Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for May 10, 2012

Quit being a big brother, Petey.

Love it! Especially the differences between what Alice and Petey have in front of them!

Mini-generation gap.

Petey doesn’t eat doughnuts anyway – they have holes in them.

Petey should do well in Geometry. Just look at how he partitions his food on his plate! I’ll wager a very large bet that each food group, however Petey defines a “food group”, is precisely 60 degrees from the other!!

I’m with you, Petey.

This is EXACTLY how my daughter talked for years! Every sentence ended with an uprising vocal inflection, sounding like a question. And, oh my, how that girl could talk . . .

Alice is a budding “Valley Girl.” She has the rising inflection at the end of every sentence down pat. All she has to do is interject “like”, “whatever” or “totally” between every few words, and she’ll be proficient in Valspeak.

“There once was a boy named Pierre (Petey),And all he could say was, ‘I don’t care,’”

In memoriam- Maurice Sendak

Re: Making every sentence a question, I’ve always thought that it’s a cadence that you often hear from very young children, particularly when they’re trying to rattle off a lot of sentences quickly.So when I read today’s strip, I imagined that Alice was speaking like that kid from “Animaniacs” who always had a story to tell about Randy Beaman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXnMLoE7yak

The rising statement thing is widespread. I think it’s done in an are-you-with-me-? sorta vein. The kiddies around here do the “and then…and THEN…and THEN..” method combined with the “and then, guess WHAT” interjection.

This is called “uptalking” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

I first heard the word in a comment on my blog – http://richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com/2008/09/oswaldo-twee.html

I actually found Alice’s account quite riveting. I wonder what kind of doughnut Dill received? Perhaps they prepared one with paste in his honor?

Petey sounds like Pierre. RIP Maurice Sendak

Exactly like growing up with my little sister!

Im with petey on this one? well at least on the part of what must every sentence end with question mark? Its weird? I hate when people do that?

“Zits” covered this first.

better finish that scribble on your plate. There are children in Africa starving for scribble. Boy, when we were kids we’d fight over the scribble-gizzard. Good eatin’.

Foggy: “That boy makes more noise that a skeleton dancing on a tin roof.”

Sweet Alice? Uptalking? Didn’t know that term? Thanks, Richard!(Feeling like a big, old, Petey.)P.S. Went back in the Blog to read the Oswaldo Twee sequence of strips there (from before I found Cul de Sac here on GoComics). Hilarious; loved red-faced Petey!

Hello, Cul de Sac fans!.I’m currently in the middle of six day tribute to Cul de Sac, being held at the site of my Sherpa strip,I’m a Dillo!  I was very impressed with all of the cartoonists who pitched in for Richard several weeks ago, and I wanted to show my appreciation for Richard Thompson as well..I’ve just uploaded the fourth of six tribute strips.  If you’re at all interested, I would love if you came to check it out!.http://www.gocomics.com/i-m-a-dillo

-Greg Trail

We Canadians end our sentences with “eh? eh! or eh”…ya gotta have the eh in there and not just a ?.

I’ve lived in the deep South some, but people there didn’t say “You know what I’m saying?” I went to school in Buffalo one summer, though, and a young woman from New York City kept saying, “Know what I mean?” She’d keep at it till you told her whether you knew what she meant. Drove me nuts.

I’ve heard that Australians talk like that. I’m not sure if that’s true or not..But anyway, I love this particular strip- it’s fun to see strips that are just funny all the way around and don’t need a specific punchline at the end..And I loved the very first time you used this idea, Richard, about Alice and Oswaldo Twee. (Especially Petey’s face in the last panel!)