yak shaving

[Thom Harrison]

Right.  The shaved yak who flies through the sky and comes up out of the
bathtub drain to get a shave in the host's (Ren's and Stimpy's) bathroom,
leaving a coating of shaving scum in the basin for Stimpy to collect the
next morning and put in his pajama pocket.

As I recall, the shaved yak makes later appearances, but none as memorable,
at least to me.

Sorry. I was a minor afficionado for awhile.


Thom Harrison

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing [mailto:gd2 at NYU.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 5:58 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: yak shaving


Re the origin of this phrase --

I think I recall first hearing yak-related humor (did it include yak
shaving, or not??? I think it did...) as part of the original, first-season
( = Kricfalusi-directed) series of _Ren and Stimpy_ cartoons. That would
have been about 1991 or 92.



At 05:34 PM 8/27/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>A neologism, nonce term, in-group slang... but useful!
>        >>>
>
>You see, yak shaving is what you are doing when you're doing some
>stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what
>you're supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal
>relations links what you're doing to the original meta-task.
>        <<<
>
>That's an extract from the text at the following URL that a friend
>passed on to me:
>
>        http://www.ai.mit.edu/lab/gsb/gsb-archive/gsb2000-02-11.html
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>

Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at nyu.edu