Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 25, 2024

Next time, bring female companionship.

Rat is right. But then, he always is.

The right questions include “Where’s the bathroom” and “What’s the floor doing up here.”

Rat’s bringing ‘boos’ in addition to booze.

Rat didn’t say anything about providing answers. He’s just going to lift the spirits off the table.

Having Rat as a friend would be enough to get anyone down.

The answer is BACON!

Technically speaking, alcohol is a solution; but not the type of solution that most people are looking for.

To booze or not to booze. THAT is the question.

Alcohol: the source of and the answer to all of life’s problems.

Should have brought chocolate, Rat.

“Lifting your spirits” indeed.

Well ya see Goat. There ain’t no solutions to every problems. Which is why one is takes one of these solutions.

Technically, alcohol IS a solution.

Make it Sangria and your on !

Only a temporary respite, problems will still be there!

If drinking isn’t the answer, I don’t want to know the question.

Chemically speaking, alcohol is a solution…

Rat is trying for Goat? This is certainly rare.

At least Rat didn’t bring him a steaming pot of Uncle Finnegan New Guinea stew. Nomnomnom.

Rat as a cheer-up squad? Calling Dr. Kevorkian…

Yeah, quality time with a friend. I think I’ll hang out with a friend instead, like Pig. He’s a sweet and gentle soul.

Goat, not to be nosy, but since when is Rat your friend?

Booze is the answer. …. (2 hours later) …. what was the question, again?

Since I’ve retired, I haven’t felt the need for booze.

Where’s the pompoms?

I’m not advocating that everybody should drink. It just worked for me. – Jackie Gleason

Quality over quantity. One nice chocolate stout beats four Buds or Natural Lites. And one Makers Mark or Crown Royal over any number of Jim Beams.

As for gin I don’t think it matters; it’s all awful.

Since retiring in January 2023 I have very little desire or need to drink. Not a conscience decision, it just happened naturally

Drinking doesn’t help problems, but it makes them vanish for a while before they reappear in a hangover.

“Beer – the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems” – HS

If Rat were here to lift my spirits, I’d ensure my liquor cabinet was securely locked!

This is what happens when Pastis is living in the drinks cabinet.

I’m so old I need a walker. Johnnie Walker.

Face. Palm.

If beer, fame and himself didn’t exist, Rat would hate everything. Rat is cynical, selfish, vain, quick to anger and prone to bouts of violence. Without Pig, the world would have given up on him long ago. He sometimes writes children’s books. That is how his creator defines Rat

Rat has a point and some days more than others.

Remember the uproar over Ozzy Osbourne’s “Suicide Solution” (wine is fine, but whiskey’s quicker. Suicide is slow with liquor. Take a bottle, drown your sorrows. Then it floods away tomorrows.) Ozzy stated the song was actually anti-suicide, contrary to claims that the song promoted suicide and led directly to the death of a 19-year old in 1984.

Goat, let me introduce Rat. It’s clear you have never met before.

Goat is perfectly capable of lifting the spirits you’re bringing him all by himself.

As usual like all rats this rats got all the wrong answers!

Drinking will never drown your sorrows. It ends up by irritating them.

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

I thought goat is the smart one, yet he thought Rat was going to solve his problem.

The answer is GIN!

I just knew there was a catch!…(but I’m still ok with Rat’s solution!)

What’s going on with Goat? Earlier this week we had back-to-back strips where he was placed in a role that would have gone to Rat nine times out of ten; given how different their personalities are, that was by itself cause for concern (or would have been if these were real people instead of cartoon characters, anyway).

Yesterday he comes out of nowhere and asks if Rat has anything in his liquor cabinet, and when he thinks Rat has a French liqueur, he immediately says “Oh, great”—implying he’s desperate for a drink.

Today Rat’s offering him booze to try to alleviate Goat’s depression, and Goat says he doesn’t think that’s the answer (so I guess he came to his senses after yesterday’s moment of weakness) but he does acknowledge that he’s going through some sort of crisis.

Now maybe reliving Farley’s death the last few weeks has me looking for hidden depths in the comics where there aren’t any to be found, but I can’t help wondering if we’re building up to some sort of watershed moment in Goat’s character.

Well, then pornhub it is.

if you can’t find Shirley Temple, will Jane Withers do?

Where was Rat holding the bottle in the first two panels? In the third and fourth panels you can clearly see that it’s not much smaller than his torso. But in the first two panels, we’re looking at a kind of three-quarter-profile view and there’s no indication that he’s got it behind his back or on his right side. Holding it in such a way that we wouldn’t be able to see it at all from that angle would not be easy, and it should be even harder as we see his left arm hanging freely at his side. That means he’s holding the bottle in his right hand alone, though we can see in the final two panels that he really needs both hands to hold it securely. It also means he probably isn’t holding it at shoulder height, with his right arm extended straight out. This would be the simplest way to make the bottle invisible from our angle, but would require him to use his left arm as a counterweight to maintain his balance.

And those are just the problems with imagining how Rat could hide the bottle from us. If you want to assume that Goat can’t see it either, which would be a reasonable conclusion based on his word bubble in the second panel, it would be nearly impossible for him to hold the bottle.

I think the answer is 42. But it will take a special program to find out the right questions, that is if some bureaucrats don’t erase the program.

Isn’t that why they call booze “spirits”?? Cuz it lifts up our spirits??…(lol!)

Don’t take drugs and stay in school, kids.

Isn’t it kinda funny how we know that, whenever there’s a bottle with XXX’s on it, it’s booze? And what if it were skulls instead? Poison? Or really really strong booze? Or are those the same thing? eek.

Literally speaking, alcohol is a solution.