Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 30, 2023

Stephan never read letters to the editor back in the day.

Instant communication does have its shortcomings…

If Terry said it to him today, why would he mail a letter?

Addressed to Springfield with no specified state. I wonder if Terry lives in the same Springfield as the Simpsons.

Email? What age is you lives in, Pig? “Social” media more advance way of telling how Terryble person he be.

Evidence that a waiting period can do a lot of good; for so many different things.

As goes the mouth, so goes the rage!!!

Ooo, a field with a spring!

Time can be your friend.

I’m just waiting to see who waits for a day or two before commenting here.

Sure. Tell that to the Zodiac killer :D

Gives one time to think, eh?!

The ‘unsent’ angry letter has a long tradition. After Lincoln’s death they found a desk full of nasty letters he wrote but never sent nor signed.

I don’t know. If someone actually writes a letter, puts it in an envelope, buys a stamp, and places it in a mailbox just to tell you you’re a fatface, you probably really are a fatface. That has to sting.

That is why we are advised to count to ten . . .

Pig prefers hand written sentiments. He is a swine of simple pleasures.

And tongues don’t have erasers. Unfortunately.

I thought this was going to be something about social media.

twitter is even faster.

How did Pig get beat up in email? Or a letter?

Like counting to 10 before venting your temper…

Back in the day (I don’t know if it holds true now), therapists would recommend writing out a letter to your enemies that you could pour out your feelings into. Obviously, not to ever literally mail it to anybody, but just to unload onto. I doubt that would work for me, because there are just too many letters.

That may be like what was the best thing about rotary phones. The extra effort required you to think things through and decide if it was worth it or not. Also why is it with these kinds of strips Pastis has characters covered in ink smudges?

Basically our brains are addicted to information

Stephan, what the heck is going on?:

What happened to you, Pig?

I hope he deduced the cost of the stamp on his income tax return.

… sending snail mail rather than email means more revenue for the post office, too.

The “Dear” was a nice touch.

If only email needed stamps we could virtually eliminate spam overnight!

Pig’s little monitory comic strip is technically correct, I suppose, but not very realistic. In “real life,” a nasty email was on the way long before Redshirt’s temper cooled down….

One of the best bits of email advice was to write the body of the letter first, look it over, THEN type in the recipient. Amazing how often I’d decide to edit and soften an angry email in the time it took to type in a recipient’s name. Most of the angry e-communication today is enabled by the near-instantaneous time it takes to reply back and forth.

You know, you can have the same “speed bump” on your outgoing email. For the last fifteen years or so I’ve had an “Outlook/Exchange Rule” set on my outgoing work messages that delays them being sent for two minutes. You would not BELIEVE how many times I’ve been grateful for that. if I had my way that would be a company-wide practice.

Wouldn’t he have reconsidered before Buying a stamp though