Life Imitates xkcd, Part II: Richard Stallman
As if Cory Doctorow getting dressed in a red cape and goggles after I drew this comic wasn’t crazy enough, in response to this comic, two xkcd fans — Rafael Roquetto and Mauro Persano — have bought Richard Stallman a katana:
The had it shipped to him at the FSF offices (more pictures here).
He really didn’t know what to make of it. I’m told he sent them back an email thanking them, adding, “I am not sure what to do with it, other then keep it near my bed.”
April 19th, 2007 at 3:45 am
There are too many batshit crazy people out there. Thank God.
April 19th, 2007 at 4:48 am
I love it. Life needs to imitate xkcd more often.
April 19th, 2007 at 5:06 am
His response wins everything. Everything.
April 19th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Looks exactly like the cheap mass-produced China-made Katana my brother bought me for my birthday, in which case nobody should fear RMS (any more than they previously did at least) since it’s as blunt as a butter knife except at the tip, which I find quite useful in opening that nasty plastic packaging that surrounds 6 packs of coke.
April 19th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Kaoru: perhaps katana is the one true way of opening clamshell packaging?
April 19th, 2007 at 9:53 am
[...] Richard M. Stallman has a katana. [...]
April 19th, 2007 at 10:23 am
No!
Can’t you guys see that you’re only encouraging him? If xkcd keeps portraying prop gags with celebrities, and if people keep imitating them in real life, the result can only be an arms race that no one wins except the reading public.
What’s next? Linus Torvalds with a rubber chicken? Bill Gates with a pie on his face? Steve Wozniak confronting a veciloraptor?
April 19th, 2007 at 10:38 am
You know, if you wanted to make a strip about a recently-defended theoretical chemist named Matt Thompson at JILA who uses, say, a new Sony Reader…or an Xbox 360…or something like that, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Why is he holding it by the blade?
Why is the blade exposed and not bloodied?
Why Richard Stallman?
April 19th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Isaac: I thought Torvalds was supposed to have nunchucks? ;-)
April 19th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Isaac, Bill was already piefaced. look for the clip out there.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Denise, in the arms race, there’s always fear that things will degenerate to the yet weirder.
F2, I think you caught my sly reference. :)
April 19th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Doesn’t it remember you of Kill Bill?
April 19th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
So… Would you mind publishing a comic depicting me holding a large bag of money?
April 19th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
And in other news, the snopes botnet goes active tonight.
April 19th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
After showing several of your comics to a cute chick in whom I was interested, and after she really didn’t get the ones at which I lafft the most, I think it might be important to find someone who gets your strips as often as I do (about an 80% success rate).
Perhaps you should start a dating service based on “personality tests” i.e. showing comics ranging from Garfield to Bloom County to xkcd along with “How funny did you find this strip on a scale from 1 to 5?”
Anyway, the ones of yours I’ve comprehended have blown oxygen into what pathetic embers of faith in humanity I had.
I found your translated George Washington address before I found the comic, as I recall it was linked on Fark.com, and I’ve had the compulsion to spread it around like the sweet jelly of liberty on the stale, crusty toast of my fellow citizens. What I’m trying to say is that I thank you.
April 19th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Check out how far from the hilt the balance point is. Are Katanas supposed to be like that?
April 19th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Which episode is this a reference to?
April 19th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
ah wait, i’m illiterate. sorry.
April 19th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Clearly the Force is great in xkcd. You need to use that power for good, not evil.
April 19th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Now all we need is for RMS to show up wielding his katana in a random park in Cambridge on September 23, along with a few hundred other xkcd-ers.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Does anybody else think RMS looks a little stoned in those linked pictures?
April 20th, 2007 at 12:38 am
This is unrelated to your blog post, but i think that you should check out some of Jonathan Coulton’s work - he has a rather similiar sense of humor to yours , and is doing for music what you’re doing for web comics. i’d go for “Mandelbrot Set” or “Skullcrusher Mountain” first, i have a feeling you’ll really appreciate his art :)
/love to see you guys collaborate on something… i’m a huge fan of both, keep it up :)
April 20th, 2007 at 3:10 am
[...] Al parecer alguien le regaló a Richard Stallman una Katana. La idea surgió en base a un comic, y RMS se sacó unas fotos con el regalo. Más información en el blog del autor del comic. [...]
April 20th, 2007 at 4:15 am
re: Bithead
Nope. Generally, the balance point should be closer to the hilt, especially since Katanas are meant for slicing, rather than thrusting. It’s probably a cheap replica inteaded more for show than use. Not that that’s a horrible thing… the real ones can be somewhat pricey ( http://tinyurl.com/2xqo8g )… plus, we wouldn’t want those lovable pranksters to get too seriously hurt, now would we?
April 20th, 2007 at 6:40 am
A katana is the gift that keeps on giving.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
This is easily the awesomest thing ever. Let’s give Bill Gates a bat with nails sticking out of it and have a rumble.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I wonder how long it takes before the term “xkcd-ed” gets coined and into common parlance. And I wonder if just mentioning it gets me in history for having coined it…
Could set up a whole set of terms, in fact:
xkcd (ex-kay-see-dee)
intransitive verb: To make reality conform to an xkcd comic. (ex. “It’s time to xkcd!”)
transitive verb: (to xkcd someone) To do something to someone that causes them to imitate an xkcd comic. (Rafael and and Mauro xkcded Richard Stallman by giving him a katana)
noun: Webcomic extraordinaire. (www.xkcd.com Enough said)
April 21st, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Of course the verb is to be pronounced “to ex-kay-ceed” and the proper pronounciation of the example sentence would be “Rafael and Mauro ex-kay-ceed-ed Richard Stallman by giving him a katana.”
I wonder how “to xkcd” would translate into other languages? I will try. I don’t know the grammatical terms for different verb forms in english so I will use an English example.
English: to exkayceed, I exkayceed, you exkayceeded, you have exkayceeded.
Swedish: att exkåsedera, jag exkåsederar, du exkåsederade, ni har exkåsederat
French: (standard -er verb form) exkeceder, j’exkecede, tu exkecedais, vous avez exkecedé
Now I don’t know any more languages.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
@Nirion:
I bow to your altered pronunciation. I also admire your translation effort. If I remembered my Spanish well enough, I’d contribute, but I have objections to knowingly butchering languages past a reasonable limit.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Regarding comic #252, my new goal in life is to find the perfect sized slinky that will walk in place on an up escalator. I’m sure one of you physicist-types can work out the relevant equations for me?
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Regarding the translation of the verb ‘to xkcd’, here it is in Japanese:
Present/Future: (I/you/he/she/it/we/y’all/they) xkcdã‚’ã™ã‚‹
Past: (I/you/he/she/it/we/y’all/they) xkcdã‚’ã—ãŸ
Man, I don’t know who got the bright idea of conjugating verbs based on gender or plurality. I really think the Japanese got the right idea.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Regarding your famous sudo comic, I tried using sudo to get my fiance to get something for me. It had the opposite effect of what I was trying to achieve in that he HAD been reaching for it, but stopped just because I used “sudo” after his initial “no.” :-/ Perhaps I need to recompile his kernel.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
But by conugating verbs based on plurality (I’m not aware of any languages that change verbs based on gender, though there are about 15,000 languages that I don’t know) all those pronouns are rendered needless and can be dropped.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
[...] Life Imitates xkcd: A fan of xkcd apparently bought Richard Stallman a katana in homage to one of the strips. But seriously, that’s pretty funny. [...]
April 25th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
To succeed you must proceed to xkcd
April 27th, 2007 at 12:35 am
[...] Source [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 8:50 am
JuggLer:
You forgot one more
(noun) 2. (math) The result of calling the Ackermann function with Graham’s number as the arguments.
peace,
–me
April 27th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Why isn’t there a “My God, it’s full of cars…” t-shirt? (http://xkcd.com/c224.html)
April 27th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
“What’s next”? Donald Knuth signing the Knuth comic with “Wait, who are you? What are you doing in my house?” — that would be the ideal followup.
At least that’s what I’d ask for if I ever met Knuth. :-)
/* Steinar */
April 29th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Clark wrote:
“I’m not aware of any languages that change verbs based on gender”
Arabic does, in singular and plural of both 2nd and 3rd person. (*And*, as if things weren’t complicated enough, there are two types of plural - ‘two people’, and ‘more than two people’). But then, yes, you really don’t need pronounds. :-)
April 29th, 2007 at 9:12 am
D’oh. *Pronouns*.
April 29th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
[...] UPDATE: It seems a couple of XKCD fans shipped a real katana to RMS: [...]
May 1st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I got a Katana like that for $20 at a “asian” store (at the mall). It was made of cheap aluminum and when it battled with my other $30 (steel, Iberian) sword the Katana came away with big dents and chunks taken out of it.
But I’d send one to him. I wonder what the post office thought….
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:39 am
So does this mean someone’s going to ship Linus Torvalds some nunchuks?
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:14 am
This… is just awesome. My friends and I have sword tournaments every month (using bamboo swords, of course), and so when this comic came out, everyone loved it. The guys who sent the sword are just awesome!!
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:16 am
I DONT KNOW WHERE ELSE TO POST THIS!!!
the latest comic, online communitys
where is the land of porn?
cheers
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Try the fora (”forums” to the layman).
May 6th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Considering how gun-shy Massachusetts is, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were illegal for RMS to own that katana, at least without a ton of paperwork. OTOH it seems unlikely that anyone involved with the MA criminal justice system reads this blog, so…
May 6th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
[...] initial reaction was to receiving an unrequested package with a big sword in it was! You can see a picture of Richard holding the Katana up on the blog [...]
May 6th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Richard Stallman has a katana.
Richard Stallman
has a katana.
Richard
Stallman
has
a
katana.
RICHARD STALLMAN HAS A KATANA HOLY CRAP THAT IS AWESOME
May 9th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Somebody send Linus a nunchuck. Just in case.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Anyone see this xkcd reference on overheard at college yet: http://www.overheardatcollege.com/?p=1695 ?
Oh, Colin: my boyfriend (who introduced me to this site) and I almost always find the same comics funny, even when there’s explanations involved and even though we’re both majoring in subjects that fall under the umbrella of visual and performing arts. What does that say about our relationship?
I hypothesize that it means the two of us are 1) closet geeks and 2) lucky to have found each other. But I could be wrong.
May 11th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
You’re really not supposed to touch the blades at all, at least on a real live katana. This could be a cheap wall hanger though, so it might not matter.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
unrelated: xkcd as reached the Movers & Shakers Traffic Graph
(Sites that are zooming up the Alexa traffic rankings in the last week.) on alexa.com
permalink:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=perfspot.com&site1=xkcd.com&site2=libertypost.org&site3=&site4=&y=r&z=1&h=300&w=610&range=3m&size=Medium&url=perfspot.com
May 13th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
(sorry i screwed up the formatting with that link…) :(
May 14th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Am I alone in the world in picturing a flying office chair bisected in the air?
May 14th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
…the result can only be an arms race that no one wins except the reading public.
No, the result will be an infinite recursion gag. It is already happening. It has already happened…
May 14th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Most swords are designed to take away your head. The GPK is designed to guarantee your cranium remains in place.
May 16th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Looks like we’ve got another “Life imitates xkcd” coming up what with http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/05/15/2327248.shtml
May 25th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
“I am not sure what to do with it, other then keep it near my bed.â€
That sounds like a bad plan given your Fujitsu was taken at arms length from where you were sleeping. Perhaps you should share this info with him.
June 12th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
>English: to exkayceed, I exkayceed, you exkayceeded, you have >exkayceeded.
>Swedish: att exkåsedera, jag exkåsederar, du exkåsederade, ni har >exkåsederat
>French: (standard -er verb form) exkeceder, j’exkecede, tu exkecedais, >vous avez exkecedé
German:zu ex-kei-sid, ich ~e, ich ~ete, ich habe ~et, …
Italian: ex-cei-sid, ex-cei-sido, ex-cei-sidi, ex-cei-sida, …
June 14th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
[...] am for GNU, the GPL, Richard Stallman (and his XKCD katana) and the majority of the FSF’s work. I just hate the public image of the [...]
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:24 am
Is it just me, or does Richard Stallman look a hell of a lot like Gimli?
August 8th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
[...] Open Source (see also the blog entry) [...]
August 16th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
am I alone to seeing some sort of strange peace in that last pic of stallman with a katana? ( http://www.gnu.org/people/jag/rms-with-katana/100_0036.jpg for those of you who may not know what I’m talkin bout)… lol I await to see the day when you refer to Munroe as Randall instead of marilyn :P your comics and view on life are quite inspiring.
August 21st, 2007 at 7:02 am
Quoting Mark Finn: “Am I alone in the world in picturing a flying office chair bisected in the air?”
Well… not anymore I suppose.
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
There’s one xkcd strip I want to see more than any other
Episode 150
I effing love ball pits
August 24th, 2007 at 7:25 am
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September 5th, 2007 at 5:26 am
I never saw Richard Stallman in a picture… I am somehow dissapointed as I noticed he does not have six fingers in each hand. Katana looks great anyways and I am sure it would be deadly on such hands capable of issuing all those emacs commands.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Nonono, Stallman only has six fingers on his right hand. It seems someone was looking for him…
September 30th, 2007 at 12:15 am
I just need nunchucks… can anyone fedex them to me so i can send them to linus torvalds… or… send some candy buttons to, I don’t know, steven bourne and tell him to eat it like a turing machine.
Oh, and please tell me how to get nunchucks. Wonghs@rogers.com
October 2nd, 2007 at 10:57 pm
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October 10th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
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October 21st, 2007 at 5:50 pm
[...] Richard Stallman, atacado por ninjas en la universidad de Yale. No menciona si Richard llevaba su katana. [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 am
[...] you’ll probably get it immediately. Actually, some xkcd readers sent him a katana a while back… xkcd » Blog Archive » Life Imitates xkcd, Part II: Richard Stallman It’s all in reference to this comic: xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - [...]
October 29th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Well, the attack finally happened, but he didn’t have his katana with him!
http://www.yale.edu/ypu/blog.html
October 30th, 2007 at 10:14 am
kazem saher…
…
November 5th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Was it a real katana or just one for hanging?
November 15th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Note how the primitive GNU-man attempts to eat the katana, before determining that it is not food.
November 16th, 2007 at 7:14 am
[...] am besten auch die anderen xkcd-Cartoons gelesen haben und außerdem mindestens diese beiden Einträge aus dem dazugehörigen blog. Aber, wenn diese kleinen Randbedingungen erfüllt sind, ist [...]
February 13th, 2008 at 12:32 am
[...] UPDATE: It seems a couple of XKCD fans shipped a real katana to RMS: [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 11:37 am
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June 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
[...] ??? Java, ??? .NET. ?? ??????? ??? tux ??? ??? duke ????? ???????? ??? Richard Stallman ??? ??? xkcd, ??? ? ?????? ????? ??? ?? duke [...]
June 28th, 2008 at 1:06 am
[...] are issues over which much blood has been shed–especially now that Richard Stallman has a katana. Kelty wisely avoids that can of worms by instead identifying five components essential to Free [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
It looks photoshopped.
Yeah, the reflections are all wrong.
Definitely photoshopped.
July 30th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Look at the other photos. Its not photoshopped.