Weekend
by Jeff
Image text: Of the two Garfields, you wouldn't think the cat would turn out to be the more compelling presidential speechwriter, but there you go.
I can't find any confirmation that any of these words are references to something from former US President James Garfield or Garfield the cartoon cat. However, Garfield the cartoon cat has a a bunch of different images (confirmed by a google image search) emphasizing the greatness of the weekend and bemoaning the existence of the first day of the work week, Monday. (Examples below.)
And of course, today is Monday, so the comic is timed to emphasize that.
And of course, in the first image, there is a reference to the Lover Boy song "Everybodys Workin For the Weekend". (Youtube link). "We are all working for the weekend" is a reference to the title and lyrics in the Lover Boy song which indicate that "Everybody's working for the weekend."
Seventies
by Jeff
Image text: Hey, man, the 1670s called. They were like 'Wherefore this demonic inſtrument? By what ſorcery does it produce ſuch ſounds?"
This is another take on the common insult "<insert some year> called and they want their shirt/hat/software/whatever back". Randall has used this joke before in the comic "2009 Called".
In this case, this one is funny because someone in the 70s would not know how to leave a voicemail because answering machines and especially voicemail had not been invented yet. (I do enjoy the 70s guy with the hair and the bellbottom pants and no shirt. The pants the 70s guy is wearing are called "bellbottoms" and were in style in the 70s. They are called this because they are considerably wider at the bottom creating a sort of "bell" at the "bottom" of the pants.)
Pressures
by Jeff
Image text: Everyone's caught by surprise when a theory of quantum gravity is developed by a sound technician wearing patent leather shoes while editing Clerks II.
This comic is a reference to Albert Einstein who got his first big idea while he was working as a Swiss Patent Clerk. Wikipedia has the details: "Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time, two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time."
Hence the pressure on future Swiss Patent Clerks to also come up with genius ideas while they are working there.
Oh, and Clerks II is a reference to the second movie in the Clerks series by Kevin Smith, widely regarded as not nearly as good as the first. (Which could be said about most sequels, but you get the point.)
Kill Hitler
by Jeff
Image text: Revised directive: It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history until you've at least taken a class on it.
In this comic, which I believe Randall created just to put in "BRB, Killing Hitler", Black Hat creates a one use time machine. Cueball selects the most common suggestion for Time Machine usage "Killing Hitler". Black Hat finally relents and goes to kill Hitler, however, he goes to the year 1945, when Hitler is already in his bunker. Hitler has already committed his atrocities and the war was already turning against him. Later in 1945, he reportedly died by suicide in that very same bunker. The joke in here being that he didn't save any lives or prevent the Holocaust or a global war by killing him in 1945 because he went back in time too late. He needed to go earlier, before his rise to power.
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.
Good Cop, Dadaist Cop
by Jeff
Image text: NOW INVENT AN IMPOSSIBLE-TO-TRANSLATE LANGUAGE AND USE IT TO TELL US WHERE THE MONEY IS.
So, this is a play on the traditional police officer strategy of "Good Cop, Bad Cop", in which two officers play different parts to get the suspect to give the required information. One is nice to the suspect and the other is mean to the suspect.
However, in this comic, they use the strategy "Good Cop, Dadaist Cop" strategy in which one is nice to the suspect and the other is Dadaist, which is defined as (via the Free Dictionary) an European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.
So, the Dadaist cop is spouting nonsense attempting to get the suspect to give some information. Unfortunately, I don't think it is going to work.
Backward in Time
by Jeff
Image text: People tell me I have too much time on my hands, but really the problem is that there's too much time, PERIOD.
Here's the spreadsheet which Randall used to calculate the times and dates for the comic. It also has a lot of other percentages and dates, so take a look if you are interested.
This comic has a lot of formulas that I'm not going to try to explain because I'm not a math person and it will probably make you dumber if I try. Any math people out there? Have at it in the comments. The reason I'm not going to try is that understanding the math is not a prerequisite for understanding the comic.
Cueball/Randall creates this formula which helps him wait for long stretches of time which goes increasingly faster into the past as more time goes by, which gives him the effect of looking like the time goes by quickly. Which assists in the waiting process.
And of course, there is a particularly obvious pun in the image text. He makes a play on the phrase "time period", which is used to describe large blocks of time throughout history. And of course, the other side is the punctuation mark: period.
(Also, the workout website, Fitocracy has been mentioned previously in xkcd.)
Space Launch System
by Jeff
Image text: The SLS head engineer plans to invite Shania Twain to stand under the completed prototype, then tell her, 'I don't expect you to date me just because I'm a rocket scientist, but you've gotta admit--this is pretty fucking impressive.'
SLS, which stands for Space Launch System (naturally) is the new launch program being designed by NASA to replace the retired Space Shuttle launch system. In the first frame, Cueball is showing Black Hat something about the SLS, possibly a video on his phone or other portable electronic device.
As usually with his appearances, Black Hat is causing trouble. Here, Black Hat is by as much as I can find, telling the truth, because Nazi-Germany era scientists like Wernher von Braun, who was one of the developers of the Saturn V launch vehicle, came over to NASA and helped develop NASA's space program.
Black Hat's assumption in the last frame is obviously a bridge too far (which is where the joke is in the comic), but he gets his desired reaction out of Cueball, who is hanging his head.
Shania Twain comes into this comic in the image text because in her song "That Don't Impress Me Much", she sings: "Okay, so you're a rocket scientist/That don't impress me much". But, the image text argues that if she stood under the new SLS prototype, she would admit it was in fact, impressive.
Mystery Solved
by Jeff
Image text: The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.
First and foremost, thanks to Berg for covering for me while I was on vacation on Friday. Make sure you follow him on twitter and tumblr. But, only if you like to laugh.
In this comic, Amelia Earhardt's plane comes back to land after it went missing in 1937. Earhardt was presumed dead and that her plane went down sometime during her journey. But, this comic supposes what if instead it just took her from 1937-2011 to fly around the Earth without really aging a day.
The image text proposed a few more solutions to mysteries including the lost colonists of Roanoke, who were one of the first groups to come to America, but suddenly disappeared, leaving their colony untouched. The Franklin Expedition was a British voyage in 1845 to study the Northwest passage that also disappeared somewhere in northern Canada. Jimmy Hoffa was the famous Teamsters Union leader who went missing in 1975 and is presumed dead (and possibly murdered).
Chain of Command
by Jeff
Image text: Themistocles said his infant son ruled all Greece -- "Athens rules all Greece; I control Athens; my wife controls me; and my infant son controls her." Thus, nowadays the world is controlled by whoever buys advertising time on Dora the Explorer.
Themistocles was an Ancient Greek politician and this comic and image text are about uncommon chains of command.
The President of the United States is at the top of the US Nuclear Chain of Command, but the Engineer is technically above him because the button would not work without the Engineer and the Engineer is in charge of configuring how the button works. Just in case you are not familiar with movie and TV depictions, the "Red Button" is usually a worst case scenario as it launches all nuclear capabilities.
In the image text is a similar joke placed at the top of the chain of command, this time in Ancient Greece. Since Themistocles' infant son ruled all of Greece, where did his infant son get any ideas? If this were current day, the infant son would get his ideas from advertisements shown on the show Dora the Explorer. Dora the Explorer is a very popular animated television series shown on the Nickelodeon networks staring a child named Dora who explores. (Hence the name.)