Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 11, 2017

That’s why there is Hallmark.

It’s official. I hate the new format

It’s hard to write a sympathy card when you don’t know the meaning of sympathy.

First attempt is the best, Rat.

“I’d show more sympathy, but I don’t LIKE you.”

@ARCHIEM: I’m not fond of it either. Have you noticed that they have now made it far more difficult to save a comic strip? You used to be able to simply right click “save image as”. They have disabled this function in Chrome and Firefox browsers. It still works on IE 11 but who would want to use that?

Leave it to the pros, Rat.

He’s pathetic at being sympathetic….

Truth, Rat! Also holds true for expressions of sympathy on those social networking sites, where a dozen other people have already all said the same thing….

Rat actually had a job writing sympathy cards earlier in the strip. Check out the strip from November 11, 2004. http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2004/11/11

Does anyone here know how to delete your own comment like we used to be able to do? Or is there a way to edit ayour own existing comment?

Insincerity and downright lying are two of Rat’s greatest strengths. I don’t know why he ’s having so much trouble with this. Although I suppose it could be for someone that he really sympathizes with.

“Look at it this way — better him than you.”

Won’t “Too bad” be sufficient?

xxx

I’ve written more of these, for more tragic circumstances, than I care to remember. Speak from the heart, but speak softly.

In my personal experience it’s hard to write a good greeting card period. I’ve had to try and write cards for my folks for Christmas, sympathy/get well soon, birthday, and anniversaries. Some things come easy depending on who their giving the cards to, others are real difficult to figure out what to say. And not all the ones you find in stores are even half as good as the folks who wrote them think. Most of the bad ones seem to be marginally better than the junk Rat writes while the rest could take a lesson from Rat.

ARCHIEM…I feel you.

Is it

that second one though…

How’s this for a sympathy card, " At least you aren’t dead. Yet."