Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 08, 2013

While technically impossible, Pig actually kinda has a point here.

Looks like the beginning of a time travel story; tomorrow they’ll step into a police box and cause a catastrophe, then they’ll try to fix it with a Delorean.

Rat: “No, Pig, you’re a liar.”

I’m with Pig

For some reason I’m reminded of this classic Pearls strip from 2002.

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2002/01/31#.UlOamiTB1jc

Pig is creating temporal paradox. Similarly, I must now go back in time to this Pearls strip and stop myself from writing a comment.

Just tell me where; I can take it from there.

On his way out the door to lunch, a man asked his secretary to confirm his flight to a nearby city for the next day. At lunch the man read a fortune cookie that said “You will die in an airplane accident tomorrow.” Upon returning to the office the man told his secretary to cancel his flight and rent him a car to drive instead. As the man approached his destination the next day, the plane he would have taken, flew overhead and lost a motor which plummeted to the ground and crushed the man in his car.

Dunno about that, Pig. You just might be….

Rat says ‘how and when’, but not where. So anyone that said yes, they’d like to know, would have only the knowledge to worry about dying, but they would die anyway. You can’t avoid a ‘when’ and a ‘how’ can be easily manipulated into striking you down anyway. All it would get you is a chance to say goodbye, and you would seem insane for doing it, and people would say you caused your own death by thinking it.

hay, im with pig here, id want to know so i could avoid death:P

Just make sure you are well armed and kill death first. That way you can avoid it.

Pig should read the story “The Appointment in Samarra (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham)”

@finaleHelp…

I side with Pig on this one.

Finally thought of Macbeth. The “second apparition” told him that “none of woman born/Shall harm Macbeth.” So Macbeth was afraid of no man. However, he was killed by Macduff. who was not “born” of woman, but delivered by cesarean.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote a short story about this. A scientist creates such a device and the academy goes nuts. And mobs him and kill him somehow after destroying the device. They find an envelope on the scientist with his own death date.

I wonldnt want to know when and how Id die. For one Id dread every day keading to it. I might try to avoid it and actually cause it

True, You’re off more than on.

As a certain spider would say: “Some pig!”

Where the $% did the Crocs go?

Sorry, Pig.

xxx

In the first Disc World book Terry Pratchett wrote about a psychic who read the future and knew about the big fire in AnkeMorepork and knew she was going to die so she gathered up her whole family and left the city the day before the fire. Then when the fire happened everyone escaped without a scratch but the psychic’s wagon was caught in a landslide in the mountains and she was killed. The moral of the story is that trying to avoid your own death can actually cause it.

Sadly too many people seem to have Pig’s response. If you now the exact how and when of your death then you can “escape” it. Yet knowing the exact how and when means you can’t escape it.

Imagine being told you will die at 9:30 PM on October 21, 2015 when a car hits you. You’d want to make sure you weren’t on the road or even out at that time of night to keep from getting hit by a car, right. If you’re not out you can escape death. So there you are on October 21, 2015 watching TV in you’re living room, knowing your safe when right at 9:30 PM an out of control car comes barreling through the wall, hitting you and killing you instantly.

I read a story once, though I don’t remember its name or the name of the author. A man looks into the future and sees himself as a helpless invalid, lying in bed hooked up to all kinds of medical machinery. He doesn’t want to have that happen, so he shoots himself in the head. But he doesn’t die, and he ends up a helpless invalid, lying in bed hooked up to all kinds of medical machinery…

So Pig is admitting to being an imbecile (the next lower category) or even an idiot (the lowest category).

I’m reminded of a strip Stephan will write next year.

Ngl I agree with Pig. Even if I had no ability to prevent it, I could plan accordingly.