Nine Shaggy Dog Stories

You may not know the exact definition of a shaggy dog story. The wikipedia says: "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. 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."

Here are nine primal shaggy dog stories:

Ghandi's Health Problems

Ghandi walked barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard. Even when he wasn't on a hunger strike, he did not eat much and became quite thin and frail. He also was quite a spiritual person. Furthermore, due to his diet, he ended up with very bad breath. He became known as a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.

The Giant Panda

A giant panda escaped from the zoo in New York. Eventually, he found his way downtown and walked into a restaurant, where he found a seat at an emptey table. The maitre d', being a native New Yorker figures he's seen stranger things than this so he sends over a waiter to take the panda's order. In due course the panda's meal arrives and he eats.

After he finishes his dinner he stands up, calmly pulls out a gun from God-knows-where he had it hidden, and blows away several customers and a couple of the waiters. Then he turns around and walks toward the door.

Naturally, the maitre d' is horrified. He stops the panda and demands an explanation, at the very least.

The panda says to him, "What do I look like to you"?

The maitre d' answers, "Well, a giant panda, of course."

"That's right," says the panda, "Look it up," and he walks out.

The maitre d' calls the police. When they arrive the maitre d' relates the whole story to them, including the panda's comment about looking it up. So the chief detective sends a rookie out to get an encyclopedia.

He eventually returns with the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Volume P. The detective looks up "panda", and there's the answer: "Giant panda, lives in China, eats shoots and leaves."

The Flower Growing Friars

Some friars wanted to do more for their flock but their vow of poverty, simple lifestyle and lack of gainful employment meant that their supply of available funds was, to say the least, meager. Nevertheless, they put their collective heads together and came up with the idea of opening a small florist shop. They reasoned that they could grow most of the flowers on the church grounds, and what they couldn't grow, they could likely pick from the surrounding countryside.
As you can probably guess, everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God and their little business flourished. So much so that the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close their little shop, but their flower business was providing them with much-needed funds for their good works and they refused. He went back time and again, finally begging the friars to close. By this time, they had tired of the florist's constant whining and they ignored him. The florist even asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of the flower business, but they ignored her, too.

By this time, the florist was nearly backrupt and in desperation hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to "persuade" the good friars to close. Being a man of few morals and even fewer religious convictions, Hugh had no ethical problems with his assigned task and promptly gave the friars a thorough beating and trashed their store. He departed with a stern warning that he’d be back if they didn’t close the shop. Terrified, the friars did so immediately, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

The Desert Storm Twins

During Desert Storm, an American Air Force officer met a Saudi Air Force officer. They began to make small talk, and after the discussion had been carrying on for a little while, the Saudi officer decided to pull out his wallet and show pictures of his family to the American.

When the American saw the picture of the Saudi's family, he was shocked. "Hey, that looks like my son," he said, referring to one of the Saudi officer's children. "That looks just like my Juan!"
The Saudi officer explained. "About 15 years ago, I went to Mexico to drill from oil. While I was there, my wife and I decided to adopt a young boy. We named him Amal and he's grown up with us."
The American said, "Well, about 15 years ago, my wife and I were stationed at the Mexican embassy. We adopted Juan and now he's in high school. I wonder if your boy and mine are twins!"

Sure enough, the boys had the same birthday and they agreed that the two boys must have been twins. After the war ended, they agreed to meet in Los Angeles and have a big reunion. Of course, the news media received word of this and were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the young boy from the Middle East.

However, to the disappointment of the crowd that had assembled, it was announced that the plane would be over four hours late. Juan's mother said to the media, "You might as well go home. There's no point in waiting here."

"Why would we want to do that?" asked a reporter.

"Well," she replied, "they're identical twins. If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal."

The Man Who Loved Hollandaise

A man went to his dentist because he felt something wrong in his mouth. The dentist examined him and said "That new upper plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?"

The man replied, "All I can think of is that about four months ago, my wife made some asparagus and put some stuff on it that was delicious... hollandaise sauce! I love it so much now that I put it on everything -- meat, toast, fish, vegetables, everything!"

The dentist said, "Well, that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new one, and this time, I'll use chrome."

"Why chrome?" asked the patient.

"It's simple," said the dentist. "Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the hollandaise."

The Czech Friend

A certain lawyer was quite wealthy and had a summer house in the country. Each summer the lawyer would invite a different friend to spend a week or two.
On one occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian friend to stay with him. The friend, eager to get a freebie off a lawyer, agreed.

Early one morning, the lawyer and his Czechoslovakian companion went out to pick berries for their breakfast. As they went around the berry patch gathering blueberries and raspberries, along came two huge bears, a male and a female.

The lawyer, seeing the two bears, immediately dashed for cover. His friend, though, wasn't so lucky. The male bear reached him and swallowed him whole.

The lawyer ran back to his Mercedes, tore into town, and got the local sheriff. The sheriff grabbed his shotgun and dashed back to the berry patch with the lawyer.

Sure enough, the two bears were still there. "He's in that one," cried the lawyer, pointing to the male, while visions of lawsuits from his friend's family danced in his head.

He just had to save his friend. The sheriff looked at the bears, and without batting an eye, leveled his gun, took careful aim, and shot the female.

"What did you do that for?" exclaimed the lawyer. "I said he was in the other one!"

"Exactly," replied the sheriff. "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the Czech was in the male?"

Mercy Hospital

Mercy Hospital in Chicago is run by a group of nuns who came from Australia. Through the years the years they have gone out of their way to maintain ties with their native land -- putting up a large map of the country in the recpetion area, and serving Australian tea from tins decorated with koala bears.

One night a patient calls a nun into his room and tells her how much he likes the hospital and the care. But he has one small complaint: he found some leaves in his tea.

"Oh," the nun says, "the koala tea of Mercy is not strained."

Nate The Snake

There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. Theis lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever.

One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever!

Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude that is was better Nate than lever.

A tale of the fabulous foo bird

Three explorers had arrived in Africa to explore territory that had never been seen by Europeans before. Immediately upon arrival, they enlisted the services of a native to translate for them and another native to act as a guide. After a few days, they had organized their supplies and secured trhe services of porters. They were ready at last!

Off they went into the jungle! They had a few days of travel before they got to the area they wished to explore. The travel went smoothly and uneventfully.

The day dawned when they began to travel into the unknown jungle. After a few hours travel, their guide got very excited upon seeing something on the ground. The three explorers and their translator hurried over to see what was the matter. The translator explained, "He says that this is the mark of the Fabulous Foo Bird! They are very rarely seen! They are very lucky!"

The explorers chuckled to themselves at the natives' superstitions and the safari moved on. After awhile, they heard a horrible squawking from the air above them. As they looked up to see what it was, the sun was briefly hidden as an enormous bird flew overhead. As they were staring, there was a loud squelching sound, followed by cries of disgust from the senior explorer. The other turned to see that he was covered with bird poop. The guide got even more excited when he saw this and began gesturing frantically at the explorer. The translator said, "That was the Fabulous Foo Bird! He says you must not wipe this off! If you leave it on and do not wash it off, you will receive untold wealth and fortune. But he says if you wipe it off, you will die horribly!"

"Nonsense!" said the explorer. He disgustedly cleaned himself up, all the while grumbling about superstitions. The natives began murmuring. They were very nervous. A short time later, the senior explorer was clean and still very much alive. "There! You see? Nothing to worry about!" he said. Three steps later he fell over dead, his body rotting away.

After the shock died down, the guide looked somewhat smug.

The next day, the same squawking was heard, followed by the appearance of the bird. This time, the second explorer was coated in gunk. Once again, the guide issued his hysterical warning. "Poppycock!" said the second explorer. "That was a coincidence. I am not going to trek through Africa coated in bird droppings becuase of some silly superstition!" He proceeded to clean himself off, but wasn't even finished before he collapsed dead into a pile of dust.
After the shock died down, the guide again looked somewhat smug.

The next day, the same squawking was heard, followed by the appearance of the bird. This time, the youngest (and only remaining) explorer was coated in gunk. Once again, the guide issued his hysterical warning. The nervouse young explorer decided to play it safe and continue the exploration in his filthy state. This met with great approval by the natives.

The expedition continued and proved to be a smashing success, with great discoveries. The young explorer recived incredible accolades and lived a very long and wealthy life.
From then on, enterprising explorers were always given this sage advice: if the foo shits, wear it.
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