Is this a sodomy joke, or do I just have a dirty mind?
If it is not a sodomy joke, what else might the cartoonist be implying?
I suppose it could mean that. I read it more as the mouse is screwing over the pig by making up rules. I notice the mouse has boxing gloves on.
Boxing gloves are for the punch in the nose.
I think it’s definitely a sodomy joke, though Pastis could claim that Pig gets locked in the shed or something.
I think probably not, though I can see where one might reasonably speculate on that.
It seems clear to me that “because it means I smell” refers to having B.O., that being Rat’s twisted interpretation of the B & O Railroad. But getting punched in the nose is not a normal consequence of having B.O., it’s just Rat milking the opportunity to be sadistic.
In general, going to jail is worse than having B.O., so it makes some sense that the punishment from Rat would be worse than that for landing on the railroad. But said punishment could be something just as nonsensical as getting punched for stinking.
I would make a small case over getting sodomized as associated with being in prison rather than being in jail, and a larger case over a sodomy joke not being the type of thing Pastis would put in his strip. He knows no bounds when it comes to bad puns, but I don’t recall anything of such a risque nature popping up before.
Agreed. A prison rape joke would be jarring and out of place compared to the rest of Pastis’ humor.
God, Pastis is practically Robinsonian in the lengths he’ll go to to set up a horrible pun! I don’t know what’s worse, the pun itself or the fact that for the really elaborate ones he’ll invariably have a final panel of Rat telling him (Pastis) off for it.
I was thinking beaten with a truncheon. Or tazed.
Heh, I guess I have a dirty mind too, because I thought all the responses would be “of course it’s a sodomy joke! Jail/prison jokes are always about sodomy!”
But noooo, you all have to be “Pastis is too clean for that!” Fiddlesticks, sez I. Sodomy or nothing!
Roddy
I don’t see how it could be anything but a prison rape joke.
“Rum, sodomy or the lash?”
“Yes, please!”
Only because he has a diligent editor…and an interesting blog.
I don’t think it’s supposed to refer to anything, specifically. Just the idea that if landing on B&O is worthy of such a mean punishment, landing in jail must bring something much much worse. Leaving it deliberately vague lets you fill in the details on your own. Sure, a lot of you may go right to sodomy, but that’s on you, not him.
Have y’all seen the animated "Pearls Before Swine"?.
Forgive me, jayjay, but in the words of Foghorn Leghorn, I must be built too low to the ground because the term “Robinsonian” went right over my head.
Perhaps Spider Robinson?
Oh, wow. It’s amazing how wrong the voices are…
Czarcasm got it. In Spider Robinson’s Callahan series, a tradition of Callahan’s bar is the recitation of very elaborate, very abominable puns. Some of Pastis’s Sunday strips remind me of abbreviated versions of that kind of pun.
(“Go directly from the sub, Lime, to the Reed oculist”, anyone?)
Only on Punday, and the winner got her/his/it’s bar tab for the night taken care of, so everyone drank as much as possible, and the bar came out ahead. By the way, wasn’t that one of Doc’s submissions?
I do believe.