Editing 68: Five Thirty

{{comic
| number    = 68
| date      = February 24, 2006
| title     = Five Thirty
| image     = five_thirty.jpg
| titletext = The 8th panel is my favorite
}}

==Explanation==
At 5:30 AM, one's sleep-deprived or prematurely-roused mind sometimes comes up with things that seem like nonsense later.

None of the twelve panels in this comic seem to have any correlation with one another, each one being its own "story," and none of them really make any sense. It is unknown whether Randall really wrote this comic while awake at 5:30 in the morning, or if he wrote it while completely alert and is trying to pass off his rejected ideas by saying what one's mind may experience when trying to process information at an hour when the person is not used to being awake.

===Explanations of the individual panels (numbered left to right, top to bottom)===
# "'80s night" is a special theme many nightclubs hold, inviting their guests to wear fashions that were popular in the 1980s while playing dance music from the same period.
# {{w|Jack the Ripper}} was an infamous serial killer in {{w|Victorian era|Victorian Britain}}. {{w|Jack Black}} is a rock star and actor. "There is no Tuesday" is likely a reference to the line "There is no spoon" in ''{{w|The Matrix}}''.
# There doesn't seem to be too much to this panel that isn't self-explanatory, but it's possible that there's a reference to the ''{{w|Civilization (video game)|Civilization}}'' series of video games, in which it's possible (albeit unlikely) for medieval soldiers to attack and destroy 20th-century military helicopters.
# Stick figures standing upright are indeed drawn without any thought as to which section of their legs are the shins.
# Two Cueballs seem very upset about "daylight savings" as indicated by them shouting ''shit'' ten times (and have started to pronounce the 11th instance). It's hard to tell what they are actually doing and what the black blobs at the ends of their arms should represent, given that Randall normally doesn't draw hands on his stick figures. One guess is that they're both wearing watches, one on each of their combined five arms. In that case, they are upset because they forgot to adjust all their clocks for DST. {{w|Daylight saving time}} (DST) was {{w|History_of_time_in_the_United_States#Start_and_end_dates_of_United_States_Daylight_Time|not due}} until April 2nd in the USA in 2006, more than a month after the release of this comic. This seems to be the first to use DST as part of a joke, but it is far from the last time that Randall has made it clear that he is [[:Category:Daylight saving time|not a fan of DST]], which he sometimes directly mocks. Alternatively, the two Cueballs represent two clocks, the right one with only hour-hand and minute-hand, but the left one also with a seconds-hand, and it is these hands that are drawn. In that case, the left Cueball is one hour ahead of the right Cueball, as his shortest arm points down left at around 8 o'clock (with the seconds-hand above, and the minutes-hand at 20 minutes past), and the right Cueball has his hour hand at 7 o'clock and the minute hand also at 20 past. This would explain both the three arms, the "hands" at the end of the arms, and the different length of especially the left Cueball's arm, and finally why they are so upset about one of them apparently forgetting or not observing DST.
# "Ointment" may be a reference to the infamous lotion scene in ''{{w|Silence of the Lambs}}'', as the panel appears to be invoking horror movie visuals.
# The farthest left angle is labeled theta. The joke is that finding the cosine, the length of the adjacent leg divided by the length of the hypotenuse, would be difficult as the adjacent leg is poorly drawn and does not resemble a straight line to be measured. <p>Alternatively, the line <q>fuck the cosine</q> resembles the slogan {{w|fuck the police}}.</p>
# Lots of jokes have been made out of the template "does liking X make you gay?", where the speaker is afraid that he may be a homosexual. Here, the speaker has apparently transformed into a {{w|mermaid}} at some point. His friend seems to be eager to both turn into a mermaid himself and confirm himself for a homosexual. <p>Another explanation may be that the friend thinks that a man who was a mermaid for five minutes should be homosexual afterwards, because he simply can't imagine something else about it. In this explanation, the friend has no interest in others being gay or not; he just thinks that this may be a realistic progress.</p>
# Waving a gun around and declaring that things you hate are "for pussies" is stereotypical "{{w|macho}}" behavior. Possibly, the man with the gun is going to cut the other man's hair with bullets because it's more "macho" than going to the barber.
# This doesn't seem to mean anything whatsoever. However, both of the characters say something irrational: "My hair is bleeding" is irrational because strands of hair can't bleed, and "√3" is an {{w|irrational number}}. <p>The first statement may also have something to do with the prior panel (as cutting one's hair with bullets does not tend to end well).</p>
# A bachelor party is a traditionally raucous party that is thrown for a groom on the night before his wedding. Because these parties can be wild (involving drinking and such), this may explain why the figure is upside down.
# Likely a reference to the "{{w|ant on a rubber rope}}" thought experiment. The experiment does not end well for the ant according to Randall, likely because the paradox often ends up with incredibly long amounts of time until the ant finally gets to the other side of the rope. So the ant does not die from getting stretched, but rather from the rope stretching and leading to the ant having to walk for inconceivably long periods of time.

---- 

The title text could actually refer to two different panels. If a person chooses to read the comic left-to-right, top-to-bottom (which is more likely given that this is the order in the official transcript), the eighth panel could be the one with where Cueball asks "Does being a mermaid for five minutes make you gay?" However, if a person chooses to read the comic top-to-bottom, left-to-right, the eighth panel will instead be the one with Cueball hanging upside down shouting "Bachelor party!"

==Transcript==
:Comics from 5:30 AM
:[A succession of unrelated and completely random panels.]

:Cueball: It's 80's night at the club. Wanna go?

:Friend: There is no Tuesday.
:Cueball: Jack the Ripper or Jack Black?

:[Cueball in this panel is holding a glinting sword.]
:Friend: You crashed my helicopter!
:Cueball: Verily!

:[A small figure is talking with a larger figure.]
:Figure 1: Basically, neither of us have shins.
:Figure 2: Over and out.

:[Two men are shown: one with three arms, and another with just two. All arms have round appendages at their ends.]
:Men: shitshitshitshitshitshitdaylightsavingsshitshitshitshitsh

:[Two figures with pumpkins (carved with faces) for heads.]
:Figure 1: You're out of ointment and out of time!

:[A diagram of a right-angled triangle, with a theta at the smallest angle.]
:FUCK THE COSINE

:Friend: Does being a mermaid for five minutes make you gay?
:Cueball: I hope so!

:[The friend is holding a gun to Cueball's head.]
:Friend: Barbershops are for pussies.

:Friend: My hair is bleeding.
:Cueball: √3

:[Cueball seems to be walking on the ceiling.]
:Cueball: Bachelor party!

:[Warning sign with picture of an ant.]
:WARNING: STRETCHY DEATH

{{comic discussion}} 

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Homosexuality]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Daylight saving time]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]