sex-a-guide
Explanation
The Joke
The comic presents a grid chart titled "Sex: A Guide" that classifies types of sex along two axes: Romance (low, middling, high) and Intensity (low, middling, high). The resulting combinations produce increasingly absurd euphemisms:
- Low Romance / Low Intensity: "The Double-Backed Walrus"
- Low Romance / Middling Intensity: "Procreation"
- Low Romance / High Intensity: "What Your Parents Did The Moment You Fell Asleep"
- Middling Romance / Low Intensity: "Post-Buffet Rendezvous"
- Middling Romance / Middling Intensity: "Doinking"
- Middling Romance / High Intensity: "Accidental Procreation"
- High Romance / Low Intensity: "Making Love"
- High Romance / Middling Intensity: "Maakin Loovvv" (drawn out)
- High Romance / High Intensity: "Maawwkin Lawwvv" (even more drawn out)
The Humor
The comic applies the format of a serious reference guide or scientific classification chart to something inherently unclassifiable and personal: sexual encounters. The humor comes from the absurd specificity of each label and how they escalate in ridiculousness. "The Double-Backed Walrus" evokes something deeply unromantic and physically awkward. "Post-Buffet Rendezvous" hilariously implies middling romance paired with lethargy. The high-romance row is funny because the labels simply become increasingly drawn-out versions of "making love," as if adding more vowels somehow conveys greater romantic intensity. The disturbing entry "What Your Parents Did The Moment You Fell Asleep" mines humor from the universal discomfort of imagining parental intimacy. The chart format itself parodies how we try to systematize and categorize human experiences that resist neat classification.