pearls_before_swine epitome of incomprehensibility The comic strip of this name showed up in my dream_fanfiction. Pig was holding up a sign that read "WE STAND TOGETHER AGAINST" and Rat was holding up a sign that said "WHO IS A RAPIST AND BABY KILLER." There was a gap in between. Pig was explaining cheerfully to the somewhat horrified Goat that these were handy signs, since you could reuse them just by putting a different name in between. I looked at this cartoon and thought, "Holy shit, Pearls Before Swine is getting awfully cynical these days." Then I woke up and considered. For a dream, the thing made surprising sense. First, there's Bill Cosby (when you have 20+ people accusing you of a thing, it seems less likely that they're just making stuff up) but it could also be making fun of protesters who exaggerate their opponents' evilness. The "baby killers" part is how anti-abortion people exaggerate, but it could also be a general insult. As for the joke itself, the reusable-text gag isn't anything new - journalists joke about reusable headlines (said Doug Camilli, jokey celebrity columnist for the Montreal Gazette, in an article I read a few days ago). 150221 ... e_o_i I can't decide if I like this comic or not. I admit, I like the strips with the elaborate-pun gag, except they keep ending in the characters threatening violence against the author, and they could end differently. As far as I'm concerned, the form of a running gag requires a fixed element + a variable (the humour perhaps is the dependent variable and then you've got a linear function, yay!!!) Did Hypatia_of_Alexandria get excited about comparing running gags to algebra? Is this a common experience for math tutors across history, great ones as well as small? 150309 what's it to you? who go blather from