Out of habit

If you're unfamiliar with the comic strip "My Cage," by Melissa DeJesus and Ed Power, its main character is Norm T. Platypus, "a wanna-be writer who has sold his soul to the mind-numbing corporation McGuffin, Inc." You can read it (and dozens of other comics) at the Houston Chronicle's extensive on-line comics section.

Here's today's strip, in which Norm soliloquizes in front of his co-worker Ashley T. Bengal:



Yes, the blue parakeet is really a platypus. And the thing on his head is his bald spot, and the two other characters in the last panel are the creepy janitor and a horse with a nail in his head who thinks he's a unicorn.

But that's not important now. What I want to point out is Ashley's typically heartless reply to Norm's comment that he thought he was better than envying someone else's success:

"Really? Why?"

In the strip, it's just a joke that shows the sort of chops-busting relationship they have. But if I may press the life out of this harmless bit of levity with the heavy Stone of Meaning:

It's actually a good question. Why would we presume to have virtues we have never had call to exercise?

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