Difference between revisions of "337: Post Office Showdown"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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(Undo revision 66433 by Kynde (talk) There is no Katana in this comic. This even doesn't belong to trivia, we would have to mention too many weapons.)
(add cat: crossbows)
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[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
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[[Category:Crossbows]]

Revision as of 17:33, 5 October 2014

Post Office Showdown
That track ('Battle Without Honor or Humanity') -- like 'Ride of the Valkyries' -- improves *any* activity.
Title text: That track ('Battle Without Honor or Humanity') -- like 'Ride of the Valkyries' -- improves *any* activity.

Explanation

Action movies, such as "Kill Bill" by Quentin Tarantino, often feature elaborate fight scenes in mundane environments. Cueball is imagining himself in such a situation, consistently with his attitude for flights of fancy.

The title text refers to two songs: "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" from the soundtrack of "Kill Bill", and "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner, the latter being associated to fighting scenes because of a famous sequence in the movie "Apocalypse Now" by Francis Ford Coppola.

Transcript

I spend a lot of time mentally choreographing elaborate fight scenes with strangers around me.
[Cueball is in a post office wearing earphones. There are several other people, including an old man with a crutch and an old woman with a long narrow box.]
Cueball's thoughts: Okay - if that old man pulls a crossbow,
Cueball's thoughts: I'll throw the postal scale at him and dive backward behind the stamps machine.
Cueball's thoughts: But what if the lady by the door has a katana in that box?
Cueball's thoughts: Better set my iPod to the "Kill Bill" fight theme, just in case.


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Discussion

One activity not, apparently, improved by "Ride of the Valkyries" is driving; supposedly, listening to it makes people more likely to crash. ‎108.162.221.64 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I wonder if the post office setting is an allusion to the "going postal" expression? (After some number of incidents in the 1980s and 90s, where employees started mass shootings at post offices, the expression 'going postal' entered American slang, meaning out of control anger, possibly violent, in a workplace environment.) Mountain Hikes (talk) 04:56, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Good thing I have been taught the basics of sparring (IRL)! SilverMagpie (talk) 04:54, 8 June 2018 (UTC)