Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for September 17, 2024

How do they get all that water inside a fire hydrant?

I actually make sure the every ballpoint in stash works. Maybe every couple of years or so. But if one by the phone fails, I do two things: I throw it away… and I pull the “gravity pen” out of my pocket and use that one. Then I go hunt down a working one from the stash.

Or perhaps, where do all the odd socks go, when they escape the dryer?

George Carlin’s list:

Why do we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway?

How is it possible to have a civil war?

If crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

The phone is in my left pocket, the pen in my right. Both work okay.

Me is wonders which God is they is talking about. For there is so many of em.

Who put the “bomp” in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who WAS that man?

I have so many different pens, from different companies and doctors, I will never have that problem!

Can you beat up all those other gods?

My dad would take out a pen and if didn’t work he would put it back! Claimed it “might work next time.”

God, do you exist and if not why does the Babal fish exist??

Who killed John F Kennedy and how does the grassy knoll fit in?

Not only do the pens not work, but now the phone doesn’t work.

It doesn’t matter what you ask. The ultimate answer will always be 42.

I actually keep refills for the ballpoints and gel pens, and cartridges and bottles of ink to refill the fountain pens.

Not to mention the mechanical and wooden pencils.

I have A LOT of questions…

My idea of heaven is that it has a library where you can look up the answer to every possible question, and it also has a viewer that allows you to see everything that has ever happened and will happen.

I would ask god if (s)he can create a rock that’s so heavy that even god cannot lift it.

I would ask if I could get a life do-over, and learn from my mistakes.

Why do I get the feeling that Rat is thinking of pushing Goat off that cliff?

How much stuff in the Bible is true?

Another cartoon cliff again.

The Hebrews and other slaves built Egyptian pyramids.

Allegedly, the pens at the bank that are chained to counter tops, have lost all desire to function!

Not so much how but why do Liberals allow themselves to be misled and become slaves to their Communist masters? Pity.

Me, I’m stuck on “pens by the phone” because that implies a stationary device and no answering machine to record messages. Does such a thing even still exist?

That’s why landline phones are obsolete.

When I say, “I am lying”, is it true?

I’ve always preferred mechanical pencils (which I was surprised to find out pre-date the yellow ones). The lead refills seldom work, though, so they have a limited life. I’m pretty dedicated to re-using whatever I can and my best so far is using them to stake baby veggie plants.

Piling a Pelion of silliness upon an Ossa of inanity, are we?

Why are there no B batteries?

Who even has a landline to leave pens next to anymore?

What is the difference between a duck?

Vanishing socks? No problem … I wear flip-flops most of the time.

The greatest mystery to me is how wire coat hangers seem to multiply in your closet when you’re not looking but then disappear when you really need one!

Why do we keep useless pens?

How does Pastis manage to come up with new content for this strip day after day?

Me, I’m more curious as to the phone—who still has a landline anymore?

My husband works at the local high school and brings home a zillion pens he finds on the floors. I used to test each one to see if it worked. Now I just pick the ones I like and toss the rest.

A place by the phone no longer exists.

If we could harness the mystery energy that has dried out pens near phones, regardless of the phone technology involved, just think of the benefits to society.

Wait…What? You actually still have a landline?

If I am allowed to be in GOD’s presence, my questions are answered.

Wait… Did Pastis slip in a 20 year-old strip?

I guess I’d ask for a peek inside a black hole, since every scientist seems to insist that’s the most unanswerable question we’ll ever face.

Mosquitoes, really?

I’d ask, “So, what now?”

Protect 2025 will take away all medical treatment for vets and stop all retirement benefits.

Why when a Financial Advisor shows you a complete graph of the stock market, it looks like straight line, but they refuse to zoom in on the decade starting in 1929, and after noting the other shocking plunges lasting a human lifetime.

I would ask,(the question I,believe, separes us from other animals), WHY ?

I have a drawer full of old pens. I check them periodically. You never know when you may have to forge a note from the 20th century. :)

pyramids were built by slaves. end of story.

there always has to be at least 1 working pen

If God were to give me such an opportunity, my question would be “Why did you provide me with no credible evidence of your reality when I was alive?”.

Hmmm … I think I’d ask the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

African and European!

Who even has a phone to keep pens by anymore?

I keep my phone in my pants pocket, I vaguely remember a pen and paper by the land line. It’s something about old age that even though I had a land line for more than 5 times as long as a cell phone, I seem to remember the cell phone better. Seems like it should be the other way around.

What happens when an irresistible force meets an impenetrable barrier?

Why is it called a building when it’s already been built?

How does the guy driving the snowplow get to work in the morning?

If something in my house doesn’t work, it’s outta here!

I would ask God why we had to learn all that Algebra only to almost never use it.

No caps on the pens. Why I prefer click pens.

Pyramids are a “mystery” that’s been pretty thoroughly solved. This is especially true if you’re talking about the great pyramids of Egypt. Archaeologists have found quarries that produced the stone, and tools used to cut it. They’ve documented notes and designs. They’ve found evidence for the quarters where the workers lived and the dumps where they threw their trash. There’s so minor debate over exactly how the stones were moved, but there’s no question that they could have been moved by relatively small teams of workers using materials and technology available to the ancient Egyptians. Other pyramids scattered all over the world may not be quite as well documented, but they’re not much more mysterious. A big, tapered pile of rocks is about the simplest possible monument to create.

“What did I do wrong?”