I Am Not A Ninja
by submission
Image Text: 'The sad thing is that I just wanted to talk about your poor smoke-bomb techniques.'
This explanation is by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
Here Megan approaches Cueball with the catch-all phrase the often symbolizes an unpleasant conversation to follow (usually a break-up). Cueball wishes to escape the conversation (as many real-life men could only fantasize about) and deploys a smoke bomb. Comically, the escape fails due to the window being stuck.
The image text sends the joke home by revealing that she didn't want to break up at all (but possibly does now), and simply wanted to talk about his poor smoke bomb techniques. Had he tried to leave through the front door, for example, he may have been able to succeed...and possibly win Megan's respect.
This comic raises the question of how often smoke bombs are deployed, and for what reason. Perhaps Cueball here has attempted other ninja-related feats. Speculation in the comments!
Fiction Rule of Thumb
by submission
Image Text: Except for anything by Lewis Carroll or Tolkien, you get five made-up words per story. I'm looking at you, Anathem.
This explanation is by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
Here the author remarks on the trend of making up words in a work of fiction. Since fiction often takes place in other worlds, it makes sense that the natural language would be something other than English (or whatever language the book happens to be). Some writers will attempt to make up words to add a false sense of depth to their stories. Since those stories are told in English, there's little reason to over-use a fictional language when it doesn't serve the plot (hence allowing a few words for when they're required).
Lewis Carrol is the author of many works, but is most famous for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel which have heavy use of intentional nonsense (his other works use a similar style), as well as "Jabberwocky" which in itself is a made-up word.
J.R.R. Tolkien is known for his "Lord of the Rings" series, which cover the MASSIVE world of Middle Earth. These books have many different races of fantasy creatures (elves, dwarfs, orcs, etc.) and each have their own (fictional) language and writing system.
Anathem is a fiction novel by Neal Stephenson that references quantum mechanics and philosophy, and uses many made-up words. Taken from Wikipedia (enjoy your citogenesis): "most of the technical words used in Anathem are derivations or puns on Latin words." Some examples include "auts" (rituals), "praxis" (technology), and "convox" (conference). To illustrate the comic author's point, reading through the article alone proved difficult due to the sheer volume of these words, and it would likely make any spell-check software cry.
Listen to Yourself
by submission
Image Text: Man, I just wanted to know how babby was formed.
This explanation is by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
Here we see an interesting reversal as Black Hat observes Megan writing a virus to read back an author's post. Youtube is known for having commenters that say remarkably stupid things (for no apparent reason), and is previously mentioned in http://xkcd.com/301/. The twist here is that the commenter is shown to not realize how stupid their post is, and proceeds to sulk in shame...something that is unlikely to really happen.
The image text refers to a once-popular meme that originated from what is assumed to be a typo in a Yahoo! Answers post ("How is babby formed?"), which is later mentioned in http://xkcd.com/550/. A rephrasing of the question could be "How is a baby made?" The post was mocked rigorously, and the sentence was later used as a form of trolling. The image text implies that the original poster didn't intend for it to go memetic, and has their feelings hurt.
An interesting note is that Youtube has a feature for reading back posts to the writer, which may or may not have been because of this comic. (ed note: it was because of this comic.)
Tones
by submission
Image Text: I need a lawn, so I can yell at kids to stay off it.
This explanation is by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
This comic references the custom ring tones that most cell phones have. While the classic phone made a simple ringing sound, most people tend to change their tones to that of music, sound effects, or quotes (though the simple "buzzing" has grown more popular since this comic was written). Most of the time, these sounds are annoying to everyone within ear-shot except for the receiver.
Since most phones can have a different tone for each potential caller, this can serve as an identifier without having to look at the phone.
The image text pokes fun at the fact that the classic ringing is outdated, and references stereotypical old men that yell at children to stay off of their lawn.
The Staple Madness
by submission
Image Text: Staple guns: because duct tape can't make that 'kaCHUNK' noise.
This explanation is written by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
This comic is a pure slapstick adventure as Beret finds a staple gun and uses it on everything in sight (including trying to install Debian software onto a laptop). When Megan comes home and asks if he's been using her gun, he denies it. Someone possibly stapled to the ceiling says that he has.
In the source of the comic, the transcript offers an alternate interpretation of the final panal.
God: [[outside of scene, as voice from above]] YES!
The image text makes a reference to duct tape being used for anything and everything, and implies that staple guns can be used as a funner substitute.
One-Sided
by submission
Image Text: He continued, 'Okay, Bernanke is uncontaminated. Find a crossbow and get him into position behind one of the columns at the Fed entrance. This is gonna get ugly.'
This explanation is written by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
This comic pokes fun at the way-too-common occurrance of someone saying "hi" while talking on their phones (and lately headsets) and someone thinking that they are the one being spoken to. It usually only takes a second for the speaker to say that they are on the phone, but occasionally it goes on for a few lines.
The graph shows that the longer the conversation, the less it happen, and that anything after the peak in the graph is awkward (presumably because several lines were spoken). The broken line in the graph symbolizes that it's no longer to scale, and implies that the author's second relationship was an impossibly long awkward conversation that wasn't really with him.
"The Fed" likely refers to the Federal Reserve, which is the central bank of the United States. The way the comic is worded implies something out of a zombie movie (contamination), but being outside the bank implies a robbery is about to take place. Alternate interpretations are welcome.
Dating Pool
by submission
Image text: The full analysis is of course much more complicated, but I can't stay to talk about it because I have a date.
This submission is from Aaron Hill. Aaron lives in the finger lakes region of NY, where he works as a web developer in higher ed. He has a blag (http://blog.amhill.net) and is on the twitter (@aaronmhill).
A "Dating pool" is a colloquial term referring to the set of people that are "single and looking" to date other people and pair off.
In this comic, Cueball and Megan are having a discussion over her fears of diminishing available partners to date, since, at the time of this comic, the median marriage age is 26. Her fears seem rooted in the notion that she is limiting her dating pool to people roughly around her age.
As Cueball explains, if you abide by the "Half your age plus seven" rule, your dating pool widens as you become older, so the number of potential partners reaches its maximum around middle age. He alleges to have compiled this information through analaysis of Census Bureau figures.
Megan's criticism of Cueball is that someone who spends an awful lot of time making graphs may be less likely to have a date, which is somewhat dismissed by the image text.
Resonance
by submission
Image text: It's really hard to control the frequency, actually.
This explanation submitted by Amy: Hi, I’m just a reader. There are a lot of the comics that I don’t get, especially the ones about programming (thus the reason I come to this site). But I love the comics about math. They make me feel happy inside. I have no site to link to, and I don't care to have one.
Cueball is annoyed because his coworker is jiggling his leg and making the desk shake. However, he then reveals his truly nerdy side when he indicates the calculations necessary to target Steve’s desk instead. The frequency at which Coworker shakes (how many times his leg moves up and down per whatever time interval you want) determines which pieces of furniture are affected, in this comic. The first frequency that Coworker has resonates with the structure of Cueball’s desk (the frequency is at resonance, so it’s at the best possible spot to shake the desk – a higher or lower frequency will not produce anything near the resonance results). This phenomenon of only certain things resonating with vibrations is most dramatically demonstrated with earthquakes and skyscrapers. An earthquake will tragically hit a city, and there will be much chaos and screaming and china-breaking and so forth, but only the buildings of a certain number of floors will collapse. The, say, 20-floor buildings all resonate with the particular frequency of the earthquake, while the 30- and 10- floored buildings stand (relatively) still. So of course Cueball calculates the necessary increase in frequency (15% faster jiggling) to resonate with Steve’s desk, and proposes a group effort to spill the drink.
The alt-text just comments on how hard it is to consistently keep a specific tempo. Actually, I find that my right leg likes to go a little bit slower than my left, so they’ll drift in and out of sync when I jiggle them together. Odd, I know.
Accident
by submission
Image text: As far as treachery-as-driving-music goes, Katamari music is matched only by Guitar Hero music.
This submission is from Aaron Hill. Aaron lives in the finger lakes region of NY, where he works as a web developer in higher ed. He has a blag (http://blog.amhill.net) and is on the twitter (@aaronmhill).
Cueball is driving his car and listening to some music. This music either already was, or suddenly became, the theme music from the game "Katamari Damacy". Katamari Damacy was a video game for Playstation where the protagonist, controlled by the player, rolls around a ball of increasing size that accumulates anything that it rolls over that is smaller than the mass of the ball. The goal is to pick up as much stuff as possible in the time alotted. (There has been some discussion about the game being reflective of hyper-consumerist culture)
In the last frame, we learn that Cueball drove his car into a mailbox after the Katamari Damacy theme music began playing. As he tells Megan "The mailbox was smaller than me, it was just instinct," implying that the music induced a Pavlovian response to start veering into anything smaller than him.
The image text also refers to Guitar Hero, a game where a player uses a guitar-shaped controller to loosely mimic playing a guitar along with the video game. Presumably, someone who has car collisions from driving when the Katamari Damacy theme plays would also have difficulty driving when a Guitar Hero song comes on, as their hands would attempt to mimic the Guitar Hero button sequences.
Boombox
by submission
Image text: And she's gonna feel like a jerk when she realizes it was actually Under Pressure.
This submission is from Aaron Hill. Aaron lives in the finger lakes region of NY, where he works as a web developer in higher ed. He has a blag (http://blog.amhill.net) and is on the twitter (@aaronmhill).
This comic is an homage to the classic scene in the John Cusack / Ione Skye movie "Say Anything", a 1980s romantic comedy. In the referenced scene, the protagonist (Cusack) is attempting to win back his romantic interest (Ione Skye) by standing outside of her window, holding up a boombox over his head, while Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" plays through the speakers. (And this, in an awkward fashion very typical of 1980s movies, is itself a reference to a cultural meme of a suitor professing his love by standing outside her window and playing her music...although traditionally he's actually PLAYING an instrument).
In the comic, the love interest, after overcoming the initial shock of hearing the boombox playing outside, asks "Is that Ice Ice Baby?". The image text clarifies that she's "gonna feel like a jerk when she realizes it was actually "Under Pressure"". The latter was a collaborative song done by David Bowie and Queen, and the bassline was co-opted by Vanilla Ice in his song "Ice Ice Baby", though he claims there to be substantive differences.