Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3226 xkcd comics, and only 74 (2.3%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Home Remedies |
 Title text: As always, you are permitted to call one person for guidance, but that person must be a grandparent. |
Explanation
Many household problems have a range of commonly-circulated supposed solutions using easily available items and ingredients, such as using salt to lift a stain out of a carpet. Sometimes, when one of these problems presents itself, several competing remedies may be offered by those present. This comic imagines this as a competitive sport, in which the final test is to combine several of these problems into one grand challenge to be solved. Specifically, the contestants in this case are presented with:
- removing unpleasant odours (in this case, that of a skunk)
- curing a hangover
- removing chewing gum stuck in hair
and possibly
- removing a wild animal from the premises
The contest appears to be set up such that strategy plays a role. While a hungover skunk is highly likely to spray when chewing gum is being removed from its fur (thus forcing the contestant to fix all 3 problems), a hangover cure that makes use of a restorative deep sleep could, if administered properly, completely remove the need to remedy the smell of skunk spray. Offering contestants a longer yet easier path versus a quicker yet riskier path is a common trope in reality television. Putting the skunk to sleep could be seen as risky due to the complexity of the remedy, the risk of disqualification (killing the skunk) and the risk of failure (getting sprayed anyway or not actually curing the hangover).
The title text's requirement that any assistance must come from a grandparent may reference the fact that such treatments are often described as "something my (granpappy/grandmaw/etc) told me", perhaps having reportedly been something that they themselves learnt from their own grandparent (and possibly even further back), deferring to the implied authority and experience behind them. These tidbits of information are rarely used enough to be among any of the life lessons that direct parents may teach to an individual, but still useful knowledge to pass down the generations.
Other people, not so emotionally invested in the ramblings of someone else's grandparent, may be more skeptically considering such 'advice' as more of an old wives' tale that isn't being passed on (or even remembered) entirely reliably, but then this is at least partly what the featured competition seems to be testing, and presumably those who have reached this final stage have already proven themselves as being more aptly critical than most of the various home remedies that they've potentially been told by their various (especially more elder) family members.
Transcript
[Cueball, holding a microphone, is addressing 3 contestants (Megan, White Hat & Hairbun), each standing at desks. Each desk has a lidded box on top and two drawers below. Megan and Hairbun's boxes are shaking, with their lids slightly open.]
Cueball: And now, for the final round, you have each been given a skunk with a hangover and chewing gum stuck to its fur.
Cueball: You have 30 minutes. Good luck.
[Caption below the image:]
The Home Remedy World Championships
View comic discussionNew here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to create an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for xkcd comics, characters, What If? articles, and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from the list of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- The incomplete explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
Rules
Don't be a jerk!
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to xkcd and, of course, only submit material that can legally be posted and freely edited. Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
