Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 16, 2019

I don’t know what they’re tocking about.

C’mon. Rat, that was a good one. Took you by surprise, didn’t it?

I’m surprised Rat didn’t say “run out on your life”. This is a career?

Gee, Rat, you’ll be unemployed then.

You need to get ticked to tock well.

That rather difficult clock modification is performed by an old ex German army officer: Ve haf ways of making you tock!"

Stephen, that pun is PASTIS “sell by” date! ;P

I bought my dog a collar that promised to “kills fleas and ticks for up to six months.” It killed fleas, all right, but the six months of ticking practically drove my dog insane…

Uh oh. He’s on a roll.

Hey, guys! Ever notice that Mr. Pastis’ name is Stephan?

Impress your friends: the practice of including or mimicking a once-useful but now obsolete feature because people expect it is called a “skeuomorph”. Examples include the floppy disc symbol that most computer programs use to denote “save file”, and decorative lightbulbs in the shape of candle flames.

Easy enough to get Rat ticked off.

Not a joke…. or it wasn’t meant to be…

so I bought an electric alarm clock, because the ticking on my wind-up one was keeping me awake.

I discovered that a very loud tick (and tock, I guess) had been added to the design…

I took it to a clock repair person…

who told me the sound wasn’t made by any moving parts, and couldn’t be stopped.

It was an electronic noise, added for the supposed comfort of anyone (or any pig) disquieted by a perfectly silent clock.

Tic Croc , Tic Croc ……. Croc Power !

That was actually pretty funny.

I actually had a digital alarm clock that tick-tocked in college. It was so loud, I brought it back within a week.

Tick Tock.

Tock? It’s ONLY tock!

… so that’s why poor people are ticked off….

Rat is all tock, I don’t think he is really ticked off.

Go for the premier version – get the hourly chimes!

tock =talk Not the greatest word play

I knew a guy that had a facial tick but he never tocked.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow’s play on words…

Rat seems tick-ed off.

I can see it now. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking are in heaven having a round cloud discussion about how their theories relate to time. But they’re having a problem because they can’t agree on the tocking points.

TOCK is cheap…but TIC is trending….

Beautiful. Thanks.

pig aint so stupid, if he can use the word ‘apparently’ so easily

Careful, Rat, he makes a living drawing you guys on a daily basis

when buying chinese cookware, be careful where you wok …

Still one of my all-time favorite strips! All of this tocking of ticks makes my skin itch!

My Father in Law had something like 3 of the Baby Ben alarm clocks and 3 of the Big Ben’s!!! He claimed he needed all of them to wake up in the morning, hell the ticking would have kept ME awake!! I feel sorry for my Mother in Law.

“Ve haff vays of makink zu talk!”

On days like today, I’m with Rat.

Just get a metronome and set it to your REM brain pattern the Sleep Testing doctors provide. Yes, this is not an example of Occam’s Razor.

I think I’ve got a new catch phrase: “tock is cheap.” Thanks, Stephan!

Tock him up! Tock him up!

I see a couple of people quoting variations on the punchline, “We have ways of making you tock,” without putting forth the effort to repeat the joke behind the punchline (without which the line has no meaning). So, to rectify those omissions:

An American POW in WWII is being interrogated by the Germans, but refuses to cooperate. In attempting to break him, the German commander orders him to stand in the middle of the room repeating, “Tick tock, tick tock,” over and over again. The POW, in an act of defiance, just stands there saying, “Tick, tick, tick,” again and again.

The German commander looks him in the eye and threatens, “So you won’t cooperate? Well, we have ways of making you tock.”

The clever thing about these punning strips is that Steve can take it easy on the last panel, reducing his creative burden by 25%.

Rat! You forgot your bat! Can I bring mine?

oh come on

We have ways of making you tock!