Out of curiosity, I Googled “things Google cannot help you with” and ended up with no results. Apparently, one of the things Google cannot help you with is a list of things Google cannot help you with. Either that, or the giant search engine company is overly confident. After all, the alternative search they suggested was “things Google can help you with.” Strangely enough, that also provided no results. I guess it’s time to start using Bing…
I can think of a few words that apply to today’s Pearls Before Swine: Inscrutable (incapable of being investigated, analyzed or scrutinized); Confusing (causing or tending to cause confusion); Surreal (having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream); Compelling (requiring acute admiration, attention or respect); and my personal favorite, Bizarre (markedly unusual in appearance, style or general character, and often involving incongruous or unexpected elements). I know Halloween is just around the corner, but I suspect that has nothing to do with the strange, costume-related antics that dominate this strip.
This isn’t the first time someone has replaced the saccharine caption in The Family Circus with something more sinister, but it still made me laugh. I’m a sucker for inappropriate captions, though, my favorite being the unintentional mix-up at the Dayton Daily News, in which The Far Side featured a young snake remarking to his parents, “Lucky thing I learned to make peanut butter sandwiches or we woulda starved to death by now” while Dennis the Menace showed everyone’s favorite scamp walking past his mother and muttering, “Oh, brother!…Not hamsters again!”
I am a nerd when it comes to the Constitution. I admire its simplicity (“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…”) while also marveling at the sheer level of minutiae involved in establishing the three branches of government. It sometimes seems as if the document contains more run-on sentences than a William Faulkner novel, and it indulges in more semicolons than a runaway grammar worksheet. But as far as I recall, it contains no guaranteed access to cheese, no protections against the plague and no clauses related to The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
While objectification of women is nothing new, today’s Pearls Before Swine brings the practice into sharp relief. I’m not bothered by Rat’s plan to bring a scantily clad woman into the forest with him, but I am put off by the words he uses to describe her. He doesn’t refer to “my friend, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader” or “my companion, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader” or even “my date, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.” Instead, he uses the phrase, “my Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.” I didn’t know women were available for purchase the same way iPhones, Xboxes and kegs of beer are available for purchase, but in Rat’s world, apparently they are. (On a purely grammatical note, I feel compelled to mention that this woman should be referred to as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, since she is almost certainly cheering for the entire team and not an individual player.)
There’s not much going on visually in this strip – two animals sitting at a table talking cynical philosophy is all – but the language is so evocative that it paints a vivid picture in my head. Unfortunately, that picture is of an angry fat man rolling out of bed, grabbing a sledgehammer and yelling, “die, crackers, die!” On the other hand, the picture is pretty funny.
Despite its shocking punchline, today’s Pearls Before Swine owes at least as much to its build-up as it does to its penultimate panel. I’m especially fond of the small details that show just how dysfunctional this marriage of over-sized mammals has become. Some panels show Elly Elephant straining to perform delicate tasks with her enormous feet, like cutting fruit or typing. But what really gets me is Henry Hippo’s peace offering of a single corn chip. Given that his bag was big enough to suffocate a hippopotamus, he could could have at least offered his wife a handful of chips.
