Brevity by Dan Thompson for February 20, 2016

Someone let Pastis loose on this strip?

Baslim… et all…Well… I was going to add…“Not chuckling…Just chuck it.”

But it won’t do…All of Dan’s fit into the sound form“CH**K L**T”

It’s harder than we thought!

PS…. As someone else posted here, more or less, awhile back….(Was it you, jreckard?)Stephan Pastis is indeed a brilliant cartoonist and I, too, love his creative use of words….But…. PLEASE stop crediting him with every bit of wordplay someone else writes.Pearls Before Swine didn’t even exist until 2003.Puns existed in Roman times….Shakespeare made them… early cartoons abound in them…For forty years, in fact, Frank and Ernest has been featuring puns so bad not even I would steal them….It’s insulting to other cartoonists and humorists to seem to credit Pastis with inspiring or even doing their work for them….punning is an art…. (well, I like to think so… cough cough…) And besides…. though I hate to admit it….I myself was getting booed for making puns long before Stephan Pastis was born.

Susan,Yup, that was me. And I think you seconded it then as well.

But Mr Thompson’s wit for today is something to chuckle at.

long before Stephan Pastis was born.And after? ; )

Dear God, must we?

I harlequin stand it

Do they have cocoa-flavored gum?? I’m not a gum chewer. Maybe that’s why I’ve never been in a tawdry romance novel.

@SusanSunshineI do admire your puns and other comments, and I always look forward to them, but I think you’re missing the point here. Nobody is “crediting” Pastis with anything, merely making lighthearted comments involving a well-known bit of current pop culture. (Then again, what do I know, I bought all of my puns at Julius Caesar’s garage sale……..)

PerkycatBut have you been in a tawdry romance?

Oh, oh! Now Dan is suffering from Pastisitis! It’s spreading like wild fire! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! We’re all gonna die!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

BOOO!!!…do it again!

jreckard, Baslim…good job!I tried, but I had to chuck a lot of ‘em.(that doesn’t quite work, but oh well…)GodfreyD… I understand the intention…and if you know me, you know I’m pretty thick-skinned, as you become after a life time of having eyes rolled at you.

But think about who reads it, and the actual result. Pastis would perhaps be flattered…. though maybe not.,, but he famously doesn’t read comments on this site, his or anybody’s.

But Dan does,I know how I’d feel, if I’d just crafted a whole paragraph of puns, whether it took me 5 minutes or an hour (though for me, the latter would be rare, cos I don’t give it that much time)….and somebody said “Did someone let Pastis loose on your comment?” And now 3 or 4 more people have chimed in agreeing.Nobody means anything by it, I know, so I’m not putting them down… I’m just speaking from inside the head of someone who gets those remarks all the time, cos I do..

To me, it’s like someone saying I didn’t know how to write that stuff till Stephan Pastis came along.

Or I’m imitating him, or even copying something he said.I just don’t think it’s very flattering to Dan, or to any cartoonist who gets those comments every time he makes a good pun.Saying Pastis must have written it is meant to be flattery, I’m sure… but not every author takes it that way.

@SusanSunshineI hope I haven’t caused (or contributed towards….) you being thick-skinned because I would NEVER roll my eyes at you. I have a high respect for you and I would hope that you would have at least a small respect for me. But to be clear: I think when at least SOME people make these “Pastis” comments they are giving at BEST a left-handed compliment to Pastis (while not at all denigrating the cartoonist in question). (What the other people are doing is beyond the scope of this comment…..) Some people really groan at excessive puns or excessive alliteration. Then again, what do I know. I bought what passes for my common sense at Nero’s garage sale…….

@SusanSunshineI honestly hope that I haven’t offended you. I would hate to think that I had. It’s just that to my (rather simple-minded, I KNOW) mind, it felt to me at least that you were “picking on” the people making the Pastis posts. And in this currently crazy election season (what else is new……), I seem to have a childish tendency to defend the underdog no matter where he is found ………Then again, what do I know. I lost interest in making jokes about old tired dead Romans…..