High Wycombe is the UK's longest town.
is it true?
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 13:59, Reply)

Legless I -
Personally, I've been waiting for "Bird 'Flu found in Kentucky".
( Sylia Stingray is pilfering the biscuits on, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 13:56, Reply)

Is It Just Me?
Or does anyone else find it deeply suspicious that the latest outbreak of Bird Flu is in Turkey?

"Bird Flu Hits Turkey!"

Come on - it has to be an Urban Legend in the making. It's someone in the news department having a laugh. If I worked there, I'd do it.

Mind you - if I see the headline:

"Tenerife - Bird Flu Rips through Canaries!"

Then I'll know for a fact that someone is pulling my plonker....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 13:45, Reply)

The Game!
what is it with 'the game' i too practice this, but would like to know where other 'players'picked it up from. personally i was taught it by some medical students whilst travelling in oz. And yep i lost it when i started this log. As for urban myths, i once convinced one friend that he would die on his eight birthday due to his distinct lack of earlobes. I totally convinced him that doctors were baffled and as yet there was no cure. He left crying. He went on to develop several nervous ticks, i hope i was not the cause, he was friggin weird tho!! bastard lost the game again (i type slowly)
(lankynyack, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 13:41, Reply)

We're not that gullible but....
My friends and I have fallen for a few urban legends in our time. The ones that stick out are that the chap who wrote "Don't Worry, Be Happy" back in the eighties committed suicide before it got to number one. Fortunately, this one was overturned due to doing some actual research on it before passing it on to all and sundry.

On a slightly more disturbing level was the story of how Ralph Macchio, the star of the Karate Kid films had gone through a sex change and was now working as a ladyboy in LA. Strangely enough, we weren't so keen to research that one...
(Mr Evian, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 13:23, Reply)

Dentists Are Also Bastards!
A while back I was having a conversation with a mate, amidst a larger group of friends, in the pub. Such was his level of drunkeness he was shouting most of his conversations loud enough to get us nasty stares from the landlord. "Keep it down big mouth!" someone said. The mate turned round indignant and informed everyone that he was far from a big mouth, the dentist had removed two of his teeth as his mouth was actually too small.

"Me too!" Three of our friends said in unison and then looked at each other accusingly. "Which one's?" I asked suddenly very intrigued. "Bottom jaw, behind the canines." he replied, slightly unnerved by the three friends. "Behind the canines!" The other five of us responded in unison, the whole conversation eerily mirroring the "Eagle River!" scene from Hot Shots.

We all compared teeth and found that all of us had had the same two teeth removed. Such was the amazingness of this coincidence we were rabbitting on about it to complete strangers for the next few days and guess what? Every single person from our school around our age was missing the exact same set of two teeth. It turned out it was all a scam so that the dentists could charge more. Bastards! So if your dentist tells you your mouth is too small, he is trying on his own, fun yet expensive, urban myth, use said mouth to tell him to fuck off. Make him put the drill down first mind.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Mon 9 Jan 2006, 13:00, Reply)

re: something clever about willies and sex wee
Ahem....

www.boreme.com/boremerigid/funny-2004/et-p1.php

Thats a definite not safe for work, people.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Mon 9 Jan 2006, 12:43, Reply)

Drop Bears
Apologies if there's been a similar post...

As an Australian living in a different country, and in proximity to Americans, it's my duty to spread the general myths about Australia so that we can continue to have a chuckle at gullible people. One night I was given a perfect opportunity: two Americans, an Irish guy and another aussie at a party, among others. The Americans mention that they're travelling to Aus soon, and the subject of animals came up. I started to ramble about the dangerous animals to be careful of, listing the famous ones and slipped in the Drop Bear. Well, the bait was taken, and I regaled them with some facts about them. I was even able to keep a straight face as I acted with polite scorn as they initially laughed at the idea - I'm usually not so good at keeping straight faces.

The great part came when the other Aussie turned up halfway through the conversation, and when I mentioned the Drop Bear he picked up the tale smoothly. He started to talk about it's only natural enemy too, which is a part of the story I've never heard, so I sat back to listen about the Cassowary, a large flightless bird which is very elusive, but has a hard cone on it's head (to protect against Drop Bears) and can disembowel with a kick of it's clawed feet. I thought this was a great animal to make up as an enemy, and the Americans certainly bought it. I congratulated my Aussie mate after for making up such a weird creature. "But I didn't make it up," he says, "It's a real animal, just doesn't kill Drop Bears is all". I looked it up. It bloody well is real.

Is that reverse gullibility? Don't know if it counts...
(omoshiRoy, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 12:12, Reply)

darkmavis 86
I remember being told that one about drying out bannana skin to get you high, and that fab 60's singer Donovan wrote his hit song "Mellow Yellow " after trying it out.

total bollocks of course..
(uptonogood, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 12:01, Reply)

Hair colour
As a scientist, I once managed to convince a non-scientist that your hair changes colour in the dark and it is only your normal colour when light is present!

He reckoned he was going to turn the light off and shine a torch on his hair but I said that wouldn't work as the torch would be light so it would be normal colour.

Once he realised there was no way of disproving my 'fact', he believed me! Sucker.
(turquoise, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 11:57, Reply)

When I was a kid...
My friend told me that the reason the Elephant man was deformed was that his mum shagged an elephant. I'm sure he was probably laughing his head off as he imparted this puerile falsehood. But for some reason I believed him.

Around the same age I also believed someone who claimed that "dude" meant "camel’s willy". But in that case he believed it too.
(Arse Pipe, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 11:53, Reply)

Gullible
Just to settle this for once and for all.

www.oed.com/words/gullible

See. Gullible *has* been oficially removed from the Oxford English Dictionary. At least the online version.

Thank you.
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 11:48, Reply)

Wooden tit.
It would be great if both her tits were wooden because then she really would have a pair of knockers! Arf!
(stusut79, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 11:17, Reply)

McDonalds
Stusut, we could probably have a 'question of the week' devoted to the sinister mythical breeding practises of McDonalds, KFC and the like. My favourite was the one about how the Big Mac (from McDonalds) has so much sugar in it to counteract all the chemicals and whatever else to make it edible that if it wasn't for the lettuce it'd legally have to be classed as a dessert.

Or is this true??
(BeardyMat, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:56, Reply)

Wouldn't it be funny if Mrs X had a wooden tit be funny if Mrs X had a.....
This little repeating rhyme used to be chanted about a history teacher when I was at school in Guildford, and I always thought it was unique until my girlfriend told me they used to say it about one of her teachers at her school in Ashford as well. She thought that they'd made it up too.
(Plyck, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:53, Reply)

Apologies if this has bindun.
But did anyone else hear the one about how in every Disney movie, there is apparently a discrete shot of one of the characters with an erection?
( Sylia Stingray is pilfering the biscuits on, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:45, Reply)

jaffafairy
Bred, Fred. Who's Fred? Ha!

aside/
Just lost The Game, again...
/aside
(SatchmoR No, mummy, don't put knitting needles in my ears!, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:45, Reply)

Does anyone else know how much truth is in this?
I first heard this about 6 years ago.A friend told me that all the chickens that KFC use aren't really chickens. They're kind of like chickens but they've been genetically bred to have no feathers, no beaks, no legs and no eyes, presumably to increase efficiency and reduce waste. So basically they're just pulsating lumps of chicken meat. And that's why they go by the name of KFC now and not Kentucky Fried Chicken - because they're not allowed to use the word 'chicken' because it's not strictly true and is therefore false advertising.

Anyone else heard anything like this?

EDIT: Sorry, Darth_munki, I didn't see your previous post on a similar subject.
(stusut79, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:21, Reply)

Henry Rollins Stars in Sesame Street
Every year my boyfriend used to point out that the NME had Henry Rollins appearing in Sesame Street in the TV listings. Every year I'd say "weird, cool". After about 5 years he pointed out that the listing was for April 1st. Doh.
(lawlam, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:20, Reply)

My dad,
a born and bred "eh bah gum, you were luckeh!" Yorkshireman, actually believed this one for a good few years - attempted to pass it on to us kids on a car journey to the *old county* once, and was forever shamed as we all burst out laughing:

Sheep who live on hills and mountains have two legs shorter than the others, from standing on the slope - y'see? Then, when the farmers take them to market, they have to strap two little wooden stilts on their short legs, so they can walk on flat ground....

Quite apart from anything else - when was the last time you saw a farmer "taking his sheep to market"?
(jaffafairy, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:10, Reply)

Cats don't drool
I don't know if this really counts, but my mate Wes once tried to convince sixy people at a house party that 'cats have cleaner mouths than dogs, because cats don't drool'. He kept it up for several hours.

However, no one believed him because A: he's pathologically mental, B: he (and the rest of us) was/were on acid, and C: it was his house the party was at and the house cat was legendary for drooling on people.

However, it is your duty as B3tans to spread this fallacy as gospel through lager drinkage and mind bullets.
(SmoothOtter, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 10:01, Reply)

Toadrunner
( www.b3ta.com/questions/urbanlegends/post46640/ ) Being below sea level would mean more gravitational pull. The equator has less gravitational pull than temperate regions (you weigh half a newton less at the equator than you do at the pole).
( Bob Todd whee, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 9:52, Reply)

I managed to convince my mate Elvis...
...that Leopards are about the same size as domestic cats.

I've changed job now and hardly ever see him, so I'll probably never get round to putting him right...
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 9:52, Reply)

last things
spent christmas winding up my boyfriend's mother that her much loved Captain Pugwash was filled with old gay sailor's references. I know it's mostly bolklocs, but i've since been told by an ageing queen that he'd heard the word 'pugwash' to mean blowjob years before either the Guardian article mentioned by another fine contributor here, or even the show itself... so it's hard to be clear on that name...

asprins and diet coke get you high. a friend tried it but had the nous to say it didn't work rather than pretend like a gimp.

similarly, i had a cold some years ago on holiday, and spent a few days laid up in bed stoked to the eyeballs on drugs. i started feeling better, took some beechams tickly cough, and went down the pub to have a couple of whiskys to get the blood moving again. i practically flew home. it was the cocktail of drugs that did it, but i still have friends who believe me that beechams + alcohol = high. and have claimed it works.
i've since been told that with the old cough medicines this could work, as if you left them in a warm place long enough it would separate, and you could skim the morphine off the top... or is this also crap?

i still think that the Eurithmics song Love is a Stranger contains the lyric "sod this circumcision". I just had to look up the song name and lyrics online, and will try to hear it the right way next time i hear it - but as this was planted in my head some ten or more years ago by a school mate, it's unlikely i'll ever hear anything but annie lennox being exasperated by jewish tradition.

edit: blahism just reminded me - does anyone remember when the Lion King came out, and there was a furore about hidden rudeness? there was supposed to be rude words in dust clouds and the like... was this true, or is it just a really good lie??
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 9:35, Reply)

My favs are...
KFC breed 6 legged boneless chickens (surprisingly 1 person acctually believed this).

Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit was the voice of Snarf in the Thundercats.
( darth munki is flipping livid, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 9:09, Reply)

stupid flatmate
so there we were at xmas, 4 of us lads hanging around in our flat. Watching ET. Suddenly, Dan pipes up 'hey, has anyone ever seen that legendary deleted scene? You know, the ET porn scene?'

Err, no dan. We haven't.

'No I'm certain of it, there's a secret scene in ET when he has sex, I'm telling you its true!'

Now, Dan is the kind of guy who never backs down, even when he's clearly wrong. He proceeded to argue his point for about 20 minutes, even resorting to searching the interweb to backup his ludicrous claim. At this point, flatmate no. 2 (Dave) pipes up - 'what the hell do you think ET stands for?! Extra Testicle!?!?'

At which point we all lost it completely and rolled around laughing for ages. Yay.
(something clever about willies and sex wee, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 8:59, Reply)

A58
The longest A road in Britain.

FACT.
(Chickenwire social lubricator extraordinaire, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 8:41, Reply)

Dutch gravity
I convinced the lads in the pub that the reason that the Dutch are such a tall race is because that Holland is at or below sea level so gravity is less. Less gravity pulling at a growing child causes them to grow really tall.

(it could be true)
(toadrunner, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 8:03, Reply)

Unique Teeth
I was told a few years back that the rather unique gentleman David Bowie, upon realizing that his distictive chompers were about to give up, had false teeth made from a mold of the originals.
(vannoy is fixing things and doing stuff., Mon 9 Jan 2006, 3:41, Reply)

My IT teacher apparently had a wooden tit too....
Never Apologise, were you a Weaverham High School goer?
(Jimmy Jangle, Mon 9 Jan 2006, 3:30, Reply)