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From: gooley@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Shaggy Dog/Atrocious pun
Message-ID: <6000009@uicsl>
Date: Wed, 18-Dec-85 14:03:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uicsl.6000009
Posted: Wed Dec 18 14:03:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Dec-85 06:12:01 EST
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Nf-ID: #N:uicsl:6000009:000:1789
Nf-From: uicsl.UUCP!gooley    Dec 18 13:03:00 1985


The same old shaggy-dog/Father Goose jokes keep getting posted --
variations on the same unlikely stories which explain away the same
extended and atrocious puns. I'm tired of stowed thrones and yellow
fingers and kicked Trids. Time for something new.

Isaac Asimov made a dying alien sing (recite?) "Give My Regards to Broadway"
(story: "Death of a Foy," in his collection THE WINDS OF CHANGE) not
too long ago; here is something similar:

A certain African tribe, mostly swineherds and fishermen, lived on the
shores of a bay; the bay had treacherous currents and water turgid with
sand, but fishing was good and the tribe propered. They attributed this
to their sacrifices -- a prize boar each year to every tribal god except
the sea-god, who got a gorilla. (A wise chieftan a few generations back
had substituted gorilla sacrifice for human).
One year, the tribesmen could not capture a gorilla. The chieftan asked
the tribal wise-woman, the surviving member of a Swedish explorer couple
who had gone native and lived with the tribe for many happy years, if they
should substitute their best boar for the gorilla.  She was strongly against
it, even to the point of suggesting herself as a human sacrifice; he was
horrified and reminded her that porcine offerings had always pleased the
other gods.
The time of sacrifice arrived. With prayers for the sea-god's mercy, the
shamans went through the usual rituals with the boar instead of the gorilla,
culminating in its being taken to the middle of the bay and having its throat
cut as it was thrown in. Nothing went wrong and the next year was as prosperous
as usual. After that, pigs replaced gorillas.
MORAL: Let a swine be your gorilla in a grainy, grainy bay. And if your Swede
decries, just tell her that a swine will always pay...