1540: Hemingway
| Hemingway |
| Instead of bobcat, package contained chair. Title text: Instead of bobcat, package contained chair. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Finished with Edit Conflict assimilation, but prior author(s) invited to rejig If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
This comic is a reference to the six-word short story For sale: baby shoes, never worn, which has been attributed to famous author Ernest Hemingway, however, Randall Munroe explicitly states that this might not be the case at all. The comic plays on the fact that the original story takes the form of a short advertisement that might have been seen in a newspaper, and for these examples uses various modern 'standards' that did not exist in Hemingway's time.
Each example remains six 'words' long!
(Title-text obeys this meme, also.)
Most exhibit common 'click bait' wording, such as "This Wierd Trick...", whilst others make use of annotating tokens from a online site. One line references Roguelike conventions for item descriptions, obviously also unfamiliar to Hemmingway's generation and there's also a direct example of HTML formatting tags from the early 1990s; the <BLINK> tag was infamously introduced to the early Netscape browsers.
In the case of the HTML, the normally invisble-and-rendered tag elements can be seen and are part of the six words count. This could have been due to 'sanitising' of uploaded text where HTML tags (other than any that are specifically allowed, like it appears Strikethrough formatting might be) are deliberately deactivated by the server, or because the incorrectly closed final tag breaks any intended rendering support.
The title text (and the penultimate line in the comic itself) makes a reference to the third pane of 325: A-Minus-Minus in which Cueball says: 'Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat'
Transcript
[Caption above comic:]
Hemingway's Rough Drafts
[A list of rough draft titles]
For sale: This Gullible Baby's Shoes
Baby Shoes For Sale By Owner
Actually, There's no evidence Hemingway wrote
Free Shoes, Provided You Overpower Baby
For Sale: Weird Baby's Toe Shoes
For Sale: Baby Shoes [an "Amazon Prime eligible" logo]
Though popularly attributed to Hemingway, the
This Weird Trick Covers Baby Feet!
For Sale: Baby Shoes, Just Hatched
Sale: Seven-League Boots (Expedited Shipping)
Complete this survey for free shoes!
Shoes, by Ernest Hemingway (citation needed)
This is my greatest short story.
For sale: Baby shoes (-1) [cursed]
<blink><marquee>Baby Shoes!</marquee><blink>
For Sale: Baby-sized Saddle, Bobcat
Hemingway Busted for Craigslist Shoe Scam
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refresh comments!Discussion
Did Randall miss the slash before the second blink? Or is there a More Profound Meaning. Possibly higher chance of typos when publication is late (deadline struggle?). Jkrstrt (talk) 14:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Wow, you're right! The Twenty-second. The Not So Only. The Nathan/Nk22 (talk) 14:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps that is the error which causes the HTML tags to be visible text? 108.162.218.83 15:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Unlikely. The opening tag turns on the effect for all the text that follows until a closing tag is found. No closing tag, and the effect doesn't stop. - Equinox 108.162.238.172 16:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Randall actually fixed it today! Somebody who knows how to properly edit this wiki should update the picture and description. EDIT: I already fixed the description, now it's only the picture.141.101.105.217 10:09, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
- Unlikely. The opening tag turns on the effect for all the text that follows until a closing tag is found. No closing tag, and the effect doesn't stop. - Equinox 108.162.238.172 16:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps that is the error which causes the HTML tags to be visible text? 108.162.218.83 15:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I think (-1) [cursed] may be a reference to the card game Dominion? 108.162.219.183 17:51, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Actually this is more likely a reference to a cursed item in an RPG (DnD, WoW, etc.), where a cursed item often gives a negative stat bonus instead of a positive one. A magic item might be indicated as Magic Hammer (+2). Veleek (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
It is from a rogue like game. 162.158.56.143 18:41, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Why is there a bit about HTML sanitization? It's in an image file.. 108.162.221.22 18:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
The effect of the marquee tag is to create an area of scrolling text. So with the blink tag the html would produce a box of text that will scroll from right to left and have a blinking background akin to annoying internet banner ads. So it's not about html sanitation, the html is visible so you can see the word count, it is up to the reader to interpret it as an annoying internet ad. (Source: mozilla documentation). Aide7 (talk) 19:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I hate that I only just learned about the 6-word story on TV Tropes a few days before this comic was posted. I wonder if Randall and I have similar browsing habits. 108.162.210.177 21:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- Explanations of each "story"
- For sale: This Gullible Baby's Shoes - I don't quite get this one. Maybe it's just not very funny. Anyone?
- Baby Shoes For Sale By Owner - Funny if one imagines an internet-capable baby posting its own shoes for sale.
-
Actually, There's no evidence Hemingway wrote- A fragment of a preemptive rebuttal to the comic's premise (or at least its title), for some reason. - Free Shoes, Provided You Overpower Baby - Funny if one imagines a sufficiently powerful baby, or a sufficiently weak shoe seeker.
- For Sale: Weird Baby's Toe Shoes - "Toe shoes" like the FiveFingers are weird, even too weird for a weird baby perhaps. Previous distaste for toe shoes is evident in xkcd 1065.
- For Sale: Baby Shoes (Prime eligible) - This is a pretty good ad; Hemmingway is selling the shoes through Amazon and is willing to deliver them quickly and without additional shipping costs.
-
Though popularly attributed to Hemingway, the- Another fragment of a rebuttal, written in an encyclopedic style. - This Weird Trick Covers Baby Feet! - An ad in clickbait style, nobody's going to click on that though.
- For Sale: Baby Shoes, Just Hatched - Funny if one imagines shoes as living creatures that lay eggs, from which baby shoes hatch.
- Sale: Seven-League Boots (Expedited Shipping) - These are magic boots that allow one to walk seven leagues (about 3 miles) with each step. Presumably they'll be delivered by someone wearing the boots.
- Complete this survey for free shoes! - Another clickbait type ad.
- Shoes, by Ernest Hemingway [citation needed] - Another reference, wikipedia-style, to the dubious authorship of the original short story.
- This is my greatest short story. - Self-referential meta-fiction, somewhat reminiscent of Randall's proposed autobiography of Douglas Hofstadter in xkcd 917.
- For sale: Baby shoes (-1) [cursed] - The shoes are described in the manner of armor in Roguelike games. These particular shoes will reduce the wearer's protection by one point and cannot be removed.
- <blink><marquee>Baby Shoes!</marquee><blink> - An ad in old-school annoying HTML style.
- For Sale: Baby-sized Saddle, Bobcat - Hemmingway is choosing to falsely advertise mere baby shoes as a rather more exciting means of locomotion. Is this wise?
- Hemingway Busted for Craigslist Shoe Scam - I guess not, he got caught for lying in his ad.
- (hover text) Instead of bobcat, package contained chair - A reference to xkcd 325, this indicates that either Hemmingway is now running a new scam (or just "making the world a weirder place"? or a less weird place?) by advertising bobcats and mailing chairs.
108.162.219.160 21:14, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
The current version of the comic has a correctly nested set of tags. __rvx 108.162.221.96 09:05, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
On first read, I though this is what search engine returns when searching for that short novel. Then I noticed the heading. -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:35, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
I just added the reference to Hemingway's practice of obsessively re-drafting his novels; but I'm not sure the explanation captures the humour in this allusion. -- Vespertine (talk) 05:01, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
See also SMBC 3582 108.162.219.160 04:00, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Please reinsert what was deleted on [1], because of an edit conflict. I added some of the deleted information. Xhfz (talk) 13:29, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
I find it extremely unlikely that "toe shoes" is meant to refer to pointe shoes, both because pointe shoes do not go by that name and because it would be inconsistent with what Randall has previously referred to as "toe shoes". I have edited accordingly. (Dear anyone whose dialect refers to pointe shoes as toe shoes, where are you from? I'm curious.)108.162.216.27 23:59, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
