0325: "A-Minus-Minus"

[deja]

You guys keep saying that the bobcat would die. Well, true, if you send it in the mail. But why don't you just deliver it yourself? It would be way worth it.

[miraidesuka]

Except the EMP Cannon.

Imitate that.

...and maybe the black hat tech support.

(ETA Belial's quote)

[Princess Marzipan]

Because Futurama is a hard package of win with a creamy nougat filling.

Eh!?

[Vitamin_A]

I honestly have to say, although many of the other comics made me laugh, none can match the laughter I had bellowed upon completion of this comic. Then the alt-text, ah, such hilarity.

Kudos to Randall.

[Piarew]

And then there's this, which may be the best ebay feedback ever. A teaser quote: "I am a walrus. I type using my flippers. Hee."

Wow. I am very pleased with his feedbacks. My favorite is "Rainbows are pretty. I don't know why I shoot at them."

[nyeguy]

The ebay comment is hilarious, nwo I am waiting for a news story about this.

[Kiirani]

You guys keep saying that the bobcat would die. Well, true, if you send it in the mail. But why don't you just deliver it yourself? It would be way worth it.

This is a very good point. It couldn't be hard to drop it off at the person's address LOOKING like it had been mailed.

[Steve the Pocket]

I think a bobcat would be a little bigger than the one depicted...

Oh, you know how people are... they get mauled by a vicious feline of any sort (well, aside from the big cats) and "bobcat" is the first thing that comes into their mind, even if they don't know what a bobcat actually is.

Any cat would turn crazy if it's trapped in a cardboard box for days, especially if there's no food in it. I would probably go crazy if I were trapped in a cardboard box for days with no food.

[wileycount]

Also, I love the look in the last panel, hes come to the realization the best he can do is give negative feedback.

I second. It is all in the tilted head of resignation - this is perhaps the most expressive stick figure...ever. I almost cried imagining the Xiao Xiao moment when he opens the box and the ocelot flies out in a furry rage. Yes. I decided it was actually an ocelot. That was being titillated. How? Who can tell? Prize will be one art, please.

Futurama is indeed the Baby Ruth of animated comedies.

D

[Arancaytar]

I can only assume, due to the way this joke has changed in the transition to a comic, that a box full of jumping spiders was too hard to draw....

Don't even joke about that.

I think I will never be able to use ebay again...

[Drakuun]

What's your ebay name, can you please advise shipping costs to Belgium for item 'office chair package'?

[1337geek]

Because Futurama is a hard package of win with a creamy nougat filling.

The Futurama episode with the line "You see, beneath the fossil's crunchy, mineral shell, there's still a creamy core of dog nougat!" was just on again last night.

[1337geek]

Or you could auction off a bobcat on ebay and send them an office chair.

Scroll up a little, you'll see I had posted that same comment earlier, with a link to a possible one. Looks like bidding ended, but there are lots more bobcats on eBay (including the animal kind).

[spacermase]

My God, this is the best by far the best use of bobcats in a comic strip I've seen, ever.

However, I do feel sort of sorry for the bobcat, but then again, one of our cats is part bobcat, so maybe that's why (for the record, they're actually surprisingly skittish animals).

With that said, this strip is also an excellent example of Pratchett's Revision of Schrodinger's cat: Namely, upon opening a box that has a cat in it, the cat's wavefuction may collapse into not two, but three possible states: Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious

[gerbalblaste]

ahaha
no, no, it's only funny
if it spawns a kind of dadaist ebay movement
buy socks, get cookies.
buy a screwdriver, get 1950s scifi pulp novels
buy a popcorn popper, get three pounds of dirt impregnated with the seeds of purple coneflowers
everyone would tag their seller posts with "guaranteed to make the world a wierder place"
thus turning ebay into a surrealist grabbag

[Mike Graham]

I LOOOVE THIS COMIC! This one is my favorite by far. Reminds me of these peoples' feedback...

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=spessa&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthers

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthers&userid=phoneloser-rbcp&iid=-1&de=off&items=200&page=6

And this gent:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... tForOthers

[genewitch]

I hope no one does this. At best the bobcat dies, and it's animal cruelty; at worst an unwitting postal worker or recipient dies, and it's murder.
Well, actually, at best the sender dies, and the world is better off with 1 fewer assholes, but whatever.
HAT GUY IS NOT A ROLE MODEL, EVERYONE. DON'T IMITATE ANYTHING HE DOES.

thanks for the tip, dad. i guess i have to cancel my order from boxcat.

[chishm]

Because Futurama is a hard package of win with a creamy nougat filling.

The Futurama episode with the line "You see, beneath the fossil's crunchy, mineral shell, there's still a creamy core of dog nougat!" was just on again last night.

I hate the ending of that episode. It makes me cry. I realise that this has been discussed in the CAPTCHA comic thread, but it's just not fair that a cartoon can cause such emotions.

[Gelsamel]

I thought that he was trying to create a zombie cat...

[ascendingPig]

Because Futurama is a hard package of win with a creamy nougat filling.

The Futurama episode with the line "You see, beneath the fossil's crunchy, mineral shell, there's still a creamy core of dog nougat!" was just on again last night.

I hate the ending of that episode. It makes me cry. I realise that this has been discussed in the CAPTCHA comic thread, but it's just not fair that a cartoon can cause such emotions.

Yeah, I've cried at two Futurama episodes. That and the one with Fry's nephew.

Your brother loved you all along, Fry! Can't you see?

[shill]

I love Top-Hat Guy (or Half-Rest Guy, as I like to call him). He's like XKCD's Tyler Durden.

[Geekthras]

Tyler Durden is Fight Club's Hat Guy.

[evilninjax]

At first, i thot this was going to be a Schroedinger's Cat jok.

-goro-

[Moo]

At first, i thot this was going to be a Schroedinger's Cat jok.

I like to think RM did that on purpose, knowing we would.

[gringer]

Did anyone notice that Randall has managed to draw an incredibly detailed cat there?

• Four legs
• Hind legs showing large muscle/tendons (although the right rear one looks a bit broken)
• Whiskers below the nose and above the eyes between the ears (I've observed these on some cats previously)
• A bushy tail
• Pointed ears
• Right front paw demonstrating struggle (near face)

It makes me tempted to change my avatar slightly...

[lihan161051]

It's very well possible that he put in a completely normal housecat, and the act of shipping the cat turned it into a bobcat. It is also possible that this is one of those Schrodinger's Box scenarios. He could have put in a ferret and it would have metamorphosed into a bobcat. That's called Quantum Mechanics!

Um, actually that has nothing to do with the Schrodinger cat experiment. Since the cat was observed before being put into the box, there is certainty that the cat is a cat. Add a completely sound-proof, sense-proof box with a random beta decay and a contraption to kill the cat, then you've got some uncertainty of life or death.

As soon as I saw the cat and the box I thought for sure it was going to reference Schrodinger, but no luck. Oh well, it's overdone anyway.

Well, but the box *does* contain an unknown for the buyer. He was, after all, expecting an office chair ..

(btw, a friend of mine referred to this as a "non-benign surreality")

[libellule]

Did anyone notice that Randall has managed to draw an incredibly detailed cat there?...

The perfection of the cat and the sad little kitchen chair used by the recipient really make this one. It's been 5 days now and I still want to marry Randall and have his babies. Also, I can't look at my kitten anymore without sniggering.

[DeSade]

Awesome, I only found this site less than a week ago and it's I've found it in two different places that I happen to frequent often...here's the one that I found today on Anandtech using the Mac OS "Leopard" to reference one "Bobcat"

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=9312

Hehe, you guys are awesome.

[infamousfreaky]

Because Futurama is a hard package of win with a creamy nougat filling.

I really want a three musketeers bar after seeing this quoted so many times.



And I woke my sister up around six in the morning to show her this comic. She laughed, a lot, and then couldn't fall back asleep. I admit I felt kind of bad, but it was worth it.

[Corvus]

"Instead of original letter signed by 41 Senators, Rush Limbaugh sent a bobcat."

"Would not buy from again."

[tonyb]

The next time one of those nigerian scammers trys to buy my stuff (this happened to me twice) I should send him a bobcat.

The only question is... where to get a bobcat...

*begins ordering random office chairs*

[Ayelis]

Why a whole bobcat? Skip straight to the chicken livers and cow tongues.

[fuzzball45]

Why a whole bobcat? Skip straight to the chicken livers and cow tongues.

Because chicken livers and cow tongues don't bite and scratch after being shipped for 3 weeks.

[chishm]

Why a whole bobcat? Skip straight to the chicken livers and cow tongues.

Because chicken livers and cow tongues don't bite and scratch after being shipped for 3 weeks.

Neither would a bobcat.

[zingmaster]

Why a whole bobcat? Skip straight to the chicken livers and cow tongues.

Because chicken livers and cow tongues don't bite and scratch after being shipped for 3 weeks.

Neither would a bobcat.

Yeah, but who's keeping track?

[muteKi]

Why a whole bobcat? Skip straight to the chicken livers and cow tongues.

Because chicken livers and cow tongues don't bite and scratch after being shipped for 3 weeks.

Neither would a bobcat.

A Bobcat however, might make lots of loud, high-pitched, and unintelligible noises.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... thwait.jpg

[SteveMB]

Apropos pic on today's icanhascheezburger.com selections....

[tmad4000]

I thought bobcats lacked a significant tail... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobcat>

[Lunch Meat]

I thought of this comic today...I keep doing this thing where I really, really want to make an xkcd joke in front of my parents or something...today I was out to dinner with my parents and grandma, and we needed a couple of takeout boxes. Well, they came to ask if we needed them, and then took our plates away. My dad said they want to do it themselves in the kitchen because it's less messy, and I wanted to add "Or so they can replace our food with bobcats and we won't notice till we try to eat the leftovers for lunch tomorrow."

Restaurant review: "Very bad service. They replaced the second half of my steak with a baby kitten. Not nearly as tender."

(That was so horrible. Please pretend I never said that.)

[GodShapedBullet]

How does the telling xkcd jokes to your parents thing work? Do they read xkcd or are you trying to pull a fast one over on them?