A PowerBook, and Pearls

-Good old Paul has gotten himself a new laptop, a PowerBook at that. We went to the Apple Store downtown when he visited Chicago last, and he was looking at one. It shows how things change. There was a point where he would not have bought a Mac. Aesthetically, Macs are damn cool and maybe sometime in the future I’ll get one. But for now, it’s Windows in all its monopolistic glory.

-Pearls Before Swine is probably one of my favorite comic strips, right up there with The Boondocks. When I was in Evanston, I purchased the second Pearls Before Swine book, This Little Piggy Stayed Home. This book continues the hilarity found in this subversive little strip.

The strip only two main characters, Rat and Pig. Rat is downright amoral, a conniving, selfish, self-centered character whose only friend is Pig. Pig is a nice, naive, caring, and incredibly stupid character who doesn’t give up despite his shortcomings. Other characters include Goat, a smart and wise character who tries to help Rat and Pig out and Zebra, a nice character that is naive enough to believe that he can actually reason with the lions and crocodiles who constantly eat his other zebra brethren.

This strip is downright funny much of the time, and takes some chances in ways that The Boondocks doesn’t. The “fourth wall” is broken as the creator, Stephen Pastis, sometimes becomes a part of the action. Other comics are fair game for parody, as well. There is a great set of strips in the second book that has Rat and the other characters leaving the strip for others. If you are an avid comic reader, these strips will make you laugh out loud. So, I encourage you to check out Pearls Before Swine, either in your local newspaper, the two books (the first one is called BLTs Taste So Darn Good) or online.