Keyed
by Jeff
Image text: I was sure he was just getting revenge, but then he did the same thing to Carrie Underwood. Then he mailed me a scone. I think I'm giving up dating.
This comic is a take on one of the typical revenge tactics in dating and in life, which is one person "keying" the car of another. To "key" a car is to drag a key across the side of the car, sometimes multiple times, ruining the paint job. Instead, our friend Beret Guy painted a really detailed key on the side of the car in his version of "keying" a car.
The image text is a reference to the song "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood, which is a revenge song which details (via wikipedia) Carrie Underwood imagining her boyfriend hanging out and flirting with a "bleach-blonde" girl, shooting pool, buying her a drink, dancing, and hoping to "get lucky" with her. In retaliation, she commits several law-breaking actions including vandalizing his customized four-wheel drive vehicle by scratching its side with a key, carving her name into its leather seats, smashing the headlights with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat and slashing all four tires. She hopes that this will make him "think before he cheats" again.
I'm not sure what is up with the scone mailing. It is probably just random. Oh Beret Guy, never change.
Late-Night PBS
by Jeff
Image text: Then it switched to these old black-and-white tapes of Bob Ross slumped against the wall of an empty room, painting the least happy trees you've ever seen. Either PBS needs to beef up studio security or I need to stop using Ambien to sleep.
Here's what you need to know to understand this one:
PBS stands for Public Broadcasting Service and is a American TV channel that is (somewhat) supported by the viewers themselves through pledge drives.
"Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego" was a computer game series in the mid-80s. The series moved to a game-show TV series in the early from around 1990 to 1995. The point of the series was to learn about geography and the world while playing a game or watching a game show. Carmen Sandiego was a mysterious character that you tracked around the globe, attempting to find clues and find out where she was headed to next.
Mogadishu is a battle-torn city in Somalia, where there was the aptly named "Battle of Mogadishu" in 1993, which would coincide with the airdates of "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego" game show.
The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970-1975).
The reference to "A Bookshelf in a Dutch Apartment" is a reference to Anne Frank, who was a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in a Secret Annex hidden behind a bookshelf in an apartment in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She wrote the famous novel, Diary of Anne Frank.
Good lord, I hate acapella, but Rockapella was the acapella (keeping up the tradition of punny names for Acapella groups) group which sang the theme song to "Where in The World Is Carmen Sandiego".
And lastly, in the image text there is a reference to Bob Ross, who is the famous painter who had a painting show on PBS called "The Joy Of Painting" that amazingly ran for 12 years.
Anything I missed? Did that help explain it for people who missed the references?
Sigh
by Jeff
Image text: If you're annoying enough, you can get them to respond with an involuntary second sigh and get a rhythm going.
Ok, here's the information you need to understand this one:
Cueball is mispronouncing the name of the British TV show, that is also currently show in the US, which is DownTON Abbey (emphasis mine). I had that same problem with the name of the show for almost a whole year.
I'm no LMFAO expert, but they are ubiquitous group in the US on radio, TV and even strange commercials with rodents riding in cars with their infectious ear worm, Party Rock Anthem. However, this comic is a reference to another one of their songs, "Sexy And I Know It" (Trust me, you don't have to get too far into it before the referenced part in the comic.)
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).
Prairie
by Jeff
Image text: Colorado is working to develop coherent amber waves, which would allow them to finally destroy Kansas and Nebraska with a devastating but majestic grain laser.
This comic is a reference to the song America The Beautiful, which contains the line "...amber waves of grain...". But, of course, xkcd being xkcd, waves are interpreted in the physics way. In Quantum mechanics, the wave-particle duality explains that particles can act like both particles and waves. In the comic, when they are observing the light from the grain, it is acting like a particle.
However, as the image text says, if Colorado wanted to destroy other states with a coherent wave laser of amber waves, the particles would be acting as waves, like a laser.
Oh yea, in America The Beautiful, "...amber waves of grain..." is used because when the wind blows over a field of grain it looks like waves in the ocean.
Physics people, please let me know in the comics if I went wrong somewhere.
Na
by Jeff
Image text: I hear that there are actual lyrics later on in Land of 1,000 Dances, but other than the occasional 'I said,' I've never listened long enough to hear any of them.
This xkcd is interesting because the image at the main xkcd site is the one you see below, but if you click on the image, you get a slightly different comic, that includes the Paul McCartney song "Hey Jude".
Alright, here are four songs (besides "Hey Jude") that all start out with at least 8 "na"s in a row.
The top song is Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye by recorded by studio musicians Garrett Scott, Dale Frashuer, and producer/writer Paul Leka that has become very popular for home fans in sporting events in America taunting the losing away team. Here's the youtube video to refresh your memory.
The Batman entry is from the 60's TV show "Batman". Here's the youtube video to refresh your memory.
The next is the theme song to the game "Katamari Damacy". Here's the spectacular youtube video as evidence.
The last song is "The Land of 1000 Dances" by Wilson Pickett. Check out the youtube video, I know you'll remember the song.
Dental Nerve
by Jeff
Image text: WAKE up in the MORning and my BREATH ain't PREtty / and noBODY'S gonna KISS me if my MOUTH smells SHItty / so I ALways brush my TEETH before I START on the JACK / sure, my DRINKing's out of HAND, but I'm conTROLLing my PLAQUE.
This comic is a take on the song "Tick Tock" by the artist Ke$ha. The lyrics at the beginning of the song go something like this:
Wake up this morning, feel like P Diddy
Grab my glasses, I'm out the door, I'm gonna hit this city
Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack
'Cause when I leave for the night, I'm not coming back
Now this site is not "Explain Ke$ha" because I have no idea what the hell those lyrics mean. I'm going to go with nothing. However, the xkcd today is a commentary on those 4 lines. Additionally, the image text is what the lyrics should say if Ke$ha was practicing good dental hygiene.
Note: If you have ever seen Ke$ha, it is obvious she is not practicing good hygiene anything.
Paradise City
by Jeff
Image text: Take me down to the paradise municipality / where the grass is mauve and the girls aren't fromthisreality.
This whole comic is a take on the song "Paradise City" by Guns in Roses. The actual lyrics are used in the first frame.
The only frame that may need explanation is the fourth in which Cueball references George Orwell when using the phrase "Orwellian". That is a reference to the books by George Orwell. It is a type of action that is defined by double-talk, propaganda, misinformation and lying by a government or ruling power.
As best I can find, a cortical lesions is an abnormal tissue found in the brain. It is most common in people with MS.
Sample
by Jeff
Image text: There are two or three songs out there with beeps in the chorus that sound exactly like the clock radio alarm I had in high school, and hearing it makes me think my life since junior year has been a dream I'm about to wake up from.
This one is pretty straightforward. There is nothing worse than the standard alarm clock sound unexpectedly in a commercial or song.
The Tell-Tale Beat
by Jeff
Image text: You fancy me mad. Could a madman have outsmarted the greatest electronica/techno artists of our era? Next to fall will be Roderick Usher's house/trance band.
This is a reference to the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe in which the character in the short story kills and buries a body underneath the floorboards in his house. He is haunted by the sound of a beating heart from under the floorboards until he admits his guilt.
"You fancy me mad" in the image text is a direct reference to Poe's story in which he says "If you still think me mad..."
Daft Punk is as it says in the image text is an "electronica/techno"artist. When the character in the comic buries Daft Punk under his floorboards, all he hears is the typical "Unn-Tss" sound that makes the back-beat for most techno and electronica songs.
In the image text, Roderick Usher is a reference to "The Fall of the House of Usher", another short story by Edgar Allen Poe. And the pun is on the word "fall" where it is used to mean die but is also a reference to the title of the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher".