337: Post Office Showdown

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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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, here wearing earphones connected to his iPod, is often imagining himself in such a situation, for instance as in this comic, while at the post office. This makes the comic related to thr My Hobby series.

First Cueball imagines the old version (with a cane) of White Hat pulls out a crossbow and how he would react to that. But then continues to imagine that Hair Bun Girl has a katana samurai sword in the box. So this could be a long fight so he decides to be ready for it by setting his iPod to play the "Kill Bill" fight theme.

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. He notes that these two songs will absolutely improve any activity. Not only fight scenes.

Transcript

[Cueball is in a post office wearing earphones connected to his iPod. There are several other people, including an old version of White Hat at the counter with a cane and Hair Bun Girl with a long narrow box entering the office by the door. Behind the counter Ponytail stand together with a Cueball-like guy. Another person is obscured by the lowest of the three thought connected bubles emanating from Cueball to the left. A last thought buble is below Cueball to the right. Above all this is a caption:]
I spend a lot of time mentally choreographing elaborate fight scenes with strangers around me.
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)