work
Original: work on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Child (off to the side, behind the father): Dad, why do you sit at the computer all day when it just brings you stress?
Panel 2:
Father (glasses, sitting at the computer): Well, the world generates a certain amount of stress each day.
Panel 3:
Father: People agree to absorb some of the stress in exchange, we are given money so that we can have houses and food.
Panel 4:
Father: It'd be sort of like if you had a mouse in a box with a food pellet dispenser that also delivered electric shocks at random intensities.
Panel 5:
Child: That sounds awful.
Father: It's not so bad.
Panel 6:
Father: If you make sure to get your shock and pellet every day toward the end of your life you can just eat off your saved pellets.
Panel 7:
Child: Do you have a lot of pellets saved?
Father: Well, first I have to pay back the pellets I borrowed so I could be allowed in the box.
Votey:
Father (looking strained, speaking to the child): Now leave so me and the computer can have Daddy Time.
Child (off to the side, behind the father): Dad, why do you sit at the computer all day when it just brings you stress?
Panel 2:
Father (glasses, sitting at the computer): Well, the world generates a certain amount of stress each day.
Panel 3:
Father: People agree to absorb some of the stress in exchange, we are given money so that we can have houses and food.
Panel 4:
Father: It'd be sort of like if you had a mouse in a box with a food pellet dispenser that also delivered electric shocks at random intensities.
Panel 5:
Child: That sounds awful.
Father: It's not so bad.
Panel 6:
Father: If you make sure to get your shock and pellet every day toward the end of your life you can just eat off your saved pellets.
Panel 7:
Child: Do you have a lot of pellets saved?
Father: Well, first I have to pay back the pellets I borrowed so I could be allowed in the box.
Votey:
Father (looking strained, speaking to the child): Now leave so me and the computer can have Daddy Time.
Alt text
A seven-panel comic. A bespectacled father sits at a computer while his child questions him. The child asks why he sits at the computer all day when it just brings him stress. The father explains that the world generates a certain amount of stress each day, and people agree to absorb some of it in exchange for money so they can have houses and food. He compares it to a mouse in a box with a food-pellet dispenser that also delivers electric shocks at random intensities. The child says that sounds awful; the father says it's not so bad, because if you take your shock and pellet every day, then toward the end of your life you can just live off your saved pellets. The child asks if he has a lot of pellets saved. The father admits that first he has to pay back the pellets he borrowed in order to be allowed into the box in the first place. Votey: a close-up of the father looking strained, telling the child, "Now leave so me and the computer can have Daddy Time."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.