When this troper couldn't make it to one of my weekly game nights, my GM cooked up a ShaggyDogStory to explain my PC's absence and to provide a bit of a BreatherEpisode for the other players. My character, the team mage, had holed herself up in her room in order to mystically search for her mentor, who had recently gone missing. After a few days had passed and she still hadn't come back out, the rest of the team would break in to find her gone, evidence of a struggle, and a map to an enclave of enemy mages. Aha! She's been kidnapped by these evildoers! The party follows the map to the enemy camp, battles through several {{Mooks}}, and defeats their leader... problem is, their teammate is nowhere to be found, and the enemy insists they never laid a hand on her. The team returns to their base in search of a new lead, only to find their mage sitting in the kitchen, sipping tea and wondering why they're all staring at her like that. Turns out the stress from the current MythArc was making it impossible for her to search properly, so she had snuck off to enjoy a weekend beach retreat (yes, without telling her teammates--most of them contributed to her stress in the first place) so she could try again with a clear mind. While she was gone, a cat had gotten into her room and made a mess of things before leaving, hence the "struggle." But then the story gets meta--when I later asked my GM how the game had gone, he told me that the other [=PCs=] had all taken the mage's warning not to bother her unless it was an emergency to heart and stayed away from her room--they had never even realized she was gone.

This Troper was once watching his brother play {{Pokemon}} Heart Gold. His brother went to the Mystery Gift mode and got a free Mew! After being awestruck and confused for a minute, his brother said, "I heard from a friend that today is a day to get free Mews." So, naturally, This Troper got his Pokemon Pearl game out. But he couldn't find the Mystery Gift mode. He and his brother spent a few minutes trying to figure out what to do to get Mystery Gift. Finally he went to GameFAQs to find out how. He did what it said, unlocked the Mystery Gift mode, and hurriedly did what his brother said to do. The game then said, "No gifts were found." So, after all that, This Troper got nothing for his efforts.

I seem to have a nasty habit of putting lots of time and effort into things that turn out to be pointless. I wrote up one particularly [[strike:frustrating... interesting example, involving my attempts to collect a missed package, on my blog. (I'd summarize it here, but summarizing would seem to kind of undermine the point of a Shaggy Dog Story.)

This troper spent his last two years of college with the goal in mind of getting a job in Japan. He was just fanatical about it, refusing to settle for any job in his native Seattle or anywhere in the US for that matter. The recession came, and he figured getting a job in Japan without any work experience and only mediocre Japanese ability was impossible, but then he came upon an ad for a study abroad program. He did that for the summer of 2009 after he graduated college; he would have done it for longer but he didn't find out about it long enough in advance to get a long-term visa. So while he was there, he applied to start again in January 2010, this time with the intent of getting good enough at Japanese to hopefully get a job at the end. With the constant reports of how bad the recession was, he figured that not even a Bachelor's and near-fluent Japanese ability were enough, so he planned to go onto a vocational school in Japan, with the hopes that having a name that employers in Japan might actually know about would increase his chances, and also, teaching you how to job hunt and do well at interviews is a large part of the curriculum for these kinds of places, so he signed up. Fast forward to March 2011, after he had graduated from his Japanese language school and was looking to move on to the new school next month. The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami happened. He figured if it didn't kill him, there's no way Japan would have an economy left by the time he would graduate. Nevertheless, he still wanted to go. Of course his parents wanted him to at least visit home, so he did. He hung out with his friends back home, having the most fun he's had in months, and about mid-way through the visit back he brought up that he was seriously considering dropping everything and coming back home for good, with his friends and then with his family. The fact that this trope is here should give away the troper's decision. He doesn't have any plans to live in Japan any time in the foreseeable future.

This troper was playing KingdomHearts once, and she was trying to jump up a set of ledges, only to keep falling back into a very large ditch. This went on for about forty-five long, frustrating minutes, and when she finally got to the top ledge and to where she wanted to be... she noticed a staircase leading from the ditch to right where she had Sora standing. A controller was broken that day.

When this troper was young, he went on a week-long canoe trip. Our camp counselor built up our expectations early on, telling us about his story about the Rosebud Inn. One night he told us the story, which he managed to stretch out to over half an hour of embellishment. It went something like this: A man is vacationing with his wife in Europe. On his flight over, the flight attendant tells him to enjoy his trip, but to not stay at the Rosebud Inn. He hears the same thing from his taxi driver and several other people. Upon arriving, every hotel he can find is completely booked. Of course, the only one with a room is the Rosebud Inn. He receives wonderful service and doesn't know why everyone warned him about the place. The next day, his wife leaves him, no one will take his money, and he can't book a flight back home. He manages to steal a canoe and tries to escape to a place where he can be safe. That night, in his canoe on the ocean, he sees a beautiful sunset. To get a better view, he stands up. The canoe then tips over and he drowns. The moral of the story? stand up in a canoe.