Talking Bollocks

Society has changed in the last twenty - five years. We live at a faster pace, we are more aquisitive, we are conditioned to believe that time is money; if we are not working to earn we should be working on improving ourselves or involved in social activities (networking) that enhance our marketability.
The can - do attitude of the empowered society may have got us all better jobs, bigger houses and more clogged arteries (yes folks, its not the lard but the stress) but at what cost. What pleasures have we lost in our quest for personal gain?
The one I miss most is Talking Bollocks.
I mean serious Talking Bollocks of course, not bullshitting or talking through your arse, two middlebrow activities that even corporate managers and other aspirational types in the meritocracy can do quire adequately. I don't mean hyping up your C.V. or inventing droves of lovers, talking about how much the value of your house has risen in the last five minutes, not even trying to make a case for Bush /Blair's Iran project. I mean pure, unadulterated Talking Bollocks, the highest art form known to humanity and just about the only pleasure left to those too old to be promiscuous and too young to forget what being promiscuous is about. Even before I was too old to be promiscuous I loved Talking Bollocks.
How depressing it is to sit in pubs now and have to join in conversations about the latest bunch of Big Brother saddos or X Factor no-hopers, whether mobile phones really do fry your brain (they do) or listening to friends horror stories about flying on budget airlines. What has happened to irrelevance. I yearn for those conversations that have absolutely no point whatsoever;
"how many angels can dance on the head of Tony Blair?"
"if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody to hear it, did it happen because a butterfly farted in the Amazon rainforest?"
"Why do Aliens only ever abduct morons and fuckwits?"
"Is Jamie Lee Curtis really a man and if you think so would you shag her anyway."
"If E=mc2 and c = 1.618/1 x infinity will we all disappear in six billion years if you expend enough energy to walk over to the bar and get your round in?"

You could really get your teeth into conversations like that.
There are rules in proper Talking Bollocks of course, it is an official pub sport.
There must be a least four participants who all play as individuals. Working as a team id against the spirit of the game.
The words paradox, contrapuntal and juxtaposition are not allowed as they are used by literary critics who talk verbal diarrhoea.
All players must Talk Bollocks, Whole Bollocks and Nothing But Bollocks. No facts are permitted unless they are grossly misrepresented. In the absence of proven facts (e.g. the origins of the Universe) the received wisdom shall be deemed fact and disallowed.
All participants must argue their point with utter conviction even though they know it is utter bollocks and they know everybody else knows.
When not speaking players shall listen to other players bollocks attentively even though they know the speaker is talking bollocks and they know the speaker knows they know they are talking bollocks.
No arse kissing. Although dissing another player's argument is against the rules you should in no circumstances totally agree with what they say.

The reason I am trying to revive Talking Bollocks as an art form is that once proficient, you will no longer be susceptible to the lies of politicians and businessmen. You will understand that when Blair says it is to Britain's advantage to support some hopeless military adventure he means it is to Tony Blair's advantage and nobody else's. When Alex Ferguson says that referees are biased towards Arsenal he is complaining because the referee has (a) turned down a bung (b) refused to let Roy Keane kick lumps out of anyone who gets in his way (c) been absolutely fair. You will know that when the police say "the suspect was wearing a big jacket, carrying a copy of the Koran and had a kilo of semtex in his rucksack he was in fact wearing a light denim jacket over a t-shirt, was a fairly devout catholic and did not have a rucksack.
In the world we have made according to the Reagan / Thatcher model we have turned our backs on scepticism and a healthy disrespect for authority; we have become cynical, reasoning "if they are all at it why not me too?" The ME generation.
But are we as happy or as secure as when we could while away a few happy hours Talking Bollocks without worrying how much money it could be costing us, when we had not all bought into the dream that tells us we can all get rich by selling each other investment plans.

(credit for this extract from http://greenteeth.blog.co.uk/2005/08/20/talking_bollocks/ )