explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

211: Hamster Ball Heist

2013-06-23T23:44:58Z

Strangely: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 211
| date = January 17, 2007
| title = Hamster Ball Heist
| image = hamster_ball_heist.png
| titletext = First person to bring me Wayne Coyne in a hamster ball gets a free t-shirt! He gets one too.
}}

==Explanation==
{{Incomplete}}
{{w|Wayne Coyne}}, the lead singer of the band {{w|The Flaming Lips}}, is indeed known to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd16G--UeLM| crowd-surf in a giant hamster ball].

This is one of several xkcd comics to feature a hamster ball, with the others including [[152|152: "Hamster Ball"]], [[413|413: "New Pet"]], and [[442|442: "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel"]]. This comic particularly references [[Cueball]]'s wish to own a hamster ball from [[152|152: "Hamster Ball"]], as the first panel illustrates Cueball saying "Let's go." in response to the suggestion that they steal the hamster ball from Coyne. Since human-sized hamster balls are somewhat rare, this comic outlines an elaborate mission to acquire a human-sized hamster ball by infiltrating a music concert and kidnapping a rock star, who would be structurally powerless to fight back while trapped within a spherical object.

==Transcript==
:Person 1: You know that giant hamster ball you've always wanted? I just found out that Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips crowd-surfs in one.
:Person 2: Let's go.

:Some Weeks Later ...
:[Wayne Coyne is, in fact, crowd-surfing in a giant hamster ball.]
:Person: Ready?
:Friends: Ready.

:Person: Now!
:''shove''
:[People on both sides shove the crowd out of the way, causing Coyne in his ball to fall to the ground.]
:Wayne Coyne: Hey!

:Person: Okay, push!
:[Person and friends start pushing the ball away, as the crowd looks on.]
:Wayne Coyne: What's going on?

:[Some roll him up the ramp into the back of a semi, while others hold the crowd back and one stands by to drive.]
:Wayne Coyne: Help!

:[The truck drives off, leaving the audience in a cloud of dust.]

{{Comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

User:Strangely

2013-06-23T01:00:36Z

Strangely: Created page with "Hi. So. What's up? The name's Strangely. I like to read, sometimes. Other times, I'm too busy outside chasing butterflies. Whenever I catch one, I usually name it, then let it..."

Hi. So. What's up? The name's Strangely. I like to read, sometimes. Other times, I'm too busy outside chasing butterflies. Whenever I catch one, I usually name it, then let it go free. Then I return inside to my laptop, where I edit my profile by making up sentences according to the Fibonacci sequence.

472: House of Pancakes

2013-06-23T00:55:50Z

Strangely: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 472
| date = May 5, 2008
| title = House of Pancakes
| image = house_of_pancakes.png
| titletext = Fuck it, I'm just going to Waffle House.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]] is parodying Mark Z. Danielewski's epistolary novel ''{{w|House of Leaves}}'' by renaming it to the ''{{w|International House of Pancakes}}''. ''House of Leaves'' has an unconventional page layout and style, including the colouring of every instance of the word "house" in blue, as is done on the menu. It includes footnotes within footnotes like Randall did here.

In ''House of Leaves'', protagonist Johnny Truant (whose meta-narration is marked by Courier font as mimicked in the comic) discovers a book called ''The Navidson Record'' (represented here by the pancake menu), which in turn details a film of the same name, which in turn details a horror story of a family living in a sentient house. Truant, who is clearly intelligent and cultured, probes deeper into notating ''The Navidson Record''--and into insomnia--until ''The Navidson Record'' consumes his mind horrifically, the same way the film in the novel consumed the author of ''The Navidson Record'', the same way the house in the novel consumed part of the family.

''House of Leaves'' lends itself to many interpretations, but has been called a "satire of academic criticism," which makes this comic essentially a satire of a satire. Since part of the appeal of ''House of Leaves'' is that it takes itself extremely seriously with its intricacy, multitude of both real and made-up references to academic and popular culture, and layered emotional conflict, Randall's reduction of the ''House of Leaves'' to the (International) House of Pancakes cuts a humorous edge to a dark story. The tone of the comic parodies the tone of ''House of Leaves'': lonely, fear-inducing, and increasingly insane, but using pancakes instead of darkness.

An alternate theory is that the pancake also stands for "pancake landing", which refers to an airplane crash.

Additionally, the mysterious "Mohawk Girl" referred to in the comic may be a nod to the ''House of Leaves'' character Delial.

The title text refers to the {{w|Waffle House}}, another US restaurant chain. The joke here is akin to if a heavily annotated copy of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'', a notoriously difficult-to-read novel, suddenly carried a note that said, "Fuck it, I'm just going to read ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar''."

==Transcript==
:[All instances of the word "House" are in blue.]
:[Every day a new city, a new IHOP. And yet every night the dreams get worse. I ply the highways, a nervous eye on the rear-view mirror, the back seat piled with stolen menus. Their doors are opened 24 hours, but forever closed to my soul. This is what my life has become. This is my hell.]
:[Sidenote left: International] House of Pancakes
:[Scribbled-out sidenote right: BLOGSPOT] Strawberry Banana Pancakes Four pancakes filled with sliced fresh banana and crowned with cool strawberry topping, more [17] bananas and [23] whipped topping.
::[17] Driven by a nameless fear, a whisper in the dark behind me, I flee ahead of I know not what. Whenver I turn, there's nobody behind me. And yet someone is clearly stealing the ketchup. WHY? (The footnote is covered in fingerprints.)
::[23] My life is feeding, fleeing, fighting, and forgetting. (The above note is sandwiched in sideways in between the Stuffed French Toast and Ham and Egg Melt.)
:[Rooty Jr. A kids only [19] version of our house signature Rooty Tooty. One scrambled egg, one strip of bacon, one pork sausage link and one fruit-topped buttermilk pancake.]
::[19] The decision not to hyphenate "kids only" is likely connected to the omission of the serial comma. I wonder if the author is British. I wonder if he sleeps at night. (The following passages are have a red substance underneath them, probably ketchup.)
:[Rise 'N Shine Two eggs, toast and hash browns served with your choice [21] of two strips of bacon or two pork sausage links.]
::[21] (illegible) rent a storage unit. Sleep there. Fill it with pancakes. Leave. Stuffed French Toast Cinnamon raisin French [18] toast stuffed with sweet cream cheese filling, topped with cool strawberry or your choice of fruit compote and whipped topping.
:::[18] Nightmares again. I wake up covered in sweat, and what appears to be a thin sheen of maple syrup (Handwritten, underlined) WHO IS MOHAWK GIRL?
:[Slanted 90 degrees left] Ham & Egg Melt Grilled sourdough bread stuffed with ham, scrambled eggs, Swiss and American cheeses. [20] (At normal orientation)
::[20] Ordered this in at an IHOP in Rochester, New York. There was blood on the floor. Some of it was mine. (Comic strip) Enough with your pancakes. Enough with your GOD DAMN pancakes. The Big Steak Omlette Tender strips of steak, hash browns, (redacted) tomatoes and Cheddar cheese. Served [22] with house salsa.
:::[22] Woke up in Las Vegas. They're closing the Star Trek Experience today. The IHOP up the strip had pancake platters named after various states. None of them sounded like home.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]

472: House of Pancakes

2013-06-23T00:54:27Z

Strangely: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 472
| date = May 5, 2008
| title = House of Pancakes
| image = house_of_pancakes.png
| titletext = Fuck it, I'm just going to Waffle House.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]] is parodying Mark Z. Danielewski's epistolary novel ''{{w|House of Leaves}}'' by renaming it to the ''{{w|International House of Pancakes}}''. ''House of Leaves'' has an unconventional page layout and style, including the colouring of every instance of the word "house" in blue, as is done on the menu. It includes footnotes within footnotes like Randall did here.

In ''House of Leaves'', protagonist Johnny Truant (whose meta-narration is marked by Courier font as mimicked in the comic) discovers a book called ''The Navidson Record'' (represented here by the pancake menu), which in turn details a film of the same name, which in turn details a horror story of a family living in a sentient house. Truant, who is clearly intelligent and cultured, probes deeper into notating ''The Navidson Record''--and into insomnia--until ''The Navidson Record'' consumes his mind horrifically, the same way the film in the novel consumed the author of ''The Navidson Record'', the same way the house in the novel consumed part of the family.

''House of Leaves'' lends itself to many interpretations, but has been called a "satire of academic criticism," which makes this comic essentially a satire of a satire. Since part of the appeal of ''House of Leaves'' is that it takes itself extremely seriously with its intricacy, multitude of both real and made-up references to academic and popular culture, and layered emotional conflict, Randall's reduction of the ''House of Leaves'' to the (International) House of Pancakes cuts a humorous edge to a dark story. The tone of the comic parodies the tone of ''House of Leaves'': lonely, fear-inducing, and increasingly insane, but using pancakes instead of darkness.

An alternate theory is that the pancake also stands for "pancake landing", which refers to an airplane crash.

The title text refers to the {{w|Waffle House}}, another US restaurant chain. The joke here is akin to if a heavily annotated copy of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'', a notoriously difficult-to-read novel, suddenly carried a note that said, "Fuck it, I'm just going to read ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar''."

==Transcript==
:[All instances of the word "House" are in blue.]
:[Every day a new city, a new IHOP. And yet every night the dreams get worse. I ply the highways, a nervous eye on the rear-view mirror, the back seat piled with stolen menus. Their doors are opened 24 hours, but forever closed to my soul. This is what my life has become. This is my hell.]
:[Sidenote left: International] House of Pancakes
:[Scribbled-out sidenote right: BLOGSPOT] Strawberry Banana Pancakes Four pancakes filled with sliced fresh banana and crowned with cool strawberry topping, more [17] bananas and [23] whipped topping.
::[17] Driven by a nameless fear, a whisper in the dark behind me, I flee ahead of I know not what. Whenver I turn, there's nobody behind me. And yet someone is clearly stealing the ketchup. WHY? (The footnote is covered in fingerprints.)
::[23] My life is feeding, fleeing, fighting, and forgetting. (The above note is sandwiched in sideways in between the Stuffed French Toast and Ham and Egg Melt.)
:[Rooty Jr. A kids only [19] version of our house signature Rooty Tooty. One scrambled egg, one strip of bacon, one pork sausage link and one fruit-topped buttermilk pancake.]
::[19] The decision not to hyphenate "kids only" is likely connected to the omission of the serial comma. I wonder if the author is British. I wonder if he sleeps at night. (The following passages are have a red substance underneath them, probably ketchup.)
:[Rise 'N Shine Two eggs, toast and hash browns served with your choice [21] of two strips of bacon or two pork sausage links.]
::[21] (illegible) rent a storage unit. Sleep there. Fill it with pancakes. Leave. Stuffed French Toast Cinnamon raisin French [18] toast stuffed with sweet cream cheese filling, topped with cool strawberry or your choice of fruit compote and whipped topping.
:::[18] Nightmares again. I wake up covered in sweat, and what appears to be a thin sheen of maple syrup (Handwritten, underlined) WHO IS MOHAWK GIRL?
:[Slanted 90 degrees left] Ham & Egg Melt Grilled sourdough bread stuffed with ham, scrambled eggs, Swiss and American cheeses. [20] (At normal orientation)
::[20] Ordered this in at an IHOP in Rochester, New York. There was blood on the floor. Some of it was mine. (Comic strip) Enough with your pancakes. Enough with your GOD DAMN pancakes. The Big Steak Omlette Tender strips of steak, hash browns, (redacted) tomatoes and Cheddar cheese. Served [22] with house salsa.
:::[22] Woke up in Las Vegas. They're closing the Star Trek Experience today. The IHOP up the strip had pancake platters named after various states. None of them sounded like home.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]

472: House of Pancakes

2013-06-23T00:53:48Z

Strangely: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 472
| date = May 5, 2008
| title = House of Pancakes
| image = house_of_pancakes.png
| titletext = Fuck it, I'm just going to Waffle House.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
[[Randall]] is parodying Mark Z. Danielewski's epistolary novel ''{{w|House of Leaves}}'' by renaming it to the ''{{w|International House of Pancakes}}''. ''House of Leaves'' has an unconventional page layout and style, including the colouring of every instance of the word "house" in blue, as is done on the menu. It includes footnotes within footnotes like Randall did here.

In ''House of Leaves'', protagonist Johnny Truant (whose meta-narration is marked by Courier font as mimicked in the comic) discovers a book called ''The Navidson Record'' (represented here by the pancake menu), which in turn details a film of the same name, which in turn details a horror story of a family living in a sentient house. Truant, who is clearly intelligent and cultured, probes deeper into notating ''The Navidson Record''--and into insomnia--until ''The Navidson Record'' consumes his mind horrifically, the same way the film in the novel consumed the author of ''The Navidson Record'', the same way the house in the novel consumed part of the family.

''House of Leaves'' lends itself to many interpretations, but has been called a "satire of academic criticism," which makes this comic essentially a satire of a satire. Since part of the appeal of ''House of Leaves'' is that it takes itself extremely seriously with its intricacy, multitude of both real and made-up references to academic and popular culture, and layered emotional conflict, Randall's reduction of the ''House of Leaves'' to the (International) House of Pancakes cuts a humorous edge to a dark story. The tone of the comic parodies the tone of ''House of Leaves'': lonely, fear-inducing, and increasingly insane, but using pancakes instead of darkness.

An alternate theory is that the pancake also stands for "pancake landing", which refers to an airplane crash.

The title text refers to the ''{{w|Waffle House}}'', another US restaurant chain. The joke here is akin to if a heavily annotated copy of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'', a notoriously difficult-to-read novel, suddenly carried a note that said, "Fuck it, I'm just going to read ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar''."

==Transcript==
:[All instances of the word "House" are in blue.]
:[Every day a new city, a new IHOP. And yet every night the dreams get worse. I ply the highways, a nervous eye on the rear-view mirror, the back seat piled with stolen menus. Their doors are opened 24 hours, but forever closed to my soul. This is what my life has become. This is my hell.]
:[Sidenote left: International] House of Pancakes
:[Scribbled-out sidenote right: BLOGSPOT] Strawberry Banana Pancakes Four pancakes filled with sliced fresh banana and crowned with cool strawberry topping, more [17] bananas and [23] whipped topping.
::[17] Driven by a nameless fear, a whisper in the dark behind me, I flee ahead of I know not what. Whenver I turn, there's nobody behind me. And yet someone is clearly stealing the ketchup. WHY? (The footnote is covered in fingerprints.)
::[23] My life is feeding, fleeing, fighting, and forgetting. (The above note is sandwiched in sideways in between the Stuffed French Toast and Ham and Egg Melt.)
:[Rooty Jr. A kids only [19] version of our house signature Rooty Tooty. One scrambled egg, one strip of bacon, one pork sausage link and one fruit-topped buttermilk pancake.]
::[19] The decision not to hyphenate "kids only" is likely connected to the omission of the serial comma. I wonder if the author is British. I wonder if he sleeps at night. (The following passages are have a red substance underneath them, probably ketchup.)
:[Rise 'N Shine Two eggs, toast and hash browns served with your choice [21] of two strips of bacon or two pork sausage links.]
::[21] (illegible) rent a storage unit. Sleep there. Fill it with pancakes. Leave. Stuffed French Toast Cinnamon raisin French [18] toast stuffed with sweet cream cheese filling, topped with cool strawberry or your choice of fruit compote and whipped topping.
:::[18] Nightmares again. I wake up covered in sweat, and what appears to be a thin sheen of maple syrup (Handwritten, underlined) WHO IS MOHAWK GIRL?
:[Slanted 90 degrees left] Ham & Egg Melt Grilled sourdough bread stuffed with ham, scrambled eggs, Swiss and American cheeses. [20] (At normal orientation)
::[20] Ordered this in at an IHOP in Rochester, New York. There was blood on the floor. Some of it was mine. (Comic strip) Enough with your pancakes. Enough with your GOD DAMN pancakes. The Big Steak Omlette Tender strips of steak, hash browns, (redacted) tomatoes and Cheddar cheese. Served [22] with house salsa.
:::[22] Woke up in Las Vegas. They're closing the Star Trek Experience today. The IHOP up the strip had pancake platters named after various states. None of them sounded like home.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]