Bullshitting Like A Boss

This man is one of my many heroes, and one of only a small handful not on the list for creatively concealed weapons.

(Video after the jump)

The story goes that, in the year 1612, Rockwell International decided to get into the heavy-duty automatic transmission business, presumably because the industry standard, serf-drawn bobsleds of the time were catching hell from local hamlets, after scores of witch-loads were lost due to loose-suspension induced spontaneous combustion long before they reached the stake.

While preparing to record their first introductory video using two wobbly sticks and a patch of mud, the professional narrator started up an improvisational monologue, and subsequently went down in history as the world’s most convincing bullshitter.

Not even his scorn is real

You may notice that I have taken liberties with some elements of the story. Although mocking the shoddy, crayon-on-the-wall quality of the pre-HD video, it also serves to illustrate the entirely fictional nature of this story. Ironically, the story about a man bullshitting his way through a bullshit introductory video is bullshit.

His name is Bud Haggart, an actor who used to specialize in industrial training videos.

He looks like this now. Perhaps.

The first technical description of the entirely fictional "turbo-encabulator" was written by British graduate student John Hellins Quick and published in 1944. The spoof became an in-joke amongst engineers and scientists and was replicated ad nauseam for the next fifty-three years.

There is one element of truth, however. The spoof was filmed on the set of an actual GMC Trucks training film. Old Bud convinced the director and crew to stay behind after the shoot to film him performing what is the engineer’s joke-equivalent of ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’, presumably by promising to upflange the caprical equity of their annual salary bonapage.