2011-01-16
Original: 2011-01-16 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
A hand-drawn line graph.
Y-axis label: BELIEF THAT LOVE IS A SUBLIME WONDER BEYOND COMPREHENSION THAT IS OUR ONLY WAY OF FINDING LIGHT IN A SEA OF DARKNESS
X-axis label: QUALITY AS A LONGTERM SIGNIFICANT OTHER
The curve is a steep decay: it starts very high on the left and drops sharply, leveling off near the bottom as it moves right. Points are labeled along the curve from top-left (high belief, low quality) to bottom-right (low belief, high quality):
HIGH SCHOOLER (top of curve)
VIRGIN OVER AGE 30
POET
DOCTOR
LAWYER
PROFESSOR
PORN (bottom-right, lowest belief, highest quality)
Votey:
The same graph axes, now nearly empty. A single arrow points to the bottom-left corner, right at the origin where the axes meet.
Label: CARTOONIST
Y-axis label: BELIEF THAT LOVE IS A SUBLIME WONDER BEYOND COMPREHENSION THAT IS OUR ONLY WAY OF FINDING LIGHT IN A SEA OF DARKNESS
X-axis label: QUALITY AS A LONGTERM SIGNIFICANT OTHER
The curve is a steep decay: it starts very high on the left and drops sharply, leveling off near the bottom as it moves right. Points are labeled along the curve from top-left (high belief, low quality) to bottom-right (low belief, high quality):
HIGH SCHOOLER (top of curve)
VIRGIN OVER AGE 30
POET
DOCTOR
LAWYER
PROFESSOR
PORN (bottom-right, lowest belief, highest quality)
Votey:
The same graph axes, now nearly empty. A single arrow points to the bottom-left corner, right at the origin where the axes meet.
Label: CARTOONIST
Alt text
A hand-drawn decaying-curve graph. The vertical axis is labeled "belief that love is a sublime wonder beyond comprehension that is our only way of finding light in a sea of darkness"; the horizontal axis is labeled "quality as a longterm significant other." The curve starts very high on the left and plunges down to nearly flat on the right, and points along it are labeled, in order of decreasing romantic belief and increasing partner quality: high schooler, virgin over age 30, poet, doctor, lawyer, professor, and porn (at the far bottom-right). The joke: the more you idealize love, the worse a long-term partner you make, with porn being the most realistic and best partner. Votey: the same empty graph with a single arrow pointing to the origin corner, where both belief and quality bottom out at zero, labeled "cartoonist" — a self-deprecating jab that cartoonists are the worst partners with the least illusions.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.