I’ve been traveling a lot for work these past few months. It’s thankfully almost over (but not before next week’s San Francisco Drinking Skepchickally, w00t!) The hardest part of the travel for me? Trying to make small talk with all these folks who I’ll never see again.
I confess, sometimes I just make things up. I spent 20 minutes chatting with my seat mate on my last flight home, telling him how much fun it was to be a lunch lady at an elementary school. Week before that I explained the ins-and-outs of manufacturing the perfect high-temperature paint for use inside ovens. I have no experience or expertise in either of these areas, by the way.Â
Today’s AI is pretty simple: I want you to lie to me. Tell me something wonderful but untrue about you. (or, if you simply cannot, tell me something wonderful you hope will someday be true about you.)
I’m actually a famous method actor pretending to be an skinny, unattractive, skeptical guy who women find universally uninteresting. It’s for a movie I’m doing about a nerd who makes good and marries his high school crush. BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS.
When the voice on the machine says “This call may be monitored” I’m the guy doing the monitoring. I know more about you then you’d ever suspect, and you really shouldn’t use language like that on the telephone.
I am a Hedge
I invented post-it notes.
I have won a WSOP bracelet
I am the Kwisatz Haderach!
a.real.girl is hopelessly in love with me. rebecca, too. And masala_skeptic.
Oh, what the hell, the entire skepchick collective!
Perhaps the Afternoon Inquisition should be “Things you’ve said to a person in a bar to get them to come home with youâ€. It’s really the same question but with spicier answers.
I earn money for college as one of those couriers who deliver pot to cautious customers around the city. My backpack smells…interesting.
I am hopelessly in love with Cleon…
I’m huge in Japan.
I have nearly 1000 different wordpress accounts and spend my day writing every response to all of the posts on skepchick.
@Sam Ogden:
Oh boy, do I have a shirt for you!
@skepticalhippie:
I often entertain using the following pick-up line, though I never have:
(Said in a very slow, serious, mysterious voice)
Hi there…you know, they wrote a Broadway show about my life. Perhaps you’ve heard of it… it’s called Cats?
@Expatria:
Cool. I think I’m actually going to get one of those.
It took me a while to get the Dune joke since I listened to it via Audible and have no idea how any of the weird terms are spelled.
I made out with Jonathan Coulton after his recent Boston concert.
I’ve had a threesome with Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs.
As a few people may have gathered from some of my late night comments I enjoy the occasional drink. When I was discharged from the Navy in 1995 I was in San Diego and the first thing I did was go to a liquor store and buy three bottles of 10 year old Glen Morangie. I got a cheap hotel room and started drinking. When I sobered up I was in a motel in Wichita Falls Tx.
@Sam Ogden: Paul, I’m your father. … sorry wrong story.
You never forget the taste of dog. The first time I had Gol Gogi was in Seoul. I had picked up an expat in a third story bar. She was pretty with curly red hair. I caught her eye when I was coming out of the toilet stall. I’m six and a half feet tall and the stall door was five feet tall and 18 inches wide. I must have looked like a giant squeezing through the door. It was a unisex bathroom and was constantly busy. Three korean girls were coming in with her and they broke down giggling so hard when they saw me that one peed herself. I went back to my dart game and when she finished in the bathroom she bought me a beer. When the bar closed down at 10:00am we went to her place. Along the way we found a street vendor that was still open. We bought some gol gogi because we were hungry. It was soft and tender and had a wonderful flavor. I liked it.
As a kid growing up in Vacaville I used to pick wild mustard. I would take it home and seperate the seeds and grind them to a fine powder that I would mix with olive oil. I would then fill up old heinz mustard jars with it. Then I would go to the Safeway and sneak them onto the shelves.
I am Mr. December 2009 in a nudey calendar. Wait, that one’s actually true.
How about: My name is Dr. Phil Plait.
@Expatria: Very cool. I expect I’ll be getting one myself. One of the best most satisfying scifi reads ever.
May I suggest a modification: Tell us five things about yourself. Four should be true, and one should be a lie. Guess which one is the lie. Here are my five.
I have a piece of the planet Mars here next to me in my bedroom.
I once sold a single balloon sculpture (a dog) for $125.00.
My mother and I hold the world record for the longest known human gestation.
I can juggle seven balls.
I was a legitimate birth in a no-adultery no-divorce marriage, but it is impossible to know whether or not my name should have “Jr.” after it.
During the most recent of my weekly poker games with YHWH, Vishnu, and Deepak Chopra (we play Omaha Hi-Lo, because we all agree that Texas Hold ‘Em is trendy and over-rated), the latter conferred upon me magical powers of healing (unfortunately applicable only in cases of fungal infection), telepathy, time-travel, the ability to win whatever I want from those claw grabber games they have in arcades, and an extraordinary talent for something that I shall tactfully refer to here only as “cunning linguistics”. He assured me that these all have something to do with quantum physics.
I baked the cake
I have a working time machine, and use it to learn about the mysteries of the past. For example, did you know that the same person is responsible for both the death of the dinosaurs AND that of JFK?
(Hint: IT WAS ME)
I am Lord Horatio Nelson.
I will love you forever.
Oh, and I once sawed the legs off the chemical table.
I was once a dead body on CSI.
I once danced topless on a bar because I cannot resist the words “I dare you”.
I’m also an expert on ethnomusicology in the US Southwest.
My attempts at humor are just pretense. I am actually more emo than Twilight.
@Kimbo Jones: Hasn’t just about everybody been a dead body on CSI? Geez.
I, too, am a hedge.
I know the truth about rotary telephones.
I can fly.
Without an airplane. Or a jetpack. Or even a an array of 2-liter bottles of Coke with several Mentos dropped in each simultaneously via an ingeniously simple mechanism.
No.
I can fly because flying is awesome.
@TheSkepticalMale: I’m always the dead body on CSI, I just didn’t want to brag. PS – The makeup people are *awesome*.
@carbon: Oh admit it…it’s because you believe in fairies.
You know how Kevin Trudeau talks about cures that “they” don’t want you to know about?
Well, I’m “they.” And I really don’t.
@ekimbrough: SPOT THE EX-COMPANY MAN! Agents use that exercise on each other test perfect their lieing (and lie detecting) abilities.
I smoked a lot of Pot as a Student, oh hang on thats true.
Looking back I think it was a great idea to pay my way through uni by signing up to the Royal Navy reserve and I look forward to going on OTS refreshers and training exercises in the arctic every couple of months
I’m also part of the ellite group of scienticians who know that homeopathy really works and are keeping its magical wonders away from the general public so we can make tonnes of money selling them poisons we call medicines because we are biased in favour of western medicine and wont acknowlegde the truth of eastern healing because , as men, we are so deeply invested in our parigdm we ignore individual anacdotes in favours of unfeeling data
I am lying.
In high school I sold my soul to Babylonian wolf goddess because Jehovah didn’t seem in any hurry to get me a girlfriend. Oh wait, we were supposed to tell an implausible LIE. Sorry.
I stole the TV.
I am William Wallace.
I invented penis enlargement. And it wasn’t because I needed it.
I am Spartacus.
I am the eggman
I am the Walrus.
I am the Nightman
I own the world’s largest trombone.
@TomDG: You’ll have to pay the troll toll.
I am old, very old. Back when I was young I was hotheaded and vengeful. Once I felt that a bartender insulted me. So I waited for him to get off from work and followed him home. I spent the next three months learning everything I could about him. I learned that he had a wife and three children. I learned that he had a mistress and two dogs. I learned that he was an aspiring short story writer. I learned that he was a volunteer with habitat for humanity and regularly gave blood. I learned that he jogged the exact same three mile route every morning from 5:15am to 5:45am and that it was secluded. I learned that his children were left alone from 6:45am to 7:30am when they got on the bus for school. I learned that his wife was having an affair of her own with another women in the neighborhood. I learned that I had way to much free time and took up painting by numbers.
It was MY noodly appendage that created the the mountain and the trees… But not the midget.
I am the world’s largest Trombone.
Ich bin ein Berliner
Ich bin ein Trombone also.
Area 51 doesn’t exist. It was invented by the Venutians who live in Area 50 as a diversion.
there are the Venusians…
really…
[IMG]http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo28/kittynh/SwedishBikiniTeam.jpg[/IMG]
@TomDG:
I can fight you with my mastery of karate and friendship for everyone.
I am Dayman!
Also, my life is immensely interesting and I only wish I had an outlet other than Twitter so I could describe it to the world in more than 140 characters at a time.
I am possibly the most fascingating woman ever to live. It’s impressive that I’ve been able to squeeze in time to respond to this thread multiple times today.
Heres your toll, troll. *Hiss*
@Elyse:
I created you, I can destroy you!
It was me that left the cake out in the rain.
And, really, it didn’t take that long to bake it…
and I still have the recipe.
Oscar: I’m Spartacus and so’s my wife!
I worked for a time as a model for adult products. The only down side was the need for constant waxing. I can’t even look at a candle anymore without severe shrinkage.
I am Keyser Söze.
I have never run through the woods naked in an attempt to get in touch with the earth, or in an attempt to have an earth girl touch me.
I make a comfortable living writing and illustrating science books for kids.
(this is one of the hope-to-be-true-someday ones)
I’m Brian, and so is my wife.
I spend all my time downloading pornographic images off the internet, printing them out and cataloging them in albums, organising them by various criteria, then reorganising them by different criteria. Whenever I discover a duplicate I put the offender in a small pot, douse it in vodka and set fire to it, then I dissolve the ashes in vinegar and drink them.
Despite this I’ve never ejaculated while awake.
I shot the deputy.
I’m the God damn Batman.