SCENE: A successful fruit store, interior.
BOB: Well, Harry, it's been a year and our fruit business is booming.
HARRY: Yeah, we've really done it, Harry.
BOB: But there's a problem.
HARRY: What's that, Bob?
BOB: Well, it seems that pretty much everyone is buying bananas, so it's not all that special any more to have a banana.
HARRY: How is that a problem?
BOB: Never mind, it just is. So the question at hand is, how do we stop people from getting our bananas?
HARRY: Are we in short supply or something?
BOB: No, we have all the bananas one might ever need. In fact, we have a banana plantation out back that just keeps spitting out bananas. But that's neither here nor there. It's important that we stop our customers from getting too many bananas.
HARRY: Well...I guess let's run with that idea for a minute. Let's see...economics 101 suggests that we, perhaps, raise the price of bananas. That would cause only rich people to be able to get bananas, and would reduce their accessibility to the average person.
BOB: I have an even better idea.
HARRY: What's that, Bob?
BOB: We're going to invent an entire new currency, and that currency is the only way that you will be able to purchase bananas.
HARRY: A...new...currency.
BOB: Yes.
HARRY: It seems like we've already got three currencies that we take for our goods -- gold, "honor dollars", and "arena dollars"....?
BOB: Yes. So three currencies isn't complex enough -- we need to have four. And this fourth currency, which I'm going to call "personal arena dollars", is going to have a number of very complicated rules associated with it.
HARRY: ....
BOB: You see, we don't want people to get "personal arena dollars" too easily. So we're going to limit whose house you can go over to. The moment you step over someone else's threshold, bingo! You lose all your personal arena dollars.
HARRY: So in order to purchase this banana, I need to save up in a special fourth currency and make sure never to go over to anyone else's house.
BOB: That's right.
HARRY: But what if my house burns down, or I get a divorce, or a friend invites me over for dinner to have some fun?
BOB: Then you need to start over in your attempt to earn this banana.
HARRY: But this doesn't apply to apples.
BOB: That's right.
HARRY: Only bananas.
BOB: Well, actually it will apply to our kumquats too. Because our kumquats are also seeing too much action, and lord knows what would happen if everyone had a kumquat, you know what I'm saying?
HARRY: Not exactly.
BOB: Treacherous dilution of our precious bodily fluids.
HARRY: Uh....
BOB: Or something, anyway it's not important -- the important thing is, we must generate exclusivity on our bananas and kumquats; and the only way to do that is to introduce a fourth currency bound up in complicated rules.
HARRY: I really think that just changing this price here from '18.50' to '49.99' would probably do it real good...I mean, haven't we as humans used pricing to differentiate between product lines since the first prostitute and her sister?
BOB: Look, I've worked really hard on this fourth currency idea. Long nights contemplating bananas. Your skepticism is wounding.
HARRY: Let me put it to you frankly, Bob. We've built up a very successful fruit business, and one of the main complaints in the past -- back when we had High Warlord(tm) brand pears, for instance -- was that the hoops the customers had to jump through just to be able to open the display case were insane. And in fact over 90% of the people who ever ate one of those pears realized it wasn't worth it and took their business elsewhere. Further, three currencies is already excessive and bewildering, so making another one and binding it up in crazy exclusions when another one will work perfectly is more than a little strange. And lastly, there's maybe 200 guys in the world that think that bananas and kumquats should be completely exclusive, but we serve millions of people a day. So I guess I don't understand the point of this exercise.
BOB: You're a bananatarian aren't you.
HARRY: What?
BOB: A filthy Marx-loving bananatarian. I should have seen the signs.
HARRY: Bob, what are you....?
BOB: DIE YOU BANANATARIAN HERETIC! MAY THE LIGHT CLEANSE YOUR CORRUPTED SOUL!
BOB delivers a brutal Crusader Strike with a kumquat, felling Harry in one blow. As HARRY falls lifeless to the floor, BOB gloats momentarily, then moves to a chest in the back of the room. Opening it, he pulls out a set of Tier 1 Paladin shoulders. He begins to stroke the banana shoulders obscenely.
BOB: My precioussssssss.
CURTAIN FALLS.
