1690: Time-Tracking Software

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Time-Tracking Software

Title text: 'List of helicopter prison escapes' and 'List of sexually active popes' are both entertainingly long, but sadly there's no 'List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes.'

Explanation

In this comic, Randall uses time-tracking software, which is intended to increase productivity by identifying how you are spending time, that reveals that he is doing frivolous and pointless things that take up large amounts of his time. He makes remixes, edits Star Wars footage, reads strange (albeit entertaining) Wikipedia articles (see 214: The Problem with Wikipedia), and even spends a large amount of time adjusting this software, all without getting anything useful done. Thus, he is embarrassed at this revelation. This time waste is a common subject on xkcd, as shown for instance in the comic mentioned above.

The visual appearance of lightsabers in the Star Wars movies of the original trilogy has been digitally changed twice during the re-releases for the 2004 DVD and 2011 Blu-ray releases. There are several Star Wars fans that feel the need to alter the movies (mainly to revert the changes made in the re-release), but so far nobody felt the need to replace lightsabers with metal swords.

"Jack & Diane" is a rock song written in 1982 by John Mellencamp. "Suckin' on a chili dog outside the tastee freeze" is the first line of the second verse of the song (see the lyrics here). A remix made using just this line would probably sound a bit repetitive (listen for instance to this re-mix of "Don't You Want Me", that almost only uses the first line of the song).

Two Wikipedia lists are mentioned in the comic and title text; List of helicopter prison escapes and List of sexually active popes. Given that the Pope is supposed to be celibate (at least after 1139), the mere fact that more than ten popes have been involved in sexual activity, even after 1139, is both amusing and intriguing. There are more than forty entries in the helicopter escape list for real-life attempts (plus 16 in fiction); not all of them succeeded, but several did!

On June 7th, the Wikipedia Facebook page posted a link to the List of helicopter prison escapes article. A user commented asking if the article was posted on Facebook due to the xkcd comic, and Wikipedia replied by pasting an image of the xkcd comic, which seems to indicate that the Wikipedia representative running the Facebook page was aware of this xkcd comic and posted the list in reference to the comic.

In the title text, Randall mentions his disappointment with the lack of a Wikipedia list stemming from the intersection of the two; that is, a helicopter prison escape involving a sexually active pope. With the last (known) sexually active pope being Pope Leo XII in the 1820s, and helicopter predecessors only taking flight in 1907, and mass production of helicopters not occurring until the 1950s, such an event has probably never happened.^{[citation needed]}

This xkcd comic was published on June 6th. On that day, the Wikipedia article "List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes" was created and subsequently deleted.

The Wikipedia list of sexually active popes has been mentioned before in the what if? article Into the Blue on infinitely powerful lasers, and after noting that such a thing cannot exist, the list is offered as a replacement for entertainment.

Transcript

[This comic shows a pie chart with 5 slices, each with a label and a line pointing to these five different sized slices. There is a caption above the chart:]

Your activity report

[The labels on each slice is given in clockwise order starting top left. The percentages are estimated from the image and are noted in the square brackets before the transcript:]

[38%]: Going through the Star Wars movies and digitally replacing all the lightsabers with regular metal swords

[16%]: Reading every entry in the Wikipedia article List of helicopter prison escapes

[23%]: Installing and configuring time-tracking software

[02%]: Actual productive work

[21%]: Making a remix of that Jack and Diane song where every line is just "Suckin' on a chili dog outside the tastee-freez" over and over

[Below the frame there is a caption:]

Time-tracking software shines an uncomfortably harsh light on my daily life.

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Discussion

I don't know how to interpret the "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." on the List of sexually active popes wiki page. 141.101.104.224 10:19, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

They're asking you to become a pope, and be sexually active. Then you can get arrested, and do a helicopter prison escape to start the 'List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes.' 162.158.26.140 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It's because we can't know for sure if every single pope is secretly sexually active or if it's just limited to the ones caught red-handed. 141.101.98.5 11:35, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Another interpretation: seduce the pope. --162.158.85.99 15:39, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

It can also be interpreted as to CONVICT pope of sexual activity. While the "became pope" and "seduce the pope" are funnier, convicting popes may be easier, as you are not limited to current and future ones, but can convict already dead popes after-the-fact by finding new evidence. Or forging some. -- Hkmaly (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Those estimated percentages have a strangely high degree of precision, I'd think limiting them to whole number percentages would do. 141.101.98.58 11:48, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Replacing lightsabers in Star Wars movies may be a reference to this amusing video of the sword fight in The Princess Bride where swords are replaced with light sabers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYVQooRSlzg 173.245.52.69 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The Jack and Diane remix with one line repeated may be a reference to svantana's brilliant re-do of a Human League number: http://svantana.bandcamp.com/track/you-were-workin-as-a-waitress-in-a-cocktail-bar 108.162.245.109 13:31, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

This is the greatest thing in the history of all remixes. 173.245.54.49 03:01, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

That was the stupidest thing that I have ever exposed my ears to, and I loved every second of it.108.162.216.102 20:14, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Look what some loser tried to actually make, to no one's surprise..... Schiffy (Speak to me|What I've done) 17:07, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Anyone took a copy before the page was deleted? 108.162.229.49 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I just took a look on the Wayback Machine, and unfortunately the first and only archive is after the deletion. If anyone knows of any other archive websites....-108.162.215.69 05:30, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

From Google cache - List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes--Attempt15 (talk) 18:22, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Notice that the last successful helicopter prison escape was exactly two years ago.. 162.158.86.35 06:49, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

One thing that this comic brings to the table is that the managing effort to increase productivity usually has a significant (and many times negative) impact on productivity itself. In this graphic, the installation took him nearly 25% of his time. He'd be significantly more productive if he wasn't using any time tracking software at all. 141.101.98.115 14:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC) duartix

I agree that losing productivity on time tracking software is more likely than actually getting some productivity advantage from it. If the things you are doing needs to be done, finding out how long they took won't help. If they are useless, you don't need to find out how much time they take to prove that. -- Hkmaly (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Why has no one yet done a Jack and Diane remix as proposed here? Update 2021, someone has: https://twitter.com/tommcgovern27/status/1360368299121532930

Looks like that video has been removed, but here's the same one on YouTube: https://youtu.be/6QX57aIDbDU Should this be mentioned in the article?

this one on SoundCloud also exists and is about five years older than the YouTube one: https://soundcloud.com/user-253934700/jack-and-chili-dog-ane

On April 27, 2024 pope Francis visited Venice. And he actually arrived and departed by helicopter in the yard of a women's prison. He probably did not have sex with any of the prisoners, and did not help any of them to escape, but the event reminded me of the "List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes" immediately, so I just wanted to share it here. --172.68.253.143 17:07, 30 April 2024 (UTC)