Suckville
by Jeff
Image text: Suckville is considered by the Census Bureau to be part of the Detroit metropolitan statistical area, despite not being located anywhere near Detroit.
Ok, so Megan and Cueball are playing a card game, that I am not able to identify from simply the piles (anyone know what game it looks like?) and Megan whips out one of the oldest insults in the book, a play on the word "suck" and adds a typical city name to the end of it. Other variations are: "losertown", "lameville", etc.
The phrase is originally based on the ubiquitous signage you see along roads that say "Welcome to Town X - Population Y". Really, it is just some creative smack talk that basically says "You suck".
Then, since Cueball one-ups Megan by indicating there is a city by that name, she can only resign herself to the fact that her smack talk did not work.
Also, she has a strange number of legs and arms in the 3rd frame. I'm not sure if that is supposed to be showing motion, or what. Either way, it is not working for me, she just looks like a spider on a laptop, which is completely terrifying.
Sustainable
by Jeff
Image text: Though 100 years is longer than a lot of our resources.
This is a graph of the usage of the word "Sustainable" in English in the United States each year. And as you can see, Randall extends the graph to the point where sustainable will be used as every word.
Sustainable has been increasing in use as people of the US are concerned about making sure that Earth's resources are not totally exhausted in the near future by developing sustainable development. Sustainable development (using wikipedia here) is a pattern of growth in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come.
As Randall mentions in the image text, the 100 years it takes for the word sustainable to get to 100% usage is a lot longer than most of our non-renewable (and non-sustainable) resources will last on the Earth.
Sloppier Than Fiction
by Jeff
Image text: Roger Ebert once called you directionless and unwatchable.
This comic is basically about a terrible person that Cueball is somehow talking to, possibly at a bar or party as Goatee Guy is carrying a drink.
The title of this comic is a play on the phrase "Stranger than Fiction", which means that sometimes real life can lead to some unexpected ups and downs that would not even make sense in a fictional representation in a book or a movie. Goatee Guy unfortunately for him, is "Sloppier than Fiction".
In the image text, Roger Ebert is a well-known US-based movie critic.
Oh and FYI, if anyone ever says "It wasn't technically cheating"... it was cheating.
SOPA
by Jeff
Image text: In protest of SOPA, I'm currently getting totally blacked out.
This very serious comic about the current bills in Congress of the United States named SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and it's sister bill PIPA. The EFF links do such a better job explaining the bill that I can, so please use them below.
The only joke is in the image text which is a play on words about "blacked out". Blacked out could mean in the web sense of a website going totally dark and offline (like Wikipedia today) or could mean when someone attempts to drink so much alcohol that they "black out", not remembering what happened that day/night.
UPDATE: Andy makes a great find in the comments below:
"There is a message hidden in the background of the black picture. If you brighten the image the blackhatguy says: “A message from sysadmins everywhere: Seriously, don’t screw with DNS. If you break this Internet, we are NOT making you a new one.”"
I've recreated the links from xkcd below:
Learn more:
EFF: One-page guide to SOPA
reddit: A technical overview of the SOPA and PIPA bills
DYN: How these bills would break DNS
EFF: Free speech on the web
Batman
by Jeff
Image text: I'm really worried Christopher Nolan will kill a man dressed like a bat in his next movie. (The man will be dressed like a bat, I mean. Christopher Nolan won't be, probably.)
This comic is a reference to the comic book and movie character 'Batman', who actually rich businessman Bruce Wayne as we see on the left being referenced as "Master Wayne" by his butler Alfred. In the middle is the stick figure representation of Batman and on the right is the Joker as played by the late Heath Ledger.
If we translate the image text, Randall is afraid that Christopher Nolan (the director of the last two Batman movies) will kill Batman in the next movie.
Adam and Eve
by Jeff
Image text: Abel and Steve would've been fine! I like Steve!
This comic is a take on the anti-homesexual refrain, used often at those sorts of rallies "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". Adam and Eve are in the story in the Bible of the first humans created by God. This refrain is used to support the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman because God created a man and a woman to start the human race, etc.
In this comic, Adam walks in on Eve having sexual relations with Abel, so he yells a take on the line used above. In the Bible, obviously, Abel and Adam didn't live at the same time, but that doesn't stop the joke.
In the image text, Adam continues that he would have preferred walking in on Adam and Steve because Steve is nice as he says in the image text and the fact that Abel wouldn't have been sleeping with his ladyfriend/girlfriend/wife/whatever Eve.
CORRECTION: Obviously, I need to go back and read more of my Bible, as Abel is Adam's son. Thanks to all the commentors and emailers for fixing my mistake. That makes this an incest joke! Adam wouldn' t care if Adam Abel was gay with his friend Steve, but incest with Abel's mother is another thing entirely.
Game AIs
by Jeff
Image text: The top computer champion at Seven Minutes in Heaven is a Honda-built Realdoll, but to date it has been unable to outperform the human Seven Minutes in Heaven champion, Ken Jennings.
This explanation got really long, so I'm placing it after the jump.
AAAAAA
by Jeff
Image text: 'ARE YOU TURNED ON YET?' 'I DON'T THINK SO--ARE YOU?' 'MAYBE A LITTLE!' 'OK, FIVE MORE MINUTES.'
Ok, in this comic, Megan and Cueball find out that "this guy's mansion" has a rotating bed (in the last frame, which is a flashback). So, they decide to build one and it appears to be going far too fast as both are holding on for dear life on each side of the bed.
The rotating bed is supposed to be a sexy device, but it appears from the comic that Cueball and Megan have made it rotate a little to fast to be appealing. However, the image text maybe makes us think otherwise.
This Week’s New Explanations
by Jeff
New Comics:
New Archives: (In No Particular Order)
Resonance by Amy
All the below are by Rik 't Hoff:
Poisson
Snapple
Kepler
The Cure
Pillow Talk
Guitar Hero
Su Doku
Iambic Pentameter
Paths
Velociraptors
Escher Bracelet
(I'm still working. Yes, I have yours. Going through them slower than I had hoped. Please, still submit submit submit!)
1000 Comics
by Jeff
Image text: Thank you for making me feel less alone.
This is obviously the 1000th xkcd comic. In this comic, click on the image above to see the large version, Randall has put (almost?) every stick figure character he has used through the 5+ years into the number 1000. Can't know for certain if this is all the characters, but it is an awful lot and I recognize a bunch.
The joke in this comic is Cueball saying at the bottom, "Only 24 more to go for a big round number". First and obviously, 1000 is a big round number, but in binary notation, 1024 is represented as 10000000000, making it a simple round number occurring frequently in computers.