778: Scheduling

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Scheduling

Title text: 'How about a little ... *family growth*?' 'Dude, that's not until round two.'

Explanation

This comic is a take on the common plots of pornographic movies. There are several "stereotypical" setups for porn videos - the suggestive pizza deliveryman ("hot sausage" being a suggestive pun), the French maid who finds out her master is home early and the wife is still away, and the plumber who, while performing routine repairs on a woman's house, becomes enamored with her (while quoting "woman in need of plumbing" as another suggestive pun). In all cases, it is usually a simple plot in order to set the stage for the sexual encounter that comprises the main focus of the pornography. In this comic, all three of these common stereotypical plots seem to have occurred at once. Realizing that none of their intended targets for sex (ostensibly, members of the Jones family) are at home, and thus they are all in the house alone with nothing to do, one of them grabs a game of Agricola off of the shelf, and they sit down to play, their confusion about this mixing of scenarios forgotten. Then the Joneses come home and are baffled by the assemblage of random professionals playing Agricola on their floor.

Agricola's objective is to build a stable family farm, contrasting with the apparently dysfunctional family in the comic. In Agricola, one can choose among certain actions with your (very limited) "workers" (Thus it's called a worker placement game). Those actions contain for instance "Take a grain" and "Be starting player (the next round)". Other examples are "Build a fence", "Take a cow", "Plowing" and other farm-related things.

The starting player has the advantage of choosing the first item/resource/action in the next round. Once an item/action/resource is occupied by a player it can't be chosen by another player in that round. The game is easy to learn and hard to master since it needs a lot of planning and anticipating the other player's next moves. As such "scheduling" is a very important part of the game.

In the game shown, it appears that Pizza-guy has used his first move to choose "Starting Player" (for the next round), followed by Maid choosing "Take grain". Pizza-guy had previously planned to take that grain with his second action, which has now been denied by Maid. Essentially Maid is telling Pizza-guy to stop complaining, he made his decision, and too bad that his plan isn't going to work as he'd hoped (and in any case being the starting player for the next round will enable him to get the grain then).

The title text references "family growth", which could be interpreted as a cheesy euphemism for sex (in the porn-movie-plot context) or as a game mechanic for gaining another worker (in the Agricola-game context). The "not until round two" response could be used for either interpretation.

Transcript

[A pizza delivery guy enters through a door and a maid is dusting.]

Pizza guy: Pizza delivery! Did someone order a hot sausag—

Maid: Mon dieu! Monsieur is home early—

Both: Wait, who are you?

Pizza guy: Wait, this is the Joneses', right? Their daughter was supposed to be having a party!

Maid: No, I thought Mr. Jones was coming home early.

[The pizza guy is off-panel left as a plumber enters from the right.]

Pizza guy: But I thought—

Plumber: Howdy, Mrs. Jones. I hear you need some plumbi— Who are you?

[The pizza guy looks in a cabinet; the others are off-panel right.]

Maid: Sorry, big mixup.

Pizza guy: Hey, check it out—the Joneses have Agricola!

Plumber: I love that game!

[Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones arrive home. The pizza guy, the maid, and the plumber are sitting on the floor playing Agricola.]

Mr. Jones: What in the name of...

Pizza guy: Dammit, I wanted that grain.

Maid: Hush, you have starting player.

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Discussion

What does "Hush, you have starting player" mean? Djbrasier (talk) 00:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Added an explanation, but left the incomplete-tag since I'm not a native speaker, and I'm not quite sure about the grammar, but I hope it's clear now, what the explanation of "Having starting player" is. Maybe someone could just re-read my text and correct it if needed. And than remove the tag. 141.101.64.65 09:00, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

It could also be that the three of them are strippers or something, there to work, but mixed up the house they're supposed to be at; after all, "Jones" is only slightly less common than "Smith" as a last name in America. 162.158.111.229