Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 03, 2015

Maybe Rat does care a small amount about Congress.

I’m a lot like Paris Goat; I notice when people use phrases without thinking about them.:Another biggie is the way people say something is “ironic” when the right word is “coincidental,” which is the opposite.

Kind of like when your girlfriend says, “The last thing I want to do is to hurt you.” It only means that there are other things ahead of that on the list, but it’s still on the list.

I hate it when someone says something “begs the question”. I’ll bet 99 out of 100 people who misuse that expression have no idea what it really means.

I caught V. Bugliosi making this same mistake in his book on religion. Even highly-educated people have a problem with this phrase, for some reason.

When this comes up, as it so frequently does, some people say that “I could care less” means “I could care less, but not much.” That at least preserves the intended meaning. Anyway, there are things about which I care more.

#@%# it….

I’m with Rat. Goat sounds too much like an English teacher I had whom I hated. And whom I ended up proving didn’t really pay attention to the work she gave us. I got an A- on a 50 page assignment that was part of the requirement for high school graduation. Hey, great. Just one little problem, I only wrote ten pages. Because we were doing it on computer and because it needed to be turned in, I just printed out all ten pages five times and turned it in. Should have gotten an F had she paid attention to everything. Probably just read the first couple of pages, if even that much.

I’ve heard Goat’s criticism many times, but I think there are logical ways around it that are especially clear in spoken English. Inflection can effectively signal a questioning tone such that the meaning becomes “Could I care less?” There’s an unspoken and understood “as if” before “I could care less.” In fact, the way I usually use this general expression is to say “Ask me if I could care less,” which implies that the answer would be “No!” Or, I just say “As if….” and allow the entire expression to remain unspoken but clearly communicated.

English… misspoken by more people than any other language.

Nonsense PICTO, unless you can point to any peer reviewed literature that I’ve missed.    ‘I COULD care less, but it’s not worth the effort’

I actually do think it matters how we use the language. First, it matters because the purpose of language is to communicate, and we have enough misunderstanding in the world already. Second, precision in language makes you smarter. It’s the “I don’t care” attitude that kills a society.

I could care less, and I would like to. I just don’t know how.

“I’m going to try and do something”… No, you’re going to “try to do something”. The ‘and’ actually implies you will definitely succeed.

….Duh? What’s the point of making all these comments? Did someone take Rat Literally when they should have taken him Figuratively? Oh wait….didn’t the meanings of those change because people kept using them incorrectly? Why bother!

“I could care less about this (than about other things).”

It actually can work.

Sadly, Rat’s response is too typical. This is why we’ve become stupid enough to listen to politicians and celebrities.“Did you try to correct me? Well, I’ll teach you a lesson by throwing my perfectly good ignorance right back at you.”

This one annoys me. “I could care less.” is the correct phrase. It has its origins in Jewish immigrants and Yiddish. It’s meant to be rhetorical/ironic. There’s just no good way to reproduce the inflection and tone when writing, but if you imagine Jackie Mason asking, “I could care less?” you might get the idea. For the younger kids, think Jon Steward.

I could care less? Of course I couldn’t!

Or think Mad Magazine and Alfred E. Neuman. What, me worry?

Hey, Pig! That should be “Us don’t care no more.” What, are you trying to look like some uptight grammarian?

Rat should just tow the line; he’s on the wrong tact. Use of the proper word’s matters.

I could care less, but I can’t work up the energy for caring less. This typing done tuckered me out.

During Basic Training, “I could care less” was the favorite saying of one of the sergeants. Several times I was tempted to attempt a discussion of what he really meant, but I resisted. By the end of the training cycle he had cut the phrase to “Care Less”.

Regardless…. It’s still funny.

I could care less, not much less, but maybe a tiny fraction less.

Methinks society’s willful ignorance of the English language may have something to do with the kinds of results we get from Congress these days.

I literally erupt in rage and anger when I hear these misused. Well, not literally . . .

Oh, good grief! The point is Rat does not care about congress. Can’t we just leave it at that?

I just say “Like I care”

Or sometimes I get creative and say “I couldn’t give a rat’s a—!”

xxx

sarcasm????

In the last panel, Pig is saying:“U.S. doesn’t care any more".He’s responding to Goat’s original comment in panel #1 about the U.S. Congress.

Also, in the last panel, Rat is not dismissing Goat’s discourse. He is simply retorting that in fact he could care less about the story about Congress, confirming what he had already said in panel #1, and thereby pointing out that Goat’s little lecture was entirely misguided and the result of Goat jumping to conclusions which he is wont to do.

And given that the dialogue is written all in upper case, we can’t tell whether Goat’s story was about Congress or about congress. So Rat might actually have been quite interested…

I think that American speakers of English, in particular, are engaged in the very American balancing act between individual freedom ( I’ll say it however I want to!) and social unity (These rules are for the sake of the whole of us!) It’s always a short jump from “I have a right to my opinion” to “my opinion is as good as yours” and such associated notions as the distrust of experts, disbelief in scientific fact, disrespect for logical argument. We come to a place of “Donald Trump is capable of being the leader of the free world.”

Next, let’s define “pedantic”.

I could care less if I really tried, but it would hardly be worth the effort.

Yes….I am like Goat, correcting everyone when I hear that erroneous statement (yes, I do still have friends :) )

At least people aren’t speaking in abbreviations (yet).

And, cue the “Word Crimes” video …

The English say “I couldn’t care less”.

Hah! I should worry!

It’s funny and all, but I can’t really relate. My grammar is never wrongly.

This one is so obviously wrong that only complete idiots say it that way.