It's an arbitrary scale mapping otuputs-- Nigel: Zzzz Smart Engineer: Smart Engineer: For $2,000 I'll build you one that goes to 12. {{Title text: Wow, that's less than $200 per ... uh ... that's a good deal!}}

[[Darkness.]] [[Someone is standing next to a laptop, looking groggy.]] Person: Ugh ... Person: What happened? Person: Where am I? <<FWOOOOOOSH>> Person: Help! Someone help me-- [[His speech fades out into nothing.]] [[He holds his hands to his mouth.]] [[He looks shocked.]] [[He tries to run, but has no traction against the ground.]] [[He falls over.]] [[He lies prone.]] [[Hat guy and hat girl are watching this scene from outside the room. He is holding a clipboard.]] Hat Guy: Huh. Looks like physics professors don't like working in frictionless vacuums after all. Hat Girl: They're such liars. {{Title text: The other two are still lost on the infinite plane of uniform density.}}

[[There is a venn diagram of two circles. The left circle is labeled "Music You Like." The right circle is labeled "Deeply Embarrassing Music." The segment on the left is labeled "What Pandora Plays," and the intersection is labeled "What Pandora Plays If Anyone Is Around."]] {{Title text: What? Oh, no, the 'Enchanted' soundtrack was just playing because Pandora's algorithms are terrible. [silence] ... (quietly) That's how you knooooooow ...}}

[[We see a screenshot of SkiFree, with the abominable snowman running towards the player]] [[A girl is sitting at her computer.]] Girl: (thinking) I've always thought of the SkiFree monster as a metaphor for the inevitability of death. [[Her friend comes up behind her.]] Friend: SkiFree, huh? You know, you can press "F" to go faster than the monster and escape. [[The screenshot again. The player is zooming away from the monster.]] [[The girl sits at her computer in silence.]] {{Title text: And from that day on, I wore this little 'F' key pendant everywhere I went.}}

[[Hat guy is hammering something on a table.]] Guy: What-- Hat Guy: Silent hammer. I've made a set of silent tools. Guy: Why? Hammer: <<whoosh whoosh whoosh>> Hat Guy: Stealth carpentry. Breaking into a house at night and moving windows, adjusting walls, etc. [[He takes his silent hammer over to a tool bench with other things on it. Two boxes underneath are labeled "Drills" and "Non-Drills."]] Hat Guy, narrating: After a week or so of questioning his own sanity, the owner will stay up to watch the house at night. I'll make scratching noises in the walls, pipe in knockout gas, move him up to his bed, and never bother him again. [[The events he's describing are shown in two mini-panels below.]] Guy, off-panel: Nice prank, I guess, but what's the point? Hat Guy: Check out the owner's card, on the table. Guy, off-panel: Chair of the American Skeptics Society? Oh, god. Hat guy: Yeah, this doesn't end well for him. {{Title text: I bet he'll keep quiet for a couple weeks and then-- wait, did you nail a piece of scrap wood to my antique table a moment ago?}}

[[A girl is running towards a closed wardrobe.]] Someone off-panel: Everyone hide! 99 ... 98 ... 97 ... [[The girl opens the wardrobe.]] Wardrobe: <<click>> Girl, looking inside: !!! [[The girl looks thoughtful.]] [[The girl walks away.]] [[The girl returns with an armful of electronics.]] [[The girl is kneeling, typing on a laptop, which has a cord extending into the wardrobe.]] [[A robotic probe is approaching Mr. Tumnus, the faun, under the lamppost in narnia.]] {{Title text: Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to tempt the probe with a firmware upgrade.}}

[[A programmer sits at a desk in front of a computer. There are cans on the desk and more crushed ones on the floor.]] Programmer: I just wrote the most beautiful code of my life. Programmer: They casually handed me an impossible problem. In 48 hours and 200 lines, I SOLVED it. ((Lines divide the comic into two possible end panels here, labeled "Academia" and "Business.")) [[Academia]] Professor: My god ... this will mean a half-dozen papers, a thesis or two, and a paragraph in every textbook on queueing theory! [[Business]] Boss: You got the program to stop jamming up? Great. While you're fixing stuff, can you get Outlook to sync with our new phones? {{Title text: Some engineer out there has solved P=NP and it's locked up in an electric eggbeater calibration routine. For every 0x5f375a86 we learn about, there are thousands we never see.}}

Bitten by a radioactive Carl Sagan in 1995, Sagan-Man possesses the powers and abilities of Carl Sagan. Victim, off-panel: Help! Thief! [[Sagan-Man spins around. A blue cape appears on his back.]] [[Sagan-Man runs towards the direction of the shout.]] [[He encounters the thief, holding a purse.]] Sagan-Man: Hey, you! Thief: What? Sagan-Man: Do you realize just how crazy it is that we've BEEN TO THE MOON? {{Title text: They laugh now, but within 10 years the city's entire criminal class will have quit to work on space research.}}

[[A woman sitting at her computer is talking to a man standing behind her.]] Woman: Well, it depends what you want. The iPhone wins on speed and polish, but the Droid has that gorgeous screen and physical keyboard. Man: What if I want something more than the pale facsimile of fulfillment brought by a parade of ever-fancier toys? To spend my life restlessly producing instead of sedately consuming? Man: Is there an app for THAT? Woman: Yeah, on both. Woman: Wait, no, looks lke it was rejected from the iPhone store. Man: Droid it is, then. {{Title text: It may be a fundamentally empty experience, but holy crap the Droid's 265 ppi screen is amazing.}}

[[A girl stands at a podium, giving a speech.]] Girl: And if I'm elected, I'll try to fix some of these problems. Boy, off-panel: Yeah, right! [[A boy in the audience is standing on his chair.]] Boy: The REAL problem is the corporate-run two party system. Until we fix THAT, we'll have no real change! Girl: Billy, I'm running for class president. We don't even have political parties. Boy: That's because the two-praty, uh ... estab ... uh. Girl: Billy, did you learn about politics from the internet? Boy: I thought that one reply was all I ever needed! {{Title text: I favor approval voting or IRV chiefly because they mean we might get to bring back The Bull Moose party.}}

[[A bereaved person and his friend are talking.]] Bereaved: The moment my brother died, I felt a searing pain in my heart. Right: Friend: I'm so sorry. Wrong: Friend: Was it instant, or was there a speed-of-light delay? Very Wrong: Friend: If it was instant, with the right arrangement of moving reference frames, we could use this to send signals back in time and violate causality! How many remaining siblings do you have? {{Title text: Excellent recovery: ... which we could try to use to somehow save your original brother!}}

[[A girl and her father are putting away Lego bricks.]] Father: When you take apart a Lego house and mix the pieces into the bin, where does the house go? Girl: It's in the bin. Father: No, those are just pieces. They could become spaceships or trains. The house was an arrangement. The arrangement doesn't stay with the pieces and it doesn't go anywhere else. It's just gone. [[The girl, older, is standing at a desk. She's holding a couple of Lego bricks.]] [[The girl looks at the bricks.]] [[She checks off a box next to the words "Organ Donor" on something on the desk.]] {{Title text: Dad, where is Grandpa right now?}}

[[A person is holding up a pointer in front of a diagram of a dorm apartment. On the diagram, there are two connected pairs of dots in each bedroom, and one dot on the couch.]] Person: Thus, one all the dorm bedrooms are occupied by romantic pairs, additional roommates are forced into less restful "living room couch" orbitals. The Pauli Sexclusion Principle {{Title text: Except the people filtering in late are the partiers, so you end up with drunkn makeouts in the living room and the next roommate to return home has to sleep in the hall lounge orbital.}}

These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time. [[Lord of the Rings. A mass of colored lines weaves back and forth across the chart, representing various characters. Sauron is represented by a huge black bar at the bottom with branches for nazgul, orcs, etc. Major locations (Moria) and plot points (the breaking of the fellowship) are marked. Gandalf, especially at the beginning, jumps all over the map in a short time. Eagles appear and then disappear a couple of times. Treebeard's line is flat except for the march to Isengard. At the end, the ship to the West drifts off into a corner.]] [[Star Wars (original trilogy). This chart is simpler. Luke, mostly accompanied by R2-D2, joins and parts from other sets of characters. There's a dotted alternative path on Jabba's line for the special edition. Yoda appears about halfway through (where Luke's Jedi training is marked). All the surviving lines group up at Endor except for Vader, the Emperor, Luke, and Lando; after the climactic duel, the latter two join the rest.]] [[Jurassic Park. The human characters are in black; dinosaurs are in red. Dilophosaurus appears briefly to eat Nedry and then fades out again. The three raptors are together at the beginning, but split up about halfway through. One has a dotted portion of line between "locked up" and "escapes." In the meantime, they cut off the lines of Arnold and Muldoon. The raptor lines all end when t-rex's swoops down to meet them at the end, and all the surviving humans leave together.]] [[12 Angry Men. The lines are labeled Juror 1 through Juror 12. They are all perfectly horizontal and parallel.]] [[Primer. Three lines start on the left labeled Abe, Aaron, and Granger. They enter a mass of scribbling. Somewhere vaguely towards the end, three lines emerge and fade out, all labeled with question marks.]] {{Title text: In the LotR map, up and down correspond LOOSELY to northwest and southeast respectively.}}

[[A kid dressed up in a lab coat and goggles is standing on a neighbor's doorstep.]] Kid: Trick or treat! Neighbor: Nice Doc Brown costume, but today's October 30th. Kid: Great Scott, I must have overshot! {{Title text: Not enough houses on your block? Just hit them at 30-year intervals from here to 2300 and get 10x the candy.}}

[[A man is apparently ascending a climbing wall.]] [[We see him again in silhouette, as well as the edge of another person standing at a ninety degree angle to him with her feet on the wall above him.]] [[The "climber" stops and looks up at the woman, who is standing on the "vertical" wall, looking at him.]] Woman: Your facebook rock climbing pictures just got a lot less impressive. {{Title text: Where did you even get this wall? Return it there and stand it back up right now.}}

[[A man is on the phone with a woman, who's on her computer in the other half of a split panel.]] Man: Hello? ... Oh, hey. Looking for Megan? She's gaming. Woman: I know. You know what's delicious? Nachos. [[The woman clicks on her computer while talking.]] Woman: When you layer the cheese so it gets on every chip ... then smother them in sour cream and salsa ... Man: Mm, that IS delicious. And I've got the ingredients, too! Woman, on phone: You should make some! Man: I will! Woman, on phone: Hurry. [[The man is making nachos in the microwave.]] Microwave: <<beep>> <<beep>> <<whirrrr>> Megan, at her computer: My wifi signal! [[The woman who called is at her computer.]] Computer: Boom! Headshot. {{Title text: 'Cheater!' 'Hey, gaming on wifi? You have only yourself to blame.'}}

Protip: Even at "Bad Movie Night," avoid the Star Wars holiday special. [[A graph plots movie enjoyability against movie quality. It drops steadily through points marked "Good Movie" to "Okay Movie" to "Bad Movie," rises up again for "So-Bad-It's-Good (Plan 9, Rocky Horror, etc)," and then drops off the bottom of a graph with an arrow pointing to where "Star Wars Holiday Special" would be. There are three mini-panels below the graph, arranged from "Good" to "Bad" along the movie quality axis.]] [[Three friends are on a couch, drinking and gesticulating enthusiastically.]] [[The same three are sitting quietly, with a bottle on the floor.]] [[The three are sitting around a table, drinking and looking miserable.]] {{Title text: You think it's so legendarily bad that you'll torrent it and sit through it just for the kitschy nerd cred. I, too, once thought as you did.}}

[[A man with a shotgun approaches a woman.]] Man: Sarah! Come with me if you want to live! A robot assassin has been sent here to kill you! [[The woman holds her hands over her mouth.]] Man: I'm here to save you. I may not be as strong or fast as a machine, but I'll fight to keep you -- [[There's a huge orange and yellow explosion. The two are disintegrated.]] <<BOOM>> [[A flying robot assassin is above the bomb site.]] {{Title text: We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future.}}

[[A man and woman are at a security checkpoint in an airport. A guard is holding an open backpack and a bottle of water, and the man is arguing with him.]] Man: But if you're worried about bombs, why are you letting me keep my laptop batteries? If I overvolted them and breached the cells, it would make a sizeable explosion. Woman: Oh god. Man: It's okay, dear. In a moment he'll realize I have a good point and return my water. {{Title text: A laptop battery contains roughly the stored energy of a hand grenade, and if shorted it ... hey! You can't arrest me if I prove your rules inconsistent!}}

[[A woman is sitting on a couch with a man lying in her lap.]] Man: There's nowhere I'd rather be Man: than with you Man: here Man: right now. [[Silence.]] [[The woman is imagining herself riding an apatosaurus.]] {{Title text: I mean, seriously, NOWHERE? For starters, there are like a thousand species of dinosaur.}}

[[It's dark. There are only the voices of a man and his lover.]] Lover: Hang on, I can't see--did you put on a condom? Man: It's okay. I've got a wrist thing on. Lover: A what? Let me see that. <<fumble>> Lover: This is an anti-static strap. Man: You mean it doesn't ... Lover: No. Why would you even THINK that? Man: I guess I was mixed up. Man: Wait, so when I was replacing that RAM last week ... Lover: Yeah, I THOUGHT that was weird. Man: Oh, but it explains why the geek squad fired me. {{Title text: I firmly believe that nothing can go wrong on a project if you're wearing one of those wrist things.}}

[[A man and woman are standing on a cliff overlooking a forest of gorgeous orange foliage. She's holding up a camera, and he has the case.]] Man: Instead of driving all this way, we could've just taken our summer pictures and messed with the "hue" slider in Photoshop." Woman: Hush. Camera: <<click>> {{Title text: And I could replace you with older pictures of you, from back when you looked happy.}}

[[Rob and his nephew are sitting on the ground. Rob is holding a flashlight up to his face.]] Rob: But they NEVER FOUND THE GHOST'S HEAD! Nephew: Lame story, Uncle Rob. Rob: And you could do scarier? Nephew: Sure. Rob: Try me. Nephew: 9 11 happened before I was born, yet I'm old enoguh to have this conversation with you. [[Rob has dropped the flashlight.]] [[Rob has curled up and wrapped his arms around himself.]] {{Title text: I'm teaching every 8-year-old relative to say this, and every 14-year-old to do the same thing with Toy Story. Also, Pokemon hit the US over a decade ago and kids born after Aladdin came out will turn 18 next year.}}

[[A graph plots time vs. 3 lines.]] [[Dysentery cases starts high, drops to near zero with time.]] [[Laptop sales starts at zero, then raises.]] [[Frequency of conversations in which one participant is on the toilet - falls as dysentery cases falls, then rises again with laptop sales.]] {{Title text: If the dysentery graph looks historically inaccurate it's because I got all my data from Oregon Trail.}}

[[A sausage is sitting to the right of an empty bun.]] Reverse Polish Sausage. {{Title text: It looks good, but it needs more postfixins.}}

[[A surgeon is standing over a patient on a gurney.]] Patient: While you're doing the surgery, can you also implant this in my arm? Surgeon: A USB port? Man: Just wire it up to some nerves. Surgeon: ... This won't let your brain control USB devices, you know. Man: Sure -- I just want the hardware. Man: The rest is software; I'm sure there will be a project to patch together support eventually. Surgeon: Ah -- you're a Linux user, I see. Man: Yeah, how'd you know? {{Title text: Damn. Not only did he not install it, he sutured a 'Vista-Ready' sticker onto my arm.}}

[[A man is holding another by the shoulders.]] Sitting man: Remember: With great power comes great current squared times resistance. Narrator: Ohm never forgot his dying uncle's advice. {{Title text: More generally, with great power comes great dEnergy dt.}}

[[Two people are sitting on chairs.]] Man: Hey, cute netbook. Woman: What. Man: Your laptop. I just -- Woman: No, why are you talking to me. Woman: Who do you think you are? If I were even slightly interested, I'd have shown it. Woman: Hey everyone, this dude's hitting on me. Voice #1: Haha Voice #2: Creepy Voice #3: Let's get his picture for Facebook to warn others. ((This panel fades into a thought bubble of the actual man.)) [[The girl is typing on her laptop.]] Dear blog, Cute boy on train still ignoring me. {{Title text: And I even got out my adorable new netbook!}}

[[A shelf holds 3 boxes of cereal. Each box shows a bowl of cereal.]] GenCo Oat Cereal StayPuft Oat Cereal RedFarm Oat Cereal ((with additional text in a star)) Asbestos-free! Narrator: I hate whatever marketer first realized you could do this. {{Title text: Asbestos is bad; definitely get the one on the right. Wait -- this one over here has no swine flu! Now I can't decide.}}

[[Two people are in a car, which is driving past a cactus. The passenger has a pith helmet and a mustache.]] Driver: The tornado's three miles west, moving northeast at 15 mph. Passenger: Go right; get ahead of it. [[A tornado is visible. The passenger pulls out a gun, and stands up in the car.]] Passenger: Okay, we're in range! Stop here! [[The passenger fires a gun at the tornado.]] <<BANG>> Tornado: AUGH! Passenger: Big one! Must be an F-3! Driver: I'm not sure we're doing this right. Passenger: Help me mount it on the hood. [[The passenger is holding the tornado by its tail.]] {{Title text: The Fujita Scale was replaced by the Enhanced Fujita Scale in 2007, but I think 'EF-5' sounds stupid, so I vote we just use the new measurements for assigning numbers but still call them 'F-whatever'.}}

[[Lincoln stands before an audience.]] Heckler: Oh yeah? Well, fourscore and seven years ago your MOM brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal! Narrator: After his 1860 loss to Lincoln, Stephen Douglas's famed debating skills entered a rapid decline. {{Title text: Stephen Douglas actually died soon after the debates and election, but if you demand historical accuracy in your webcomics you should be reading Hark! A Vagrant.}}

Ant: We've searched dozens of these floor tiles for several common types of pheromone trails. Ant: If there were intelligent life up there, we would have seen its messages by now. The world's first ant colony to achieve sentience calls off the search for us. {{Title text: I am so excited about the Kepler mission. This is the second most important thing our species has ever done, right behind inventing the concept of delivery pizza.}}

((In Scribblenauts word input format)) LARGE HADRON COLLIDER <<Click>> Woman: Wow, Scribblenauts even lets you summon the LHC. [[A man is sitting at a computer. The woman talks from off-panel.]] <<Fwoosh>> Woman: And it makes a black hole! This game rules. Man: I guess it's okay, for a DS kids game. ((In Scribblenauts word input format)) PRETENTIOUS ASSHOLE <<Click>> [[The woman looks up.]] Woman: Oh, hi! It worked! {{Title text: Let me look away and type 'guy who's just jealous that I beat all his MarioKart times' and turn back, and ... yup, there you are again!}}

[[Two people are sitting at a bench. The woman is holding a turtle.]] Woman: Our love is like a turtle. [[The woman sets down the turtle and turns to her partner. They hold hands.]] Woman: Humble and simple, enduring by virtue of perfect design. Partner: Our love is like a brontosaurus. Partner: Recognized as a mistaken combination long ago, lingering only out of misplaced affection for an imagined past. {{Title text: Well, sex is like a velociraptor: despite your movie-fueled lifelong neurotic obsession, unlikely to be found in your house.}}

[[Valentine is laying on her back on the ground. Peter is feeding a squirrel.]] Valentine: Ender's up there saving the world, but down here it's fallig apart politically. What can we do? Peter: I know -- we get on the nets and anonymously post political opinions. People reading our articles will see our intelligence, recognize how clear and logical our arguments are, and insist that we be put in charge, so we can fix everything! Valentine: Brilliant! [[The squirrel is vomiting.]] [[A blog.]] ((Header.)) LOCKE Powered by Wordpress ((Articles, partly scrolled down.)) [...] which is why we must reach out to the Russian leadership. Posted at 3:15AM by Locke Comments (0) ((In a larger font)) The Problem with China In recent months much has been made of [...] ((In a sidebar)) Recent posts: >> A few thoughts on... Comments (0) >> Russian Aggression... Comments (1) >> Trade policy and the... Comments (0) >> And one more thing... Comments (0) >> Everyone's wrong about... Comments (1) ((A list of links to other websites.)) Blogroll: >> Demosthenes >> FiveThirtyEight {{Title text: Dear Peter Wiggin: This letter is to inform you that you have received enough upvotes on your reddit comments to become president of the world. Please be at the UN tomorrow at 8:00 sharp.}}

[[Two people are sitting at a table, with a candle-lit dinner. The man is holding up a sheet of paper, and the woman is scribbling.]] Man: Both my parents were colorblind, so... Woman: Hey, if we made more than two, we'd have a better-than-even chance of adorable red hair. Man: Ooh, and check this: green eyes! Narrator: Trivia: 30% of biologist first dates disintegrate into making Punnett squares. {{Title text: Well, the kid's definitely getting the biology geek phenotype.}}

Man: We've acquired some new rights, but I'm not sure it's in the spirit to make it a blockbuster -- Voice: Do it anyway. Take $100 million, hire Michael Bay. Man: But -- Voice: [[in italics]] NEXT! [[Panel is inverted, white on black background.]] Girl: They said if I were captured I should take my own life. Girl: But I'd just as soon take yours. [[Girl is pointing two handguns at two men with machine guns.]] <<BOOM>> [[Girl explodes off a cliff, carrying a rectangular object and a gun. In the background is a helicopter, some mountains, and the sea.]] [[Panel is inverted, white and red on black background. Man: Stop! I'll talk! Girl: No, I know everything, this is just for fun. [[Girl is holding a bloody pipe. Man is tied to a chair. There is blood pooling on the ground under the chair.]] [[Crosshairs follow a man.]] Girl: I'll be watching. [[The panel is inverted colour, white on black.]] Harriet the [[in red]] SPY [[A bloody spiral notebook, with blood streaks leading from it.]] {{Title text: The 2007 Bridge to Terebithia trailer put me off too much to see that particular movie, but I am cautiously optimistic about Where the Wild Things Are.}}

[[A man is sitting at a computer, typing.]] Man: I've loved our online chats these past few months, Lisa. Computer: Me too. I really like you, Rob. [[The man continues to type.]] Man: It's just... now and then you mention products you like, and... I worry. Computer: What? Honey... [[The man types.]] Man: Before this goes any further, I think we should go get tested. You know, together. Computer: You don't trust me? Man: I just want to be sure. [[A web browser is open.]] VK Couples Testing Test ID: 21871138 Waiting...Partner connected. ((A pair of CAPTCHA images)) [You] Library [Partner] Kittens Man: Okay, mine says "library". Yours? Computer: I... uh... Man: Oh god. Computer: I'm more than a spambot! Our love was real! Man: Goodbye, Lisa. {{Title text: Fine, walk away. I'm gonna go cry into a pint of Ben&Jerry's Brownie Batter(tm) ice cream [link], then take out my frustration on a variety of great flash games from PopCap Games(r) [link].}}

Plate 15: Female breast. [[There is a drawing of a breast, with 'breast', 'areola', and 'nipple' labeled.]] Plate 16: External female genitalia [[There is a picture of external female genitalia. 'labia majora', 'labia minora', 'clitoris', 'urethral opening', and 'vagina' are labeled.]] Voice #1: HEY! Plate 17: External male genitalia [[There is salt, ketchup, and mustard to one side.]] Voice #2: Shit! Voice #1: What the hell? You can't do that in here. Voice #2: Megan, get off the table! Voice #2: Grab the tripod! Plate 18: Erect Penis [[The picture appears to be at an angle.]] Voice #1: We're calling the cops! Voice #2: RUN! Voice #1: TGI Friday's is a family establishment! {{Title text: For many of the anatomy pictures on Wikipedia, I think this is actually not far from reality. They only look all formal and professional due to careful cropping.}}

Woman: I've traveled here from the year 1983 to say this: Woman: {{In italics}} Are there any bagels left? [[A man is eating something.]] Narrator: While it's technically true, I wish she'd stop prefacing every sentence with that. {{Title text: She also starts every letter with "Dear Future <your name>".}}

[[Man is packing luggage.]] Voice: Where are you going? Man: Convention. Voice: What for? Man: Well, you know furries, right? Voice: Sure... [[Man closes suitcase.]] Man: We're furries whose animal identities have a thing for pretending to be humans. Voice: I see. [[A convention. People sit behind booths in the background.]] Man with glasses: How's the weather? Woman: Great! I've been driving my car and having a job all day! Man with glasses: Did you meow? Woman: Not once! {{Title text: There's Livejournal drama between those who want to wear human suits over fursuits and those who just take off the fursuits.}}

Man: I'm psychic, you know. Woman: There's no such thing. Man: Okay, think of a number from one to one hundred. Woman: Okay. Man: 43. Woman: Holy shit! Man: I try not to let it affect my life too much. Woman: Wait, I can't believe this. Man: Don't worry about it. Forget I said anything. Woman: But-- Man: Let's get to the movie. Woman: I, uh... Ok, sure. Narrator: This trick may only work 1% of the time, but when it does, it's totally worth it. {{Title text: You can do a lot better than 1% if you start keeping track of the patterns in what numbers people pick.}}