788: The Carriage

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Jump to: navigation, search
The Carriage
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.
Title 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.

Explanation

Emily Dickinson is a famous American poet, who wrote a poem called "Death", about the personification of Death kindly stopping for her to pick her up.

Grand Theft Auto is a well known video game series where players commonly steal cars by grabbing the driver and throwing them out of the vehicle. In the lower left corner of the second panel, there is a picture of the Y-button used to enter (and steal) vehicles in the Xbox versions of the game.

The proposed Emily Dickinson edition of Grand Theft Auto mashes up these two concepts. When Death stops to pick up the protagonist (Hairbun, possibly representing Dickinson herself), she violently carriage-jacks him and takes over his carriage to use for her own purposes.

The title text refers to this strip from the webcomic Achewood where it is pointed out that poems written in ballad metre can be sung to the same tune as the theme song of Gilligan's Island, a 1960s sitcom. Upon learning this it can (as it seemingly has for Randall) become difficult to read Dickinson's poem without singing it.

Transcript

[Death with his scythe is driving a horse-drawn carriage. The text is written in two frames above and below the carriage:]
Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
[Hairbun grabs Death by the arm and pulls him off the carriage. There is a circle with the letter Y in the lower left corner. The text above the carriage is in a frame.]
The carriage held but just oursel-
Death: Hey!
Hands holding Death: Grab
Circle: Y
[Hairbun takes off in the carriage with the scythe, leaving Death behind on the ground in the dust from the carriage taking off.]
Hairbun: Hyah!
[Hairbun stands with her arms crossed, and Death's scythe next to her. The first text above her is printed as the official logo and the text below is in a type of square brackets.]
Grand Theft Auto
Emily Dickinson Edition


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

Fun fact: you can sing anything written in ballad meter to the tune of anything else written in ballad meter. Try singing the pokemon theme to the tune of saving grace. Davidy²²[talk] 02:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean Amazing Grace? 74.226.103.181 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Bah, close enough. Davidy²²[talk] 03:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

What is this Y-button? --JakubNarebski (talk) 16:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

It is the button used to enter / exit a vehicle in GTA (XBOX versions) SioD (talk) 09:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
You have to press a button to steal a car? -- Weatherlawyer (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
While playing the game, on that device, you gain pretend illegal possession of a pixelated vehicle by pushing the game controller button specified Katt3 (talk) 17:56, 19 September 2016 (UTC)Katt3

Is it Emily ion the comic? She is not depicted with a bun on wiki. And neither is she in most of the pics found on google. If someone makes an edition of GTA they would not necessarily use them selves as the protagonist? --Kynde (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Can we please change 'Hair Bun Girl' to 'Emily Dickinson'? We all know that's who she's supposed to be. 108.162.218.35 13:41, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Just rewrote the first quatrain with GTA wording: Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me/ I yanked him from the driver’s seat/ And got a carriage free. 108.162.220.221 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I sympathize fully with Randall. Since I learned (can't remember where) that this poem can be sung to "the Yellow Rose of Texas" I can't read it any other way either. 108.162.242.117 21:31, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Babylon 5 episode, "Day of the Dead" Cosumel (talk) 19:37, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone else just see "crap crap crap ..." for the main page now? I just see pages of the one word over and over. 172.70.131.222 23:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

btw, this also works with loch lomond. New editor (talk) 02:55, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

My SO typically uses the tune of 'Yellow Rose of Texas' for this poem. 162.158.159.155 12:16, 9 June 2023 (UTC)