Independence daze
One July 4th, I was enjoying the massive fireworks filling the sky over San Francisco at a roof-top barbeque. One of the yanks said, "I suppose you don't have anything like this in England, do you?"

"Well no," I replied, "But we do have a party on July 5th. You know, to celebrate getting rid of you colonials."

I span a yarn about how we traditionally celebrate this date, with a special Marmite Pudding and baked beans, and July 5th crackers which contain union-jack party hats. I even said that in 1976, the bicentennial, we had massive street parties - surely you saw them on TV? Of course, a few people had vague memories of the Silver Jubilee street parties in '77, so I got quite a few to believe me.

Except the ones who thought my accent meant I was Australian, of course.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 20 Jan 2011, 12:00, 1 reply)

Untruth on the telly.
When I was young, my parents had a number of rules in place regarding what was and what wasn't suitable TV. No telly was allowed before 5pm, for example, and there was a number of programmes that I wasn't allowed to watch. The Incredible Hulk was one such programme; The A-Team was - at least for a while - another.

My friends - including S, who insisted that he was Elvis, and whom I was tempted to believe because, at that age, I didn't know who Elvis was and so reasoned that his claim may have been true - were talking about their TV viewing from the previous night one playtime. Had I seen The A-Team?

Yeah, I said. It was brilliant.

I don't know how, but they detected my lie, and asked what had happened.

Eeek.

"You didn't see it, did you?"
Yeah. I watch it all the time. It's brill!
"Who's best out of BA and Hannibal?"
Oh, Hannibal.
"How does the theme tune go, then?"

Caught.

In retrospect, I can't believe how much of a telly bullshitter I was. One night, I'd been unable to sleep, and so wandered down to the living-room, where my parents were watching the box. I asked what was on.
"The end of a film," said my dad.
Next day, keen to demonstrate how late I'd been allowed to stay up, and what daring stuff I'd been allowed to watch, I thought I had the best conversational gambit of my short life at my disposal.

So: did anyone see The End of a Film last night? It was dead ace!
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 20 Jan 2011, 11:15, 7 replies)

I shot JR..
While in Houston a few years ago having a cigarette outside some Irish pub, some guy in his 40s points at a hotel across the road and claimed that his grandfather had dinner with Kennedy the night before being shot in Dallas.....hmmm

Sort of like in the part of Dublin I live, every second person's brother or cousin used to play football with Robbie Keane.....I call shenanigans..
(El_diablo_blanco, Thu 20 Jan 2011, 11:02, Reply)

Our ex dear leader
Just after T B-liar was first elected I was at work and someone commented on how "theatrical" Tone was. I don`t know how these things crystallise but I did find myself saying " It`s in the genes , look at his great uncle Lionel".
"No!"
"look it up, it isn`t a secret."
Edit: it was bought, simply because there was no great emphasis, and several repeated it until corrected.
(tootired Is searching for a funny sig, nothing good so far, Thu 20 Jan 2011, 9:34, Reply)

Waldo
I used to work with a guy called Craig. Pleasant enough chap, but by shitting christ could he come out with some amount of bullshit.
Now for the back story of Craig. He hade a tough upbringing, his dad died of cancer when Craig was about 10. His mother took to drink at that point and kind of lost her way. Lots of new men in her life after that, many of them for one night at a time. Seemed she didn't bother trying to keep it a secret from anyone, far less Craig. This is all verified by people that knew Craig from an early age. Growing up in the small town that he did, everyone knew everyone else's business.
Anyway, fast forward to 2003ish. As I stated before, he was an amiable fella. We worked together selling electrical goods for a well known chain. So I suppose bullshit was really a neccesity to get you through the day and make targets. Now he didn't just bullshit about mundane things like his sexual conquests and how filthy they were in the sack, although he liked to do that a lot as well... He liked to really push the boundaries of believability too. Like the time he told us he bumped in to Jim Corr off of the Corrs and went out on the lash with him for the night. We were able to prove that the Corrs were in fact touring America at the time and therefore highly unlikely to be out and about in downtown Dundee for the night. Or there was also the time that he didn't come in to work one Saturday and his excuse was that he couldn't because he was with David Coulthard on his yacht in Monaco for the weekend and no he couldn't call in and let the boss know, as David didn't have a phone on the yacht!
Now you might think that he would not be able to hold down a relationship for any length of time, but he was actually married when I first met him and had been for about 4 years, having known her since they were at primary school. She knew he was a terrible bull shitter, but overlooked it the majority of the time. They eventually split up though because Craig's mum took a shine to his father in law. (Again verified by an independent 3rd party) My favourite lie regarding his wife was that he was shagging her so hard up the wrong 'un one night, that he split his cock and had to be taken away in an ambulance because he had lost so much blood. He had a string of good looking girlfriends after that, that were waaaaaay out of his league. But kept them interested in the most part until they found out he was a liar. He even told me that he had set it up with one of them to get me involved in a threesome. Of course I didn't believe a word of it. Fronted up all cocky in front of him and said girlfriend and basically tried to out him as a liar in front of her. Backfired spectacularly because he had actually got her to agree to it. I'm sad to say that I shat it and mumbled some really lame excuse about not having any condoms with me and bolted "in search" of them. I'm sad because although she didn't look much in the face dept (but then again nor do I) She had a fantastic pair of lady glands that defied gravity. The likes of which I am extremely unlikely to get the chance to see ever again.
After that it became a bit of a game to catch him out with his lies, so we basically used to hound him about it every time he came out with something. Didn't put him off in the slightest. Just shrugged his shoulders and agreed with us that it was in fact bullshit. We took to calling him Walter after Walter Mitty. This eventually got shortened to Waldo. He even started using it himself and had his name badge changed at work. Customers would come in and ask for Waldo.
Then things took a bit of a sinister turn. One night Waldo was out at a club with one of his longest standing friends, they were there with their girlfriends. Everyone was well on by this time and the boys took off for a circuit of the place. Waldo comes back about an hour later minus his mate who turns up in the gully at the side of a motorway having fallen off a flyover, barely clinging to life. Spotted by chance, just after first light, by a paramedic in the passenger seat of an ambulance. If he had laid there much longer he would have been dead. He had fractured his skull and was in a coma for about a week. Waldo apparently knew nothing of what had happened although everyone that knew him, knew he was lying about something. The police interviewed him more than once and also said he was lying about something. His mate couldn't remember anything when he came round, including who he was. Took him almost a year before he could remember fairly major events in his life, such as his entire chilhood. Distanced myself from Waldo after that. Last I heard he was worse than before for bullshitting. Probably down to the fact that most of his friends turned their back on him, so had no-one around to keep him grounded.

Sorry for the length,but got in to telling the story.
(roasterboy, Thu 20 Jan 2011, 3:17, Reply)

My Dad...
Apparently once bought a pint of Guinness for Uma Thurman. Right, yeah.
(fuzzyjumpers savaged a lion on, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 22:08, 1 reply)

Grasshoppers
When I was young, my Dad told me that times were so tough in the Depression that he was reduced to eating grasshoppers for food.

One autumn day, I was out behind the house, helping with chores. I was burning a pile of dead weeds, and along the way I baked a number of grasshoppers mixed in with the weeds. Wanting to toughen myself up and emulate my Dad, I steeled myself and placed a baked grasshopper in my mouth....

I started retching. I tried several times, trying to choose the grasshoppers that less ashen and were the most-evenly cooked. No matter what, I couldn't force myself to eat the wretched, bug-eyed things.

When I mentioned this later to my Dad, he was surprised. He didn't remember his grasshopper story, but did remember he had a pet chicken in the Depression, and was so saddened when his parents butchered it that he vowed never to eat chicken again, a vow he kept to the present day. Instead of being ravenously hungry during the Depression, he was comfortable enough to indulge sentimentalities.

B**tard.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 21:52, 2 replies)

Hey Sully...
...remember when I said I'd kill you last?

I lied.
(Brighton RAWK at the tone, the time will be:, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 16:47, 3 replies)

sorry, kids
the reason i have no belly button is because of a hernia operation. i lied. i'm not really a clone.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 16:41, Reply)

This upgrade will make your system faster and more reliable
As opposed to, say, making you spend the next three days trying to get the damn thing to actually boot up again, and another week discovering which of your favourite applications now give weird errors or fail to work at all.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 14:08, Reply)

Because the farmer refused to move out
The M62 had to be built around that farmhouse near Rishworth Moor and just to piss him off, they built it either side rather than serving a court order, getting the police to drag him out and then bulldoze his house.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 19 Jan 2011, 13:46, 16 replies)