Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont

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.

205 Responses to “Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont”

  1. fu says:

    Ralph, you’re an idiot. Why in god’s name did you break rules 1 & 2? /b/ might be shit today, but its faggots like you that caused the shit in the first place by constantly breaking the rules.

  2. Rob says:

    Is there a good reason that my comment from eight days ago is still awaiting moderation? I just wanted to know why Firefox 3 tooltips have a timeout.

  3. Dom says:

    I won’t mail you $20.00, but maybe I’ll give you $20.00 worth of gold, that way it’ll still be worth something when Ron Paul and I are the only survivors of the financial apocalypse.

  4. gham says:

    Am I hallucinating, or did today’s comic (10/28) originally say ‘nascent memes’ and has since become ‘nacient memes’? Is this in itself some nascent/nacient meme wherein the proper spelling becomes nacient for reasons I haven’t researched yet?

  5. Fuck. I’m always 12 days late for kite flying.

  6. eitje says:

    While I understand what you were going for, drawing the American flag backwards isn’t a good thing, and should not be associated with Tron Paul. :P

  7. Psshhh says:

    look at all you snarky folks, correcting each other and pretending that you have a life.

    such nerds.

    … and yet i find it strangely arousing…

  8. Vegeta897 says:

    eitje Says:
    While I understand what you were going for, drawing the American flag backwards isn’t a good thing, and should not be associated with Tron Paul. :P

    What do you mean “isn’t a good thing”? Do you understand what a backwards flag represents? It fits perfectly in the context.

  9. Ghede says:

    You should just stop drawing regular comics and devote yourself to political fan-fiction all day every day. It’s both entertaining and slightly surreal.

  10. Flagbearer says:

    The flag is forwards in the sense that the vehicle represents the flagpole.

    I was more interested in the orientation of the stars, the number of stripes, and the rare use of colour in xkcd.

  11. Fletcher says:

    Man, I wish politics really worked like that.

  12. Clarisse McClellan says:

    Marry me.

    Please.

  13. eitje says:

    Vegeta:
    http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html
    “Military guidelines specify that in support of joint or multi-national operations (as in Iraq), the “right” flag is worn on the right sleeve (see picture), 1/4″ below the shoulder seam or 1/8″ below any required unit patches. (Class A uniform excepted.)”

    http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title4/chapter1_.html
    Section 8. Respect for flag
    Subsections G, I, and J.

  14. Kevin says:

    Hey, came across this, and thought you’d like (or hate) it:

    http://www.asylum.com/2008/10/29/eight-ways-to-make-a-raptor-even-more-deadly/

  15. david says:

    vt? that’s almost canada. hey, wait, you do know that c.d. is a canadian, right?

  16. bkh says:

    nice Legolas move by the man in the hat :D

  17. Paul says:

    i’m telling you! RANDALL MUNROE MUST BE STOPPED.
    he is getting too powerful! do you even believe for one second that he doesn’t perfectly realise the power he is wielding?! he is going to impose tyrannical rule upon the internet! Citizens of the internet. NOW is the great war of our time! he must be stopped at all costs! The next time he makes some inane suggestion like attacking Wikipedia’s articles or nominating a secretary of the internet, please see through his blasphemous falsehoods!!!

  18. Erik says:

    I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but Wikipedia and Berkley Breathed’s sites are not loading.
    Could “Secretary” be coming true?

  19. Seddy says:

    You, like, really need to name Mr. Hat. Make it something cool. :)

  20. Mark says:

    He has a name.
    At least, in my group of people-I-know-who-read-XKCD-and-live-around-here
    We just call him the Classhole, since http://xkcd.com/72/

  21. Sol says:

    loved the 1999 comic… but you forgot to illustrate all of your “magic: the gathering” cards falling out of your collector binder.

  22. art begotti says:

    Well, if the html address is anything to go by… Happy 500th, XKCD!

  23. DEEP SPACE says:

    HAPPY #500, XKCD!!

  24. BoxMonster says:

    Well, there was no comic #404, so we’re not technically at 500 yet, ladies and gents. ;)

  25. That Google sobriety test looks interesting, I’ll have to try it next time I drink any type of alcohol.

  26. Christian says:

    So yesterday I get sent a xkcd comic (friend was helping me resolve my depression over a late literary criticism paper (see impostor)), and end up reading all of them in 1 night. Today I find out your in Burlington… coincidence? Anyway, for good kite flying you have some options. If you want a nice quite open area, there is a big park off of Dorset street about 1.6 miles from Williston road (google earth has the details). I think that place has enough room to fly a kite, another smaller park is next to Locus street called Callahan Park. I must say Vermont has too big of an obsession with trees, so kite flying is possible but not optimal unless you search hard.

  27. Christian says:

    oh forgot to check the date never mind…but next time

  28. Kholby says:

    Don’t drink and derive…alcohol and calculus don’t mix. (Granted, you’re looking for integrals and not derivatives, but it gets the point across)

  29. Nathanael Nerode says:

    Funny thing about the “Scantron” comic (#499) is that a #1 pencil would have worked just fine.

  30. Rock Hard says:

    GOD my cock is so hard right now. Would everyone like to see it?

    I am getting it out now so you can all have a look!

    WOOOOOOAAAAAAAAHHH

    Sorry, my 16yo gf walked in, she went to change into something more comfortable.

    So, whaddya think everyone .. jealous? Also, I am on a boat, relatively speaking.

    So I herd you liek mudkips?

    “Mudkips? I LUUUUUUUUUUUUVE MUDKIPS.”

  31. Leslie says:

    Funny thing about the “Scantron” comic (#499) is that a #1 pencil would have worked just fine.

    Thanks for explaining the joke.

    First I thought you were being serious about the sobriety test but then I clicked on the link to the picture of it…haha, fool me once shame on you, fool me 89? times, shame on me.

    are you even allowed to have a non-integer number on the top of a summation sign??

  32. Gah. I wish I’d read this when it was new. I live an hour from Burlington.

  33. Ghede says:

    Is it just me, or has the websites formatting exploded? I’m getting everything left-aligned, without those fancy sorting box thingies. Or a background. It’s kind of like an early 90’s website, except somebody tilted the server so all the data fell to one side.

  34. Ghede says:

    Also, Recently I accidentally filled out a scantron form with a #2.5 pencil.

    It didn’t explode, but it did burn constantly.

  35. Ghede says:

    Well, either you work really fast really early or the problem fixed itself.

    I vote miracle. THANK YOU LAWD FOR THIS BOUNTY.

  36. video says:

    I was playing around with the audio feature.

    And instead of saying “I am” it says “I A-M”.

    It made me giggle.

  37. Lana says:

    If it’s already been mentioned, I apologize, but I wasn’t about to read 134 comments to check.

    As far as political drinking games are concerned, every time Palin says, “Maverick” often gets you pretty drunk pretty fast.

  38. derik says:

    All matter is lonely, and the observed force called gravity is Love in action.

    (And this is why scientists will never spot a graviton.)

  39. fqqdk says:

    the person who managed to plant the fear from velociraptors into the collective subconscious of our generation, has passed away. :(

  40. derik says:

    …Scott McNeil is dead?

    Oh my god. I– I didn’t know. Wow.
    The rest is silence.

  41. beanjavert says:

    Actually, Michael Crichton.

    Pretty crappy, nonetheless.

  42. Jewlz says:

    Does anybody know if Randall Munroe is single?

  43. Jewlz says:

    …Because, you know, I’d TOTALLY go down on that smart/sexy science stud SO HARD he’d turn stupid.

  44. Guy (trapped in Italy) says:

    Well the “East-West” map is only confusing if you make the mistake of thinking America is the centre of the world (it isn’t), but the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in it’s appropriate place in the centre and it all fits perfectly!

  45. Nebet says:

    >…Because, you know, I’d TOTALLY go down on that smart/sexy science stud SO HARD he’d turn stupid.

    That would be a shame if it worked. Why would you want to deprive the rest of us?

    Re: “Terminology”

    Wheeeee, Eurocentrism!

  46. Nebet says:

    >I understand what you were going for, drawing the American flag backwards isn’t a good thing, and should not be associated with Tron Paul. :P

    http://www.flagandbanner.com/fab/flag.asp?cpage=etiquette1#4

  47. opauti says:

    jewlz, ye-ah!

  48. jeremiah says:

    just to point out, on the east west thing, new zealand is more like a broken italy

  49. Darwin says:

    No Secretary of the Internet yet, but the internet now has staff on Obama’s transition team!

    http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/obama_transition_team_staffs_u.php

  50. Poore says:

    @jeremiah

    Also, Egypt looks like a fat Georgia (the state, not the country)

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