amused*Pearls Before Swine, Copyright 2004 by Stephan T. Pastis, Distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Laughter not guaranteed. Not suitable for some readers who prefer 75-year-old strips drawn by the son of the son of the son of the original creator. Product not available in some cities where "Snuffy Smith" still wins reader polls. Product may have limited availability in cities where editors choose comic strips based solely upon potential racial or ethnic demographic appeal. Check local listings. No animals were harmed in the making of this strip, although we roughed up the dumb pig a little bit. Our apologies to the editors throughout North America who are staying up late tonight perusing this text with a magnifying glass to ensure that this cartoonist did not bury any offending words or concepts in this small text. Okay... I'm tired now. To be perfectly frank, when I initially came up with the idea for this "tiny word" joke, I thought it would be really quick to do, but I now see that to make the joke work, the writing has to be really small, and it apparently takes a ton of tiny words to fill such a large space. Hence, I have run out of ideas. If you'd like, you can now move on to "Cathy" or "B.C." and check in on their crazy antics, as I am totally out of funny stuff. Actually, so are they. So heck, maybe you ought to just put this newspaper down and go watch a little TV. Geez, man, I STILL have more space to fill with this now tired joke. What to do... What to do... I suppose that a lesser cartoonist would use this space to promote his latest books, but I don't think that either of my two books, "BLTs Taste So Darn Good" or "This Little Piggy Stayed Home", both of which were published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, need that sort of cheap publicity. Their sales at BordersTM, Barnes & NobleTM, Amazon.comTM and your local bookstore have been tremendous and they don't need more help from me here. Wow, finally... I'm done. I'm never doing this joke again.
I love how he works in digs at other strips, an apology to the editors that's both funny and sincere, a plug for his two books despite his claim otherwise, and a thank-you to his fans!
