2012-10-08
Explanation
This comic presents a series of escalating complaints about a "bad roommate" who happens to be an overly enthusiastic physics nerd. The roommate's offenses include: always droning on about physics and mathematics, always standing two chairs next to each other and lying on them naked, and declaring that "my penis is pointing directly at the center of the Earth." When his normal roommate points out that his girlfriend is coming over that night, the naked physicist responds that she'll surely "want to know the nature of this apartment's gravity field."
The joke is built around a character who has taken his love of physics to an absurdly literal and socially inappropriate extreme. Lying naked across two chairs to demonstrate something about structural support or equilibrium, and using his body as a crude gravitational measuring instrument, are behaviors that blur the line between scientific enthusiasm and exhibitionism. The punchline works because the physicist is completely oblivious to social norms -- he genuinely believes the girlfriend will be interested in his gravity field demonstration rather than horrified. It satirizes the stereotype of the scientist so absorbed in their discipline that they lose all awareness of normal human boundaries.