Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 02, 2015

For a good man, very few people attended Fred’s funeral;.

My thoughts utilizing the song exactly.

The boy grew up and graduated in the time that texting has been around?

Tim Hawkins: “And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, and some other poetic…..stuff.” His abbreviated version of the song, which as I recall has the lyric “My son got mad because I worked all the time, he grew up to be a jerk, just like me.”

The dangers of technology addiction…

“Fred was a complete waste of life. Have a good day, folks.”

That’s exactly where my mind went as soon as I read the strip!

Sadly Rat has made the perfect commentary on the cellphone/smartphone age. Though he did have one fatal flaw in his story, should have shown that the driver of the bus was too busy texting to see the idiot texting as he walked right out in front of the bus. I know laws are being enacted against texting while driving, but deaths caused by texting while driving are still occurring. And it would have been the utter irony of this idiots life to be killed while texting by a DWT.

Ah, such a “fond” memory. Riding in a car down the street and seeing a couple of kids walking along side by side busy texting. They’d both occasionally glance over at the other kid then furiously start texting. Just by the actions you could tell they were texting each other. And all I could think at the time was how sad it was that they were right there and they couldn’t even take the time to talk to each other, they had to text. That must be close to six to eight years now. In the time since I’ve watched one of my sisters practically make her smartphone a body part, so busy spending time texting and doing whatever with it. I’m surprised she gets any sleep because I’ve had her by sleeping on the couch at night only to wake up every few minutes to check her texts and make replies. It’s not that important.

Does that mean his son is gonna get killed by a bus too?

You just know what the kid is texting – Fred is Dead. That’s what I said. Freddie’s Dead

Science guys are saying that humanity is rapidly evolving in response to the texting addiction. Not necessarily for the better, either.—Still no smartphone, and proud of it!

By Willy Dingo, you’re right! I totally missed that. Thanks.

Fred was a slave to his fart’s moan. (It’s a spoonerism.)

Very unaccustomed to Rat playing the role of Aesop.

I work in a bookstore. About one in four of customers who ask for a specific book do so by saying “Do you have this?” while pointing a phone screen more or less in my general direction. I don’t want to take the phone from their hand… and I’m not sure they want me to. It’s usually a small image of a book cover, too small to read unless their hand is steady and at the right distance from my face. If it were some book with a difficult to pronounce title (“Csardsh” for example) I’d at least understand reluctance to speak. But it is almost always “To Kill a Mockingbird” or some other plain English name. I guess what I do is rude at some level, but I just say “Please tell me the name of the book.” Sometimes they look at me like I’ve just sprouted a third eye, and I say that I can’t read the small words onscreen. So far, no one has voiced offense at my demand that they speak to me. Whole other story is those who talk on the phone during the entire encounter from looking for the book to paying for it!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:The Sheep Look Up is a science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, first published in 1972. The novel’s setting is decidedly dystopian; the book deals with the deterioration of the environment in the United States. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972.

For me it was work when the kids were small. Missed the whole thing. Making up for it now with the grandkids.

why should i quit smoking…tomorrow i might get hit by a bus…

Don’t mention that song unless you want to see this grown man cry.

Went out to an upscale restaurant last night and couldn’t help but notice that most of the tables had one or more adults playing on their phones thus avoiding conversation with their tablemates.

Getting hit by a bus while texting…..another good way to clean up the gene pool.

A sobering song. But it strikes me that the opposite isn’t necessarily that great either. Most of life ends up as a balancing act.

My thought exactly!

@Blaziker 348thank you EVER so much, none of us were sharp enough to catch that… (subtle sarcasm alert lol)

Cat’s in the Cradle was re-done by Ugly Kid Joe in 1992. Although, to be fair, if I had a kid named Ugly Kid Joe, I wouldn’t want to be around him, either.

cats in the cradle

I went there too but in my mind I always hear Weird Al’s version. Today especially, after reading Get Fuzzy and Satch saying “Cat’s in the kitchen.”

I love how Rat gets ink all over his face when he writes, just like Charlie Brown.

“And as I hung up the phone it occurred to meHe’d grown up just like meMy boy was just like me”

My uncle Norbert stopped smoking. He went around annoying all the other smokers with his continual, “I quit smoking. You can do it too!” They had the last laugh when he got run over by a Chesterfield cigarette truck.

So true!

great. now while we’re all thinking about harry chapin listen to some of the other songs he wrote. and throw a few cans into a feed the poor box. food pantry, etc. honor the guy who founded world hunger year

I was supposed to be trained on a forklift for my job, but I crashed it. It was a stand-up lift where you accelerate with one hand and steer with the other, and I got mixed up which hand does what. They hired my replacement, and they did certify him on the forklift. Before they let me go, I saw him driving and texting on the lift. Meanwhile, just about everyone texts as they walk down the warehouse along the forklift routes. I suppose some day they will meet, but I am not around to see it.

Parents who pay no attention to their kids don’t deserve to be parents.There’s a lot to be said for condoms and birth control. xxx

Reminds me of the Harry Chapin song, "Cats in the “Cradle”.

> There’s a lot to be said for condoms and birth control.yepper #3, regardless of the line before.

my dad can thumb his phone faster than your dad!my dad can thumb his phone and drive the bus at the same timemy dad can thumb his phone and cross the street – whopsguess he can’t.BUT – i can thumb my phone faster than my dad can.

Kind of reminds me of Harry Chapin’s “Cats Cradle”.

Good call.

A woman in Dallas was recently killed because she crossed the street without looking up from her phone.

So true. Sad, but so true.

The story of every age really

Is he using the same model phone the whole time? Wow, talk about fictional fantasy…