Savannah Ancestry
by Berg
Image Text: She's a perfectly nice lady from a beautiful city, and there's no reason to be mean just because she thinks a quarterback is a river in Egypt.
Relatively quick one today, folks- I've got to be up in the morning and evolutionary psychology is a deep rabbit hole for a former psych major to tackle. At any rate, here goes nothin':
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology that seeks to justify contemporary human behavior using forces that acted upon us during our evolutionary history. It has come under some fire from the psychology community because it frequently seems to be justifying what are seen as stereotypical gender roles. A quick example is evolutionary psychology's explanation of attraction/mate selection between males and females. Males are attracted to signs of fertility, because these are clear markers that their genes will have a higher percentage of being passed on. Thus, men like plump breasts, wide hips, and barely legal cheerleaders. Women, on the other hand, are attracted to men with resources. Thus, women like men with money, and men who are older clearly have the resources necessary to carry on a long life. This is a quick example that I'm certain my major adviser would chide me for butchering, but hopefully it still serves the purpose of outlining some of the basic philosophy behind evolutionary psychology.
In today's xkcd, Cutie jumps to the conclusion that when Cueball refers to her Savannah ancestors he means the primitive hominids living in Africa nearly 2 million years ago (probably Homo ergaster). Therefore, Cutie presumes that Cueball is invoking evolutionary psychology, and instantly launches into a withering attack on what may be fundamental biases in Cueball's line of reasoning. Cueball, however, is taken aback- he merely meant Cutie's ancestors from Savannah, Georgia (a city which was supposedly too beautiful for William Tecumseh Sherman to bear burning down). Cutie is flummoxed, naturally, in that she's now been attacked from an unforeseen angle, and in the image text struggles to defend her mother.
Here's where I'm a bit stumped- is there a river somewhere in Egypt I've been unable to track down that sounds anything like "quarterback," or is good ol' R.M. just having a bit of fun with a non-sequitur? Either way, since we know darned well that a quarterback is a kind of football player and NOT a river in Egypt, we can take Cutie's image text defense as an oblique admission to her mother's idiocy. Her defensive tone indicates that this is a bit of a sore spot for Cutie, and mayhap some of said idiocy has been passed down to her either culturally or genetically. Sure, she may be able to knock evolutionary psychology down a peg or two, but she doesn't understand abstract mathematics after all. Does anybody win? No, not really, but Savannah certainly seems to take an unnecessary beating.
August 4th, 2010
The alt:text refers to two different yo’ momma jokes, that she thinks that denial is a river and that a quarterback is what you get when you pay with a dollar for a 75c object. Her mother is so stupid that she got them mixed up. The punchline, as I understood it, is that her mother is named Georgia. Possibly Georgia Savannah, and it was a complicated Yo’ Momma joke.
August 4th, 2010
It should be mentioned that evolutionary psychology frequently comes under fire from evolutionary biologists, generally due to a general lack of evidence (and frequently for not even providing reason to believe that the feature was actually ever adaptive).
August 4th, 2010
we know darned well that a quarterback is a kind of football player
Not in the rest of the world, we don’t.
October 11th, 2010
Speaking as an Englishman with a typical disdain for American Football (why all the armour? Just man up and play rugby!) I do still know that a Quarterback is an American Football player. That’s just the kind of thing that permeates just about everyones culture through U.S. imported TV shows.
Other positions gleaned from these sources include Running Back, Linebacker, reciever, and the idiot kid who handles refreshments who turns out to be a football superstar natural.
August 4th, 2010
Yo momma so dumb she thinks Denial is a river in Egypt.
Yo momma so dumb she thinks a quarterback is a refund.
There’s the two jokes.
Lord Z. just google Savannah, Georgia before you venture a guess.
August 4th, 2010
Does that mean her mom is from Savannah, Georgia? And that’s why she thought he was taking a shot at her mom?
August 4th, 2010
Ah, yo’ mama jokes, I see… The best I could do was that ‘quarterback’ could be ‘Qatar beck’, but that would be a river _near_ Egypt…
August 4th, 2010
Note that there was a news story a few days earlier suggesting that the “49ers may be suffering from a psychological condition known as Quarterback Denial”.
August 6th, 2010
is that when you refuse the refund?
August 4th, 2010
As a woman from Savannah, Georgia, I can attest that in all certainty, the reference is to Cutie’s mom who comes from Savannah. If you’ve ever met an old-Savannah mother you would understand. Think southern belle.
August 5th, 2010
Well, the snappy “my mother” defense ties in humorously to the attack on Ego-Psych (hence, “Leave my mother[s] out of it”
But the quarterback-river thing is a mashup reference two very popular “your mom” jokes:
“Yo momma so stupid that she heard ‘quarterback’ at a football game, and thought she was getting a refund!”
And the ever popular:
“Yo mommy so stupid she thought ‘denial’ was a river in Egypt!”
Hope I.could help.
August 5th, 2010
Ah, yes! Yo momma jokes. Man- you prepare yourself for xkcd by studying science, and right when you think you’ve got a handle on things it slaps you upside the head with popular culture. Looks like I’ve gotta broaden my scope.
August 6th, 2010
Ah, I was thinking it could be related to Quarterback->Quarter->Nickel->Nile.
That would probably be too complicated though, and the mismatched joke punchlines seem more likely.
August 7th, 2010
Considering XKCD’s self professed love of “Your mom” kokes (http://xkcd.com/366 and others) this must definitely be a relapse into that genre.
Tying it to evo-psych just proves he’s the genius we already knew he was.
February 21st, 2011
Hopefully, you’ve already found this out, but in case not, the Nile has “cataracts”, which likely explains the “quarterback” confusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataracts_of_the_Nile