1148: Nothing to Offer

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Nothing to Offer
cerebrospinal fluid, pericardial fluid, sputum, aqueous humor, perilymph, chyme, hydatid fluid, interstitial fluid, rheum, and gin.
Title text: cerebrospinal fluid, pericardial fluid, sputum, aqueous humor, perilymph, chyme, hydatid fluid, interstitial fluid, rheum, and gin.

Explanation

Blood, toil, tears, and sweat is a famous phrase in a speech given by Winston Churchill, which would be heard on the radio in the 1940s. The comic then goes on to list many other bodily fluids produced in the human body, with the exception being gin. To list in order: spit, bile, vomit, urine, mucus, semen, earwax, lymph, gastric acid, sebum, pus, endolymph, intracellular fluid, blood plasma, vitreous humor, feces, pleural cavity fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, pericardial fluid, sputum, aqueous humor, perilymph, chyme, hydatid fluid, interstitial fluid, rheum, and gin.

Transcript

[Radio on a dresser.]
Radio: I have nothing to offer
Radio: But
Radio: Blood, toil, tears, sweat,
Radio: spit, bile, vomit, urine,
[Text is now bleeding through the background.]
Radio: mucus, semen, earwax, lymph, gastric acid, sebum, pus, endolymph, intracellular fluid, blood plasma, vitreous humor, feces, pleural cavity fluid,
[Cut off by radio.]
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Discussion

As I was reading the comic today, I saw the joke, but didn't really find it funny. Then I burst out laughing when I finally got to the word "gin". 76.122.5.96 06:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking the "CHLY" cut off behind the radio might be a typo, meant to be "CHYL(E)"? "...a milky bodily fluid consisting of lymph and emulsified fats". Sokak (talk) 11:24, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

What is 'toil'? English is not my native language, and I heard before "blood, sweat and tears" but never heard before about 'toil'. Also, it's conviniently missing from the ordered list. Is it related to toilets? 189.123.133.2 03:16, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Toil simply means struggle or laborious effort. It's the only thing that is breaking the pattern of the bodily fluids but is part of the original quote from Churchill. --184.36.97.155 04:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't actually think 'CHYL' was a typo and he just couldn't write the E because of the spacing...so it wasn't a mistake and EVERYTHING RANDALL MUNROE WRITES IS AWESOME AND PERFECT. -- 125.34.1.165 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The typo wasn't the missing 'E'. A lot of the fluids on that list are obscured by the radio and contain missing letters. Read the two carefully. What's written is CHLY and what it is assumed to mean is CHYLE. -- 110.174.201.221 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Do you think there's any significance to the fact that 'rheum', which is pronounced similarly to 'rum', is immediately proceeding 'gin'? -☃

I tried to see the official transcript ([1]), but it seems to be obscured as well. 172.69.67.22 03:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Given that Churchill was British, the spelling should be fæces rather than feces. While the beginning of the word is obscured in the comic and it is difficult to determine exactly how it is spelled, the small vertical line preceding the E looks more like part of an F than part of an A. 172.69.6.56 (talk) 18:49, 1 December 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)