Date: | October 11, 2006 / year-entry #344 |
Tags: | microspeak;other |
Orig Link: | https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061011-14/?p=29423 |
Comments: | 14 |
Summary: | Somebody at a meeting two years ago used the term "goat rodeo" to describe a completely confused situation. The term stuck with me as a really funny folksy analogy. It's not official Microspeak, but who knows, it may someday gain currency. I certainly enjoy saying it. "Goat rodeo." "Goat rodeo." "Goat rodeo." (Some earlier Microspeak... |
Somebody at a meeting two years ago used the term "goat rodeo" to describe a completely confused situation. The term stuck with me as a really funny folksy analogy. It's not official Microspeak, but who knows, it may someday gain currency. I certainly enjoy saying it. "Goat rodeo." "Goat rodeo." "Goat rodeo." (Some earlier Microspeak entries: schedule chicken, baking.) |
Comments (14)
Comments are closed. |
Interesting. There is a Danish expression, "gedemarked", i.e "goat market", that has roughly the same meaning.
Friends of mine have been using this term for 5 years or so. I’m not sure if it comes from the same place or not.
Hmmm. I feel bad about even saying this, but the only time I’ve ever heard something like a ‘this is a goat #@*!’ phrase then it sounds, um, a little more ‘vernacular’, but with basically the same meaning.
Using ‘rodeo’ makes it a much nicer expression.
Since at least 1970 the Air Force has used the term "goat rope" to mean the same thing, as in "This exercise is a total goat rope".
In 1997 or 1998, one of my confreres used this term to refer to Cisco’s collective development processes. Soon after that, our little group created an IRC channel #goatrodeo, which exists to this day.
This is a term coined (or perhaps just used) by EdSt during the Win98 dev cycle. He had so many of these terms that DaveFe made a t-shirt with them on it.
PingBack from http://gilli.in/2006/10/11/proto-microspeak-the-goat-rodeo/
This term goes back at least as far as 1983 where it was a popular expression at a large pharmaceutical company in NJ.
As for "goat rope", the term "goat roper" was current in Denver about 30 or 35 years ago, used for someone who pretended to be a cowboy but wasn’t.
Reminds me of a Tintin adventure where Haddock accuses Professor Calculus of "acting the goat". Ah, Tintin . . .
So – is "baking" here derived from silicon, or from Buffy? ("I’m cookie dough… I’m not done baking yet")
"Baking" was in use at Microsoft when I was there (90-00) so no, not 7th season Buffy.
I think it’s derived from "half-baked", actually :)
My favorite is the term "herding cats" used to describe a group of unruly (prima donna) types who all want to go their own way….you can imagine!
http://www.goatrodeo.net/ ;)