A shaggy dog is a longwinded story that often includes many irrelevant parts. It generally results in a punchline that is absurd or a pun. Sometime the punchline is entirely pointless.
For a more detailed exposition on the origins of the term “shaggy dog”, see From Whence the Nomenclature Shaggy Dog.
A feghoot is a form of shaggy dog story that invariably ends with a pun. The name comes from the series of science fiction pieces known as “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot”, written by Reginald Bretnor under the pseudonum Grendel Briarton.
What is the best way to explore this site?
There are hundreds of entries on this site. We’ve build multiple ways of navigating through the site. Hopefully, one of them will work for you.
The most simple is to visit the homepage and browse backward through the postings. The most recent are towards the top of the page. You can read the excerpts, and if you’re interested in the story, click on the name of the story and you’ll be taken to the entire post. At the bottom of the homepage is a link to previous pages with more stories.
There is also a search box to the upper right of each page. Search anything that tickles your fancy. There’s a decent chance there’s an entry about that subject.
At the top of each page is a menu item called Indices. This offers a pull-down menu with several ways of browsing the site, including:
- By Category – A hierarchical categorization of posts
- By Date – Listings by when the entry was added to the site
- By Tag – A taxonomical listing of the posts
- By Title – A simple listing by the posts subject line
- Tag Cloud – A visual representation of the tags where the size of the font represent the number of entries
Lastly, if you’re feeling lucking, there’s a link at the top of the page to a Random Post on the site.
What are the rules about commenting on this site?
Comments are moderated, but that’s really for the prevention of spam, not the controlling of content. As long as you’re polite, or at least funny, we’ll probably approve the comment. (Note: the funnier the comment, the less polite it need be).
We do have kids reading this site, so we’d ask you to watch the language, unless it’s integral to the humor of the comment.
In the future, we may add a system where comments are automatically approved once the commenter has made a certain number of approved comments, but as commenting is new to this site, we don’t yet have enough comments to make that worthwhile.
I found this site via a link to the old version of the site, but it took me to the homepage, not the pun. What gives?
Yeah, sorry about that. When we moved the site over, we thought about redirecting to the individual puns, but decided that setting up over 2,000 redirects wouldn’t have been an efficient use of time. Plus, that many redirects would have actually been a pretty heavy load on the old server.
So, You can find the old story by either the search box (right side of the page) or one of the indices (top of the page). Please be aware that we don’t have all the stories moved over yet, so it’s possible that something from the old site won’t be found here. We’re working hard to fix this and get all stories converted over.
I don’t get the pun. Where can I find the original phrase upon which it is based?
If we’ve entered the original phrase, it can be found at the bottom of the right column below the text “Spoiler”. If we’ve not entered the phrase, that text will not be found on the page. Unfortunately most entries do not have this data yet, but we’re working on it. We’re also working on having the spoiler not show unless you ask for it.
This text can also be found via the search engine on the site, so if you’re wondering if a particular phrase has a pun on this site, use the search box on the upper right of the page.
Of course, it will be more useful when there are more entries that have this.
I’ve got a shaggy dog story/pun I want to submit. To where do I send it?
If you’ve got a shaggy dog story that’s not already listed in Tarzan’s Tripes, please use the form on the Contact Us page.
A lot of these aren’t shaggy dog stories. Why are you wasting my time?
Well, hopefully everything in this archive is at least funny, so we’d like to think we’re not wasting your time. But, if you just want shaggy dogs stories, go to the Shaggy Dog Category Page.
Something is wrong with your Web pages. Who needs to be informed of these problems?
The pages of Tarzan’s Tripes are maintained by Alan’s son, Brian. To report any problems with the pages, please use the form on the Contact Us page.
I maintain a humor/pun Website. Will you link to my site?
To be honest, probably not. We link to very few sites. We might always like yours, however, so use the form on the Contact Us page to send us info on your site.
I want to advertise on your site. How do I go about doing so?
Ok, no one has actually asked this yet, but you should. We get quite a few hits per day and I’m sure we could work something out. If you are interested in advertising here, please use the form on the Contact Us page.