The Art of BS [Thursday, January 22, 2015]

[professor-lyman.livejournal.com]

"Well, yesterday was pretty gross," Josh said, "judging by the nastiness on the ground as I walked to school today. It smells like low tide out there."

Which, ew.

"But it does give us an excellent classroom exercise today now that we're free again to not tell the absolute truth all the time." Josh sat in his desk chair and put his feet up on the desk. "Public speaking time, kids! You have ten minutes to put together your talking points, then regale the class with a five minute speech about your amazing heroics yesterday in the Rain of Eels. If you aren't speaking, your job is to come up with questions to see if you can trip them up from their stories. The art in bullshitting is to give enough embellishment to make things interesting without it being laughably implausible. But we're starting with eels that fell from the sky, so...the margin of error around here is pretty big."

He waved his hand over his head. "Okay, then. Wow me."

Comments

Re: Speech, speech!

[ultimatehottie.livejournal.com]

"My friends. I won't tell you anything untrue here today. I'm barely even going to tell you a story. I'm going to give you a math problem. It's not a hard one. I'm terrible at math, but even I can do this one," Johnny said. "Take a an eel with an anti-grav unit and oxygen tank. Add an open flame, thrown at that oxygen tank."

Johnny pointed up with one finger as a flame danced on his fingertip, like his finger was a candle or something. "And that equals exploded eel. Flash cooked and ready to eat, if you like the taste of flying eel. Personally, I'm not a fan."

"I've still got, what, four minutes? That can go to somebody who needs it."

In actuality, making eels explode was kind of boring and it was such a mismatch that he couldn't tell a good story. It was better for him to let people fill the blanks between explosions. Let them be their own Michael Bay.

Re: Speech, speech!

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy raised her hand, figuring Johnny wouldn't mind a little bit of needling. "Why did the eels have oxygen tanks? They breathe water, not air. Wouldn't their equipment have water in it for them to breathe?"

You know--good, old-fashioned, non-combustible water?

Re: Speech, speech!

[ultimatehottie.livejournal.com]

"A mad scientist smart and crazy enough to put anti-grav units on eels and send them out into the world is probably smart enough to figure out how to filter oxygen through their gills without water. And before you ask why, remember, they put anti-grav units on eels and sent them out into the world," Johnny pointed out. "That's lunatic behavior. Their logic is not our logic. All I know is that their tanks exploded."

Re: Speech, speech!

[tigerundercover]

"Does flying eel taste significantly different from regular eel?"

Re: Speech, speech!

[ultimatehottie.livejournal.com]

"It's a little drier, since it's been out of the water for so long," Johnny said. "But it's better than you'd expect."