Shaggy Dog JOW

I do enjoy puns. One of the forms of jokes are the ‘so-called’ shaggy dog puns that go on and on with a terrible pun at the end. The problem is that they are best if told, not read. Also there is a significant element of cultural context. For example if you do not know the song “Chattanooga Choo-choo” how can you understand a punch line like “Pardon me Roy, is that the cat who chewed your new shoes?” So I am limited in my choices. Let me start with a short, simple one just to put you in the mood for the others.
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What do you call an alligator who is wearing a vest?
An investigator

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There once was a man who decided he had to visit Australia once in his life. He read up on everything he could find, visited all the Australian web sites on the Internet and saved his money so he could make this once in a lifetime vacation.
The day finally came when it all came together and he was ready to leave. He boarded the plane and some hours later stepped off the plane at Sidney International. Australia at last!
Unfortunately, on his first day sightseeing, he began to get a bad headache. Thinking it was probably just jet lag he took two aspirin and continued his tour. The headache didn't go away, however, so he asked the tour guide where the best place to go for treatment was.
"Sir, you'll want to go to the emergency room at the Mercy Hospital", the guide told him, "It’s not far from here."
At the hospital, the doctor suggested he stay there overnight for observation and he agreed. He was assigned a room and a nun who was a nurse came in to see him. When he told her about his headache, she asked him if he had tried their Koala tea. "Its made from the fur of the Koala bear and has great healing properties", she said.
He said he was willing to try anything at that point and asked that she bring him a cup.
Presently, the nun came back in with a cup of liquid. He looked in the cup and saw it had a mass of hair in the bottom. Feeling rather nauseous, he said he didn't believe he could drink the tea with all that hair in the cup.
"Couldn't you strain it out or something", he asked.
The nun was indignant. "Sir, I'll have you know the Koala tea of Mercy is not strained!"

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A doctor was just starting out on his own, when he found that he just had too much work to do. Now this man was brilliant, and had particularly good people skills. Once he got a patient, they would just not see anyone else.
It seems that this man had been reading recently about the advances in cloning, and decided to have a clone made of himself to do his work.
For years it worked perfectly. His clone took care of all his patients, and he got to relax. However, the clone began to have some personality disorders. it would insult patients, and treat them very badly. It got so bad that business was suffering. The doctor decided that he just had to get rid of the clone or lose his business.
So one morning as they jogged together over a high bridge, the doctor pushed the clone over to his death.
The doctor again began seeing his old patients, and things were going exceptionally well, until a fisherman found the dead clone body in the river. When the police found that the real doctor was still, in fact, alive, and that this was a clone, they didn't know just what to charge the doctor for doing wrong.
After much deliberation, they decided to charge him for... Making an obscene clone fall.

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So the Russians got sick of buying wheat from the Americans and began to spend millions on research into grains. Finally U.S. intelligence found out that the Russian scientists had developed a new grain that yielded twice the harvest of conventional wheat and grew in half the time. Several agents died before it was discovered that the new grain was called "Krilk". The CIA was panicked! Without the Russian dependency on American grains the security of the West could be forever compromised.
Congress quickly convened and appropriated several hundred million dollars for the CIA to send up spy satellites over Russia to learn the secrets of Krilk. Finally, after several years, the satellites began to send back images of the factory deep in the Russian Union that was processing the Krilk. The CIA sent in over a hundred agents. None returned. The process remained a secret. The satellites were next to useless because they could only see the outside of the building, not the actual milling of the harvests. Finally the Russian Ambassador in Washington sent a message to the President of the U.S. to let him know that all further attempts to learn the secrets would be futile.
The message read...."You are wasting your money. Everyone knows that it's no use spying over milled Krilk!"

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In California, and, indeed, many parts of the West – the whole country, actually, prevention of uncontrolled wildfire is critically important. So when we camp out in the Sierras, on the last night of a multi-day backpack, we occasionally get carried away and have a bigger fire than might be prudent.
The National Forests have some rules:
Prepare Your Site – Find a level spot away from overhanging branches, brush, or dry grass. Keep away from the base of a hill. Escaped fires travel uphill fast. With a shovel, clear a circle 10 feet wide down to bare dirt. Hollow out a fire pit 6 inches deep and 2 feet across at the center of the cleared circle. Pile the dirt around the fire pit. Keep your fire small. Use existing fire rings where available to reduce the number of disturbed areas and damage to soil cover and vegetation.
Beware of the Duff – Duff is the layer of decomposing wood material that lies on the forest floor between pine needles and bare dirt. Many times it may look like dirt, but it isn’t. Duff burns, dirt doesn’t. It allows even the smallest ember to smolder for days, most times underground and unnoticed, until enough heat is built up to produce flames. Don’t let the duff fool you.
Attend to Your Fire – Never leave your campfire unattended, even for a few minutes or if you take a nap.
Drown the Fire – Drown your campfire 1/2 hour before you break camp. Use your shovel to separate the burning pieces of wood in the fire pit.
Stir and Mix – Stir and mix water with the ashes until the fire is out. Don’t try to bury the fire under dirt, it can smolder for hours and then escape.
Drown Briquettes – Charcoal briquettes should be extinguished by dumping into a pail of water, mixing thoroughly, and then place into the fire pit.
Feel the Ashes – Feel the ashes to be sure the fire is out. Before you leave the campsite, check the area within 50 feet of the fire for sparks or embers that may have escaped.
We have only one issue with the above instructions: Those of us who depend on having functional fingers to make a living Feel the ashes with our bare feet.
“We foot out the pyre.”

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Thursday night, eleven time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal lost to 100th ranked Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic in the second round at Wimbledon. Some call it the biggest upset in tennis history, but I think they’re missing the real story.
I heard that before the final point of the match, Nadal cried out that he couldn’t believe he was losing to a Serb.
After scoring the winning point, Rosol yelled out, “That’s Czech, mate!”

This one is a little different -

A disappointed salesman of Coca-Cola returned from his assignment to Israel.
A friend asked, “Why weren’t you successful with the Israelis?”
The salesman explained, “When I got posted, I was very confident I would make a good sales pitch. But I had a problem. I didn’t know how to speak Hebrew. So I planned to convey the message through three posters.
First poster: A man lying in the hot desert sand totally exhausted and fainting.
Then to the immediate right the second poster: The man is drinking Coca-Cola.
Finally on the far right side the third poster: Our man is now totally refreshed and active.
We put these posters were pasted all over the Tel Aviv.
“Terrific idea! That should have worked” said the friend.
“Yeah, but it failed,” responded the salesman. “No one told me they read from right to left!”

And finally a legal-type joke

Diamond D’s brothel began construction on an expansion of their building to increase their ever-growing business. In response, the local Baptist Church started a campaign to block the business from expanding with morning, afternoon, and evening prayer sessions at their church.
Work on Diamond D’s progressed right up until the week before the grand reopening when lightning struck the cathouse and burned it to the ground! After the establishment was burned to the ground by the lightning strike, the church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about ‘The power of prayer’.
But then ‘Big Jugs’ Jill Diamond, the owner/madam, sued the church, the preacher, and the entire congregation on the grounds that the church “was ultimately responsible for the demise of her building and her business either through direct or indirect divine actions or means.”
In its reply to the court, the church vehemently and voraciously denied any and all responsibility or any connection to the building’s demise.
The crusty old judge read through the plaintiff’s complaint and the defendant’s reply, and at the opening hearing commented, “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this damn case, but it appears from the paperwork that we now have a whorehouse owner who staunchly believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that doesn’t!”