Feghoots site

[Mark A. Mandel]

Wilson writ:
>>>
 But why are they referred to as "shaggy-dog stories"? I've always
considered them to be puns, whereas a shaggy-dog story is a long
string
of bullshit with no conclusion, as in the first such story I ever
heard:

And you know what it was?!
What?!
All this bull I'm shittin' you!
 <<<

I've always understood one sense of "shaggy-dog story" to be a long,
rambling joke whose punch line is in some way trivial compared to the
length and elaborateness of the story. Your example would count as
that. It does have a punchline (imho), a self-referential one.

The original Feghoot stories are long, elaborate tales designed to
build up to (usually) one crashingly painful pun, often on an idiom or
well-known phrase.

The eponymous s-d s, as I've heard it, ends not with a pun but with a
line ("Oh, no, he wasn't THAT shaggy!") that is bizarrely
inappropriate to the story as narrative. And the hearer's reaction,
perhaps, is the unifying element behind all the types of sds.

-- m a m