Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for June 11, 2014

Rat, that stringy stuff on the wall may be a web, but…

There is a disorder (forgot its name) that rat has. Where symptoms will appear because you think you have them when reading possible signs.

Ex:-you read eating strawberries have a chance of a really bad rash…you’ll cause it by thinking you have it

Anyone going to heroes com in Charlotte, nc next week. Original artwork never before seen will be on display before they are auctioned off of last week Bill Watterson’s arc with pearls.

Also there will be a panel discussing it. No word of Pastis or Watterson will attend

Don’t complain, Rat; you give everyone around you pains in various body parts just by being alive.

The way the wall is colored, it makes me think there’s a hidden message in the mortar pattern. P…I…R…PA?…EL?…

That was a Knee Jerk response, Rat.

Thought Pastor Porcupine’s acupuncture treatment yesterday would have heped.

Bad case of the kneeasles, for sure!

Lol! So true. I just researched my shoulder pain and have decided that I need a will and fast.

The net might give you information overload but at least you don’t need to buy a newspaper to get the comics!

I thought Rat wasn’t afraid of death. he never seemed to mind going to hell in the first place

Borders on Munchausen….

Back in Pre-Internet days (the Dark Ages) you had to get your strange diseases from the Reader’s Digest: “I Am Joe’s Spleen”, “I Am Jane’s Ovaries”, etc.

Back in pre-internet days when I was taking a class in “Health,” I contracted every disease and developed every condition there was except v. d. Woulda gotten that if I coulda.

To me, Rat is a pain in the neck…others have a lower opinion of him!

Common wisdom is that in only takes 3-4 google searches of any symptom before you can prove you have cancer.

Let me guess… Wikipedia?

xxx

WebMD.

Calm down Rat, that was just a porn site….

No it wasn’t, there were just fewer claims before the net. Folks listened to TV doctors or looked things up in books, or heard about it from someone else and suddenly they had all the symptoms. Heck it’s been a sitcom classic since the ‘50s and a cartoon classic sense at least the ’40s. Used to be a common plot device to have someone looking things up in medical journals or encyclopedias and ever so slowly convincing themselves there was something mortally wrong with them. The web’s just made it even easier to find out about these things. Don’t have to go and pull out the volume M encyclopedia, look at an article that says see also X, Y, Z, and then go pull out the Volume A, Volume J-K, and Volume So-SZ to look each up, now it’s often just click a link and go there instantly.

“I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got.”

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat.

Relax, Rat. Half of what you read on the internet is just plain wrong. The other half is suspect. And too many statistics are just made up [hint]….

One time my dad tried a concoction that’s good for your health, and there was a five page essay online proclaiming all of its benefits.

@Howiewell done; nice catch!

I once thought I had a fatal disease. And it would have been… if I’d been a rosebush.