Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 26, 2021

Ambition is what makes somebody be the first person in their to attend college.

Sounds like Andy Achiever achieved becoming roadkill in under 1 hour.

Andy achieved a bed in Hospital.

The iron man has just been totaled.

Is the moral of the story that drawing a successful comic strip is safer?

Andy overachieved by missing the simple things in life like, oh, his life.

Setting goals is a good idea. Moving toward those goals is also good. Being monomaniacal about them: Not so good. That Smack is Gaia’s way of telling Andy to slow down and smell the hospital odors…

Hate to be the stickler for details, but why was that car on the walking path?

It’s clear that Andy is in a rush and in training to get to his funeral, as is Jeff the Cyclist…

Now he’s training for an iron lung…

Andy Achiever needed to meet Mandy Moderations! Now he gets to meet Mary the Mortician!

I’m in no hurry to get back to school.

He should look up Caitlin Doherty’s “Ask a Mortician” on youtube

Looks like it was Andy vs Geese in frame 5.

So sad. If it had merely been a truck, he might have stood a chance.

Nothing wrong with a little “overachieving”. I earned a PhD and ran two marathons and I always had time to spend with friends or watch a sunset.

An IRONMAN in 11 hours is nothing to sneeze at, but I expect his ultimate goal would be 8 hours. I think that’s about the fastest time I recall seeing.

“Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think” applies here!

Pig you could of joined Andy and did some running . Running would be good for your lazy butt ;-)

….Frazz?

To lazy to be ambitious I let the world take care of itself.

Ryōkan, Japanese Zen poet

RIP Andy Achiever. Another statistical Covid fatality.

I’m not sure those Ironman folks are really a good example of ambition or achievers. They are more like addicts. They’re so hooked into it that that becomes their life, and they have difficulty thinking about anything else. Or so I’m told. Not anything I would touch with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole.

Thinking Andy Achiever’s death would be categorized as a Covid fatality seems to imply (or perhaps indicate) the opposite.

Just as well, Pig. From my experience, even if you managed to convince him to stop for a chat, the only conversation people like Andy have is all about “iron man marathons”.

Actually what is being shown is obsession, not ambition.

Too much physical activity is going to cause a heart attack. One of these days Andy Achiever is going to achieve that; if he’s able to run after that accident, that is.

Is this Jef’s cousin?

Ambition shouldn’t get in the way of leisure time. You need to balance your life out.

Looks like he achieved orbit… but he had to return as he had not gone through a TSA check before his flight.

Training makes those other things even more enjoyable when you rest.

Oh, yes – “I write and draw a cartoon daily that appears in hundreds of papers around the world, but I am completely untroubled by ambition.”

Someone protests too much.

Can’t think of a better way to pass the time than watching a sunset with Pig.

Ambition is better than “am bitchin’”

Ambition is fine, but not at the expense of the little things. I suspect there is a fine line between ambition and obsession.

Well, there goes that theory….

My ambition was to get by and then retire. I achieved both.

Pointless: Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man’s records are all unbreakable.

You have to have some level of ambition to survive and maintain your life. Being overly ambitious can lead to not truly enjoying that life.

Maybe before training for the ironman, train to look both ways.

Equatable to stupidity on many ocassions…..

He managed a mush-man in under half a minute.

I know this guy, and am not going to show it to him. Steph nailed the landing, as always. However, this probably would have been better as a daily strip, you only really need three panels.

Stephan could have used the Jeff the Cyclist character, but that wouldn’t have fit in the Christmas mood. Still, I’m surprised he didn’t took that jab at him.

Ambition is what will get a bunch of people to take the day after Christmas to make sandwiches, gather water, fruit, goodies, and warm clothing to feed and help the homeless. Ambition is a tool just like a hammer. You can use it to build a shelter for those who need one. . . or hit your thumb.

I’ll take Andy over Jef any day…

“Cat’s in the Cradle”

Food.

would have been funnier if the shoe had remained in the final panel, laying in front of pig or rat… or across Rat’s nose

Sometimes relaxing & enjoying a sunset can be an achievement in itself!

Probably a good idea to remove sun glasses after dark and wear reflective clothing and carry Next of Kin ID and having all your affairs in order (I bet Stephen King does). I quit running 5-miles every day in the 1980s when my lumbars gave up the ghost but not the pain.

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon, When you comin home, Andy, I don’t know when, But we’ll get together then, You know we’ll have a good time then.

“When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,

And Brutus is an honorable man.”

Antony

William Shakespere

There’s a philosophy associated with Scandinavian society called Janteloven — Norwegian for Law of Jante. It’s named after a fictional town of Jante in the book A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks by Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose. It refers to the Scandinavian trait of discouraging personal ambition or goals that might make an individual standout in his/her community.

Ambition is great! But there IS such a thing as being OVER ambitious. Or just plain obsessive. Or a fruitcake.

Philosopher Rat speaks a profundity today, for those at least who consciously are not ambitious….