Perspective
Perspective
Sometimes, when I first wake up, I am caught in the horrible grip of perspective. [Cueball sitting up in bed.] Cueball: It may be a jewel of open source, but Firefox is just a browser. It shows webpages. What the hell is wrong with us? Fortunately, this subsides quickly.

Firefox is a popular browser, and in 2006, it was the second most commonly used browser. Its more fervent supporters sometimes wrote as if there was a moral imperative to use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.
Cueball , presumably representing Randall , wakes up with a reasonable perspective on the relative unimportance of an internet browser within the world at large, but quickly loses that perspective as his enthusiasm for nerdy things like Firefox gets the better of him. The humor stems from the irony that Cueball is relieved to trade a richer perspective for a simpler, browser-oriented world view.
The title text references Richard Stallman , an American software freedom activist and computer programmer, and Cirque du Soleil , an entertainment company specializing in big-top circus performances. The two have no connection with one another, so this is one example of an odd combination of topics that would only (and commonly) be connected in dreams.
Alternately, the dream may be a reference to Stallman's forceful defense of software freedom, which could be seen as "over-the-top" or circus-like.
Another possible joke is that the comic, unlike most other xkcd comics, is drawn with perspective as well as being about a more metaphorical perspective.
Sometimes, when I first wake up, I am caught in the horrible grip of perspective. [Cueball sitting up in bed.] Cueball: It may be a jewel of open source, but Firefox is just a browser. It shows webpages. What the hell is wrong with us? Fortunately, this subsides quickly.
