2013-08-22

<< < Comic #3089 (August 22, 2013) > >>

2013-08-22

Title text: 2013-08-22

Votey

Explanation

This comic is one of many of Zach's works revolving around the running gag of men being overly ashamed of, or not wanting to admit to, sexual inadequacy (See also: half, 2009-01-06).

In a lot of media, there is a prevalent idea that sex is supposed to be and feel good, and that therefore, being unable to sexually satisfy your partner (whether due to a lack of skill at lovemaking or due to not considering the needs of one's partner) is a flaw. One specific implementation of this trope is men being unable to maintain an erection, leading to them being labeled as objects of mockery and not being manly. In real life, erectile dysfunction is the most common sexual problem in males and can frequently cause distress and strife due to its negative impact on relationships and self-image, but can be treated through a number of methods, including exercise, medications, shockwave therapy (if the dysfunction is due to vascular problems), pumps, and in extreme cases, surgery. In this comic, the male protagonist is a sufferer of ED, and would in theory benefit from such treatment. However, presumably due to not wanting to be seen as admitting he has sexual inadequacies, and thus being labeled a loser who cannot sexually satisfy his partner, he has apparently invented a miniature hydrogen-elevated dirigible balloon, along with a headband that reads his brainwaves and can control the elevation of the blimp. The blimp, in turn, has cords attached to it that are, based on their angle, attached to his penis off-panel, allowing him to use the blimp to lift it up.

In real life, this approach would be extremely impractical, if not outright impossible: While recent technological advances have resulted in the invention of devices that can use brainwaves to control robots (See "NOIR: Neural Signal Operated Intelligent Robots for Everyday Activities" by Zhang et al from Stanford University), these are still highly experimental and not available to the average consumer, and would presumably require great technical skill to implement. Further complications would include getting the blimp to stay in place and not be pulled around by the air currents in the room, and the fact that, while having a blimp lift one's phallus solves the issue of it not raising up from its flaccid position, it does nothing to actually make it erect. In order to achieve an erection, the muscles of the arteries leading into the penis must relax, while the veins leading out must shut off, leading to blood flowing into the corpus cavernosa. This would not be affected by the man's blimp strategy, making it completely inviable (to say nothing of the irritation and chafing that would presumably be caused by the attachment points of the cords during penetration even if it did).

We can infer that the man's partner is aware of all of this, as seen in the beat panel where she stares at him in disbelief, before then exhorting him to simply take the simple solution and admit the truth. Instead, due to, once again, not wanting to have to admit to ED and be an object of mockery, the man doubles down (ironically making him further a target of derision due to his inability to accept the truth), resulting in the juxtaposition between his absurd and unworkable solution where he doesn't have to admit to being inadequate and the simple solution where he has to admit to needing help that forms the punchline of the comic.

The man's exclamation in the final panel of "Oh, the humanity!" is a reference to the destruction of the Hindenburg on May 6, 1937. Journalist Herbert Morrison was covering the arrival of the famous dirigible in Lakehurst, New Jersey, when he witnessed it catching fire, resulting in his famous report (transcribed below).

"It's practically standing still now they've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship; and (uh) they've been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; it's... the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from...It's burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It's fire... and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames and the... and it's falling on the mooring mast and all the folks between it. This is terrible; this is one of the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it's... [unintelligible] its flames... Crashing, oh! Oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here! I told you; it – I can't even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It's... it... it's a... ah! I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I... I... I'm sorry. Honest: I... I can hardly breathe. I... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah... I can't. Listen, folks; I... I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed."

In the votey, the man appears to still be deluding himself into thinking that he could have made his solution work if he had just used a drone instead of a blimp; however, this would have still run into the technical issues as listed above, plus the noise from the rotors and risk of injury if one of them accidentally crashed into the drone during lovemaking.

This explanation is either missing or incomplete.

Transcript

[A man and a woman are standing in a room naked; the woman has her back to us while everything below the man's waist is off-panel. The man is wearing a headband with an electrode stuck in the middle of his forehead, and a blimp is hovering a short distance in front of him. Cords are going from the blimp down toward the man's (off-panel) crotch.]

Man: "It's held up by the buoyancy of hydrogen and controlled by my brain waves."

[The scene changes angle to show the woman looking down in disbelief toward the man's crotch. She is clearly unimpressed.]

Woman: "Can we please please just see a doctor about your erectile dysfunction?"

Man: "Sure. Or we can skip that and I can give you the hardest blimping of your life!"

Woman: "Doctor it is."

[The blimp is now hovering noticeably lower.}

Man: "Oh the humanity!"

Votey Transcript

[The man from the main comic is depicted frowning.]

Man (thinking): Knew I should've used the quad-copter...