I’ve trained myself to hear that way. Years of bosses without clues were great incentive to reduce everything people said to the ‘wah wah wah’ of the adults in those Charlie Brown cartoons. Keywords like ‘Lunch’, ‘Raise’, ‘FIRED!’ and ‘Friday’ always got through.
I guess if she had a flash of perfect empathy about now it would really help her out, I mean there she is the princess in charge of saving the universe from a restart, but now her task is to be bringer of breakfast.
Considering that Dietzel has come to her rescue when the water was shut off after she got soap in her eyes, I think he is showing considerable restraint.
Cute – but in my experience, when my dog is pestering me to wake up, food is not the foremost thing on his mind. That’s usually his second priority of the morning.
Dietzel has met Phix, iirc — it’s one of the strips when M is drunk and Phix shows up and sort of reveals great secrets to her, but she won’t remember them in the morning. (Sorry, I don’t have the time/bandwidth to go search for it.)
It’d be interesting to probe the full vocabulary of Dietzel. How many words has he come to understand? Enough to cry during Chick Flicks, at least. But that could be just a dog’s ability to empath with human emotions.
Studies have shown that an adult dog has about the same intelligence of a 3-year old human. This includes word/concept recognition. Some breeds are even smarter, up to about 5-6 years old. I am a little surprised that Deitzel doesn’t understand more than he does (as he is a very smart dog. Yes he is!)
I wonder, if one were to list his full vocab, if any of the assorted ‘other’ words (Pablo’s funky font) would be included. He certainly hears them enough.
Jin (who knew Tina when she was alive in other cycles, but not this one) mentioned that Tina used to be a pshrink.
And when Monica and Jin went to Tina and mentioned it, Nudge came strongly to the fore and was obviously Very Interested.
Well, continuing from the sequence whn Phix came to Monica’s place when she was drunk, i hit the sequence that here and continues here, where Nudge has some interesting observations to make about Monica and pshrinks.
And the reaction of the Steering Committee, in the last panel, is interesting for what it reveals … in light of what we know now but didn’t Back Then…
Too true! Glad you don’t do that. Also glad that you–on the other side of the coin–don’t mislead us in the comment replies, but simply pass out hugs & cookies when we (finally) guess correctly.
Why would she have to hide? It’s her body, after all. She should be able to take control again whenever she wishes. Effectively the demons work for her. Also, surely the demons would know Tina, were she among them.
So wait… Tina might still be in there?! The demons have the keys, and she’s just a passenger along for the ride? As they run amok with her life?? This sounds like Hell (with a capital H) to me. Torture.
Gee… does Monica remember who her psychoanalyst was back before her car accident?
Or, perhaps, as Monica was running away from Doubt and company, Tina was heading to the hospital to deal with this interesting new patient from the TC?
I’m sorry, but to me this violates our past experience with Dietzel. The number of times people have directly questioned Dietzel on some matter and he has responded with a (comedic) appropriate response tells me that he understands a lot more than just pertinent nouns. He understands what people are saying. He’s Gromitt to Monica’s Wallace__he doesn’t speak, but understands everything said around him.
He understands a LOT and can piece together what is being said from body language, intonation, and context, but he doesn’t know the meaning of all words.
Really. I admit being a little surprised; Dietzel’s intelligence and dexterity had gotten me to thinking of him as a talking dog who’s mute (okay, an odd phrasing, but probably self-explanatory). Now I need to wonder all over how smart he really is.
It has been my experience that once you get to know them, dogs don’t need to talk. They do have expressive faces and body languge. Sure, we have a tendency to anthromorphize our pets and while you may not be able to tell what they are thinking, it’s generally not all that hard to figure out what they want.
For communication, the average human’s senses are tuned primarily for language and facial recognition, because we communicate directly with one another… ie, we talk to each other or write messages or draw paintings on caves, etc. In short we communicate with the intention of being understood directly by another.
Animals, on the other hand, not being as developed in those areas, utilize a much greater percentage of ALL their senses to communicate with, and through, their environment. As a result their brains are wired to take in a vastly higher amount of information that way, as a survival mechanism, because they haven’t been specialized for language or tool use.
The net effect of this is that even your average dog or cat can read your body language far better than the best Texas Hold’em player ever could.
As my high-school biology teacher used to say – “You traded away a whole lot of stuff in exchange for sentience… I’ll leave it up to you to determine if it was worth it…”
did someone’s ear drums got blown out? 😉
This is probably what my 9 month old son hears when I talk to him. Blah blah food blah blah blah bottle.
Haha that’s adorable.
So I guess while Dietzel is unusually intelligent he still only has the average vocabulary of a dog.
That or Monica is being extremely…expressive..in her word choices.
not so much “expressive” as much as her articulation library may very well still be initializing. XD
Just because you understand the language, doesn’t mean you actually bother to listen to any words other than the ones important to you.
Lol, this strip was from Dietzel’s perspective.
Blah blah blah Dietzel, blah blah blah Sleep! Blah blah blah bowl, blah bah blah food. Blah blah blah shower.
So Dietzel knows what a shower is?
Sure he does. =) http://wapsisquare.com/comic/10032001/
You were just WAITING to refer to that strip, weren’t you? 😉
And once again, the end justifies the means!
I haven’t seen a smirk like that since the original Playboy bunny icon — the furry stuffed one…
See! who says that a dog isn’t smart. 😉
Well he still has some work to do in training his human. Did you see how long it took for her to figure out that it was feeding time?
He’s just too patient. :3 No crawling all over her as soon as she starts making noise. She fails to understand the urgency. ^^
… This reminds me I need to get cat food today…
Ah there’s your problem… you’re thinking of cats.
Dogs don’t train their humans, they’re perfectly happy as long as they have them.
I love the self-satisfied look on Dietzel’s face in the last panel. =^_^=
And it’s so realistic! Paul’s done a great job of Dietzel’s doggyness in this strip.
Of course, Dietzel has used expressive body language, before. 😀
does anyone else get a charlie brown & snoopy vibe from this?
At first read i assumed monica was using an awful lot of swear words but then i realised it was what Dietzel heard.
Now i am curious as to wether monica will wait til after her shower to feed him 😛
Only if she doesn’t mind him flushing the toilet while she’s in the shower. Perhaps more than once.
Does this mean Dietzel hears in pseudo-glyph?
I’ve trained myself to hear that way. Years of bosses without clues were great incentive to reduce everything people said to the ‘wah wah wah’ of the adults in those Charlie Brown cartoons. Keywords like ‘Lunch’, ‘Raise’, ‘FIRED!’ and ‘Friday’ always got through.
Heeee! Brilliant!
haha, just like the dog in rugrats ^^
Gooood Monica, fetch the kibble!
I guess if she had a flash of perfect empathy about now it would really help her out, I mean there she is the princess in charge of saving the universe from a restart, but now her task is to be bringer of breakfast.
Considering that Dietzel has come to her rescue when the water was shut off after she got soap in her eyes, I think he is showing considerable restraint.
Awwwwww! Cutee! I love Dietzel
Reminds me of a couple of Far Side cartoons.
What Dogs Hear: Blah blah blah Rover blah blah blah.
What Cats Hear: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Cute – but in my experience, when my dog is pestering me to wake up, food is not the foremost thing on his mind. That’s usually his second priority of the morning.
Has Dietzel ever met Phix or Tina? I wonder how those encounters would go…
Dietzel has met Phix, iirc — it’s one of the strips when M is drunk and Phix shows up and sort of reveals great secrets to her, but she won’t remember them in the morning. (Sorry, I don’t have the time/bandwidth to go search for it.)
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/freebooze/ through http://wapsisquare.com/comic/drunkpower/
Like Lee (above), I immediately thought of the Far Side strip about what dogs hear.
Blah blah blah awesome comic blah blah top 5 blah blah blah blah I recommend to friends blah blah . ;^)
It’d be interesting to probe the full vocabulary of Dietzel. How many words has he come to understand? Enough to cry during Chick Flicks, at least. But that could be just a dog’s ability to empath with human emotions.
Studies have shown that an adult dog has about the same intelligence of a 3-year old human. This includes word/concept recognition. Some breeds are even smarter, up to about 5-6 years old. I am a little surprised that Deitzel doesn’t understand more than he does (as he is a very smart dog. Yes he is!)
I wonder, if one were to list his full vocab, if any of the assorted ‘other’ words (Pablo’s funky font) would be included. He certainly hears them enough.
He understands “pizza,” If he’s like me, anything after the word pizza is blah blah blah, regardless of actual understanding.
Yes I immediately thought of the Far Side strip from so long ago.
Blah Blah Blah Ginger! Blah Blah Blah.
Another good one is the “Names dogs give themselves”.
Hope P had a fun birthday last weekend – happy 40th!
Link “Pink” and “Black”? Or am I thinking of “Reservoir Dogs”?
Alas, only words that dogs can hear…
Hmmm. This is interesting.
Jin (who knew Tina when she was alive in other cycles, but not this one) mentioned that Tina used to be a pshrink.
And when Monica and Jin went to Tina and mentioned it, Nudge came strongly to the fore and was obviously Very Interested.
Well, continuing from the sequence whn Phix came to Monica’s place when she was drunk, i hit the sequence that here and continues here, where Nudge has some interesting observations to make about Monica and pshrinks.
And the reaction of the Steering Committee, in the last panel, is interesting for what it reveals … in light of what we know now but didn’t Back Then…
I’m beginning to wonder if Tina’s “Self” is hiding somewhere behind the Steering Committee.
(Psst! Pablo! This is where you reply with a pithy ‘Indeed’! … Pablo? … Pablo? … )
And spoil all your fun? 😉
Bad Man
Heh! 😀
Too true! Glad you don’t do that. Also glad that you–on the other side of the coin–don’t mislead us in the comment replies, but simply pass out hugs & cookies when we (finally) guess correctly.
Why would she have to hide? It’s her body, after all. She should be able to take control again whenever she wishes. Effectively the demons work for her. Also, surely the demons would know Tina, were she among them.
Sure, it might still be her body; however, it’s still dead. It would be as if she were haunting herself.
So wait… Tina might still be in there?! The demons have the keys, and she’s just a passenger along for the ride? As they run amok with her life?? This sounds like Hell (with a capital H) to me. Torture.
…and how does this relate to Deitzel Speak?
Gee… does Monica remember who her psychoanalyst was back before her car accident?
Or, perhaps, as Monica was running away from Doubt and company, Tina was heading to the hospital to deal with this interesting new patient from the TC?
And this is why Dietzel is my favorite character in the comic 🙂
I’m sorry, but to me this violates our past experience with Dietzel. The number of times people have directly questioned Dietzel on some matter and he has responded with a (comedic) appropriate response tells me that he understands a lot more than just pertinent nouns. He understands what people are saying. He’s Gromitt to Monica’s Wallace__he doesn’t speak, but understands everything said around him.
He understands a LOT and can piece together what is being said from body language, intonation, and context, but he doesn’t know the meaning of all words.
Really. I admit being a little surprised; Dietzel’s intelligence and dexterity had gotten me to thinking of him as a talking dog who’s mute (okay, an odd phrasing, but probably self-explanatory). Now I need to wonder all over how smart he really is.
Possibly an communicative dog, who is mute? a eloquent dog?
You’re right, it’s a bit difficult to put into words,
It has been my experience that once you get to know them, dogs don’t need to talk. They do have expressive faces and body languge. Sure, we have a tendency to anthromorphize our pets and while you may not be able to tell what they are thinking, it’s generally not all that hard to figure out what they want.
For communication, the average human’s senses are tuned primarily for language and facial recognition, because we communicate directly with one another… ie, we talk to each other or write messages or draw paintings on caves, etc. In short we communicate with the intention of being understood directly by another.
Animals, on the other hand, not being as developed in those areas, utilize a much greater percentage of ALL their senses to communicate with, and through, their environment. As a result their brains are wired to take in a vastly higher amount of information that way, as a survival mechanism, because they haven’t been specialized for language or tool use.
The net effect of this is that even your average dog or cat can read your body language far better than the best Texas Hold’em player ever could.
As my high-school biology teacher used to say – “You traded away a whole lot of stuff in exchange for sentience… I’ll leave it up to you to determine if it was worth it…”
Love the funky ‘hat’ on her *giggle*
So now we know who the *real* Alpha is in this pack, don’t we?…