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.
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
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.)
Cadbury Eggs
by Jeff
Image text: When they moved production from New Zealand to the UK and switched from the runny white centers to the thick, frosting-like filling, it got way harder to cook them scrambled.
If you are not familiar with Cadbury Eggs, they are a chocolate egg-shaped candy with a filling. They are supposed to replicate a regular egg with a hard exterior and soft interior. However, with Cadbury Eggs, you can eat the outside.
In this comic, Cueball is trying to say that sodas have way too much sugar to even be appealing as a beverage because they contain as much sugar as 2 or 3 Cadbury Eggs and one Cadbury Egg alone makes him feel sick.
However, Megan, of course, takes it the wrong way and indicates that this means that she can eat Cadbury Eggs year round and as many as she wants. (Cadbury Eggs are usually consumed around Easter - which is usually anywhere from late March to late April.)
Networking
by Jeff
Image text: Our company is agile and lean with a focus on the long tail. Ok, our company is actually a polecat I found in my backyard.
Networking in business is the act of expanding your group of contacts in order to help your career down the line. Here, in this comic, Beret Guy meets Connr Clark (surely that must be a typo for "Connor") and Beret Guy is as strange as he usually is. This time he has a business card, which usually contains contact information, but only says "This is my business card". He calls his briefcase or suitcase a "handlebox", which is full of a quarter of a million dollars in cash. Then Beret Guy proceeds to eat Connr's business card. All of these things are not common behavior.
The image text is a pun on three common business buzzwords: agile, lean and long-tail. An agile business is one that can change course quickly based on customer demands and the business environment. A lean business is an efficient one that can provide results for customers without any wasted time, energy or money. Long-tail describes the retailing strategy of selling a large number of unique items with relatively small quantities sold of each – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. The best example I can think of for long-tail is Netflix, because they have (almost) every movie imaginable, including rare ones that only a few people would be interested in.
And of course, the pun here is an animal that is agile and lean with a long tail is a polecat.
Error Code
by Jeff
Image text: It has a section on motherboard beep codes that lists, for each beep pattern, a song that syncs up well with it.
First and foremost, I want that book! I'm looking up error codes all the time and never find something as awesome as "Sit by a lake."
In this comic, character 1 gets the error "-41" on his computer, but cannot tell even what program it comes from. So, character 2 decides to look up the code in the famous book. (As an aside, I couldn't find anything on Google for error -41, which is usually my magic book.) The book then indicates to go to a lake instead of how to resolve the computer problem. Which seems like a great solution because it would be very relaxing!
Car Problems
by Jeff
Image text: Or if you replace your car, we'll be happy to set it on fire again so you can take another crack at getting that shot.
Ok, so in this comic, Megan's friends, including our old friend Black Hat take the phrase "Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this picture?" literally and are critiquing the style and composition of the picture and not the subject. Megan is hoping that they have any insight to why her car was on fire this morning and not a photography critique.
Making Things Difficult
by Jeff
Image text: Favorite mastectomy breast prosthesis idea: a fake boob containing a spare rechargable battery, accessed via a nipple USB port. Complete with a ring of LED charge indicators in the areola!
This comic is a reference to the breast cancer surgery that someone in Randall's family recently underwent this year. This comic is the follow up appointment after the surgery. When the doctor asks Megan to take her shirt off, she refuses until the doctor gives her a necklace of beads that in the New Orleans Mardi Gras culture is used to exchange for the exposure of a female's breasts.
So, by Megan saying "You know the rules", that indicates that Megan has stipulated that every time she takes off her shirt for the doctor, a necklace of beads much be exchanged.
Don't forget, we still are looking for submissions for back catalog xkcd explanations. I'll have the list of the comics posted this week up on Friday.
Brand Identity
by Jeff
Image text: Legally-mandated information would be printed on the back or discreetly along the bottom. In small letters under the nutrition information it would say 'Like our products? Visit our website!' There would be no URL.
This comic presents Randall's idea for a line of food products all with clear black font on a white background. Notice how well they stand out in with the other items in this comic. Would they stand out this well in a store in real life? I'm not sure, but it certainly would attract some attention as most products are going for busier and brighter boxes to catch attention.
In the image text, however, I'm not sure what the effect would be to have no URL for anyone to look up the company website. If anything, it seems like it would deter people from buying the product again. Am I missing something?
Tradition
by Jeff
Image text: An 'American tradition' is anything that happened to a baby boomer twice.
This comic uses the source of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to say that the 20 most played Christmas songs in the US between 2000 and 2009 were all released between the 1930s and 1970s. I'd love to see this research, because the most popular Christmas album of all time was not released until 1994, "Merry Christmas" by Mariah Carey. This album featured what I consider to be the most ubiquitous song around this time of the year which is "All I Want For Christmas Is You" which is also featured prominently in the very popular (and frequently replayed) movie Love Actually from 2003. The song is the only holiday song and ringtone to reach multi-platinum status in the U.S. So, I usually don't take a look at the information that Randall presents to us and think it is incorrect, but this one just seemed egregious based on the popular success of a mid-90s release.
(Christmas is December 25th, for any Americans who have been living under a rock for the past 2 weeks or so and don't own a TV and are somehow able to escape the crushing commercialism of the Christmas season. And "this time of the year" is apparently considered Christmas time despite the fact that not everyone celebrates Christmas in the US and in the world).