2013-02-07
Explanation
This comic explores the tension between reductionist scientific descriptions of love and the actual practice of romance. A man acknowledges to his girlfriend that she is mad at him because he said "love is just a chemical reaction." To make amends, he goes to the store and gets her a heart-shaped box of chocolates. She is initially touched, saying "Aww... that'''s so sweet!"
However, the man then ruins the gesture by describing the gift in the same reductionist terms: "Enjoy these high calorie nourishment balls, and the large expenditure signalled by their packaging." His partner responds with an exasperated "Dammit man!" The joke is that while he tried to apologize for reducing love to chemistry, he cannot help but continue reducing everything to its most clinical, scientific description -- turning chocolates into "high calorie nourishment balls" and the fancy box into a signal of expenditure.
The votey panel shows someone looking at the comic and asking "What'''s the joke? That'''s just a normal couple, right?" This is a meta-joke suggesting that this dynamic -- one partner being overly analytical and the other being frustrated by it -- is so common as to be unremarkable, and that many couples in Weinersmith'''s audience will recognize themselves in this scenario.