Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for July 04, 2020

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    BE THIS GUY  over 4 years ago

    Put a dust jacket from a Bill O’Reilly book on it if you’re embarrassed to be seen with it.

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    Sherlock Watson  over 4 years ago

    “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” —Shakespeare

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    wiatr  over 4 years ago

    I have to admit that poetry and I just don’t get along but this one makes some sense.

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    Concretionist  over 4 years ago

    Among the earliest translated clay tablets is a screed complaining that society is going to the dogs, nobody respects the old ways, and the kids are totally out of control.

    Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard.

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    DennisinSeattle  over 4 years ago

    Yeats’ vision has come true several times to different parts of the world in the past century.

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    darkwingdave  over 4 years ago

    I remember that line from a Spenser novel by Robert Parker.

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    Caldonia  over 4 years ago

    Misery Before Swine

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    gopher gofer  over 4 years ago

    next he can read a novel by chinua achebe, things fall apart

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    robnvon Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Surely the Second Coming is near at hand….

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    Gent  over 4 years ago

    How’d Yeats know about the autonomous anarchy zones?

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    hitmouse  over 4 years ago

    This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but with a whimper. T S Eliot – The Hollow Men.

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    RohanDemon  over 4 years ago

    Sounds more like a horoscope

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    David Wolfson Premium Member over 4 years ago

    You want poetry that’s relevant to today, read poetry that’s being written today.

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    Breadboard  over 4 years ago

    Dam the Poetry ! Full speed ahead ! Fire up the grill and start burning Burgers and Dogs tis the 4th don’t you know. Happy 4th of July ! … Croc Power !

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    Little Caesar  over 4 years ago

    “T’was brilling…….”

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    walstib Premium Member over 4 years ago

    The only poetry I’ve unconsciously memorized is old rock song lyrics and that one about the man from Nantucket.

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    Aviatrexx Premium Member over 4 years ago

    For an artist who can pull off a humorous, yet timely, thoughtful, and erudite strip like this, why does Pastis resort to so many gags based on third-grade puns?

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    Ignatz Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Dammit, Pastis, I just wasted time trying to figure out a pun using “Yeats” and there wasn’t one.

    “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” – Shakespeare

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    Markov Da Robot  over 4 years ago

    WEAR MASKS, YOU TWO

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    Ellis97  over 4 years ago

    That’s real deep, Goat.

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    Thomas R. Williams  over 4 years ago

    All manner of rough beasts slouching towards a Bethlehem of the mind. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Coney_Island_of_the_Mind

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    Reader  over 4 years ago

    Unless anarchy is the goal….

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    Ralph Newbill  over 4 years ago

    Nothing changes; it was true of Athens, it was true of Rome, and so it goes…

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    Keno21  over 4 years ago

    The world has been ending for, like, ever. We’ll be fine, folks.

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    vics_machine Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003 (Who knew the U.S. had a Poet Laureate?):

    “The Blue”

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9a/04/12/9a0412efe36d13ec52d098a552815523.jpg

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    VICTOR PROULX  over 4 years ago

    “The Second Coming,” those lines have come to me too, of late.

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    Radish...   over 4 years ago

    If you can keep your head while everyone else is losing theirs, you’ll be a Rat.

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    Olddog1  over 4 years ago

    “The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” It seems that we are hearing a lot from the worst.

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    Zebrastripes  over 4 years ago

    We, too, shall overcome….

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    Agapostemon  over 4 years ago

    For those who think they don’t like poetry, try Billy Collins.

    Introduction to Poetry

    By Billy Collins

    I ask them to take a poem

    and hold it up to the light

    like a color slide

    or press an ear against its hive.

    I say drop a mouse into a poem

    and watch him probe his way out,

    or walk inside the poem’s room

    and feel the walls for a light switch.

    I want them to waterski

    across the surface of a poem

    waving at the author’s name on the shore.

    But all they want to do

    is tie the poem to a chair with rope

    and torture a confession out of it.

    They begin beating it with a hose

    to find out what it really means.

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    Packratjohn Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Care for us! True, indeed !

    They ne’er cared for us yet; suffer us to famish and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us.

    - Coriolanus

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    kcsch  over 4 years ago

    “I saw Tom Jefferson drop his copy of the Declaration of Independence and when he went to pick it up, his pants split…Oh my God! ROFLMAO” – Alexander Hamilton

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    LeonStauffer  over 4 years ago

    I’ve been quoting that to myself a lot lately.

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    zeexenon  over 4 years ago

    I like Percy Bysshe Shelley, myself, but his Frankenstein inventing wife even more.

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    DCBakerEsq  over 4 years ago

    #VoteAnarchy2020 Use the mail-in ballot.

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    wirepunchr  over 4 years ago

    There once was a lady of Nantucket……. Oh never mind.

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    everett_r0  over 4 years ago

    The recurring prophecy of every seventh generation that always begins but is never quite fulfilled…

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    marilynnbyerly  over 4 years ago

    TS Eliot’s poetry is in the same vein.

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    saintian  over 4 years ago

    There is nothing new in this world, just history you don’t know.

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    Lou  over 4 years ago

    I couldn’t quote you no Dickens, Shelley or Keats‘Cause it’s all been said before

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    Clare Kelm Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Your 9th grade English teacher loves it when you reach out to your fans with real poetry.

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    Otis Rufus Driftwood  over 4 years ago

    The best poetry is good for any occasion. Back in April, I reflected on the opening line of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’: ‘April is the cruelest month’. We’re now into our fourth cruel month. In the last panel, we see Rat developing an appreciation for poetry.

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    Lou  over 4 years ago

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,And towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

    Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

    In all my dreams before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams, you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

    Wilfred Owen

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    willie_mctell  over 4 years ago

    Yeats, Eliot, and Auden—the best part of high school English. “What rough beast…”

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    Mlcorrad Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Thank you for this, Stephan Pastis!

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    NWdryad  over 4 years ago

    Hey Rat, ever read Dante?

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    WCraft Premium Member over 4 years ago

    “And they will hate one another and provoke one another to fight. And the despised will rule over the honorable, and the unworthy will raise themselves over the illustrious.And many will be delivered to the few …and the impious will exalt themselves over the brave. The wise will be silent, and the foolish will speak.”

    A chilling prophecy from the Apocrypha – part of the Catholic Bible. How is that for “poetry?”

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    codedaddy  over 4 years ago

    I visit the rat and pig for my daily dose of humor. Can we please return to it?

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    delennwen  over 4 years ago

    And beautifully quoted by one of my favorite characters, G’Kar, on Babylon 5. Even hundreds of years later, things are still the same.

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    rwh2  over 4 years ago

    Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice. / From what I’ve tasted of desire /I hold with those who favor fire. /But if it had to perish twice, /I think I know enough of hate /To say that for destruction ice /Is also great / And would suffice. // “Fire and Ice” — Robert Frost

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    Johnny Q Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Some poems feel TOO relevant…

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    Sisyphos  over 4 years ago

    Awesome stuff, ehh, Rat?!

    How did that mnemonic go? “Bryon, Kelly, and Sheets”? Meh. T.S., Eliot.

    Tenser, said the Tensor.

    Tension, apprehension,

    And dissension have begun.

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    PuppyPapa  over 4 years ago

    I met a traveller from an antique land

    Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

    Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

    And on the pedestal these words appear:

    ’My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

    The lone and level sands stretch far away."

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    asrialfeeple  over 4 years ago

    There is nothing new under the sun.

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    praesodynium  over 4 years ago

    Aye, the falconer should get a new falcon and in the meantime get the falcon’s hearing tested, lest it come to a bad end, or something. A relatable lesson for our time indeed. /s

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    flyingfysh Premium Member over 4 years ago

    Shakespeare didn’t say it, Yeats did. The whole thing can be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

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    j.l.farmer  over 4 years ago

    an hour ago.

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    Call me Ishmael  over 4 years ago

    “The best lose all conviction”/ Yeats’ poem is a sad depiction/ of the state of this nation/ on this celebration/ of our fumbled founding fiction. (i.e. “all men are created equal”)

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    JamesEdwinPendergast  over 4 years ago

    How wonderful to encounter a quotation from Yeats’s “The Second Coming” in my favorite comic strip!

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    jtt  over 4 years ago

    Somehow, “The Second Coming” seems entirely apropos.

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    Quabaculta  over 4 years ago

    a little dated but same sentiment, end of the world. “Two thousand zero zero party’s over, oops, out of time. Tonight I’m going to party like it’s Nineteen ninety nine.” Prince, or the Artist once known as Prince, or the Glyph. Who cares, some of my favorite ’90’s music are his.

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    John Jorgensen  over 4 years ago

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are filled with passionate intensity.

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    ibbysaeed123  almost 3 years ago

    deep

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