1577: Advent

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Advent

Title text: The few dozen doors that have little Christmas trees on them are a nice touch.

Explanation

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An Advent calendar is a means of celebrating the days before Christmas. Each day on the calendar contains a small gift. This comic satirizes the concept by proposing such a calendar that would have one gift for each day one is anticipated to live. Such a calendar would be very morbid and existential. This is especially disturbing when given as a gift because it implies someone has put extensive thought into when the recipient will die.

In Cueball's case, assuming each square in the calendar represents one day, and that the wall he is facing is the entire present he received, the sender of the gift assumes he will live around 46 more years. (Each smaller grid is 10×7, and the larger grid is 12×20 smaller grids).

Transcript

[Cueball is looking at a large wall subdivided into a rectangular grid, with each grid subdivided into 70 small drawers]

Caption: Unsettling gift: Life expectancy Advent calendar

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Discussion

Media:Example.ogg16800 squares counted, corresponding to a projected lifespan of 46 years. 108.162.225.124 04:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

This description says "64 small drawers" but each of the small drawer sets contains 70. 7 columns, 10 rows. (Then there are 20 columns of drawer sets, and 12 rows.) 199.27.133.115 04:54, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Same counting here, I changed the description. 199.27.133.160 05:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Use × not x. (Editing with this phone is really hard.) 173.245.55.171 05:13, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I corrected the number of drawers ((70×12×20)÷365.25≈50) then used that calculation to work out Cueball's approximate age. 141.101.98.185 06:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Note that (70×12×20)÷365.25≈46. 173.245.50.154 12:32, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Reminds me on the Life calendar from this Wait but why post Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:54, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

There is a (common) mistake in the life expectancy calculation in the description. If the life expectancy in the US is 75.9, then that doesn't mean you expected remaining life at 25 will be 50.9 years - otherwise that would imply no-one dies under 25. Since, sadly, many people do die before their 25th birthday, the life expectancy remaining at 25 will be somewhat larger than 50 years. As these tables show: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html 50 years remaining corresponds roughly to an age of 27-28. In other words your remaining life expectancy drops by less than one year per year, if no new information is presented (i.e. assuming you don't take up smoking etc.) 141.101.98.205 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There's a link in this explanation stating that the life expectancy refers back to comic 1070. I think this may be the wrong comic, not sure what the correct one should be :/ apbarratt 09:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC) This is about the title text that mentions "The few dozen doors". 1070 explains that "a few" for most people seems to be anything more than one but at most five.173.245.49.97 11:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

What struck me about the comic, and which didn't come out clearly yet in the explanation, is the idea of countdown. An advent calendar is a countdown to Christmas, one day at a time. This is a countdown to Cueball's death. 108.162.241.167 11:54, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

The cruellest surprise of all would be opening one of the boxes and seeing a Grim Reaper. All those other boxes? You don't get to open them! Margath (talk) 21:32, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

I was expecting that the alt text would say "Your life may be shorter if you eat all of the chocolate". 108.162.241.148 14:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about the USA, but in the UK, advent calendars may contain chocolate, but many just show a picture (related to either the Christian or the commercial aspects of Christmas). I'm going to change the description slightly to make that clear. Cosmogoblin (talk) 17:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I would normally get the chocolate ones from my parents. One year my grandmother gave me one with just pictures inside. I was not amused. 108.162.241.148 20:18, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Why on earth would it seem strange for 4 to be included in "a few"? It seems perfectly natural to me. 198.41.243.249 23:43, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe bacause: "One, two, three, many...". But I think the real reason is, that "a few dozen" = "4 dozen" seems fine, while "a few dozen" = "48" doesn't. So it's a conflict between "few" and "48" here. However, I agree in "4" being a totally acceptable value for "a few" Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:26, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Randall makes an advent calendar comic within days of LEGO releasing their 2015 advent calendar sets...Coincidence? I think Randall is a LEGO geek! 108.162.241.207 01:25, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

"S&W" Linkage

Lets See if I get this right. Could this have anything to do with the current story arc over at Sandra and Woo "S&W" about life expectancy? --Mark w --173.245.54.160 11:51, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

This comic reminds me of this dinosaur comic: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1833 --141.101.104.185 08:08, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Assuming they're all chocolates, the right move to make it sufficiently morbid is to have a chocolate-covered cyanide capsule behind the last door. 172.68.55.81 07:19, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

My question is, did Randall actually hand draw over ten thousand little squares individually? Due to perspective each is seemingly unique. And they don't look like cut/paste/resize...