truth-is-beauty
Explanation
The Joke
In the first panel, a person asks their partner, "Do you think truth is beauty and beauty is truth?" In the second panel, the partner confesses that he once ran out of bowls, did not want to do dishes, and ate potato chips out of a pair of pants. In the third panel, the first person concludes: "Keats was wrong. So very very wrong." The partner adds: "And he didn't even know about the spinach dip."
The comic takes the famous philosophical-poetic assertion that "truth is beauty" and tests it against a mundane but completely true personal anecdote. The truth about this man -- that he ate potato chips out of a pair of pants because he was too lazy to wash dishes -- is undeniably true, but it is the opposite of beautiful. Therefore, truth is emphatically not beauty. The additional detail about spinach dip suggests even more disgusting truths remain untold.
The Humor
The humor comes from the collision between lofty Romantic poetry and the squalid reality of everyday human behavior. Keats imagined truth and beauty as interchangeable cosmic ideals, but the comic demonstrates that many truths about human existence are deeply unglamorous. The escalation from chips-in-pants to the ominous mention of spinach dip (implying an even messier scenario) adds a layer of comedic horror.
References
The phrase "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" comes from John Keats’s 1819 poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." It is one of the most famous lines in English Romantic poetry and has been the subject of extensive philosophical debate about whether aesthetic beauty and factual truth are truly equivalent or related concepts.