longest joke...
 

I can't seem to come up with it in a search, but there was a joke in the humor thread about a year or two ago that took up several posts to fit it all in, and ended with a rather cheesey punchline. Does anyone have a quick link to this joke these days? *sigh* Thanks...

you mean this one?
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=94225

My sense of symmetry compels me to follow up with the shortest joke:

An Irishman walks out of a bar.

cj... that's the one! Were you able to find it by searching, or did you have it bookmarked? Thanks!

warrrreagl, it's funny because it's true, as a joke at least (I'm Irish, I know these things...) ;-)

Better Nate than Lever - I love that joke

For what it's worth, this particular kind of joke is called a "shaggy dog story". The point of a shaggy dog story isn't to entertain the listener, it's to entertain the teller by keeping the audience on the hook for as long as possible. The lame punchline is part of the act, a way of driving home the point that the teller was conning the audience.

True shaggy dog stories are improvised from basic guidelines, with the skill being how long you can keep improvising and building on the basic framework without losing the audience, and climax without a real punchline.

There is an original "Shaggy Dog Story". The basic framework is this:

A man see in the classified ads an ad from a rich man who wants shaggy dog. He gets a shaggy dog, cleans it up, and takes it to the home of the man who put the ad. The butler greets him, sees the dog, and says, "We wanted shaggy, but not *that* shaggy."

I doubt anybody would memorize the joke in the first linked thread, but the basic framework could be greatly condensed into a single paragraph.

Sissy can do a killer version of "If I play my cards right . . . ." I've seen her keep a group hooked for close to ten minutes, the delight she was having with keeping her audience hooked obvious. It is a thing to behold.

Gilda

I like the blues singer epitaph:

Didn't Wake Up This Mornin'

My dad had great 'shaggy dog stories'. Came close to smacking him upside the head a few times for telling them:lol:

This farmer had a problem. Seems his beautiful mare had birds building nests in her flowing mane. This would happen every spring and quite frankly, the farmer was fed up.
He called upon a man who had a fantastic reputation with animals. He could cure anything, fix anything, you name it.
"I just want the birds to go away, not harmed", the farmer told him."Her beatiful mane is getting ruined." So the man set to work.
At the end of the day, the farmer went to check on the man's progress and noticed all the birds were gone, but he smelled......bread.
He asked the man,"Fantastic!!! Not only are the birds all gone, but her mane is beautiful again! But, why do I smell bread?"
The miracle-worker, never looking up as he packed his bags, simply responded, "Yeast".
"Yeast???" the farmer asked in shock.


wait....





here it comes....









"Yes, I applied yeast to her mane. As you can plainly see for yourself, Yeast on beast, the nest is at rest and never the mane shall tweet".



For those of you who don't know the saying being so viciously twisted:
East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet

i used a google site search to find it :D