235: Kite

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 18:13, 9 January 2014 by Kynde (talk | contribs) (Explanation)
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Kite
It's easy to regret your awkward conversations but hard to regret the ones you didn't have.
Title text: It's easy to regret your awkward conversations but hard to regret the ones you didn't have.

Explanation

Cueball is probably dreaming. He is starting to fly a kite, then fixes it to a tree, after which he is climbing on that string. When he reaches a high altitude, Megan appears hanging on a blimp, looking at him throughout the encounter. Cueball is wondering about her and considers talking to her, which he however chooses not to do. After she has gone Cueball is alone again.

The title text explains that you can lament on an awkward conversation you had, but that you cannot regret a conversation that you never had - because you did not have the nerve to start it.

It could, however, be worse that you did not begin a possible conversation - so this missed opportunity could be regretted even more than you would have regretted having an awkward conversation...

Transcript

[Cueball readies a kite.]
[Cueball starts to fly the kite.]
[Cueball continues to fly the kite.]
[Cueball ties the kite string to a tree.]
[Cueball grabs the string.]
[Cueball starts to climb the string.]
[A scene showing Cueball holding onto the string at a high altitude, against a colour backdrop of the ground, clouds, water and the sky.]
[Black and white again. Megan comes into view holding onto a small blimp.]
Cueball's thought bubble: Hey, there's someone else up here. I wonder what her story is.
[Megan floats to the other side of the panel.]
Cueball's thought bubble: Maybe I should say hi.
[Cueball is alone holding onto the string.]


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Discussion

I believe you are backwards on your interpretation of the title text. If it is hard to regret; you do not regret. Therefore you can regret awkward communication, but can't regret communications that never occurred. In this, Randall seems to be at odds with the tone of other pages, such as the choices arc.138.163.106.71 01:50, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree on this and I have changed the explanation - I do however, believe that it is not the point that Randall tries to make - and have thus added that you can regret the missed conversation even more than a possible awkward one... Kynde (talk) 18:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Pi day

How has everyone missed this.

Not one notices that the day relates to Transcendentalism, and that relates to Life in the Woods, which relates to Thoreau, who put it quintesentially:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

WurmWoode (talk) 06:58, 16 August 2021 (UTC)