Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 20, 2024

I’m pretty sure the harps have been replaced after Les Paul got there.

So what instruments do they play in Hell, besides the accordion?

Hopefully it means there’s Guinness in heaven…

Hey there is a lot of rocking Celtic harpists out there. You are just not listening to the right music.

“And they there’s a heaven for those who wait, some say it’s better but I say it ain’t” Billy Joel

“Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

- variously attributed to several folks in the late 17th century.

Harps do occasionally find their way into popular music. For example, in the song “Love of My Life” by Queen.

There are also misguided folks who think Heaven is one long church service. So not.

I imagine one of the greatest torments of Hell, would be having to listen to hillbilly (country and western) ‘music’ for eternity.

Hell has bagpipes and slide whistles!

The Bible itself doesn’t depict Heaven as a boring place where we sit on a cloud all day playing the harp. Neither will it be one long church service. Heaven will be more pleasing than our wildest imagination. Misrepresentations of Heaven are dangerous if they make people not want to aim to go there.

Those are old depictions they’re talking about. The afterlife has been modernized, and now they have electric harps.

There ain’t no afterlife. When you is dies, that is the end of you. But what you is made of, what cannot be created nor destroyed, is just change into another form. But you, one of the many forms of it, is no longer exists.

Hell must be full of kazoos.

Rat is a bit of a harpy.

Although I wouldn’t worry about harps in the afterlife, I actually like harp music. Some of the newer electronic harp music is pretty cool. Look up Andreas Vollenweider or The Harp Twins (they’ll give you two extra reasons to watch)

Nope, Rat, you sin because you’re a sinner.

Yes, but so many people harp, and harp on some subjects, until you get sick of it!

Me too.

I suppose a rat would prefer “weaping and wailing and gnashing of teeth” to the sounds of harps. :P

Rat just loves messing things up and he is proud to admit it.

Mark Twain anticipated this comic. Letters From The Earth, 1909.

Mark Twain wrote a short story called “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” in which everyone, on arrival, gets a harp and a pair of wings. And everyone discovers they have no use for the harp or the wings, and discards them.

I’m gonna plug the Harp Twins here…awesome sisters who play harps! Look ’em up!

Careful. Bagpipes and accordions down “there.”

To me, Rat makes a good argument as a narcissist-atheist.

Mark Twain expanded on this idea in “Letters From the Earth.” Highly reccomend.

Everybody misunderstood. Heaven has Blues Harps.

You’re ahead of most of us, Rat. You know you sin and don’t try to spray perfume on p00p to call is something else or justify it.

Jesus was kind to sinners, it was the self-righteous religious types that got the sharp side of his tongue. I believe He loved everyone, even them, but was trying to jar them out of their complacency. I was always more concerned about becoming the latter.

Iconography from the early 1600s frequently shows angelic brass ensembles with cornettos and trombones!

“Everyone wants to go to Heaven and hear the music of the Heavenly chorus!! They start wars on Earth over less noise than that!” – Mark Twain

Don’t forget Tiny Tim on the ukulele. Tiptoe Through the Tulips

Would you prefer accordions? Or is that the other place?

There’s a harp player that I follow online. She can add distort to her harp, and other effects and make it sound amazing. Name a song, she plays it. She didn’t stick with that narrow view.

Night Gallery had an episode sort of about this – Lawerence Welk for eternity for the hard rocker.

If I find myself in an afterlife where I have to listen to any music when I don’t feel like it, I’ll know that it isn’t heaven.

It’s not that I don’t like music, but I appreciate it more if I’m not forced to listen to it all the time.

Rat needs a beer in hand in the last panel.

Props to the Piano Man: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints”. Me, too.

Or, as Mark Twain said (paraphrasing), we work hard to go to a place to be with people that we wouldn’t want to be with anyway.

Will Tom Sawyer be there?

I’d rather go to Rock N Roll Heaven because the music will be awesome!

And don’t get me started on HELL-thy food.

I don’t think Harpo’s harp playing was boring.

Personally, I quite like harp music…

The harp is anything BUT boring. My wife and I both play various forms of Celtic harps, and that music is inspiring and uplifting.

My tunes be played on the harp unstrung….

She’s Leaving Home by the Beatles

Bring on the celestial kazoos!

Why is Rat harping on about this?

Indeed, people aren’t sent to hell so much as they choose not to get in tune with God.

But the music… It’s angelic.

I’ll see myself out.

My Epiphone Les Paul Classic Custom Pro also has strings.

If Rock and Roll Heaven has a helluva band, can you imagine the concerts in Hell when we get there?

I wish Rat would quit harping on that subject.

Could be worse. Could be violas.

They show a lyre, to be exact, but of course all those depictions are wrong and completely made up by the artists based on nothing but their imagination. No one has ever been to the afterlife and then come back to paint or otherwise describe it.

“Hell has all the best musicians.”

Crowley, Good Omens.

In my case it won’t matter, because I can’t hear anything anyway

I listen to Andreas Vollenweider a lot, so I am set. Well except for the whole trying to be good part.

That’s accordion to scripture,.

Hey, leave the poor harpists alone. They have it bad enough already, toting those huge things everywhere and then always having to tune every darn string once they get there.

One of many good reasons to sin.

Mozart, in his day, was condemned by some for being too radical, so…

Sorry Rat but if your playing the Harp for eternity you went to the bad place

Could be worse. You could spend eternity at the opera.

There’s a young lovely playing one on YouTube in a field where a curious deer walks in her direction - it’s a wonder how Y-Ts algorithm translated my love of camping, forests, and music to that conclusion.

People love Bach, but the angels play Mozart on their own time.

Sigh. Harpists in the comics just can’t catch a break lately.

Rat & Pig need to go on YouTube and search “Harp Twins”……..

I always heard heaven also had choirs of angels.

Rat and Mark Twain (“Letters from the Earth”)

Hey guys, forget it, there’s no heaven and no harps. Just silence, deadly silence.

“You see, the thing about heaven is that heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in heaven. Like, well, singing, talking to God, watering pot plants.”

Mark Twain said it first in “Letters From the Earth.”

Yeah, but if you go to Hell it’s all bag pipes.

Heaven would be where the harpist gets to spend time playing than moving the harp and retuning.

Welcome to Heaven — here’s your harp.

Welcome to Hell — here are your bagpipes!

Yes, heaven has harps. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard In A Godda Da Vida on the harp.

This was very funny -LOLOL - Thanks Stephan ♥♥

1 could tolerate the harp if Harpo Marx is playing it

There’s nothing after folks. Live this life for all its worth.

Heh… they’ve obviously never heard my grandma play her hot jazz harp. Ian Fleming even wrote about her in his autobiography.

How High the Moon?