986: Drinking Fountains

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Drinking Fountains
I've always wondered whether you could drink slowly enough, and eliminate fast enough, that you just sort of peed continuously. But I'm afraid to try because I worry someone might call while I'm doing it and ask what I'm up to, and I won't be able to think of a lie.
Title text: I've always wondered whether you could drink slowly enough, and eliminate fast enough, that you just sort of peed continuously. But I'm afraid to try because I worry someone might call while I'm doing it and ask what I'm up to, and I won't be able to think of a lie.

Explanation

Here, we see Cueball, using the restroom, as the title text indicates, he is eliminating the liquid waste from his body, or peeing. He says that he avoids the use of the drinking fountain right after peeing, because he is afraid that he will be forced into immediately peeing again. And as in the image above, he would be stuck in a loop. A loop is a computer science term, but also used elsewhere, to indicates going through the same steps over and over again. In this case, the bathroom and drinking fountain form an infinite loop, which, when used about computers, refers to a loop which never ends, eventually crashing the computer, which is therefore a situation to be avoided at all costs.

The title text says Cueball/Randall would be embarrassed in trying to explain his experiment to someone, as an experiment of this nature seems interesting to geeks but gross to non geeks, and he wouldn't be able to lie about what he was doing if called by someone.

A thread on yahoo answers [1] with a (purported) Biology major concluded that drinking from a hose and peeing at the same time would not work: the kidneys can only process so much pee at a time, and the majority of it is re-used. But since the experiment doesn't put a lower boundary on the flow that would be regarded as an ongoing pee, this objection is invalid. Constantly sipping and dripping might be possible.

Transcript

[Cueball leaving a public bathroom. A water fountain is next to the bathroom door. An arrow points to the next panel.]
[Cueball drinking from the water fountain. An arrow points to the next panel.]
[Cueball reenters the bathroom. An arrow points back to the first panel.]
I avoid drinking fountains outside bathrooms because I'm afraid of getting trapped in a loop.


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Discussion

Build a toilet next to the fountain so you can do both at once! Davidy22[talk] 06:52, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I recall when this first posted it randomly had the word water to the left of the door. only evidence of this seems to be on insult sites. [2]--Calvsie (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Apparently he's never stayed up all night and drank 18 beers...162.158.60.23 23:54, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think you can call it 'constant' peeing, as most likely you'll quickly die to water poisoning (yup, too much water can kill you, and I don't mean drowning) 162.158.202.82 06:04, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

The original with the word water on it is archived: [3] MarkSill (talk) 13:33, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that he would actually want to drink quickly and eliminate slowly. Does this seem true to anyone else? Birdsinthewindow (talk) 01:20, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

The least funny [citation needed] ever. What infinite loop is is not an outright obvious fact that every person alive would know. 162.158.90.83 14:37, 5 October 2021 (UTC)