The History of Lies

As long as there have been statements of truth, there have been lies. In fact, lies have been around a bit longer, since in early days there wasn't much of a good reason to tell the truth about anything at all, because it was near the beginning of time and nobody knew anything anyway. It took decades for normalcy to be established and for those original lies to come back and bite the liars on their early asses, creating a motivation not for honesty, but rather more clever lies that were less likely to boomerang back and fuck shit up later on.

After a few generations, someone told the truth, mostly on accident, and an entirely new category for these mysterious "not lies" had to be created. These were deemed highly unusual and somewhat unsettling, and no one was entirely sure what these statements of non-falsity might be good for. In the end, it turned out, the answer was not much.

Early caveman lies were charmingly quaint and simple, with the original lie, "It wasn't me!" still a popular favorite today. After a few hundred years the second lie, "It was him!" was invented, contributing greatly to the growing complexity of social interactions. The third lie, "No, you look great," marked the dawning of modern male-female relations, which have progressed little in the intervening 160 million years.

Lies grew more complex in Egyptian times, with the great lie of that age being the Pharaoh's "Seriously, we're building this pyramid for everybody to use!" But the modern lie didn't reach full maturity until the time of the Roman Empire, when the Romans went over 200 years without telling anyone the truth, ever. This became a running joke in Rome, since if you bought a ticket to the Coliseum, the time listed on the ticket only really told you the hour the event was guaranteed not to start on. Unlike modern Westerners, the Romans weren't angry at all about being lied to, since to a man they found it uniformly hilarious. Most conversations between Romans were merely contests to see who could tell the biggest lie, and because of this the greatest insult you could pay to a Roman was to compliment him. This cultural misunderstanding led to all but one of the wars Rome was involved in during the nation's reign, the other one being caused by a stray dog with incredible gas.

Some consider Jesus' "I'll be right back!" claim of rapturous return to be the original lie, but that's just foolish religious bias speaking. Men had been pulling each other's legs for millions of years before Jesus laid that turd.

Perhaps the funniest lie ever told in history was the pilgrim's famous "We come in peace!" canard handed to the Indians upon de-boating at Plymouth Rock. The Indians bought this stinker hook, line and sinker, thanks to an unfortunate history of total honesty in Native American communication, since most tribes even lacked the concept of what a lie was, except for the Ocaca ("Shitbird") tribe, who were dirty fucking cheats so crooked their arrows didn't even fly straight.

Fittingly, America was founded on not only the "Let's live together!" bullshit dealt to the Indians, but also the "We're just checking this place out for you guys" whopper that was flung back England's way. This cock-and-bull double-whammy set the precedent for a nation so enamored with tall tales we ended up exporting them to the entire world on flimsy little plastic discs guaranteed to last "forever."

America's favorite lie to date has probably been the fate of JFK; since 40 years have gone by without the truth ever being revealed that there never WAS a president named John F. Kennedy, even though it only took some grainy footage of some random parade unwisely detouring through Compton to convince an entire nation otherwise.

New Coke was a lie. It was actually exactly the same as Old Coke, which makes the soft drink's spectacular failure all the more hilarious. Admittedly, though, a large portion of the drink's failure can be attributed to an early can-printing mishap that led to the first million cans of the soda being shipped with the name "New Cock."

This flub did thrill the small bands of genetic dropped balls known as soda collectors, who rushed to buy up all the cases of the misprinted cola they could get their hands on. The flubbed pop was a giant flop with the general public though, since few people in the early 80's were ready to publicly declare their aching desire to wrap their lips around some New Cock. The soda did sell surprisingly well in Texas, however.

Advertising has overshadowed most of the big public lies of the last century, since not even President Clinton's "It wasn't me!" or President Bush's "Of course they got bombs, they're A-rabs" can really compete with the constant daily inundation of claims that beer will make you strong and that the same old shit is new and improved. In fact, dishonesty became so pervasive in advertising that the only completely honest ad on record, Pan-Am's ill-fated "We Really Hope You Fly With Us, Even Though the Airlines are All Basically the Same, or Else We'll be Up Shit Creek" campaign, led to the prompt bankrupting of the airline within fourteen days.

Other great lies you may have missed? Here's the rundown on what you need to know, courtesy of your Uncle Griswald: Unless you're Jimi Hendrix, nobody in the world likes to listen to you play guitar. Sorry. Underwear? Not really necessary, and the prime reason you haven't been laid in three years. Tomatoes aren't really a fruit, and Castor Oil isn't really good for you. Everybody else was pretending to like Reggae. Masturbation does cause cancer, but only if you keep it a secret. And most importantly of all, reading the commune really does improve both your chances of winning the lotto and being trampled by bison. Do with that knowledge what you will.

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