Attention Span
Attention Span
[Cueball and Megan are standing together.] Cueball: I haven't read any books in forever. I have no attention span anymore.
[Zoom in on the faces of Cueball and Megan.] Megan: Didn't you literally just spend six hours obsessively reading about the theory that Thomas the Tank Engine is authoritarian propaganda depicting a post-apocalyptic fascist dystopia?
[Cueball still standing there. Megan begins pacing away.] Cueball: OK Cueball: I mean I have no attention span for anything good anymore. Megan: Let's check out your bookshelf, shall we?
[Cueball alone.] Cueball: What are you- Off-panel: I see a dragon holding a sword in its teeth on the cover of a book that's thicker than it is wide. Cueball: And? That's a classic! Off-panel: Just saying, I don't think this is a new development.
2005 (the comic number) is also the year of the first XKCD comic.
The dragon described is very loosely similar to the legendary pokemon Zacian , whose game had been teased at the release of this comic.
People often groan about their shrinking attention span, attributing it to an increased illiteracy. This allows for fond nostalgia about the times when they were supposedly more intelligent and focused. For instance, Nicholas Carr wrote this article to compile both anecdotes (which are more abundant) and research (which is more useful) to describe this phenomenon.
Cueball does the same here, but Megan retorts that he spent six hours reading over a pointless (if disturbingly plausible) theory about a banal show based off a series of bedtime stories made to entertain small children. Thomas The Tank Engine is a British children's series based off a series of books written by Wilbert Awdry. It follows the adventures of anthropomorphized train locomotives and other vehicles.
Cueball qualifies his statement: he has no attention span for anything good anymore. Megan, in reply, examines Cueball’s bookshelf, finding a book that cements Cueball’s status as a nerd who reads high fantasy . Cueball protests that the book is a classic, but Megan dismisses the fact.
To be fair to Cueball, many great fantasies have covers such as those in the comic (e.g. A Song of Ice and Fire , The Lord of the Rings , Randall's personal favorite Discworld ). To be fair to Megan, this book is apparently not one of them, being thicker than it is wide (like The Complete Miss Marple by Agatha Christie ), a telltale sign of needless bombast and turgid prose.
Other possibilities for the dragon book are His Majesty's Dragon from the Temeraire series or Dragonsbane from the Winterlands series.
If there was any doubt about Cueball’s dubious literary tastes before, Megan dispels them in the title text, refering to a novelization of the excoriated movie Surf Ninjas , a movie that is exactly what it sounds like. Signed novelizations of a movie named “Surf Ninjas” are not typical fodder for great minds. [ citation needed ]
The comic contains a hyperlink to an article with the same unfortunate content Cueball has apparently finished reading prior to this comic: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends” . This article, the articles linked from it, further linked articles from those, links found by googling the topic, and other related web surfing on the topic could easily add up to six hours or more of reading.
[Cueball and Megan are standing together.] Cueball: I haven't read any books in forever. I have no attention span anymore.
[Zoom in on the faces of Cueball and Megan.] Megan: Didn't you literally just spend six hours obsessively reading about the theory that Thomas the Tank Engine is authoritarian propaganda depicting a post-apocalyptic fascist dystopia?
[Cueball still standing there. Megan begins pacing away.] Cueball: OK Cueball: I mean I have no attention span for anything good anymore. Megan: Let's check out your bookshelf, shall we?
[Cueball alone.] Cueball: What are you- Off-panel: I see a dragon holding a sword in its teeth on the cover of a book that's thicker than it is wide. Cueball: And? That's a classic! Off-panel: Just saying, I don't think this is a new development.
2005 (the comic number) is also the year of the first XKCD comic.
The dragon described is very loosely similar to the legendary pokemon Zacian , whose game had been teased at the release of this comic.