116: City
| City |
 Title text: God, she's such a whore. |
Explanation
The poem or description alternates between using words that start with C and words that start with S, to achieve an effect resembling alliteration. The gentle, romantic tone of the poem is broken by the last two words, Your Mom. This is an example of a maternal insult joke, and is phrased accordingly.
The title text further emphasizes this, implying that the mother in question is also promiscuous.
Transcript
- [A picture of various apartment buildings.]
- Shadowed city slumber silently. A second-story suite.
- Come craving courtship, selected serendipitously
- Crazed copulations, a salacious storm of continuous coitus.
- Spread, straddled, conquered.
- Countless crashed suitors strewn carelessly.
- Center, silken sheets sensuously caressing soft skin,
- Contentedly sleeps your mom.
Trivia
- This is the shortest comic explanation on explainxkcd, as of writing this. This still holds as of 04/05/2023 (dd,mm,yyyy), ignoring the 281 bytes this trivia section occupies.
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It's a long jump, but could it be a reference to Whore, a song by a Norwegian death metal band Mayhem? Similarities include the rhythm and the "alliteration" effect. I wouldn't call it, but with the extra hint in the title text it begins to appear probable. Kos 108.162.219.11 15:56, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think Randall knows Norwegian Heavy Metal bands. But maybe I'm wrong, wiki says "Mayhem is a Norwegian black metal band formed in 1984 in Oslo". So the question is: How popular was this band in the US over the last thirty years? --Dgbrt (talk) 21:58, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
- Popular enough to be easily recognisable by anyone interested in the genre; it even got a major feature in a documentary (Until the Light Takes Us). That said, I understand that black metal itself is too niche to just assume Randall would be into it. Kos 108.162.219.11 08:05, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
The drawing combined with the poem makes me think of Chicago by Carl Sandburg (even though that doesn't have a much alliteration. -Jason 108.162.238.47 03:56, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
- May not have much to do with Carl Sandburg, but the repeated initial letters are C and S. Coincidence? Probably.Boldiski (talk) 19:55, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I suspect it's a reference to (the English translation of) The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, wherein a computer is tasked to "compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!"
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide.
172.70.130.211 19:47, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
