A clichéd statement is taken literally in order to create an improbable situation, possibly for use as humor.
The newscaster is doing exactly that which he is being criticized for - letting people without college physics degrees voice their opinions.
The Author has fabricated a hypothetical college course where intelligent female physics students (geeks) act violently towards male psychology students (non-geeks).
It is possible that this comic is a manifestation of past social and/or sexual frustrations from the Author’s college days.
The Author is making a joke about circular dependencies. It is targeted at Computer Science majors who have felt left out recently for not having a reference to their particular geek culture in the comic strip.
And our lives continue for another day, as we all pretend to have not disappointed ourselves and our families.
In order to satiate His desire to draw an infographic for a single, small piece of information, the Author has sourced a quote from President John F. Kennedy that is 35 years older than himself.
He uses this infographic to make the joke that the president made a geographically incorrect statement.
Note: one common symptom of Asperger syndrome is a desire to correct people and factual inaccuracies.
In another tour de force of Found Art via Culturally Relevant References, the author has constructed an alternate reality, independent film in a single comic strip. Drawing inspiration from such authentic, indie sensations as The Brown Bunny, Thelma and Louise, and Twister, and featuring brilliant casting of Chloe Sevigny as herself, and Justin Bieber as Geena Davis, he weaves a universal narrative celebrating friendship, overcoming fear, and chasing our dreams. Your humble curator is not too proud to admit shedding a tear of melancholy joy upon reading this work of genius.
In this comic, a father and son have a comedically awkward conversation about pornography. An older father fears that his son will be exposed to pornographic material when an errant issue of the Swimsuit Edition falls into the child’s hands. But a casual comment about hardcore sexual acts suggests that the son’s internet habit has exposed him to an unexpected degree of pornography.
The Author is making a joke about how there is pornography on the internet.
A group of men gather, angry about the contents of a book. “Heresy” is the complaint offered, which implies they find the comment religiously objectionable. They decide to burn the book in protest, but realize that in order to get their desired bonfire they need more copies. Comedically, they opt to burn several less-expensive copies loaded onto an ebook reader. The “punch” of this comic—that is to say, its ultimate joke—is that the men involved foolishly burned an electronic device and died from chemical inhalation.
To the uninitiated reader, it may seem shocking that this work ends with people dying. In order to understand why the Author considers this funny, one must understand the subculture and doctrine called the “Hacker Ethos,” a militant version of libertarian-ism and darwinism that believes in absolute survival of the fittest, where “fittest” is defined by who can amass the most knowledge. Unlike other academic subcultures, the “Hacker Ethos” makes almost no differentiation between useful knowledge (such as chemistry, engineering, or computer programming) and useless trivia (such as jokes, correlations to movie plot lines, or correct english spelling of foreign words). In this philosophy, only memorization and recall are of value and the accumulation of knowledge (and its subsequent display) supersede all other drives.
It is easy to see why people who voluntarily destroy or avoid knowledge would be at the absolute lowest position of this social hierarchy. Much like slaves, any and all misfortune that happens to them in this pursuit is considered richly deserved and even funny. This effect is magnified even more than the casual observer might expect; the story will be retold over and over as the crown jewel of the nerd king’s arsenal of trivia.
Kidney theft is an urban legend wherein an unwitting traveler has his or her kidney harvested for transplant without permission. A story about a traveler waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a hastily stitched up side and a note saying “go to the hospital” made the rounds via email in the late 90’s.
Your curators have written about the author’s fascination with the trappings of science before. Not content with just a veneer of science, the author is fusing his fascinations on science with his fantasies about harvesting organs from unwilling patients. His fantasies are clearly evolving, and it won’t be long now until he must act them out.
Statistically speaking, most serial killers are white males in their twenties or thirties who target strangers near their homes or places of work. Childhood developmental characteristics of serial killers most frequently include day dreaming, compulsive masturbation, and isolation. The isolation of a serial killer often leads to feelings of inadequacy, often in relation to the opposite sex. In other words, the archetypal male protagonist of most xkcd comics.
Always topical, the Author introduces the strip with two reporters asking an intelligent female scientist (humorously named Dr. Scientist) for comments on the current ecological disaster the BP oil spill in the gulf has caused, and what the latest worst case scenario could be now that the top kill solution has failed. Dr. Scientist replies that we are already living the worst case scenario. Revisiting a common thread throughout the run of this comic, the female of superior intellect is roundly dismissed as the reporters press on in their pursuit of “if it bleeds, it leads” journalism, hoping for an even worse possible future than what we are currently experiencing in order to scare people into consuming their media. This sends Dr. Scientist into a reasoned—albeit accusatory—response that bluntly comments on the tendency of the media to seek out titillating headlines and stories rather than acting as responsible journalists; a more attractive option than putting in the time and effort to investigate the situation at hand in a sober, impartial manner. Of course, this this is all just a set up by the Author signaling that the time has come to cut to the Dumb Male Character… the Audience is treated to another special guest appearance from the Author’s go-to whipping boy, Michael Bay, reprising his famously stereotyped role as a testosterone-filled alpha male with flowing unkempt hair—the perfect archetype of everything the Author despises in a man.
Predictably, the Author’s depiction of Michael Bay immediately begins to spout off an extreme and outlandish scenario in which… well, it doesn’t really matter what he came up with. Unfathomable natural disasters, scientifically impossible scenarios, absurdist humor, a dash of political intrigue thrown in for good measure, etc. In reality, the remaining frames exist purely to demonstrate the cultural and intellectual inferiority the Author views in the typical American alpha male stereotype, and the disdain he has for the plebeian average American who holds these people and their brand of entertainment in high regard. The Author is well aware that the audience of the Comic feels the same way, harkening back to their high school days when the Michael Bays of their campus were busy telling loud stories and getting lots of laughs from throngs of adoring boys and girls in the lunch time quad. The Author and Audience always knew, however, that one day their time would come when they’d be able to exact their revenge upon all of these types of extremely popular and successful men in the form of a biting commentary within a crudely drawn comic strip on the internet.
