853: Consecutive Vowels

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Consecutive Vowels
But the windows! What if there's a voyeur watchi-- wait, now I'm turned on too.
Title text: But the windows! What if there's a voyeur watchi-- wait, now I'm turned on too.

Explanation[edit]

After running some analysis on a database, Cueball shows Megan a chart depicting the relationship between sexual arousal and consecutive vowels, showing that a high amount of consecutive vowels is linked to higher sexual arousal. At first, it could be theorised to be due to drawn out moans or screams during lovemaking and orgasm (Ooooh! Yeeeees!).

Megan says she doesn't get it, but Cueball interrupts her with "queueing", a word with 5 consecutive vowels. This immediately arouses Megan, who grabs Cueball and shouts "FUCK ME NOW." It turns out that the consecutive vowels themselves appear to cause arousal, rather than arousal causing the use of consecutive vowels.

The title text shows that Cueball is fearful that there may be a voyeur peeking at them, but as "voyeur" has 4 consecutive vowels because "y" is a vowel in this case, Cueball gets turned on as well.

Transcript[edit]

[Megan stands at the left while Cueball comes from right holding up a chart.]
Cueball: I was running a factor analysis on this huge database, and check out what it found:
[An xy-graph plotting "sexual arousal" against "consecutive vowels." The trendline through the dots is a smooth exponential increasing curve.]
[Frameless panel:]
Megan: Huh? This chart makes no sense. What-
Cueball: "Queueing"
[Zoom in, Megan grabs Cueball.]
Megan: FUCK ME NOW.


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Discussion

Present tense, or gerund? -- IronyChef (talk) 14:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I always thought the voyeur reference was to the statistical voyeurism is http://xkcd.com/563/

I don't think y is a vowel in that word. 184.66.160.91 05:17, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Y is always a vowel.76.29.225.28 15:21, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
No --JSekula71 (talk) 05:33, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
From the grammatical point of view, “y” is a vowel. If you would look at the pronunciation point of view then even “queue” is read /kjuː/ and therefore has only one vowel. STEN (talk) 19:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Depends on barely audiable differences in pronunciation (vowel in voy-eur and consonant in vo-yeur). Would have to be voy-e-yor for every writen vow to be pronounced distinct from the others, though. Equally kyu-e-oo-ee. -- 108.162.210.111 17:52, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Can't you think of some way to find out?

I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 18:17, 24 January 2015 (UTC)


Y has to be a vowel here or it's not funny ~JFreund

I don't know if it's related, but 'queue' is the french word for 'tail', and it's slang for dick. Queueing sounds like 'queuter', which is slang for 'to fuck'. Bonob (talk) 14:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

So THAT's why the French are lovers, not fighters! Anonymous 04:30, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Seems to me the explanation does a pretty good job explaining. as the incomplete did not include a specific reason, I deleted it. Anonymous 06:51, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Isn't it related to the kind of long scream containing long string of vowels during climax ? 173.245.53.138 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'm slightly worried that Cueball has a (huge) database containing data on sexual arousal and consecutive vowels, such that they can be plotted against each other.... --Pudder (talk) 15:39, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't think Megan is shouting here, considering how close the two are. While I can see that the italics may imply shouting, I would instead interpret the dialogue to be whispered with intensity, so as to establish a mood. 141.101.99.5 18:39, 11 March 2015 (UTC)Now That I'm Signing Right, I Guess I'll Go Make An Account

the axes aren't labeled #http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/833:_Convincing 173.245.49.129 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Even if it's acting as a consonant, it should count as half a vowel: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/semivowel 108.162.237.160 23:22, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Has anyone else noticed that the scatter plot has waaaaay too many different x-values to have "queueing" and "voyeur" be near the top of the curve? (you can't have half a vowel in a sentence, so each different x-value should represent one additional vowel...) Qwerty Dvorak (talk) 11:08, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

What about Euouae? Euouae--Catnerd8695 (talk) 18:38, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Relevant xkcd: 552 162.158.34.202 17:21, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I always assumed that Cueball getting aroused by potential voyeurism was nothing to do with vowels - he's just a sexual exhibitionist.

"Catchphrase" is the opposite: the most consonants in a row. 162.158.90.196 18:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)