Being Facebook Friends with Stephan Pastis – Rats! September 8, 2009
Posted by alwaysjan in Blogging.Tags: Comics.com, Facebook Friends, Humor, Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis
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Rat is booted off Facebook because he's a fictional character. He, as usual, gets his revenge.
I’m a big fan of the comic Pearls Before Swine. Brain surgeon that I am, one day I mentioned to my trainer Louis that he happened to have the same last name as the comic’s creator Stephan Pastis. “He’s my cousin,” Louis replied.
He then proceeded to dish the dirt, the way only those with a familial connection can. Okay, Louis is too nice to do that, but he did tell me that out of all the characters, his cousin is most like Rat. Then he showed me Stephan Pastis’s blog.
Louis hadn’t read his cousin’s blog in a while. We laughed ourselves silly reading about Louis’s wedding in It Is Dancing That I Fear. I came home and promptly added stephanpastis to my blogroll. When he posted about how he was desperate for Facebook friends, I succumbed and he “friended” me. Cool.
But I made the fatal error of commenting on one of his facebook status updates. How was I to know that so many of his 4,498 “friends” also felt compelled to comment? My computer dinged every time another person added a comment. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Never again.
I recently read Pastis’s post Love Thy Neighbor, or at Least Give Them Nicknames You Can Remember which is laugh out loud funny. If you’re living in a cave somewhere and haven’t seen Pearls Before Swine, you can learn all about the characters at Pearls Before Swine on Wikipedia. The strip is also on Comics.com. Enjoy.
planetjan 
I learned the hard way, too, not to comment on a “friend’s” post who has a lot of friends. I joined facebook to see what my kids were doing. I don’t call it spying! They rarely post any more, so now I’m reading about what a lot of people I barely know are doing. And it’s fun, even though I need to stop and get something done. I read that facebook was really for middle-aged people (people older than us, ha, ha!)
Whenever I mention a comic to people, they say they don’t read the comics, leaving me looking like a person with too much time on her hands….But there is some great stuff — and wisdom — in the funny papers. I love Rat. I’ll check out Stephan Pastis’s blog. (People shouldn’t have names that end with an s.)
Catherine – I realized a lot of people aren’t familiar with Pearls Before Swine because they don’t read the paper. Our newspaper is left on the curb every morning. I used to worry that someone was going to steal it. Silly me. No one reads the paper any more! Jan
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oh id probably read the comic but not the paper 😛
this is some funny stuff… i love his neighbours blog…i have names for mine too, jess saw the woman from next door n couldnt believe how miserable she looks…talk about turning milk sour…
I , too, have commented to people on FB then wished i hadnt lol but then its not a big deal really, and u can alter the settings etc
HUGS
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Oh, thanks for the great recommendation! I’m looking forward to some new humor. I confess I’m not a comics fan, and I only read the paper online or at restaurants when I’m traveling for business and on my own. I was a newspaper reporter, so I don’t have anything against the paper (it is visually much easier to read) but it’s just not in my budget. Anyway, I’m only now figuring out what graphic novels are, so I’m behind the times – graphically speaking.
Janelle – Things have never been quite the same since the demise of The Far Side, which Stephan Pastis also loved. I only read Pearls Before Swine and a few other offbeat comics. Jan
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