My Phatic Whales

Today I am trying to tidy my room. I have started with throwing away all my old University notes that I never look at anyway, and while I was sorting through them to take out all the staples, I found my Phatic Whales!!!
Last year, in The European Novel, we had some of the most incomprensible lectures ever. I mean, US Writing and Culture was a close second, but in EuroNovel, I could sometimes not even understand what book they were supposed to be talking about for all the difficult words and other references they used. One lecture, about 'Tristram Shandy', by a lecturer whose name I didn't know then and still do not know, he talked about the phatic qualities of the novel...
OED definition: phatic: Of, designating, or relating to speech, utterances, etc., that serve to establish or maintain social relationships rather than to impart information, communicate ideas, etc.; esp. in phatic communion speech communication of this kind; (also) trivial or purely formal verbal contact.
So, instead of trying to find out what the hell this man was talking about, I drew some Phatic Whales (the things they say are actual quotes from the lecture). Make them your friends, because they want to be, and will cry if you won't. And whales crying in my room is going to wake me up and annoy me, so be nice to them!