Image text: I learned from Achewood that since this poem is in ballad meter, it can be sung to the tune of Gilligan's Island.  Since then, try as I might, I haven't ONCE been able to read it normally.

This is a quote from the first three lines of the Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop For Death".  In the second frame, what seems to be Emily Dickinson is using the "Y" button from Grand Theft Auto to "carjack" Death from its carriage.

Achewood referenced in the image text is another webcomic.

Image text: Normally, the Shuttle can't quite safely reach the orbital inclination required to pass over both those points from a Canaveral launch, but this is an alternate history in which either it launches from Vandenburg or everyone hates the Outer Banks.

This comic is about disputed territories, orbiting satellites and latitude and longitude.

There is not enough pixels in the world to go over the Palestinan/Israeli conflict over land in the Middle East.  Needless to say as in this comic, both groups lay claim to the same area of land and have been fighting over it for years with no end in sight.

The Texas - Oklahoma disputes pale in comparison, but that is where the joke lies in the comic.  Texas and Oklahoma have been disputing their border for years as well before it was finally settled around 10 years ago.

Cueball probably should have just settled for latitude and longitude instead of trying to define where the shuttle was over.  How about just "Earth"?

Vandenburg is a reference to the Vandenburg Air Force Base which has space launch capabilities and is in Santa Barbara, California.

I'm not sure why everyone would hate the Outer Banks?  The only connection I know of is that you can see the shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida in the Outer Banks as the shuttle moves swiftly up the East Coast and into orbit.

Image text: I'm just worried that we'll all leave and you won't get to come along!

In this comic, our friend Beret run to wake up Cueball with his potentially middle of the night revelation that Humankind is discovering "Exoplanets" or planets that exist outside of our solar system.  The indication is that these planets are habitable enough for humans, even if just for a visit.

Then Beret takes it a bit further thinking that one of the countries on Earth could restart Project Orion.  As Beret suggests, Project Orion was an early study that pushed for nuclear powered rockets for space travel.  However, the one major downside of Project Orion was the fallout zone that the nuclear launch would present on Earth.  But a nuclear launch in space on an asteroid or space station would not present those same problems.  Then Beret references Stargate:Atlantis when he mentions "City-Ships" as the city-ship Atlantis was the basis for the show.  The city-ships on Stargate:Atlantis are about the size of Manhattan.

So, to sum up the comic.  Beret is very excited that we can see (with the Hubble telescope and other earth-bound telescopes) and find exoplanets.  Then with some advances in space technology we can create nuclear propulsion in space to reach these planets.  Have to admit, it is very exciting.

And Cueball would just rather snooze.

Image text: Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?

Alright, open mic night.  Everyone's favorite night.

In the first frame Cutie/MC Aphasia is not a very good rapper because Aphasia is a disorder that effects the part of the brain that controls the ability of speech.  So, as you can see in the comic, MC Aphasia has a very difficult time speaking let alone rapping.

In the second frame, Black Hat is reacting to a Yo Momma joke that someone in the audience possibly yelled his way and starts off a common "Yo Momma" joke - "When yo momma sits around the house, she really sits AROUND the house."  But instead he goes in another direction to something that is a bit more off the beaten path.

In the third frame Cueball/MC Quine is a computer science joke.  A Quine is a program that produces its source code as its output.  In other words, what MC Quine puts into the rap is exactly what he gets out of it.  Hence the repetition of the same line.  In this case, the source code of the rap is "Yo, I'm MC Quine and I'm here to say,".

And completing the xkcd trifecta is the last comic, is a Lord of the Rings joke.  I'll call him "Beret" and is riffing off a common observational comic routine in which the comic observes that men go to the bathroom alone and women go in groups.

The image text is a reference to how when comedians become more famous, they travel more to other cities to do their comedy.  In the case of observational comics, the more they travel, the more they have time to observe both hotels and flying and nothing else.

Image text: Sweet unintersecting dreams!

This is one of those xkcds that come along every few weeks that's always about feelings and always strike me as a little creepy and weird.  I'm not sure what it is about them, but they are easily my least favorite type of xkcd.  Plus, they do not need any real explaining, so what's the fun in that?

Anyway, this comic uses typical perspective and literary tricks to make you think that Cueball and Cutie and sleeping in different beds.  Hint: the fact that they have the same color red comforter is the give-away.  And then in the last frame they show both characters sleeping in the same bed.  Conceivably, leaving the world behind.

That's all I've got.  What do you think?

Image text: Yes, I understand that the turn is half a mile past the big field, but my GPS knows that, too.  This would be easier if you weren't about to ask me to repeat it all back to you.

Sorry about the late post today, it was unavoidable.

In this comic, Cueball is getting directions over the phone to a friend's house.  We only hear Cueball's side of the conversation, but it is obvious the other party is giving him very detailed turn by turn directions with specific landmarks.  Cueball, however is not interested in the directions at all, because he will simply plug the address in the GPS and be on his way as his GPS tells Cueball where to turn, big field or no.

I think with the considerable prevalence of GPS enabled devices these days, people who give detailed turn by turn directions are more and more giving way to the GPS style of directions.

Also, the 495 referenced in this comic is certainly the 495 highway that circles the city and suburbs of Boston.  According to the directions, it looks like Cueball's friend's house is somewhere around here in Southern Massachusetts.

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Image text: It gets worse! You know that wizened old monk with the gypsy wife whose voodoo shop we smash up every every day after school?

This comic is a play on the standard movie set up of a house or a hotel being built on an ancient Indian burial ground.  Being built over an Indian burial ground is generally a bad thing and leads to the house being haunted at the very least.  The goal of the haunting is to get the people to move out of the house or dwelling so that the ancient Indians can rest in peace. The Indians in this case are referred to the Native Americans and not the people of the country of India.

This comic is a play on that because Rob and Cutie in this comic have dug up Indian bones and made puppets out of them, which the title of the comic says is certainly desecration of the ancient Indian's tombs and definitely way worse than accidentally building a house over an ancient burial ground.  But since this comic is a play on the typical movie set up, Rob and Cutie think nothing of playing with ancient bones, but the fact that those bones were buried over another ancient burial ground scares them.

I'm not sure what movie the image text refers to.  Anyone have an idea?

Image text: They actually started the reversed-text practice in 1977 -- not for ease-of-reading reasons, but because too many people were driving backward down the highway blasting the Star Wars opening theme.

This comic is refers to how when words or instructions are written on the highway are always backwards from how you would read them.  It seems that the "highway" engineers write the words as if you would read them as your car goes over them.  Sometimes this approach works, other times (probably most of the time) it is terribly confusing. The sentence on the comic is: Highway Engineers Think I Read Backwards.  I think adding the period is perfectly hilarious touch.  Probably not too many periods on the highways.

The image text is referred to how the words at the beginning of Star Wars move from the bottom of the screen to the top so that it can be read by normal human being.  However, the image text says the engineers initially reversed the text because people were driving BACKWARDS down the highway.

The title of the comic is also a reference to this phenomenon because the "Stop Ahead" instruction would be written on the highway as "Ahead" and then "Stop".

It is also kind of odd that there is a sidewalk next to the highway in this comic.

Image text: There are two or three songs out there with beeps in the chorus that sound exactly like the clock radio alarm I had in high school, and hearing it makes me think my life since junior year has been a dream I'm about to wake up from.

This one is pretty straightforward.  There is nothing worse than the standard alarm clock sound unexpectedly in a commercial or song.

Image text: Don't need any thanks.  I have a backscattering fetish.

This comic is of a security line in an airport, which I got all too familiar with during my recent trip.  However, this is not the airport security line you are traditionally familiar with because everyone is waiting for one of the new Backscatter x-ray machines (which is what it says in tiny print on the scanner in the comic).  These machines do more than merely beep when enough of a metal object pass through them.  They take "pictures" of the person inside them to see if they have any prohibited material on their person.

That is all well and good, however the x-ray machines ignore clothes and produce an outline of the person's nude body for the security personnel to analyze.  Because this outline bares a lot for the picture, some men would find it beneficial to take some Viagra to increase the bulk of the area around their crotchal regions.  I'm quite sure "crotchal" is not a word, but I like to use it anyway.  If you are not sure what I mean, you either haven't seen a single commercial for Viagra, Cialis or any variant drugs.  If you still do not understand, come back when you are older.

The image text is what the last person in line says to the Black Hat character when he sees the Viagra for sale sign.  He does not need the Viagra to achieve tumescence to impress the security personnel and increase his own self confidence because he is aroused by the backscattering itself.

Backscattering is the the reflection of waves, particles or signals back to where they came from.

The security person in this comic is thinking "Oh God".  There is several possible reasons for this. 1 - He could be seeing the image in the screen of the Viagra-enhanced outline of the man in the scanner.  2 - He could have noticed the Black Hat selling Viagra, check the long line of men and then back at the image and think about how long his 8 hour shift seems now.

However, for comedic effect, the comic is different than in reality because in actual airports, the person analyzing the image is in a completely separate room and cannot see the actual people going through the line.  The people attending to the line only look at an LCD screen and wait for the technicians in the other room to declare the person clean.

All in all, it is a very disarming situation as they make you hold your hands over or behind your head for the scan.