1023: "Late-Night BS"

[San Fran Sam]

So, it has come to this.

[av4rice]

What in God's name is up with the font? Why is the quality so bad?

You noticed the lettering but not the rest of the image? The whole thing lacks the anti-aliasing that these comics usually get.

[Dingbats]

What in God's name is up with the font? Why is the quality so bad?

You noticed the lettering but not the rest of the image? The whole thing lacks the anti-aliasing that these comics usually get.

Yes, and why? Is there some point to it that you need to be American to get?

[EpicanicusStrikes]

[rinka]

What in God's name is up with the font? Why is the quality so bad?

You noticed the lettering but not the rest of the image? The whole thing lacks the anti-aliasing that these comics usually get.

I even right-clicked the image to have the picture shown in full size because I couldn't imagine this would be on purpose. Though, unless it's related to the comic's content, which I don't think, it's still possible that it's unintentional.

[llwang]

Something is wrong with the resolution or discretization. It hurts.

[Coyne]

Ah, yes. PBS on Ambien: That'll do it every time.

[SirMustapha]

I never expected that Randall would become so lazy that even the image quality of his comics would take such a sudden nosedive. All made worse by the fact that the "joke" is just a watered-down, uninspired creepypasta pastiche. Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia yesterday and decided to make a comic about it.

[threedognice]

I never expected that Randall would become so lazy that even the image quality of his comics would take such a sudden nosedive. All made worse by the fact that the "joke" is just a watered-down, uninspired creepypasta pastiche. Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia yesterday and decided to make a comic about it.

So, it has come to this.

[addams]

I don't think Bob Ross was capable of painting a less than happy tree. It's your own little world and you can make it any way you like. And in Bob Ross' little world the trees were happy dammit. And the clouds too.

*And if you aren't you're getting scraped off existence with a palette knife.

Yes. Everything about him was calm and content. Bob Ross was like a narcotic. Ten minutes with a pillow and a blanket in front of the TV with him on was sleepy time.

He was way cool. He is recorded for all time. We can still lay down on the floor and listen to him put us to sleep. Right?

Oh Man! It, just, occurred to me. Some of you may have been attempting to paint the trees by the water and the shadows on the water. Not me. I was sleeping. Off and On.

Hey! It is not easy being as happy-go-lucky as he was.
So; It has come to this.

Fine. Scrape us off and replace us with happy ones.

[neanderslob]

This comic is hysterical but at the same time I feel like I don't get it. Is there a particular situation or opinion that he's parodying?

[Eebster the Great]

Despite the fact that "Candle Cove" was the first thing that came to mind when I read the comic, I don't think there's really any direct relation.

Unless there's some Carmen Sandiego creepypasta I'm not aware of.

[Steve the Pocket]

I never expected that Randall would become so lazy that even the image quality of his comics would take such a sudden nosedive. All made worse by the fact that the "joke" is just a watered-down, uninspired creepypasta pastiche. Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia yesterday and decided to make a comic about it.

Ever surf the Internet late at night? I fell asleep after visiting deviantART and woke up at like 3 AM. The new XKCD was up, except the humor hadn't aged well, and Randall had clearly been drinking. The strip is some lazy reworking of an old creepypasta, and there's no punchline. The image quality is awful, like he hit the wrong setting in GIMP when he scaled it down. Over in the forum, it's almost a page in before anyone even comments on this.

[redstart]

I never expected that Randall would become so lazy that even the image quality of his comics would take such a sudden nosedive. All made worse by the fact that the "joke" is just a watered-down, uninspired creepypasta pastiche. Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia yesterday and decided to make a comic about it.

Well, the quality was better this morning. I don't know why it changed, but it looked normal when I first saw it.

Creepypasta is mostly uninspired, watered-down pastiches of various urban legends; it's no great crime to take one and do something else with it.

[Invisiblemoose]

I swear the image quality was fine when it first went up. I'm not crazy.

[WolfieMario]

I never expected that Randall would become so lazy that even the image quality of his comics would take such a sudden nosedive. All made worse by the fact that the "joke" is just a watered-down, uninspired creepypasta pastiche. Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia yesterday and decided to make a comic about it.

Ever surf the Internet late at night? I fell asleep after visiting deviantART and woke up at like 3 AM. The new XKCD was up, except the humor hadn't aged well, and Randall had clearly been drinking. The strip is some lazy reworking of an old creepypasta, and there's no punchline. The image quality is awful, like he hit the wrong setting in GIMP when he scaled it down. Over in the forum, it's almost a page in before anyone even comments on this.

I saw this at 2AM, and can tell you that nobody spoke of the aliasing because originally that's not how it looked :p

I doubt it has anything to do with resizing; the scale is unchanged - I think it's more likely something went wrong with the alpha channel (assuming Randall does the layers on transparent backgrounds rather than white, which makes sense), though that doesn't quite explain the breakage of the lines on the tile floor (and I can't imagine why this would be done intentionally).

[suso]

Wild. I came here just before 2pm and the image was all messed up and I thought maybe that was some part of the joke or comic. But after reading the forum for clues and seeing people's mention in the afternoon, I notice that the image has been fixed. And a little curl magic proves that:

Code: Select all

~$ curl -s -D- http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/late_night_pbs.png | head | grep Last-Modified
Last-Modified: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:55:07 GMT

Which was just 10 minutes ago.

[kayghar]

@suso got to this first, I now see but I can't help noticing that the compression artifacts weren't intentional... I had come up with a list of possible explanations... :/

[RAGBRAIvet]

What's even worse is falling asleep while watching late-night reruns of old TV sitcoms on a channel such as 'The HUB' — then waking up in the middle of something like "In the Night Garden".
GAHHHHH!!!!!

[whateveries]

I never expected that Randall would become so lazy that even the image quality of his comics would take such a sudden nosedive. All made worse by the fact that the "joke" is just a watered-down, uninspired creepypasta pastiche. Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia yesterday and decided to make a comic about it.

So, it has come to this.

well played.

[madaco]

... creepypasta .... Probably Randall read about it on Wikipedia....

err
there are articles on Wikipedia about various creepypasta that no one here has pointer out yet?
how did THAT get through the notibility filters?
I would think that most creepypasta would be not notable, unless is is very common.
I would expect creepypasta that is or was very common to be recognized.

so we have come to this:
the conclusion that it is most probably that either it is not based on creepypasta or it is not based on a Wikipedia article.

That which was to be made to seem likely.

[odog1999]

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was a quiz show? I always thought it was a cartoon.

You're thinking of Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, which indeed was a cartoon version featuring two kid sleuths.

[eaglewings51]

I love the mussed up hair on the sleepy guy. It just adds so much to the comic.

[AvatarIII]

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was a quiz show? I always thought it was a cartoon.

You're thinking of Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, which indeed was a cartoon version featuring two kid sleuths.

ah oh, I'm guessing the Quiz show never made it to this side of the pond, even though the cartoon did.

[Number3Pencils]

Would the graves in Cambodia be marked with crosses? Really don't think Christianity was too big at the time (though Pol Pot would certainly have targeted it if it were).

I just went to the Killing Fields in January. No crosses there. All the graves there are mass graves, so instead of putting individual grave markers up, they just fenced off the areas to show where the mass graves had been. When I saw the picture, though, I figured it was a place "like the Cambodian Killing Fields [or] Mogadishu". Not necessarily either of those places.

[Mirkwood]

Would the graves in Cambodia be marked with crosses? Really don't think Christianity was too big at the time (though Pol Pot would certainly have targeted it if it were).

I just went to the Killing Fields in January. No crosses there. All the graves there are mass graves, so instead of putting individual grave markers up, they just fenced off the areas to show where the mass graves had been. When I saw the picture, though, I figured it was a place "like the Cambodian Killing Fields [or] Mogadishu". Not necessarily either of those places.

Yeah, I think they're showing some other bad place. My own interpretation was that it one of those crosses-row-on-row cemeteries in France or Belgium, but the crosses aren't actually in a row.

[FrobozzWizard]

Did you see "Late Night with Jim Lehrer" last night? It was hilarious!

[SirMustapha]

so we have come to this:
the conclusion that it is most probably that either it is not based on creepypasta or it is not based on a Wikipedia article.

Not based on creepypasta? Not likely: it follows the formula way too closely, with the same kind of narrative of of sequence of unsettling events related to well known and/or nostalgic things.

Not based on Wikipedia? Not necessarily so.

[devopablo]

Can anyone explain why this is funny?

I've seen late-night PBS before. I've seen the Carmen Sandiego quiz show. I've seen both when young and not young. I don't lack context or reference for this comic at all. The only thing I haven't done is ever take Ambien. Is that the whole joke? Hallucinations? Or is there something else that's *actually* funny?

[rcox1]

What I remember about late night PBS was the number of scantily clad persons. I remember one show, A Very Peculiar Practice, that always delivered the goods. And in the days when many of us still had broadcast tv and VCRS were not everywhere, that was a good thing.

[enderverse]

This is the most "meh" comic in a long time.

[BotoBoto]

It should be an Austrian basement, I believe... Dutch basements are just full of weed and old stolen bicycle parts

There is no mention of a basement in the comic. Anne Frank was captured living in a secret room behind a bookshelf in a Dutch apartment (and, like many Dutch Jews, deported to a concentration camp and brutally murdered).
It would make no sense for it to be an Austrian basement, because it was a good thing that girl was found in there.

Also, it was Dutch bicycles that were stolen by the Nazis, because their iron frames were useful for the war effort.
Furthermore, it is illegal to grow more than three marijuana plants without a license, and [url=http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_can_use-lifestyle-cannabis-use]Dutch people don't use much weed] compared to nations like the US, so it is much less likely to find a lot of marijuana growing in a Dutch basement than in an American one.

Have you ever been in a student complex? They grow that shit alll the time.

[Slesh]

I approve of this comic for mentioning Carmen Sandiego and Rockapella. I still have some of the lyrics to that memorized all these years later.

Steal your seoul in south korea,
Make Antarctica cry uncle,
From the red seas to Greenland, you'll be singing the blues,

Well, I never arkansas her steal the mekong from the jungle,
Tell me, Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego?

[bobateme]

I made an account on the forum just to say this:
I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, and I love it.