Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 31, 2015

But you get to steal food when the other person’s not looking!

I don’t even like having my own booth, if the restaurant is even a bit crowded. And I’m not always particularly fond of being seated with friends.

Who knew Rat was an anti-communalist?

Well, I think we all would guess it if it came up in conversation.

I’m sure the other diners aren’t wild about having a rat at the table.

Hell is other people. Communal table? Hell squared.

I had plenty of experience with communal tables in college and beyond. I agree with Rat and WaitingMan (just above this post.)

Add me to the list of anti-communalists. Occasionally it has been forced upon me; college, banquets, etc. But I go to a restaurants to enjoy a meal, not to make conversation with strangers.

Hell is, indeed, a communal table. Where you’re only allowed to eat from spoons and forks … which are all 6-feet long. Works pretty well in heaven, but in hell…

He would hate the no-name restaurant in Boston. I liked it though, and they have a great seafood chowder! (That’s saying something, cuz I really don’t like seafood very much)

I can sympathize. The weirdest person in the room always sits at my table and wants to make small talk about the most inane things, until I want to chew off my own arm to escape. I can’t, though, because we’ve been married for 35 years now.

I ate at communal tables in the Marine Corps for four years. Didn’t bother me.

Everyone at the communal table will be texting or surfing on their cellphones, which even most young couples do now when they eat together.

Ever been in the Navy? a large family, elbow to butt, with hundreds, a little madhouse on the water.

We get visited by feral goats from time to time (the subdivision used to be a goat ranch, and not all were captured during the transition). Their communal table consists of just about anything we plant, including nopal cactus.

Hold on a minute there, Baba Looey. Every single time the strip takes place in this coffee shop, Rat sits at the counter with all the other characters. Why doesn’t he get his own table?

Explains why rat was not invited to the last supper.

Meat-eaters eating as a herd? Absurd.

“Excuse me, Can you please eat with your mouth shut?”

Shudder!

xxx

Then don’t go to Mrs. Wilkes in Savannah.

Got so upset he spilled his own coffee. Shame.

A friend of mine says hell is a communal table where no one gets anything to eat because they have to use these incredibly long utensils to access the food, whereupon they can’t get the food into their mouths. Heaven, OTOH, is the same table with the same utensils; however, everyone eats because everyone feeds someone across the table using those incredibly long utensils.

Might as well get used to it, Rat!

It’s funny reading about a goat who likes steak…..whaz up with dat???!!!! Is not this goat the same character who consoles zebra when the crocs try to eat him? Anyway, where are the crocs? Have heard from them in a while.

Isn’t that a school cafeteria table?

I thought it was a windowless room with polka music. Maybe with the table added, too.

Rat, it’s a very good thing that you’re not Norse.