2012-12-17
Explanation
In this comic, a man named Frank attempts to confess to his wife about infidelity, but frames it using increasingly convoluted economic and legal reasoning. He says he "had to sell my body" to pay for their children's college, went to their attractive neighbor because he "couldn't bear to do it with just anyone," notes that if the neighbor had paid it would make him a prostitute (which is illegal), and explains that because the profit per transaction was so low, he "tried to make up for it in volume." Each statement digs him deeper into an absurd hole while he tries to make cheating sound like a selfless financial decision.
The humor lies in the escalating absurdity of Frank's rationalizations. He tries to reframe serial adultery as a noble economic sacrifice for his children, using business terminology like "profit," "transaction," and "volume" to make it sound like entrepreneurship rather than betrayal. His wife sees through the nonsense immediately and tells him he could just confess to cheating, but Frank deflects one last time with the classic rhetorical shield: "Think of the children!" -- turning a phrase normally used in moral arguments about protecting kids into a desperate excuse for his own behavior.