2013-07-05
Original: 2013-07-05 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A police officer (or hostage negotiator) on a megaphone, speaking toward a window: "Release the hostages and we'll give you whatever you want!"
Panel 2:
A hostage-taker's voice replies from inside (silhouetted figure at a window): "I want to be as carefree as I was at age 10, as excited as I was at age 20, as confident as I was at age 30, and as empowered as I was at age 40!"
Panel 3:
The negotiator: "We've got that down here, just release the hostages!"
Panel 4:
The hostage-taker: "So where is it? WHERE?!"
Panel 5:
The negotiator: "Okay, that's great, all you have to do is accept that the present, though a result of the past, still exists unto itself."
Panel 6:
The hostage-taker (police-uniformed figures shown): "...briefly put, any self-assessment is entirely the result of an over-simplifying analysis of instance and added opportunities..."
Panel 7:
The negotiator: "Well, you probably should've bargained for a Ferrari or something."
Panel 8:
The negotiator: "This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about!"
Votey:
Caption: "EARLIER TODAY..."
A man with spiky/flame-like hair sits thinking, a thought bubble above his head: "TIME TO WRITE SOME REALISTIC DIALOG."
A police officer (or hostage negotiator) on a megaphone, speaking toward a window: "Release the hostages and we'll give you whatever you want!"
Panel 2:
A hostage-taker's voice replies from inside (silhouetted figure at a window): "I want to be as carefree as I was at age 10, as excited as I was at age 20, as confident as I was at age 30, and as empowered as I was at age 40!"
Panel 3:
The negotiator: "We've got that down here, just release the hostages!"
Panel 4:
The hostage-taker: "So where is it? WHERE?!"
Panel 5:
The negotiator: "Okay, that's great, all you have to do is accept that the present, though a result of the past, still exists unto itself."
Panel 6:
The hostage-taker (police-uniformed figures shown): "...briefly put, any self-assessment is entirely the result of an over-simplifying analysis of instance and added opportunities..."
Panel 7:
The negotiator: "Well, you probably should've bargained for a Ferrari or something."
Panel 8:
The negotiator: "This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about!"
Votey:
Caption: "EARLIER TODAY..."
A man with spiky/flame-like hair sits thinking, a thought bubble above his head: "TIME TO WRITE SOME REALISTIC DIALOG."
Alt text
An eight-panel comic drawn in flat color. A police hostage negotiator with a megaphone calls up to a window: "Release the hostages and we'll give you whatever you want!" Instead of normal demands, the unseen hostage-taker replies with an abstract, philosophical wish list: to be "as carefree as I was at age 10, as excited as I was at age 20, as confident as I was at age 30, and as empowered as I was at age 40!" The negotiator keeps insisting they just release the hostages, while the hostage-taker desperately asks "So where is it? WHERE?!" The negotiator responds with tangled, jargon-filled philosophical statements about the present existing unto itself and self-assessment being an over-simplifying analysis. Finally the negotiator deadpans, "Well, you probably should've bargained for a Ferrari or something," then "This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about!" The joke: the negotiation collapses into impossible existential demands rather than material ones. Votey (aftercomic): a single panel captioned "EARLIER TODAY..." showing a man with spiky flame-like hair thinking, with a thought bubble reading "TIME TO WRITE SOME REALISTIC DIALOG" — revealing the whole exchange is a writer's attempt at 'realistic' dialogue.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.