2011-02-01
Explanation
This comic is a simple graph joke with a philosophical punchline. It shows a chart with "Desire for Sex" on the Y-axis and "Time" on the X-axis. The red curve depicts desire for sex over the course of a human lifetime: it starts near zero, then shoots up dramatically (representing puberty), plateaus at a high level through young adulthood and middle age, and then gradually declines in old age. The caption below reads: "Life is an orgasm, in reverse."
The joke works by observing that the shape of this lifetime sexual desire curve is essentially the mirror image of the graph of an orgasm'''s intensity over time. An orgasm builds gradually, reaches a sharp peak, and then drops off suddenly. The desire-for-sex-over-a-lifetime curve does the opposite: it spikes suddenly (puberty), maintains intensity for a long time, and then tapers off slowly. Hence "life is an orgasm, in reverse" -- a characteristically SMBC blend of crude humor and pseudo-profound observation that sounds deep but is really just a graphical sight gag.
The votey panel shows a man on the phone saying, "Sorry... I can'''t leave the house... I have to... live life in reverse." This extends the joke by imagining someone who has taken the comic'''s observation literally and is now committed to experiencing life as a reversed orgasm -- which apparently means staying home and... doing whatever that would entail. It plays on the absurdity of treating a throwaway philosophical quip as a genuine life philosophy.