"Suffering doughnuts!"

[Gerald Cohen]

    In a Sept.28 message Barry Popik cites the 1924 exclamations
"Suffering doughnuts!" and "Great suffering doughnuts!" and asks "Why
do doughnuts suffer so?"

    I'm not sure, but Barry's quote jogged my mind, since I had
recently  come across "deader than a doughnut":  _St. Louis Post
Dispatch_, Sept. 8, 2001,
pg. 4, cols.  1-5: (title) "DNA Match of Hair Is Seen As Break In
Jimmy Hoffa Case." col. 5: "James Burdick, a lawyer in Michigan who
represented O'Brien during the original investigation called O'Brien
a 'notorious big mouth' who could not have kept such a secret.'
        "'If (O'Brien) knew anything about it, he'd be deader than a
doughnut 25 years ago,' Burdick said..."

     Maybe a doughnut hole is somehow likened to a large bullet hole,
and this would explain why the doughnut is dead or suffering.

     Btw, there's some cartoon character (Roadrunner? Yosemite Sam?)
who frequently says "Suffering succotash!" We deal of course with
alliteration, but otherwise, is there any justification for succotash
appearing in this exclamation? And is the exclamation used anywhere
else besides the cartoon?

---Gerald Cohen

>Date:         Fri, 28 Sep 2001
>From: Bapopik at AOL.COM
>Subject:      Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo (1924)
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>CONFESSIONS OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY HOBO
>by "Digit"
>Herbert Jenkins, Limited, London
>1924
>
>    A British man tramps the U. S.
>...
>Pg. 62:
>    "Great suffering doughnuts!"
>Pg. 173:
>    "Suffering doughnuts!"
>(Why do doughnuts suffer so?--ed.)