819: Five-Minute Comics: Part 1

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Five-Minute Comics: Part 1
The wolves thin the RAID arrays, removing the slowest and weakest disks to keep the average seek speed high.
Title text: The wolves thin the RAID arrays, removing the slowest and weakest disks to keep the average seek speed high.

Explanation

This is the first of three "five-minute comics" posts Randall made during November 2010. Let's get started!

  • In astronomy, an "approach" is when two bodies come abnormally close to one another (but not close enough to crash). Jupiter, as most probably know, is the fifth planet in our solar system. Its approach to Earth in September 2010 was the closest seen in many years (in fact, the next time it will come that close will be in 2022). In the comic, this is indicated by Jupiter hovering right above Earth and talking to the characters.
Of course, Jupiter is not only planet-sized, but is enormous compared to Earth; in fact, Earth would fit quite comfortably into the red spot of Jupiter.
Gravitational slingshots are a technique used by deep-space probes to gain speed by temporarily orbiting a planet and then escaping that orbit; the gravity of the planet pulls the probe into orbiting speed, and the end result is an extremely fuel-efficient way of gaining speed during space travel. Jupiter is commonly used for this purpose because it's the most massive planet in our solar system.
  • The comic in the middle left features the lyrics to the Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue, but with "Sue" replaced with "Trig." Inexplicably, Trig is a name that people actually give their children. The most notable example in the US - and probably the inspiration for Randall drawing this comic - is Trig Palin, the son of Alaskan politician Sarah Palin. Trig is also a widely-accepted abbreviation for the mathematical field of trigonometry, and it sounds similar to "twig," so one can imagine how a person with such a name might be ridiculed.
  • A child getting trapped in a well is an alien experience to some parts of the Western world, but it's quite a serious problem in places where wells are commonplace. Here, though, rather than attempt to rescue the little girl, Cueball instead tries to grant her wish of owning a pony before her imminent demise; a pony is a stereotypical thing for a little girl to want. Of course, since ponies don't fit into wells too easily, he has to stuff it in, which appears to be quite painful for the pony.
  • The server room of a large datacenter is an unusual place to return "back to nature", to say the least. Reintroduction refers to the process of taking a population of animals raised in captivity and bringing them back to the wild; this is a delicate process, as being raised in captivity affects the natural development of skills the animal needs to survive. In fact, Wikipedia has a page specifically about the challenges of wolf reintroduction.
Needless to say, reintroducing wolves to a server room is neither a good idea nor OSHA-approved.
The title-text refers to the wolves thinning the RAID array. A RAID array is a way of spreading data redundantly across multiple hard drives, such that 100% of the data is still recoverable if some number of drives go down. (This number can be set arbitrarily, as long as you have at least one more disk than the number you want, but it reduces your total storage space accordingly.) The seek speed of a drive is how fast it can find a specific point of data on its platter; thus, the wolves are essentially killing the slowest drives, implementing a kind of natural selection to "evolve" the drives to be faster.
  • Directly below the previous comic, Cueball is telling a "yo mama" joke. Such jokes are usually told in jest, and aren't really targeted at a particular person's mother; however, in this case, Cueball was attempting to make an honest observation about the listener's mother, and when he discovers his mistake, he realizes that she is, in fact, quite a nice person.
  • Johann Sebastian Bach wrote an opera called The Magic Flute. Richard Wagner wrote a series of operas called Der Ring des Nibelungen, or, more commonly, the ring cycle. Here, Randall interprets the ring cycle as some kind of motorcycle, while the teleporting magic flute comes from video games: in both The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3, the player can obtain a magic flute item that has teleportation powers.
The caption implies that even Randall is not sure what meaning this comic has.
  • This comic shows how people rate the "hotness" of girls. Glamour magazines have desensitized many people to photo-edited models with large amounts of make-up, so the model gets a "meh" reaction. The girl in biology class, by contrast, is not only "real" by comparison, but is actually a viable choice for dating, so she is given a 2 star rating. If the same girl from bio class is wearing your shirt, that usually means you've had sex the night before, and she spent the night at your apartment, hence the need to get dressed in one of your shirts; this possibility earns the highest rating, 4 stars.
Here it starts taking a turn for the worse. If wearing one of your shirts means she spent the night with you, logically, wearing one of your mom's shirts means she spent the night with your mom. This earns a "Wat!" reaction.
Finally, human skin is not generally designed to detach from its owner. If the girl from your bio class is wearing your mom's skin like a suit, it means she probably murdered your mom and skinned her. Both of these actions are considerably illegal, and quite likely indicate a serious mental instability. To this, Cueball can only scream.

Transcript

Because of a family illness, instead of regular comics, this week I'll be sharing some strips that I drew as part of a game I played with friends. Each comic had to be written and drawn in five minutes. -- Randall

Comic #1

[A man and a woman stand facing each other.]
Man: Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in decades.
[The man points behind the woman, and the woman turns around.]
Man: In fact, here it comes now!
[Jupiter, about the size of the characters' heads, hovers into the frame at about head-height.]
Jupiter: Hey, guys.
[Jupiter continues to hover through the frame as the characters watch it go.]
Jupiter: Anyone need a gravitational slingshot?
Woman: No, I'm good.
Jupiter: Aight.

Comic #2

[A man sits on a box, playing a guitar.]
Man: ...Now I don't blame him 'cause he ran and hid, -- but the meanest thing that he ever did -- was before he left, he went and named me "Trig."

Comic #3

[A man looks down a well.]
Man: Oh God, a little girl is trapped down this well!
[The man runs off screen.]
[He returns, leading a pony.]
Man: It's okay, we got you that pony you always wanted!
[He tries to cram the pony down the well with the aid of a large stick.]
Man: Get... in... there... -- Ugh!

Comic #4

[A man and a woman stand in a server room. ]
Man: I like to get back to nature by coming out here to the server room. -- The warmth, the whirr of the drives, the drone of the fans, the howl of the wolves...
Woman: Wolves?
Man: Yeah, we started a reintroduction program.
Wolf: Awoooooo

Comic #5

[A man stands by himself in the frame.]
Man: Yo momma's so masculine that she... oh, wait, that's your dad. -- Is your mom the lady over by the door? Aww, she looks nice!

Comic #6

[A man runs toward another man who is wearing a powdered wig, holding a gun in one hand, and a flute in the other. Behind him, someone is chasing him on a motorcycle.]
Man: Bach, activate the magic flute and teleport us home! Wagner's right behind me on his Ring Cycle!
Caption: Why did I draw this?

Comic #7

Hotness Ratings:
[A close up of a woman with wavy hair.]
Incredily made-up girl on magazine cover.
(Inset of a man: "Meh.")
[An average girl.]
Girl in your bio class.
(Inset of man: "Two stars.")
[Girl with mussed hair in over-sized men's shirt.]
Girl in your bio class wearing one of your shirts.
Girl: Want some breakfast?
(Inset man: "Four stars.")
[Girl with another sort of shirt speaking to an older lady.]
Girl in your bio class wearing one of your mom's shirts.
Girl: Thanks for the great night.
(Inset man: "Wat!")
[Creepy-looking girl.]
Girl in your bio class wearing your mom's skin like a suit.
Girl: Give Mommy a hug!
(Inset man, screaming: "AAAAAAAA")


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Discussion

The Magic Flute was composed by W.A. Mozart, not Bach! --96.20.169.44 02:10, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

You are correct! I've fixed that particular mistake. If you spot any other errors on any explanation, please edit the explanation to be correct. Or, if you find an explanation to be lacking, please add to it! lcarsos_a (talk) 06:13, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible that the unnamed Cueball is Mozart? 162.158.59.40 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Regarding #7, couldn't perhaps the lines of the respective girls be transcribed, too? (can't read them)--108.162.254.197 10:59, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Ups,sorry, very bad reading. Refers only to the first girl.--108.162.254.197 11:03, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone tell what the magazine girl is saying? To me it looks like "Airbrush!", but I'm not sure. 199.27.130.180 03:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
It's 'Airbrush!', referring to the Photoshop tool that paints, as the photo has been edited. Fizzle (talk) 05:11, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
An airbrush is an actual spray-painting tool that was used for many years to touch up glamour shots long before personal computers even existed, never-mind Photoshop! The function in Photoshop that produces a similar effect was named after the mechanical tool. -- The Cat Lady (talk) 15:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Regarding #6, the motorcycle could be a reference to Tron. The music for Tron 2 is composed as an opera by the band Daft Punk. 108.162.254.140 17:48, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The explanation of "reintroduction" only refers to captive-raised animals. Reintroduction programs often use wild animals from another geographic area. The wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone, for example, were wild wolves trapped in Alberta, Canada. The main point is that putting wolves back where they haven't been for a while; the source is beside the point. 173.245.62.173 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I don't think that it starts taking a turn for the worse when the girl's wearing one of your shirts. I mean isn't that the climax of hotness? 141.101.98.237 10:13, 10 January 2015 (UTC)


I read #1 as Jupiter doing a PUA style 'approach', did anyone else get that? 108.162.249.205 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"Human skin is not generally designed to detach from its owner." [Citation Needed] 188.114.106.119 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

the horse being crammed into the well makes me think of this fable where a donkey falls into a well and they decide to fill the well with the donkey in it. --172.68.57.107 16:16, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Relating to comic 4, Coincidentally [Seagate sells HDDs for NAS devices called IronWolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate_Technology#Internal_SSD_and_HDD_storage). I don't know for how long they've been around for this to possibly be referenced in the comic, but I reckon it's a possible link. 172.70.93.13 13:28, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Comic 1 might contain a [forced perspective gag](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForcedPerspective) of sorts like [this](https://www.thescienceof.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/TinyEarth1.png) [one](https://overmental.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/rick-and-morty-tiny-earth-750x415.jpg) from Rick & Morty 162.158.170.85 14:36, 28 September 2022 (UTC)