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#16762 01/25/01 03:01 AM
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Jackie Offline OP
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This one is from Geoff.
How about shaggy dog stories that include a REALLY bad pun? Here's one to start us off:

Atilla the Hun was among history's meanest men. He is reputed to have killed the first person he saw upon awakening, just out of sheer meanness. Needless to say, his attendants were thinning out rapidly, so they took council how to awaken Atilla in safety.

Upon pillaging a town, they discovered the town drunk in a wine vat unharmed. They thought that he might be a person whom they could use to awaken the boss - at least once. They told him that they would supply him with the finest wine they had in exchange for his awakening Atilla each day.

The next day the drunk staggered into Atilla's tent, shook him, and WHACK! out the drunk flew, slamming against a wagon, as Atilla bellowed his usual morning curses. The drunk staggered to his feet, unscathed by the blow.

The drunk withstood day after day, year after year of this ordeal, and became famous throughout the world as the
Souse of the Rising Hun.





#16763 01/25/01 12:40 PM
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Jackie:

The others on this board may come to curse your name. I have a very large collection of shaggy dog stories, and you've just given me "license" to post some of my favorites. Here's an old faithful to start us off. It's a bit PUC, but the story doesn't work without it.

TEd

Dust devils swirled around Laughing Cloud as she waddled proudly down the row of tepees, her hands crossed contemplatively above her swelling abdomen. It's time, she thought to herself. My new son will one day be war chief of this tribe. She soon reached the large tepee where Cold Hands Shaking, the famous Cheyenne medicine man, delivered babies on a regular basis.

"It is time," she declared to Cold Hands Shaking, gasping as another contraction gripped her.

The medicine man moved his hands over her belly, poking and prodding gently. He nodded and smiled reassuringly. "I think you will have twins. Good fortune for the tribe. It will mean good hunting for many years. Come, let us make you comfortable. It's going to be a busy day, there are two others who will deliver this day."

Inside the delivery tepee, there were three large screened off areas. Cold Hands Shaking led Laughing Cloud to the largest of the three and bade her to lie down on the large tanned hide which dominated the space.

Racked though she was with pain, Laughing Cloud immediately noticed the strange text ure of the hide on which she was lying. "What manner of animal is this?" she asked.

"Do you remember when the Wild West Show was traveling across the prairies three summers ago? One of their strange animals died, and Buffalo Bill gave me the hide. It is called hippopotamus. I wish I had hides like it for the other areas, but there I have only buffalo and elk hides. Excuse me, I have to check on the others."

Later that morning Snow Comes Again delivered a 6-pound baby boy. At noon Elk Calf also had a 6-pound baby boy. And late in the evening Laughing Cloud had twin 6-pound baby boys. Which proves once again that the sons of the squaws of the other two hides is equal to those of the squaw of the hippopotamus.




TEd
#16764 01/25/01 01:54 PM
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Jackie Offline OP
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others on this board may come to curse your name

Ah well, just call me hippopotamus-hide.
Ted, you are the very one I was most hoping would put some
good ones here! Um--do I want to know what PUC means?


#16765 01/25/01 04:03 PM
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speaking of twins...

a young mother gave her twin sons up for adoption when they were babies. one of them went to a Spanish family which named the boy Juan; the other went to an Egyptian family and they named him Amal. when Juan was 18 years old, he searched out his birth mother and sent her a picture of himself. she excitedly said to her husband that she would also like to have a picture of Amal. her husband replied, "But they're twins, if you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal".



#16766 01/25/01 04:20 PM
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I can't remember (if I ever knew) how "shaggy dog" came to be name of this genre. Please, someone, take pity on my ignorance.


#16767 01/25/01 05:20 PM
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Which proves once again that the sons of the squaws of the other two hides is equal to those of the squaw of the hippopotamus.

This is one of my absolute favorites. Thank you, TEd, for rendering it electronically, so I may inflict it on others..


#16768 01/25/01 05:50 PM
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I think I meant PIC. Politically InCorrect, not Politically UnCorrect.



TEd
#16769 01/25/01 06:00 PM
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according to M-W, a shaggy-dog story is ""a long-drawn-out circumstantial story concerning an inconsequential happening that impresses the teller as humorous but the hearer as boring and pointless; also: a similar humorous story whose humor lies in the pointlessness or irrelevance of the punch line".

just for the sake of the semantic wars, here is a "true" shaggy-dog story (no pun)...

an Irishman comes into a bar and orders three beers. he slowly drinks them one after another, then he orders another three beers and slowly drinks them.

after repeating this for several evenings, somebody finally asks why he orders three beers at a time, as the last one must be quite flat when he gets around to it.

"It's for my two brothers who left for America. We agreed to always drink a couple of beers for each of us as long as we were all alive."

but, the night comes when he orders only two beers, and the entire bar falls silent while he drinks them. when he orders another two beers, the bartender expresses his sympathy for the dead brother.

"What? Dead brother? Oh, you misundertand... No, no, my two brothers are alive and quite well, I assure you. It's just that I've given up beer for Lent."



#16770 01/25/01 06:19 PM
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...as to the origin of the term, here's our friend Michael Quinion's take:

http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-sha1.htm


#16771 01/25/01 06:26 PM
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> according to M-W, a shaggy-dog story is ""a long-drawn-out circumstantial story concerning an inconsequential happening that impresses the teller as humorous but the hearer as boring and pointless; also: a similar humorous story whose humor lies in the pointlessness or irrelevance of the punch line"

Technically quite correct, of course, but incomplete, I feel. Bennett Cerf (my personal hero) published a great many shaggy dog stories (his words) in Bennett Cerf's Bumper Crop, published of course, by Random, his very own publishing company. He included the types of stories that Jackie and I related above as shaggy dog stories. By the way, do you know why it was called Random House? Because they would decide what to publish by plucking manuscripts at random from the slush pile of submitted mss.

Anyway, your story of the Irishman reminds me that few people (other than myself of course) know what happened to the poor fellow. On a trip to the interior regions of South America, he was captured by a tribe of fierce cannibals. They did not, though, immediately immerse him up to his neck in boiling water. Instead, they kept him penned up, and on the night of the full moon they would nick a vein in his arm and drink of his rich Hibernian blood. Patty tired of this after several months, and on the night of the next full moon he roared at them, "Kill me and eat me if you will, but you've gotta stop sticking me for the drinks."



TEd
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