Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 19, 2020

Stephan should introduce an Ox character.

Comparing this strip to recent ones, I have to conclude that Rat has more than one personality. I wonder if any of them are likable . . .

No doubt this year has been spectacular . Not pretty but spectacular yes .

More like Year of the Bat if the virus originated as they think.

Around here, some would call it the year of the RIOT. Though the truth is, there was very little rioting and mostly just demonstrations.

I move we repeat it and this time GET IT CORRECT (I hate that I cannot use “right” to mean that, because the wrong-wing extremists have stolen the word. Damn them each and every one!)

I just looked it up. 2021 will be the year of the ox, but 2022 will be the year of the tiger. The water tiger, to be precise. So the real question is, HOW DID THEY KNOW ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?!

We could use a “Year of the Croc”.

I’d rather have “Year of the Skunk,” myself.

People forget that Chinese New Year doesn’t coincide with our New Year. So unfortunately the Year of the Rat doesn’t end until February 12.

This gag looks familiar.

No Groundhog Day (AS in the movie) please!

You mean the Chinese calendar year of the harbinger of the plague, eh, Rat?

For my wife and me, it HAS been spectacular. It’s the year we got married and conceived a baby girl.

Interesting coincidence: I have in my life eaten animals for all six of the Chinese zodiac signs that correspond to odd-numbered years (or animals related to them), and would not even consider eating any of the other six.

Life’s path is not always straight from point to point …. Croc Power !

Spectacular is not the word I would use for this year.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first, but what shall the middleth be?

Conveniently, he’s a RAT, but it doesn’t mean it’s been a good year…maybe next year!

I would have thought, that in the Year of the Rat, that cats would be revered as gods. Oh wait, they already are.

("Inside Story, The New Yorker12/7/20) From the memoirs of Henry Adams, great grandson of John: “The credit of the Government was tottering,” he warned. Adams feared that the Constitution . . .had licensed a “sectional power within the Government,” which had now “raised its hand to destroy the Government.” The corruption of the outgoing Buchanan Administration seemed to him grotesque: “The frauds discovered . . . had begun to assume a vague and astonishing size,” while “public confidence and courage were shattered.” Looking back on the period, in 1907, Adams filled out the picture: the secessionists were “unbalanced in mind,” “fit for medical treatment, like other victims of hallucinations,” “haunted by suspicion,” and prone to “violent morbid excitement.” SOUND FAMILIAR?

When will it be the Year of the Pig?

Does this mean we can blame everything that happened this year on Rat?

Astrology is stupid.

If we were able to eat out I would have known this much earlier…This is my year!. First thing my wife said when she found out her year was a snake, and mine a rat, “Snakes eat rats, you know.” I didn’t know whether to be excited or scared.

We’ve just been through four years of the rat.

Rattos in my refer!!dang

Year of the Plague Rat.

Next up: Year of the Ox. Hopefully it will be a news year as slow as the ox.

104th comment!

I’m with Pig

The Google Chinese to English translator says “The year of the D.T.s”

We don’t need to repeat this year. Booooooo Coronavirus!

Turning the page and adding a 1 to 2020 isn’t going to change the narrative were in.

2032 is our next ‘year of the rat’, and so for you, Rat, and brother who was also born in a previous one, here’s hoping that will be better. (My brother’s best ‘year of the rat’ would have to have been 2008; that was the year he met the woman he is still married to.) Happy Saturday before Christmas my friends.

It’s been a year of the Rats posterior!!!

Rat must be drunk

I agree with the pig.

2020 has been so bad, even Donald J. Trump doesn’t want to repeat it.

All that beer he’s imbibed over the years has finally rotted Rat’s brain! Pig’s reaction was perfect!

2020 sucks, Big Time….

Curse you, covid

this explains a lot

how about year of the pig?