Romney Quiz
by Jeff
Image text: Charlie actually delivered the Medicare line almost verbatim in the 1971 movie's Fizzy Lifting Drink scene, but it was ultimately cut from the final release.
So, Mitt Romney is the Republican candidate for President of the United States and as it says above, the former Governor of Massachusetts. Charlie Bucket is the main character of the movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".
The absurdity and joke here is that each different quote is very not very similar and easy to tell apart.
(via wikipedia) "In 1965, Congress created Medicare under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history." So, the quote being used in a movie in 1971 (which is obviously not true) is still feasible.
Ablogalypse
by Jeff
Image text: Plus the reaction in the Tumblverse is always 'repeatedly get hit by a dog and fall down the stairs'.
Ok, lets see: blog, you know what that is because you are currently reading one. Tumblr is a more of a "micro-blogging" site, which has taken off due to the prevalence of animated gifs and funny photos. Wordpress is a type of blog software. Livejournal is a sort of personal blog site that as you can see hasn't been really popular at all since 2004-2005.
As you can see in the caption and then the image text, there is no way that newscasters will reference the "Tumblrverse" because all the reactions will be filled with animated gifs of a person in a raptor suit falling over or a dog answering a phone.
Never
by Jeff
Image text: I'll never forget you--at least, the parts of you that were important red flags.
Wow, this is a little deep for a Friday. But, let me see if I can decode this. Cueball is mulling over a previous relationship in which he had something so special, he will never have something that special with anyone else.
However, the image text gives us another angle on the story in which the previous partner had important "red flags". "Red Flags" is a phrase used to describe problems or warnings about the person that they would not be a good fit for a serious relationship or marriage. Red flags include (depending on the person) no job, history of cheating or violence, etc.
Cueball indicates he will never forget this mysterious previous person because of their important red flags that must have doomed the relationship.
Well, now I'm sad.
Whites of Their Eyes
by Jeff
Image text: Don't fire until you see through the fragile facade to the human being within.
"Don't Fire Until You See The Whites of Their Eyes" is a famous order given (most famously) at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution. It is not clear who exactly gave the order and where it originated. The Americans were low on ammunition and needed to save all of their bullets until the British were close enough that it would have the most effect. That range was famously when you could see the whites of their eyes.
This comic takes that order and goes to some place very sexual, which has nothing to do with the battle.
Lakes and Oceans
by Jeff
Image text: James Cameron has said that he didn't know its song would be so beautiful. He didn't close the door in time. He's sorry.
Click the image to see the large size. This comic is prompted by James Cameron, the movie director and producer taking a one person underwater capsule down to the bottom of the Mariana's Trench, which is the lowest point in the ocean. He filmed the whole thing in 3D, so as far as I know, there is no secret door down there, but it would be cool if there was.
In the Puerto Rico Trench, "The Abyss" is labeled. This is a reference to a quote by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that goes something like "When you stare into the abyss, it stares back". And of course, as all of our parents told us, it is rude to stare.
David Bowie and Freddy Mercury making their way onto the comic is a reference to their collaborative song, Under Pressure. (Because where they are in the comic, there would be a lot of pressure from the water in the ocean above them.)
Deepwater Horizon is a reference to the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico that recently had a major issue and filled most of the Gulf of Mexico with oil.
Burj Kalifa is the tallest building in the world and it is the United Arab Emirates.
RuBisCO
by Jeff
Image text: Bruce Schneier believes safewords are fundamentally insecure and recommends that you ask your partner to stop via public key signature.
This comic is about sex. A safeword is something you use so that you can indicate to your partner that you want them to stop. The chemists getting it on in the other room from Cueball and Megan are using that long word as their safe word. RuBisCo is (per wikipedia, I am not a chemist) commonly known by the shorter name RuBisCO, is an enzyme involved in the first major step of carbon fixation, a process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is converted by plants to energy-rich molecules such as glucose.
The image text references Bruce Schneier, who is an internationally known security expert. Here's his blog. The image text is a joke on what Schneier usually says about some password schemes. Public-key cryptography refers to a cryptographic system requiring two separate keys, one to lock or encrypt the plaintext, and one to unlock or decrypt the cyphertext. Neither key will do both functions. One of these keys is published or public and the other is kept private.
This joke in the image text works because of its absurdity because there is no reason to use a public key/private key system for your safe word.
Fountain
by Jeff
Image text: Implausible, did you say? Sorry, couldn't quite hear you from all the way up heeeeeeeeere!
Sorry for the late comic, it was one of those days. In this comic, Cueball steps into a fountain and uses his umbrella to get pushed up into the air by the water pressure coming out of the fountain.
Given the improbability of this actually working, I'm sure in the comic he floated back down to the ground using the umbrella to keep himself floating in the air gently downwards.
Umwelt – Follow Up
by Jeff
Thanks everyone for commenting and emailing and showing off what you got from yesterday's comic. It was pretty much insane. One such person who did all of the work to find all the variations was the reddit user SomePostMan. He had an incredible multiple comment post thread with all the variations and with his permission, I'm going to recreate that thread here after the jump. Thanks to SomePostMan and I've included some of his thoughts below as well.
Umwelt
by Jeff
Firefox
Safari / Internet Explorer
Chrome
Image text: Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds. Everything about you shapes the world you inhabit--from your ideology to your glasses prescription to your web browser."
The image text does the work for me explaining umwelt. The money part of the text is the last part. This comic is different depending on what web browser you are using. I was able to test Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer. If there are any more out there that are different (Opera, etc). UPDATE: Crap, this is a hard one because the comics change by country, state, city (above, you can see I'm in Philadelphia), browser, network and page you navigated from. Please, if you see something new, report on what you did and how you got it in the comments.
In the Firefox comic, Megan finds a snake, but "forgets to stop". That seems to mean that she forgot to stop finding more and more of a massive snake. A snake so long it goes over a squirrel, you see the part of the body where it ate something huge. It passes another person in the third frame and Beret Guy is riding it in the fourth frame and then it goes through a portal from the gaming series Portal. And given that it doesn't end by the end of the comic strip, it could continue on.
In the Safari comic, Cueball goes out to see the Northern Lights and they are amazing as we see in the middle frame. But Cueball says they are just clouds, because the Northern Lights play off the clouds themselves to downplay the beauty he saw.
The Chrome comic is a commentary on how the East Coasters are panicked by a small earthquake that happens often on the West Coast, but California's aren't tough enough for snow. (Or LA people and their rain traffic jams.)
Reviews
by Jeff
Image text: I plugged in this lamp and my dog went rigid, spoke a sentence of perfect Akkadian, and then was hurled sideways through the picture window. Even worse, it's one of those lamps where the switch is on the cord.
This comic couldn't be more true. When shopping for anything via reviews, whether it be electronics or even something as simple as lamps like the comic demonstrates, one negative review can spoil a lot of positive reviews. That hits home even more if the review is specific. This usually occurs because humans attach more weight to anecdotes and specific stories. This comic points out the absurdity of paying attention to those reviews. The 2nd frame starts out normal and then proceeds to get more and more absurd all the way to the image text.
In the image text, Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia.