I’m Sorry
by Jeff
Image text: You know I've always hated her.
Rarely does xkcd beat me to the explanation by providing it below the comic, however, in this case it does.
In the US, I don't know if this is the case in other countries, but when someone presents the other with bad news, they respond with (as the comic explains) a sympathetic "I'm Sorry". That is different than the "I'm Sorry" that a person would give for something that is their fault.
As it says below the comic, Cueball switches his sympathetic "I'm Sorry" when Megan does not accept the "I'm Sorry" because it was not his fault. This all starts to sound like an episode of the American sitcom Seinfeld.
Cueball says at the end "You know what I did..." and ""You know I've always hated her" as a wild switch to a fault "I'm Sorry".
Mimic Octopus
by Jeff
Image text: Even if the dictionaries are starting to give in, I refuse to accept 'octopi' as a word mainly because--I'm not making this up--there's a really satisfying climactic scene in the Orson Scott Card horror novel 'Lost Boys' which hinges on it being an incorrect pluralization.
Let's get this out of the way before it starts a flame war on here: according to Merrian Webster Dictionary online, both octopi, octopuses and octopodes (only if you are English) are all the correct plural of octopus. It is a pretty funny video, I highly recommend watching it, even if you don't care about the plural of octopus.
So, this comic is a reference to a typical fish and sea-life identification chart. Like this or the US airforce ID chart parody. So, its basically a parody of a parody referencing the mimic octopus which is, as the name implies, able to mimic other animals.
The Orson Scott Card novel 'Lost Boys' is (from Publisher's Weekly): "A withdrawn eight-year-old in a troubled family invents imaginary friends who bear the names of missing children in this absorbing thriller."
Strunk and White
by Jeff
Image text: The best thing about Strunk/White fanfiction is that it's virtually guaranteed to be well written.
This is a comic about the writing style guide called The Elements of Style by Cornell University professor William Strunk Jr. (I assume that's him with the pipe) and New Yorker writer E.B. White (who is at the computer). Just like in their book, they are clarifying the usage of words and phrases in the English language. In this case however, they are clarifying the use of their names, one for their book and another for the slash fiction or erotic fan fiction involving them.
Erotic fan fiction, if you were not aware is a genre of fiction in which fans make up erotic stories involving characters from non erotic stories.
I'm sure if there was not a Strunk/White slash fiction out before, there is one now.
Guest Week: Bill Amend (FoxTrot)
by Jeff
Image 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.
The top comic is a reference to this famous xkcd comic. The sudo command in linux allows a user to run as a "super-user", thus allowing them to execute the command they wish.
The next comic is a pun on the word "attractive". The girl thinks he is using it in the fashion that he likes he and is interested in her. He's using it in the gravitational pull way.
The next comic is a reference to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Which, if you read explain xkcd, you should know like the back of your hand.
The third comic, is a play on the sound of the word "aye". Aye is a word used when taking a verbal vote that is used to signify a positive, like yes. Additionally, aye sounds like the letter i. In this case, the mathematician in Congress is voting the square root of -1, which comes out to an imaginary number known as i. And since i sounds the same as "aye", that is how a mathematician votes.
Five-Minute Comics: Part 2
by Jeff
Image 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.
Top Comic - This is a parody of the frequent conspiracy theories that have come about since the events of September 11, 2001. The use of the "grassy knoll" is a reference to the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a US President on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Some people say they saw another or different shooter over on a "grassy knoll" by the road where JFK was shot.
Middle Left - Some people say that when women are pregnant, they have a certain glow about them, whether it is just their general happiness or something else. In this case, the woman is really pregnant and then promptly gives birth.
Middle - In this comic, the character says "Cogito Ergo Cogito" instead of the traditional phrase "Cogito Ergo Sum". The traditional phrase is Latin for I think therefore I am, which was said by René Descartes. In this comic, the character is playing it safe by just saying I think therefore I think.
Middle Left - This comic is a pun on the phrase "Bail out!" When it is used by fighter pilots, it means for them to hit their ejector seats and parachute to safety. In this comic, the pilots are using the phrase as would two people in a boat that is filling up with water.
Lower Middle - This is a joke on how in Star Wars they have lightsabers. In this case, they created black-lightsabers which use black light bulbs. Black lights just make every thing seem really eerie and you are able to see dust and dirt particles on everything.
Right - I think that one is pretty self explanatory and pretty gross.
Lower Middle Left - I'm not sure what is up with the sandwich making one, but it appears to be an inside joke somehow.
Bottom Left - This is a lawyer who is going to make a defense that will offend women and he prepared an opening statement incorrectly thinking there would be both men and women on the jury. This comic is an extension of the stereotypical lawyer opening "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury...".
Bottom Right - From the start this is a full quote from Star Wars in which Conan Antonio Motti rips Darth Vader's ancient religion, which in the movie is The Force. Vader proceeds to force choke Motti until Moff Tarkin tells him to stop. In this comic, Vader's ancient religion is of course Wiccan.
Tech Support
by Jeff
Image 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.
In this comic, Cueball is having a dream about being on a tech support call with his internet provider.
Cueball, naturally is running Haiku, an open source operating system that is compatible with BeOS. Of course, don't try to go to the haiku website today because the xkcd effect took it down.
Cueball is getting nowhere with the tech support personnel, so he attempts to have the member of the help desk find someone that has the stereotypical look of a geek: Cargo Pants with a subway map on their wall (of their cubicle).
When he finds a person who knows how to fix his problem. She says that the keyword to find a person who knows two programming language is: shibboleet. Shibboleet seems to be a combination of Shibboleth and the word "leet" which is short for "elite" in gamer and online circles.
The word shibboleth originates from Hebrew, and refers to features of language, and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group. So, if I'm getting this right, if the person pronounces the word correct, they identify themselves as a fellow member of the community.
No word on if this actually works, but I'm sure some xkcd fans will have it implemented in their phone systems within the day.
Adjectives
by Jeff
Image text: 'Fucking ineffable' sounds like someone remembering how to do self-censorship halfway through a phrase.
Xkcd took a lot of the explanation out of this one by putting an explanation of the last word in perens below the word. Cheating! We've still got the other words to define though.
Let's start with after "improper".
Evanescent - tending to vanish like vapor.
Piquant - having an agreeable pungent taste.
Jejune - insubstantial: lacking in nutritive value.
Kafkaesque - relating to or in the manner of Franz Kafka or his writing.
Stochastic - being or having a random variable; "a stochastic variable"; "stochastic processes".
Fungible - a commodity that is freely interchangeable with another in satisfying an obligation.
The two people in the higher of the two comics are standing around drinking wine, possibly at a wine tasting because they are discussing the taste of Cabernet, which is a type of wine.
In the bottom comic, Cueball is trading stocks online as he comments on the fungible nature of the stocks and bonds.
Period Speech
by Berg
Image Text: The same people who spend their weekends at the Blogger Reenactment Festivals will whine about the anachronisms in historical movies, but no one else will care.
Ah, language- the great social agreement of symbolic representation which enables someone like me, sitting in Los Angeles to communicate with someone like you, who I presume lives somewhere on the internet (nice place, by the way, but you should put your porn away before you have people over). Today's xkcd is about the inherent slipperiness of language, and how very little of what we say today will sound coherent to a future observer.
Consider English. Modern English is thought to have settled into it's current form (more or less) sometime in the 16th century. Before Modern English, however, were Middle English (mayhap you've heard of the Canterbury Tales?) and Old English (mayhap you've heard of Beowulf?). Middle English is close enough to Modern English that you can almost read it, but Old English is far enough away, linguistically, that it requires some study to be able to read.
The point xkcd is making, then, is that 400 years from now, bits of dialect and slang that to us seem quite disparate ("forsooth" is hundreds of years old, while "grok" entered the lexicon in '61) will seem quite similar to all but the most avid linguistic scholars. After all, if you were presented with 5th century slang and 9th century slang, chances are you wouldn't notice any difference.
Those who would notice the difference are addressed in the image text- they'll be the folks at the Blogger Reenactment Festivals. Those aren't a thing yet, but we can imagine that these would be fringe affairs, attended by only the most devoted of nerds (a term brought into the language by none other than Dr. Seuss in 1950). As such, their opinions as to the accuracy of slang presented in historical movies from the future represent the minority view, even if it is correct.
Analogies
by Jeff
Image text: I just call all of them 'synecdoche'.
Let's recap middle school English class, link style!
Metaphors are the comparison of one thing to another without the use of like or as : “A man is but a weak reed”; “The road was a ribbon of moonlight.”
Similies are a common figure of speech that explicitly compares two things usually considered different. Most similes are introduced by like or as : “The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water.”
A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which the one of the following (or its reverse) is expressed:
* A part stands for a whole
* An individual stands for a class
* A material stands for a thing
Dyslexics
by Jeff
Image text: And of course I had to redo this like three times because I kept writing 'UNTIE'; I kept doing 'doing 'doing it wrong' wrong' wrong.
The joke shirt is supposed to be "Dyslexics of the world Untie" because dyslexics mixed up the T and the I. In this case, the dyslexics were trying to make the joke shirt and mixed up the T and the I again because they are dyslexic.