Jude For the Offense
Cidu Bill on Jul 30th 2009
Chuck Douglas: I get the joke and I know what is being implied. I just can’t work out what word Pintsize was going to say before he was cut off.
(Arlo warning)
Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, Questionable Content, comic strips, comics, humor | 23 responses so far
Norm Jul 30th 2009 at 02:03 pm 1
cock?
Chuck Jul 30th 2009 at 02:10 pm 2
Definitely cock.
Charlene Jul 30th 2009 at 02:14 pm 3
Chuck needs to be told this?
PeterW Jul 30th 2009 at 03:44 pm 4
I was thinking “cord,” which could still be placed and shaped suggestively.
Keera Jul 30th 2009 at 04:04 pm 5
If it is prehensile, then it must be a cord. The other alternative is SCARY.
JamesK Jul 30th 2009 at 05:11 pm 6
Given the comic is “Questionable Content”, it was almost certainly “cock”.
Marshal Jul 30th 2009 at 05:35 pm 7
“The uncanny valley hypothesis holds that when robots and other facsimiles
of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of
revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a
proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s
lifelikeness.”
- Wikipedia
.
“
buzz Jul 30th 2009 at 05:35 pm 8
co-axial cable?
Heather D Jul 30th 2009 at 05:39 pm 9
Her “writhing erection” comment confirms it for me. Definitely a 16-inch prehensile cock. Intriguing…
padraig Jul 30th 2009 at 07:07 pm 10
“copulatory extension”?
Norm Jul 30th 2009 at 08:05 pm 11
I vote for Padraig’s answer: that is so what Pintsize might say.
Mitch4 Jul 31st 2009 at 12:18 am 12
The only problem with that probably-right-anyway answer is that the dash for cut-off-short speech doesn’t usually go mid-syllable like that. More often shown when breaking off after a completed syllable. So Padraig’s suggestion, for instance, even though somewhat arbitrary, has the advantage of fitting the customary pattern for the dash-indicating-cut-off-speech.
Patrick Jul 31st 2009 at 01:34 am 13
That’s exactly the point I was going to make, Mitch4, but you put into words much better than I’d have been able to.
Marshal Jul 31st 2009 at 03:22 am 14
I’m wondering if the author couldn’t decide which word to use so
decided to leave it up to the reader. I assume the robot in question is
Gigolo Joe from A.I.
Nicole Jul 31st 2009 at 07:39 am 15
Whales have prehensile penises, why shouldn’t robots ???
chuckers Jul 31st 2009 at 09:46 am 16
Okay…Now I got it.
But Mitch4 is right. That is what kept me from seeing it. The only word I could
come up with was co-processor which didn’t make sense. Padraig does have
a good answer.
Tam Jul 31st 2009 at 10:36 am 17
Well, the bonus panel landed in ewww for me. (Yes, I’m afraid that’s how my mind works… maybe it’s because had a Coke and meds and a vitamin for breakfast… Yeah, that’s it! Brain starvation!)
Chuck Aug 2nd 2009 at 05:06 am 18
“the dash for cut-off-short speech doesn’t usually go mid-syllable like that.”
Doesn’t it go wherever the speaker got cut off?
Mitch4 Aug 2nd 2009 at 09:04 am 19
Sure, it’s not like there’s anything even near to a prescriptive rule about this.
But there is a tradition or convention established just by practice — what writers have a tendency to do, and thus what readers also will have a tendency to do on the other end of the process.
That’s just a quasi-statistical observation, and I think that’s what the phrasing “doesn’t usually go mid-syllable” implies. Are you suggesting that the cutoff does usually go mid-syllable?
I can see a reply of “No, I’m suggesting it would usually go wherever the speaker actually cut off”. But (1) we’re not privy to that, all we have is the printed result, not a window into the (fictional or real) speaker’s intent; (2) in a way that claim is in a sense necessarily true, and hence vacuous — of course it’s (at least supposed to be) wherever the speaker would cut off — but that then defers to a more concrete empirical or quasi-empirical question, in fact (or in representation) where do speakers tend to break off, mid-syllable or on syllable boundaries? And at least in representations, it is overwhelmingly guided by the syllable-boundary convention.
On the other hand, I strongly suspect you and others are absolutely right that it was Jacques’s intention to suggest the completion would be “–ck”. The quibbles from me, and others before me here, are meant to indicate how difficult and awkward it is for him to try to get that across.
The difficulty is half because of the generalization r convention that we’ve been belaboring here. And half because of English spelling and pronunciation patterns, so that the spelling “co-” is pretty ambiguous about presumed pronunciation. It could be the COH of “co-operative”, especially because of the pressure to make that a syllable on its own, or COH as in “coal” if we accept mid-syllable break. Or it could be the CAH of “co–ck”. Or the r-colored CAW or CAWR of “cord”. Or the CUH of “come”. Or the CUU of “cook”. Or the CUUW of “coop”. So it’s only our dirty minds
that make his attempt half-work or more.
Soup Dragon Aug 3rd 2009 at 06:58 am 20
Tam: QC has a bonus panel?
Tam Aug 3rd 2009 at 10:59 am 21
Sorry for the confusion, Soup Dragon. That was supposed to go with the gorilla comic!
DPWally Aug 3rd 2009 at 04:03 pm 22
Wait, is this saying that the real Jude Law doesn’t have a sixteen…..
Jeff S. Aug 4th 2009 at 10:39 am 23
If that’s not true, then I’m SERIOUSLY disappointed now!