227: Color Codes

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Color Codes
It's the TMBG Dial-a-Song line, to save you some time.
Title text: It's the TMBG Dial-a-Song line, to save you some time.

Explanation

Resistors are an electronic component carrying color-coded bands indicating their value (measured in Ohms) and tolerance (e.g. 5%).

TMBG are "They Might Be Giants" popular beat combo responsible for toe-tapping chart-topping "Birdhouse In Your Soul". At one point, they recorded individual songs on an answering machine, and advertised the phone number so people could call and listen to the song on the machine. Hence, Dial-A-Song.

Transcript

[Cueball talks to a friend at a desk littered with objects.]
Cueball: Hey, what's your cell number?
Friend: (Violet Brown Gray) - Uh, I mean, (718)-387-6962.
Cueball: Okay, you are putting down those resistors and going outside for a while.
Friend: That's probably a good idea.


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Discussion

Interestingly enough, violet brown grey corresponds to 710,000,000 ohms. BlueRoll18 (talk) 02:39, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Which part of that fact is interesting? 108.162.219.223 20:28, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
It's 71*10^8, the first digits of the phone number. Compro01 (talk) 19:31, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
isn't that the joke in the first place? Just some random derp 18:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

That's interesting because that's the beginning of the phone number 108.162.228.29 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


There has been a community portal discussion of what to call Cueball and what to do in case with more than one Cueball. I have added this comic to the new Category:Multiple Cueballs. I have also changed the explanation and transcript so Cueball is the interesting person of this comic - i.e. the one who talks in color codes. And then made a note that the other guy also looks like Cueball. --Kynde (talk) 12:01, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


Any idea if there is any significance to the phone number? 172.69.35.5 19:05, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

It's in the title text *and* in the explanation, good grief.--The Cat Lady (talk) 10:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)