2014-07-20
Original: 2014-07-20 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Guru (old man with long beard, robe): You have been a good student, young one. But now... a test. Snatch this coin from my hand.
Young man: Just a second. Let me make a phone call.
Caption: 30 SECONDS LATER...
Panel 2:
Young man (on phone): Okay. I'm having a counterfeiter print trillions of duplicate coins which will be given at random to people around the country.
Panel 3:
Young man: The more time passes, the more people will realize what has happened and the less that coin will be worth.
Guru: But... all our money is in coins like this.
Panel 4:
Young man: Tell you what. I'll give you this nice stable American dollar in exchange for that rapidly deflating piece of metal in your hand.
Guru hands over the coin.
Panel 5:
Guru: It was supposed to be a test of your spiritual oneness expressed via bodily perfection.
Young man: Actually, gimme your hat too and those shoes.
Votey:
Thought/speech bubble: namaste'
A man's face is shown with a faint, distant expression (the defeated/enlightened guru).
Guru (old man with long beard, robe): You have been a good student, young one. But now... a test. Snatch this coin from my hand.
Young man: Just a second. Let me make a phone call.
Caption: 30 SECONDS LATER...
Panel 2:
Young man (on phone): Okay. I'm having a counterfeiter print trillions of duplicate coins which will be given at random to people around the country.
Panel 3:
Young man: The more time passes, the more people will realize what has happened and the less that coin will be worth.
Guru: But... all our money is in coins like this.
Panel 4:
Young man: Tell you what. I'll give you this nice stable American dollar in exchange for that rapidly deflating piece of metal in your hand.
Guru hands over the coin.
Panel 5:
Guru: It was supposed to be a test of your spiritual oneness expressed via bodily perfection.
Young man: Actually, gimme your hat too and those shoes.
Votey:
Thought/speech bubble: namaste'
A man's face is shown with a faint, distant expression (the defeated/enlightened guru).
Alt text
A five-panel SMBC comic. Panel 1: A robed, long-bearded guru tells his young student he has been good, but now faces a test: snatch this coin from my hand. The student replies, 'Just a second. Let me make a phone call.' A caption reads '30 seconds later...'. Panel 2: The student, on his phone, says he's having a counterfeiter print trillions of duplicate coins to be distributed at random across the country. Panel 3: He explains that as time passes and people realize what happened, the coin will be worth less and less. The guru protests, 'But... all our money is in coins like this.' Panel 4: The student offers the guru a 'nice stable American dollar' in exchange for 'that rapidly deflating piece of metal in your hand,' and the guru hands over the coin. Panel 5: The guru says it was supposed to be a test of spiritual oneness expressed through bodily perfection; the student demands, 'Actually, gimme your hat too and those shoes.' The joke: the student wins the coin-snatching test not with reflexes but by engineering hyperinflation to devalue the coin and then trading for it. Votey (aftercomic): a simple hand-drawn portrait of the guru's face wearing a faint, defeated expression, with a wobbly speech bubble above reading 'namaste'.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.