Feghoots site

[Harrold Wilson Gray]

I tend to forget how old I am. The first feghoots appeared more than
half a century ago, when I was in high school. That's plenty of time
for a proper name to become generic. Unfortunately, I'm at the age at
which over fifty years ago... Why, it seems like only yesterday!

But why are they referred to as "shaggy-dog stories"? I've always
considered them to be puns, whereas a shaggy-dog story is a long string
of bullshit with no conclusion, as in the first such story I ever
heard:

And you know what it was?!
What?!
All this bull I'm shittin' you!

When I was in the Army, we called shaggy-dog stories "sleeve jobs,"
after a long shaggy-dog story regarding something called a sleeve job
told by a barracks-mate. He set us up by first telling us the
non-shaggy-dog stories of the socket job and the walk job.

-Wilson Gray

On Sep 5, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Jeff Prucher wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jeff Prucher <jprucher at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Feghoots site
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> --- Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Feghoots site
>>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>>
>> Apparently, "feghoot" has become a generic term.
>>
>> <http://www.awpi.com/Combs/Shaggy/index.html>
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>
> I believe it has been for awhile now, in the sense that it doesn't
> necessarily
> refer to stories featuring the eponymous hero, but this is the first
> time I've
> ever seen it used in a non-science fiction context.
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
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