Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks… lol, the undeniable reality of scotts and the annoying certainty of rogers)Anyone seen a box of words? I am pretty sure I had some put away, under the bed or in the back of the closet, just in case. What’s the deal with the writing style of clarks and the non-use of contractions? We certainly don’t think like that! See? I used ‘don’t’ (as opposed to do not!). Well, the fact remains, I am missing a bunch of words and I really could stand to find them right about now.
Long time Readers know what’s coming next. But… we will let the new Readers enjoy the w…t…..f??! moment that comes with each and every one of these special Posts. Today’s Post is the blog equivalent of what, in the world of jokes and comedy, is referred to as a ‘shaggy dog’ story.1 An example of such a story is provided in the footnote area. Better go down there right now, if you do not find yourself laughing (at very least chuckling) then you will not be amused when you have dragged yourself to the end of this rambling morass of a Tuesday Post. Serially. Better go there…now!
Still with us? Fine. Actually, the process of finding the shaggy dog reference in wikipedia and jamming it into this Post has gone a long way to get me out of the ‘what the hell! there are no words left in my (fill in favorite body-part here). But since you are still reading, it is only fair to give you something to take away, as a reward for your:
- loyalty: which is a clarklike trait. notice we did not say it was an admirable quality …we did not!
- stubbornness: scotts are stubborn, not for any reason that would produce a benefit, in fact, they should not be thought of as being stubborn for any reason, they just are
- close-minded: rogers are the example of how being close-minded can be thought of as a good thing!
1) In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, usually resulting in a pointless or absurd punchline based on a play on words in cliché form. These stories are a special case of yarns, coming from the long tradition of campfire yarns. Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience’s preconceptions of the art of joke telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner. A lengthy shaggy dog story derives its humour from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listeners for a long time (such jokes can take five minutes or more to tell) for no reason at all, as the story ends with a meaningless anticlimax. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story )
What some sources choose to believe is the archetypical shaggy dog story:
“A boy owned a dog that was uncommonly shaggy. Many people remarked upon its considerable shagginess. When the boy learned that there are contests for shaggy dogs, he entered his dog. The dog won first prize for shagginess in both the local and the regional competitions. The boy entered the dog in ever-larger contests, until finally he entered it in the world championship for shaggy dogs. When the judges had inspected all of the competing dogs, they remarked about the boy’s dog: “He’s not that shaggy.”
