Alphabet
Alphabet
[Cueball stands behind Blondie who has turned her head towards him while sitting at a bar stool at a bar desk. She holds on to a wine glass standing on the desk. Two regular glasses are standing on the desk in front of her.] Cueball: Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd forget about you in a heartbeat . Cueball: I'm not gonna waste my one chance to help the mess that is English orthography.

This comic is mainly a joke on the traditional pick-up line that goes: "Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put 'U' and 'I' together", i.e. "you and I", or "the letter U and the letter I".
However, in typical xkcd fashion, rather than continuing with that tired pickup line, addressed at Blondie at the bar, Cueball jumps at his hypothetical chance to rearrange the alphabet and fix the English orthography .
An orthography is a standardized system for using a particular writing system (script) to write a particular language, including rules of spelling. The English orthography happens to be one of the deepest (that is, most irregular) ones around, since almost every sound can be spelled in several ways, and most spellings and all letters can be pronounced in more than one way, and often in many different ways.
So faced with this opportunity, the hooking up could wait. Restructuring the alphabet and creating a sensibly regular English spelling is the chance of a lifetime, and would make history, making Cueball immortal in the sense of living on forever in memory, as the alphabet-fixer.
In the title text Cueball muses on the possibilities. Does he get to remove letters entirely or just rearrange them (like putting U and I together)? Then he mentions "the 'k/c' situation" specifically because that "situation is ridiculous". This is about the use of the letter 'c'. It doesn't have a unique sound, and most often makes a 'k'-sound or an 's'-sound . Combined with an 'h' it usually makes the 'ch'-sound in chair , but also they often sound like 'k' ( character ), and in not too few cases they even make the 'sh'-sound (like champagne , see more examples here ). So a reasonable change Cueball might make is to replace 'c' by 'k' or 's', and keep 'c' only followed by 'h' (or even giving 'c' the current sound of 'ch' as in chair or giving the role of 'ch' as in chair to 'kh', spelling 'khair') .
He finishes off by stating that they can make out any other time, because fixing the alphabet now would bring him immortality.
Orthography was again the subject in 1562: I in Team . A non-standard version of this pickup joke was previously referenced in 279: Pickup Lines .
[Cueball stands behind Blondie who has turned her head towards him while sitting at a bar stool at a bar desk. She holds on to a wine glass standing on the desk. Two regular glasses are standing on the desk in front of her.] Cueball: Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd forget about you in a heartbeat . Cueball: I'm not gonna waste my one chance to help the mess that is English orthography.
