A friend of mine had an epic joke that was a literal shaggy dog joke. It starts with a neighborhood having a "shaggiest dog in the neighborhood" contest, escalates up to city, county, state, etc. with the same dog winning shaggiest dog. You can stretch each contest out as long as you can, and add as many variations of a larger area as you can think of, until you get to "shaggiest dog in the universe". The punchline is
In college DH used to tell "the squirrel joke" which could go on for ages. A man sees a squirrel running past carrying an acorn. So he chases it to find out where he's going. And they come to several obstacles (river, pit of snakes, disco) and at each one the squirrel runs back and gets his boat/snake charming kit/white polyester jumpsuit so the man has to do the same. This goes on until the joke-teller can't think of any more situations, the man finally catches up with the squirrel in a cave full of acorns, and asks "What have you been doing all this time???" And the squirrel says "Nuttin'"
I don't know if I can conscientiously ever return to the martial arts, as if I didn't have enough reasons to want to cry today.
ita, I'm so sorry.