It's mildly amusing to me that this was the first week I deliberately delayed my post on, since xkcd-sucks gave me a very much appreciated plug today, calling me "timely".
Anyway, regarding the first two comics... I like them. I think they're decent. Monday's comic actually made me smile warmly at "...and search". It's just completely absurd, but intentionally so. It's even paced nicely, going through the list in the reverse order of popularity/usefulness. As a bonus, I have no idea what the hell the 8.8.8.8 DNS server is, so it's an example of obscurity being used well for comic effect, like the stock lines "'Remember what happened to [X]?' 'Who?' 'Exactly.'"
Wednesday's was a slight step down, but not enough to make me dispair at the depths being plunged. I admit that this is probably just me, but I do tend to attempt to be philosophical in wide fields and other places that seem to have that sort of atmosphere. It's something I could see myself doing, bringing up that fact and making a joke when the person I was with failed to return my musings. The joke is pretty much just "No one goes on Livejournal anymore" but the art, setup, and yes, the post-punchline dialog (people don't go to websites for peace and quiet, you silly) add to it enough that I couldn't criticise it with any honest vitriol.
I was honestly looking forward to Friday's comic. I thought it could be the next Golden Week, after 734-736. Admittedly, it's not quite that level, but if XKCD stayed around the average level of Monday and Wednesday, this blog wouldn't exist, so my point stands. Sadly, to the yin must come the yang, to the day must come the night, and to the finding out Mike Oldfield is releasing a new album must come the finding out that Renard Queenston is a rapist. Likewise, to XKCD#1361 must come XKCD#1363.
I've probably been hyping it up too much. It's not terrible, like the legendarily bad 631 or my personal most-hated 1357. It's really more uninteresting than anything, which is a shame, because there's a decent joke that could be made off of the same basic idea.
There would be three panels in a row. One would have the phone saying "Hi!" excitedly, with someone asking "...and it does that every time it's exposed to the light?" and the phone's owner responding with a despondent "Yeah....". The second would have the phone screaming after being jiggled around in a pocket or dropped two feet. The third would have it asking its owner to watch a romantic movie "...you never spend time with me..." etc. The caption would be "When Siri goes too far.", or something to that effect. Not gut-bustingly hilarious, but it's something that I'd definitely give a pass on criticising. As it is, we've basically got a picture of a phone with "Wouldn't it be funny if a phone was complete shit?" written around it a few times.
Adding insult to injury (or possibly injury to insult, depending on your priorities) the alt-text cuts out mid-word for me, ending on the "e" in "nausea", sans ellipses, dash, or any other indication that it was intentional. This might be just because I use Internet Explorer as my browser of choice, but even so, Randy managed to make the alt-text so long that it cut out. At that level, that's enough material to make another panel, if not another comic.
Anyway, welcome to all the xkcd-sucks-ers that have come to my humble blog. Feel free to comment with what I did right, what I did wrong, why any or all of these comics were good or bad, what I should have for dinner tonight, or your favorite leader of Soviet Russia (mine's Gorbachev). Only those things though, anything else would just be craaaazy.
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