Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 20, 2019

Pig had been waiting for that opening for a long time.

That gave me a warm feeling. Am I wrong?

Looks more like tell and show.

“I also want to know, roughly what do we pay for electricity?” WHAM “And water?” WHAM<CRACK

Pig has been interning with Guido the local loan shark muscle. Rat is lucky not to be left with busted knees.

That’s quite rough!

He should have asked for a ballpark figure

I think Pig’s been planning that for a while --

English isn’t too ambiguous. You have to believe that any language in which you can meaningfully say “The more I light my lighter, the lighter my lighter gets until it’s too light to light.” had to have been designed to be as ambiguous as possible.

We can safely say Rat was stunned with the answer?! :D

But that was roughly roughly.

This one took me a sec, but I dig it.

A hundred bucks?????? how can they afford it? it’s like ultra premium all-sports package!

Rat deserved it

Looking at my cable bill makes me feel the same way.

Well played Pig ! …Croc Power !

It is not so much the interpretation that is lacking, here, as the inaccurate use of the language. Had Rat said, “approximately” instead of “roughly,” there would have been no problem, at all.

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

S.L. Clemons

cable sucks!

That’s just plain funny!

Pig unhinged….now he feels better about himself!

YEAH!!! GO FOR IT, PIG!!!!

Today’s question: HOW ARE RAT & PIG ABLE TO PAY THEIR BILLS?

$100?? Rat’s watching too many PPV porn movies, again.

Ambiguity’s great. Used in advertising (and other forms of political speech) all the time. Their message is ambiguous, and your mind fills in what it wants the message to be. Example:Things go better with Coke.

Worth getting angry about!

Reminds me of one day when I went to the in-laws house to pick up a twin bed they were giving to one of our daughters. At the time, they were hosting a foreign exchange student from Germany. I needed help carrying the bed out to the truck, so I asked the student to give me a hand. She paused for a minute and then said, “You want me to give you my hand?” That’s the point I realized that slangs do not translate in all languages.

He forced an answer from him, after all.

So unfunny

I wish I only paid a hundred dollars a month for cable. Our company just responded to the growing threat of streaming services by raising our bill.

We cut the cable here. We have three cellphones, one for each of us, and a cellphone that acquired our old landline number. The telephones are all TracFones, costing $12.50/month.

We dropped the landline and cable teevee, and kept only the Internet. Our bill from Spectrum (formerly Time-Warner) is $73/month. We added Netflix, Hulu+, and Amazon Prime, via streaming with a ROKU device. There was an initial saving of $60/month.

That savings is slowing going away as prices for the additional services for streaming increases. However, we have have thousands of shows and movies such that we cannot possibly watch everything. I particularly favor the PLUTO channel on the ROKU.

Not only does cable TV turn your mind to mush… they actually have people paying for the privilege. That’s marketing for ya.

Imagine what people might accomplish if they had to spend their spare time being productive, or enjoying family time, become artists or musicians or weavers or take up other interesting hobbies. Gasp… society might… mature!

No no… let’s get serious now… heh heh. I’m such a joker.

Wait, Pig, pays the bills???

Old joke but still a good one.

I never thought I’d see the day.

I’m guessing Rat should stop running up big Pay-per-view charges!

GO PIG! HARDER!!!

After looking at and paying said bill, you sure feel like you have been beaten up. Why can’t cable wise up and dump those egregious contracts and many who left for streaming and no long term commitments might return? But no they are still doing their “thing” which surely isn’t profitable now.

I would think the fact that they pay that much for mindless dreck would be enough to floor him

Care for some salt to go with your battery,Rat ;)

Way to go Pig!

And that’s why writers spend so much time revising.

Very true, but if you’re trained by, say, the patented AT&T Human Resource Assessment Evaluation job, you are instilled with the joy of simple language taking the other person just to the point of stroke. And, I do not apologize to my Financial Advisor.

Well screw me.

Pig must have been just like me last night, watching “The Irishman”

Inflection in spoken English?

That’s funny!

ka-literal

Pig gives it to Rat roughly?! The world turned upside down!

I never saw pig be violent before….or am I mistaken?

Someone is paying too much for cable. Better yet, paying for cable.

or Betty White

Just thinking of that myself during this morning’s commute. Who decided that ‘raised’ and ‘razed’ should sound the same, but with completely opposite meanings?