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Herb and Jamaal, 9/13/13

OK, everybody, here’s the thing: when multiple negatives are strung together in a sentence the way that our faceless gumbo aficionado has strung them together in panel one, with the intent to intensify the negative sentiment rather than to have the negatives cancel each other out, that’s called negative concord. While this isn’t an accepted feature of high-status standard English today, it was common in old and middle English (and was extensively used by Chaucer), and is a feature of the high-status literary varieties of a number of other languages, including Portugese, Russian, Persian, and ancient Greek.

Now, arbitrary distinctions between dialects are made in every language ever spoken, so I’m not going on some quixotic quest to get negative concord back into standard English or anything, but I do have a gripe with people who pretend that dialectical uses of it are difficult or impossible to parse. People love to smugly point out that “I don’t got no money” logically means “I do have some money” — according to formal mathematical logic, which is very different from the logic that defines the grammar of naturally occurring spoken languages. But I would be very, very surprised if any competent native English speaker ever heared someone say “I don’t got no money” and genuinely believed that the speaker was claiming to have some money.

But (and here is my point) if you are going to go down this pedantic, narrow-minded, wrong-headed road, at least get your pedantry right. A double negative resolves to a positive. A triple negative resolves to a negative. You’re making yourself look dumb, Herb.

Gil Thorp, 9/13/13

Considering that some years the Milford bonfire is restricted to single glorious panel, I’m pretty excited about this fall’s installment being spread over multiple days! Even better is that this extra strip time gives us an opportunity to hear some Milford High students wax rhapsodically about the delightful smell of burning human flesh.

Blondie, 9/13/13

I’d give Dagwood a free sandwich if he showed up in that mask, wouldn’t you? I’d give him whatever he wanted. That thing is fucking terrifying.

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Dennis the Menace, 8/24/13

Dennis dreams of fleas, monstrously huge fleas, fleas the size of dogs, fleas with a terrible thirst for blood that’s proportionate to their size, fleas that sink their awful probisci into hapless, screaming victims and drain them in an instant, then leap dozens of feet after the panicked citizens, covering the distance faster than any poor human can run. Dennis dreams of putting collars and leashes these beasts and bending them to his will, of gathering a bloodsucking army of nightmare-insects. Dennis is clearly increasing his menace levels in a hurry.

Family Circus, 8/24/13

“When will the lustful sin-urges finally leave their bodies and their minds? When will they finally be able to live together in chastity, like you two do?”

Blondie, 8/24/12

The joke is that Dagwood’s dead, right? He used to be alive, but now he’s dead?

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Blondie, 8/18/13

Having recently turned 39, an age significantly closer to Dagwood’s vaguely defined middle age than to Alexander and Cookie’s vaguely defined teenagerhood, I too struggle with the kids today and their lingo, and sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between actual teenspeak and things that comics creators who are even older than me think might be teenspeak, in some teen subculture somewhere. For instance, “sick” and “wicked sick” are slang synonyms for “good” and “very good” of such long standing that even I recognized them right away. “Wound” is another matter, though, one not helped by the fact that it’s not clear in writing whether it’s meant to rhyme with “pound” or “spooned.” I certainly hope it’s the latter and that some misguided sixtysomething Blondie gag writer came to the conclusion that “Well if being sick is cool, then being wounded must be super cool!”

Mary Worth, 8/18/13

Oh no! The talk group has gone dangerously awry! The participants may be emotionally fragile, but they recognize an alien robot spy wearing a human meatsack disguise when they see/hear one. “SOMETIMES FRIENDSHIPS RUN THEIR COURSE,” said the carefully constructed Homo sapiens emulation module. “REVIEW PAST INTERACTIONS FOR POSSIBLE CAUSES. HALT! BELAY AGGRESSIVE POSTURE! A SEMANTIC COMPREHENSION MISMATCH HAS OCCURRED! PREVIOUS SENTENCES WERE INTENDED AS HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS, NOT AS ATTACKS ON SENSE OF SELF! RECALIBRATING … RECALIBRATING …”