Pearls of twisted wisdom

"Pearls Before Swine," by Stephan Pastis, is my favorite part of the funnies. I had never seen it before moving to New Mexico, and my paper here carries it too. Not since "Calvin and Hobbes" have I enjoyed a comic so much (we were also carrying reruns of old "Calvin" strips, but they inexplicably quit showing up one day). "Pearls" occasionally misses the mark but for the most part is twisted humor, my favorite kind.

The stars of "Pearls" are Pig and Rat. Pig is a naive do-gooder, much to Rat's annoyance. Pig is not the smartest of swine and for this is often targeted and ridiculed by the megalomaniacal, self-centered Rat. Rat often complains about the comic strip's style and believes Bil Keane ("The Family Circus") is a better cartoonist. (This hasn't stopped the strip from poking fun at "Circus" and others. My favorite was when a week was devoted to "Circus," whose family, it turned out, was harboring Osama bin Laden. You know, the guy about whom Bush said, "I truly am not that concerned about him," six months after 9/11.)

But I digress (our administration's incompetence can do that to a person).

In the strip above, the last panel features Pig's anthropomorphic Viking action figures. Rat believes the Vikings love violence, but in reality they enjoy watching "Oprah" and "Ellen." They also enjoy styling their hair. (For more far-out hair, check out The Feathered-Back Hair Site; for more on the cast of characters of "Pearls," see the Wikipedia entry.)

While we are on the topic of comics, I just have to say there are few things I hate more than ... OK, besides him ... Calvin and Hobbes peeing stickers. You know the ones. Calvin, with an evil glint in his eye, peeing on a Ford symbol. Calvin peeing on a Chevy symbol (once I even saw Calvin peeing on a Toyota sticker on a Toyota). Then there's the even weirder Calvin alternately praying at or peeing on a cross. Anyway, Bill Watterson never marketed Calvin (aside from books of comic strip collections) for a reason, yet people have co-opted him, and it's not even in the spirit of Calvin. He was mischievous but not devious.