Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont

Posted on October 16, 2008 by xkcd

I am currently at the tail end of the Debate Drinking Game, wherein you take a drink every time McCain says “my friends” and Obama starts a response with “Look,”. Since both candidates had their verbal tics under control, I just took a drink every time someone said a pronoun. I am not in a good state. Fortunately Google’s sobriety test has not yet extended to the WordPress default implementation. Why would you ask for the arctan of pi/2? Maybe it will make sense when I’m sober.

I did an interview with the New Yorker Cartoon Blog. It’s available here.

I will be in Burlington, Vermont tomorrow, to try kite photography. Thanks to the excellent (albeit poorly-organized) CHDK project, I’ve picked up a cheap Canon Powershot A720 and modified it to do time-lapse photography. This makes kite photography much simpler than it’s been in the past.

If there are any readers in the Burlington area who are interested in kite flying and know of a good location, email me at xkcd@xkcd.com. I will send out an email containing plans to anyone who contacts me, sometime soon after noon. If you know someone in Burlington (e.g. at UVm,) let them know! Thanks.

220 thoughts on “Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont”

Lusk on October 17, 2008 at 4:40 pm said:

So, are you counting SNL’s debates? You’ll get more “my friends” and “Looks” in that way.

Saw the comic-off. It was great, but I didn’t quite get your first comic, were they watching a tv? Anyway, i’m pretty sure you won, if only for refrencing Palin in a comic about animals.
Obsessed Fanboy on October 17, 2008 at 4:42 pm said:

OMG! Randall Monroe! Here? Today? ZOMG!

I have been reduced to “ZOMG”s and the such by this news. If I had known earlier, I could have gotten my autograph book, tranquilizer darts and miniature gps tracking device ready.
Obsessed Fanboy on October 17, 2008 at 4:51 pm said:

munroe. I’m a bad fanboy.
Bret on October 17, 2008 at 5:26 pm said:

Wow.

The google sobriety test is harsh.
Winker Watson on October 17, 2008 at 5:52 pm said:

ufkufyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Aaron A. on October 17, 2008 at 6:54 pm said:

To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, we Alaskans are just as smart and sophisticated as anybody. We just have trouble keeping the least intelligent of us off the television. Between the vapid Governor, indicted Congressmen, killer strippers-turned-soccer-moms, and Jewel, I fear there’s no redemption for our fair state.

– A.
Oh, and apparently Joe the Plumber used to live here too.
http://www.adn.com/politics/story/558835.html

Captcha: studying fail, a.k.a. my life since I discovered WoW.
chiya on October 17, 2008 at 9:21 pm said:

Wait… Arctan of pi/2?
I’m pretty sure that even if i were drunk i would look at it, think undefined, then realize it’s not.
lifeismusic434 on October 17, 2008 at 10:40 pm said:

Nooes, I go to UVM, and it looks like I missed you… *sad face*
Erica on October 18, 2008 at 12:28 pm said:

Did you know that your cartoon-off got linked on Neil Gaiman’s blog?
Spastic on October 18, 2008 at 8:25 pm said:

HOLY CRAP YOU’RE COMING TO YALE.

I’m skipping Chem lab to come, so you better be worth the hit to my grade. No pressure, though. You should’ve come to TD instead, much better than Pierson (Ask them about their Intramural standings).
Elsewhy on October 19, 2008 at 1:14 am said:

you will be the greatest thing that ever happened to yale. i can’t wait!
Erikson on October 19, 2008 at 12:17 pm said:

Why wasn’t their Alt-text in the cartoon off? That’s one of the things that makes your comics hilarious.
Arjan on October 19, 2008 at 4:42 pm said:

When are you coming to Yale? A Master’s Tea at Pierson? Sweet.
Rew on October 19, 2008 at 9:38 pm said:

Infinitely sexy dino guest strip. (Friday)
http://www.qwantz.com/
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey on October 20, 2008 at 1:37 am said:

Apropos of #491:

Burma Shave verses canonically have six signs, not five.

I should apologize for nitpicking. Fortunately for our artist, I am the only chronic nitpicker who reads this strip.
tahrey on October 20, 2008 at 5:05 am said:

To change the direction suddenly…

…I have an A720 and was disappointed it didn’t have timelapse functionality, even over USB, just some wierd mode on the self timer that waited for a certain period (1-60s) then took a set of pictures (1-10) asfastasitpossiblycould.

Sooooo… how did you mod it to work right? Did it involve warranty invalidation? cuz I’ve got like 14 months left of that still :-/
Chhavi on October 20, 2008 at 8:51 am said:

Randall!

You should come to Australia. Particularly Adelaide. Particularly Flinders University…Ok, just Adelaide will do.
Awesome landscapes for kite photography…
Come soooon
Rob on October 20, 2008 at 12:33 pm said:

Apropos of #491‘s title text:

While Firefox 3 tooltips display the entire text, they have an annoying timeout which also prevents one from reading the entire message in one go. Has anyone a resolution for this?

This is not such a problem for xkcd, but moreso for other comics which routinely have longer titles.
Cat on October 20, 2008 at 3:05 pm said:

Why didn’t you tell us earlier? I didn’t check the blag in time. I’m a terrible stalker.
Blake Stacey on October 20, 2008 at 3:11 pm said:

I should apologize for nitpicking. Fortunately for our artist, I am the only chronic nitpicker who reads this strip.

Per the comments I get on my blag, it appears I must disabuse you of your cherished illusion.
krandor on October 20, 2008 at 4:21 pm said:

Just wanted to say that i’ve been reading your strip for quite a while, and now just discovered the blog. Oh so much to catch up on!

My days at work will no longer be filled with awful boredom!
marc on October 20, 2008 at 10:23 pm said:

Did this with some helium balloons in Porter Square and Cambridge Common. Results here: http://flickr.com/photos/briannnnnnnnnnnna/sets/72157608029538895/
Sapphire on October 21, 2008 at 2:38 am said:

You know I’m in the mood to get totally drunk, too. It’s a shame I cannot afford alcohol.
the other me on October 21, 2008 at 9:19 am said:

Are you sure you want Google to see this: http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/googlecopy.jpg ? It’s just that I’m highly terrified of anything that has to do with math, and if they implement that check, it’s your ass on the line.
Dan on October 21, 2008 at 11:24 am said:

Randall, I just wanted to say that I actually stumbled upon the cartoon-off on the New Yorker blog before seeing it here and was delighted/shocked/slightly alarmed to see you getting your props under that hallowed URL… And you totally pwned that Katz guy. Well done!
thrilled on October 21, 2008 at 3:13 pm said:

I should be working or sleeping this afternoon, but instead I am attending your Master’s Tea, because, seriously. Is not going even an option? Obviously not!
dem on October 21, 2008 at 4:14 pm said:

could someone explain to me the burma-shave comic? i…dont get it at all.
Ryan on October 21, 2008 at 6:45 pm said:

Ok, now I’m stuck with this Time lapse stuff too. I got CHDK working, got time lapse working (some useful scripts at that site, but damn is it difficult to find your way around). Now, I’m curious, what do other use for compiling those stills into frames for a movie? I’ve been searching around and can’t figure it out.

Damn this addiction to trying weird new things!
Aaron A. on October 21, 2008 at 8:14 pm said:

dem, it’s a reference to an old and longstanding (1925 – 1963) advertising campaign by the makers of shaving cream Burma-Shave.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave

Burma-Shave’s ads capitalized on America’s highway expansion in the post-WWII period, and thus entrenched themselves in mid-20th-Century American nostalgia. (see Wikipedia for an extensive list of pop culture references.)

Bill Higgins is correct; authentic Burma-Shave ads used six signs (five forming a clever saying plus the final “Burma-Shave”), but pop culture references almost always employ a five-sign structure. Motorists, whizzing by in their cars, had mere seconds to read each sign, so they had to be short and easy to read. Comics can get away with four longer sentences, which also work better with our assumptions about the poem’s cadence.

– A.
Reuxben on October 21, 2008 at 8:51 pm said:

Thanks so much for coming to visit us today! It was one of the most informative Master’s Teas I’ve been to.

And I only asked the question about the unglamorous part of the job just so I could get the often overlooked side of the coin; didn’t mean to bring the mood down…

Anyway, thanks again!

Reuxben
Justin on October 21, 2008 at 8:52 pm said:

I would just like to note that only the burma shave jingle made me realize that firefox 3 doesn’t cut off tooltips. No more opening safari just to read xkcd!
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Darwin on October 22, 2008 at 12:30 am said:

re. the tooltip in the scrabble comic: are you kidding!?! ‘ostrich’ is all of, what, 13 points?

as this isn’t facebook scrabble and i wouldn’t know to play ‘lictors,’ i’d probably gamble opening up two other triple words and settle for ‘historic’ for 42 points…

ostrich!?! open up two strings of 2x word tiles, waste a perfectly good S…for 13 points?

that’s umm…this…i…but…i i think i’m speechless!
Darwin on October 22, 2008 at 1:18 am said:

Speechless am I! So much so that I don’t decide to babble on with facebook ramblings of incoherance?

but sometimes I also like to just talk and talk incessantly about nonsense, kinda like the whole principle of scrabble itself. One time I took all the words spelled on the Scrabble board and put them together in a short-story-fan-fic about Boba Fett…

random?!? similarly I will give random advice to people about things that are not that significant to… the world?

here’s where… i… break down… and… stop… t…a…l…k…i…n…………g. BIG PHRASES!
becky on October 22, 2008 at 1:34 am said:

you’d want to play the word, regardless of which school of scrabble you subscribe to. playing for points, you want the bingo. playing for cool words, you have it as well. clitoris is way cooler than ostrich.
K on October 22, 2008 at 1:57 am said:

holy balls!
as a math major (third year),
http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/googlecopy.jpg
is pig-disgusting… I mean honestly, omgwtfbbq.
honestly, though, a slightly complex truth table problem would work well as such a verification system
eg -
x relates to at most 20 y, at least 10 y, and not 15 y.
rewrite as a truth statement using only:
‘and’ and ‘or’ operators
‘for all’ and ‘for some’ quantifiers

then again, mine is probably (or certainly) worse.

also, nice interview with the new yorker
John Chew on October 22, 2008 at 9:19 am said:

You could play TROCHILS through the H, but most people I know would play LICTORS making CHI. But I don’t know many people who aren’t expert Scrabble players.
Jim on October 22, 2008 at 11:02 am said:

I’m taking the fifth of November off of work, not to remember remember but in order to play a new game. Every four years, you get to play the Electoral College drinking game! Since a lot of people (D or R) will be watching the election results saying, “oh god oh god please no” – I decided that I’d just drink every time the other guy won a state.

I figure, win or lose, I’m going to be slobbering drunk. Maybe that’ll save me if the results spark a nationwide civil war… o_o
9squirrels on October 22, 2008 at 6:28 pm said:

Re: the Scrabble comic.
This happened to my girlfriend and I playing Scrabble a few years ago. I’d put down something, first word of the game, then she went “YES!” and laid out Clitoris, across the double word score. And because she got rid of all her letters in one go, she got bonus points (can’t remember the rule now, but I think it’s an extra 50 bonus points for that).
It was an early lead I was unable to close.
Steelwool199 on October 23, 2008 at 9:06 am said:

Nice idea with the drinking game. but take it from my experience… never do this if your the only person drinking and i don’t know about u but i prefer drinking when the person says something like “like”, “umm” “uh” “and another thing” “the thing to look out for” otherwise your drunk in the first 10mins
Aaron A. on October 23, 2008 at 10:44 am said:

@ Jim & Steelwool:

Love it, and be sure to add “too close to call” if you don’t plan on driving for the rest of the week.

– A.
Esther on October 23, 2008 at 8:31 pm said:

Maker’s Mark! My favorite! Great cartoon off!
Alex on October 24, 2008 at 2:25 pm said:

Some other options:
COISTRIL, HISTORIC (already mentioned), ORCHITIS, TROCHILI, TROCHILS.

I also played the Debate Drinking Game. I drank when I laughed. I managed to somehow blow a 0.471
Pete on October 26, 2008 at 7:47 pm said:

If there ever had been a “mail Randall $20″ comic, there’s a good chance (like 80%) that I would have done so. Not sure that’s still the case after bringing up the idea in advance, but you never know.

(It would have to be a case of physically posting banknotes, though – some crappy PayPal site would just never be the same.)
Emily on October 27, 2008 at 1:38 am said:

I don’t know if you noticed, but youtube now has the “Audio Preview” option, where a voice reads your comment back to you. I like think it was because of XKCD. Cheers.
Rozen on October 27, 2008 at 2:32 am said:

“It’s the Tubes sir. They’r e clogged.”

I’m affraid that will became real soon… and, I expect the Mr. Hat comes out from xkcd to save the world. Or not.
Keith on October 27, 2008 at 8:19 am said:

“[...] stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It’s about three-fourths autobiographical.”

I wonder which three.
Mike MacHenry on October 27, 2008 at 1:07 pm said:

“I am not in a good state.”

You shouldn’t have left Massachusetts.

-mike
Pete on October 27, 2008 at 4:43 pm said:

Emily – either I’m being horrifically trolled, or you didn’t read the blag post that preceded this one.
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey on October 27, 2008 at 9:47 pm said:

Aaron A, I am old enough to remember seeing Burma-Shave signs, particularly on a 1963 trip across the Great Plains. They disappeared shortly afterward.

Like so much of our vanished culture, their traces are preserved in old Warner Brothers cartoons. Case in point: “Rabbit Seasoning,” 1952.

xkcd

The blag of the webcomic

Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont

220 thoughts on “Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont”

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