731: Desert Island

|< < Prev Comic #731 (April 23, 2010) Next > >|

Desert Island

Title text: Telescopes and bathyscapes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes, Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse explained with abstract phase-space maps, some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleonic war: the most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here.

Explanation

This comic is making the point that there is a wonderful world waiting to be explored in the ocean. From above it seems so plain, endless, and boring. But underneath the surface lies the most unexplored area on the planet. This comic is a commentary on the need to head below the waves and start exploring.

Transcript

[Cueball sits writing in a diary on a desert island, only the sandy tip of which with a palm tree on it stands above the water. Beneath the surface is a kelp forest, some sharks, a stingray, a shipwreck, a submarine, several large jellyfish, a giant squid fighting a sperm whale, a crashed plane, some coral formations, a thermal vent emitting a plume of smoke surrounded by several annelids, and a snail.]

Cueball: Day 44: Still stranded, with nothing but flat empty water as far as the eye can see.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

There's a shark, a manta ray, giant jellyfish, and a giant squid in the water. It's totally safe. And what the heck are those worms at the ocean bed? Davidy²²[talk] 13:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Those worms are extremophiles feeding off of the nutrients emitted by the volcanic column... and from what I understand, they're completely harmless. Their entire ecology centers around the extreme heat and alternative chemical sources of energy provided by the center of the earth (vs sun-based photosynthetic life.) Oh, and I think Randall left off the "not to scale" attribute of the map, otherwise the ocean floor would only be a few hundred feet deep... -- IronyChef (talk) 15:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think they are, 'cause they don't look quite right, but I *really* want them to be bone-eating snot flower worms.L-Space Traveler (talk) 21:00, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

The title text seems to be alluding to a song. No idea what it could be. --Qwach (talk) 18:27, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

In my mind, I hear the alt-text as lyrics to the Can-Can song, "Infernal Gallop". See if you agree! 173.245.54.12 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'm pretty sure it's meant to go with the Major-General's song from the Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan. The meter and rhyme works out, and Randall based comic 1052 (Every Major's Terrible) on it, showing that he knows and likes the song. 141.101.88.208 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Also the title text is a poem since no one mentions it:
Telescopes and bathyscapes
and sonar probes of Scottish lakes,
Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse
explained with abstract phase-space maps,
some x-ray slides, a music score,
Minard's Napoleonic war:
the most exciting new frontier
is charting what's already here.
--7buergen (talk) 09:32, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I think the point of the commentary is "there's more than meets the eye". 141.101.81.216 13:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

It's to the tune of "We Didn't Start the Fire"... 108.162.221.116 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I agree. It lines up perfectly, arguably better than Major General. 108.162.221.57 05:34, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

If "We Didn't Start the Fire" had been the original intended tune, then the "some" and "a" in line 5 should not be there; they are superfluous and do not fit the rhythm of "We Didn't Start the Fire". The most plausible conclusion is that those words were added or retained to make the text fit the meter of a different song. To my ear, "Infernal Gallop", as noted above, seems quite plausible, although it doesn't exactly account for "some". Being (to my shame) unfamiliar with Gilbert and Sullivan, I can't comment on the Modern Major-General theory. --5parrowhawk (talk) 10:18, 8 March 2016 (UTC) Feels like it has something to do with those I Spy books idk 108.162.221.116 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The white/blue colored things on the left could be scrap metal from the game subnautica162.158.134.184 06:19, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

...which was released mere 8 years after this comic... --Lupo (talk) 07:09, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

That looks like a crashed plane to me. James J. James -- James J. James (talk) 02:20, 6 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The title text can be sung to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire". I found this out because someone pointed it out here {{unsigned ip|172.69.63.247|00:01, 15 May 2020})

When I read the title text I immediately heard the Gilbert & Sullivan music from Pirates of Penzance in my head. I'm voting for that rather than Billy Joel. -- The Cat Lady (talk) 14:38, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

The poem is in iambic tetrameter, a quite-common meter in English poetry and music. Examples include Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud", Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", Byron's "She Walks in Beauty", and Tolkien's "Song of Eärendil". "We Didn't Start the Fire" doesn't fit (its feet are trochees, not iambs - long-short vs. short-long - and every fourth line leaves the last trochee blank); "Infernal Gallop" and "Modern Major-General" come very close to fitting, but there are subtle differences in each (for example, "Modern Major-General"'s first line starts with a full iamb (coincidentally, "I am") while Randall's skips the initial short beat of the first iamb). Of these, I think "Major-General" is the most likely match; Randall's poem has the same meter and flow, and matches G&S's rhyme scheme (where "Infernal Gallop" doesn't have lyrics to rhyme!). Noëlle (talk) 19:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm adding my vote for "Major-General". L-Space Traveler (talk) 21:00, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

o, no, it is definitely "We Didn't Start the Fire". Songs often slur less important words and the last verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" fits perfectly. 172.70.131.122 (talk) 13:34, 27 February 2022 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Okay, but what about the other parts of the title text? The x-ray slides, the music score? I want to know why they're part of the new frontier Alcatraz ii (talk) 07:03, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I refuse that this is anything other than "We Didn't Start the Fire". The whole flow and motif of the song fits perfectly, no other suggestions fit the rapid fire structure of this poem. James J. James -- James J. James (talk) 02:19, 6 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That is one small submarine. Even Cueball sitting down is nearly the same height as it. 162.158.175.202 08:00, 27 July 2024 (UTC)