It all began when I got my husband a push-mower instead of a motorized one, as part of my push for us to join the Amish. The downside of this mower is that push-mowers cannot pulverize twigs like their manlier cousins. If you have trees in your yard, you have to go around and painstakingly pick up all the twigs before this.

He did this, and made a neat little pile of twigs on the patio, mowed the lawn, and got on with his life. What he didn’t realize is that in spring our little desert oasis attracts about 900,000 birds per square meter, they all happened to be making nests that very day, and that he had created bird Home Depot on our patio. Soon, bits of twigs were scattered all over the place as birds came in and took them.

We thought this was cute, until the birds apparently decided that flying more than 5 yards with their twigs was too much effort, and instead started building nests right there. We noticed one day that a pair of mourning doves had appropriated an old nest in the awning in front of our front door, and were doing it up with the twigs we'd supplied. We realized this when one of the pair tried to swoop us as we opened the front door. I then looked it up and apparently male mourning doves can get quite territorial, probably because they were socialized into being aggressive by being given toy dove guns to play with in their dove kindergartens.

Obviously, I voted that we not move the nest because then the doves would be homeless. But my husband didn't listen, and removed the nest when the doves weren't there. I was very sad about this, but a few days later, I noticed that the doves' nest had been replaced with three smaller sparrow nests (Note: they may not have actually been sparrows. This is just my word for any unidentifiable bird smaller than a condor). Unlike the doves, who would at the very least freak out and fly near your head when you got near, these birds would just kind of fly up into the awning, see you standing there at the front door, and just kind of fly in a circle and casually fly out of there, like they were saying “Yeah, just flying by, checking out this awning. Nothing to see here. Just flyin’ by.” So I decided to leave the new nests in place. Also I had a vision of each big nest I removed being replaced by successively smaller nests, so that I would end up with 27 tiny hummingbird nests or maybe a home for several dozen pipistrelles.

But it was all treachery.

I was a bit torn over posting this. On the one hand, the story of Mr. Marsay's escapades have not, as far as I know, been detailed anywhere online that isn't private or locked, and this means that Mark will be able keep on doing this elsewhere on the Internet without even a theoretical chance of someone finding out about his reputation. On the other hand, by describing this guy as a big faker I do not want to damage Cracked’s reputation. In light of this, I want to emphasize that all of Mark Marsay’s fakery was done entirely with regards to his personal life, and not anything he wrote in his many Cracked articles, which like all articles there were fact-checked multiple times by editors. In fact, it was only when Mark got too confident and tried to take it into the article arena that the spiel unraveled.

According to the stories Mark told to anyone who knew him, this guy had not only had a liver transplant in 2010, but had also had a son who died in Gulf War 2 (or was it 1?) and a daughter who died of AIDS after an infected blood transfusion in the 80s. He overcame all this misfortune, though, and indeed leveraged people’s sympathy into contributing to a collection of fiction stories he edited and sold on Amazon. Other Cracked writers, myself included, contributed non-fiction pieces, and a Cracked editor wrote an introduction. Still others donated their time in order to copyedit and create the Kindle version. The money from the book, which sold well, was meant to go towards Kiva loans.

The money never actually reached charity, but Mark had many excuses about Amazon messing up the checks and a thousand other things. After that, I didn’t have much contact with the guy and didn’t respond to the emails asking me for more free work, not because I suspected anything so much as because I’m lazy. Meanwhile, a few other writers had apparently figured out what was going on, but chose not to tell anyone. I don’t hang out with them either so I don’t know why.

A few months back, Mark submitted a "personal experience" article to Cracked. These are different from normal articles, in that they’re less about general facts and more about your own life (for example, like this one I did). Mark Marsay’s claim at the article was that he made a living as a weaponsmith, and at first glance the article actually seemed legit (I'm guessing this is because he wasn’t completely lying – he is involved in antique restoration, quite possibly he reads up on weaponsmaking as a hobby; and also just likes to pretend he’s cool enough to make a living at it). Still, a few people immediately called him on minor errors in the text, which he brushed off with explanations and changes, and finally the eds requested more proof, particularly pictures of the weapons Mark was talking about making. Note, he'd told everyone that every weapon he makes was photographed by police (he lives in the UK, remember, and they don’t trust their subjects to defend themselves there), so all Mark theoretically had to do was give everyone the name of the police database where they were stored. Instead, he claimed that:

1. He had left his camera at home

2. His wife was mentally ill and paranoid, and would not allow his photos to go up (his wife is real, by the way. I wonder what she thinks about this)

3. He couldn’t send the pictures because he had Undisclosed Health Problem X and was in hospital for a while

4. He had suddenly entered a monastery (no, really.)

5. He would send the photos later

6. Don’t we trust him????? Some of the Cracked staff DON'T EVEN USE THEIR REAL NAMES!

7. I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THESE PHOTOS ON PRINCIPLE BECAUSE YOU HAVE QUESTIONED MY HONOR, SIRS.

Finally, he stormed off completely. His last demand was that passionate speech requested that Cracked send him an invoice so that he could repay the money he was given in advance for the article. He declared that he would not take money for work he hadn’t done. You see, Mark is honest.

When I heard about this, I spent about 15 seconds looking up the WHOIS information on a domain Mark owns, and found his real name and street address. With this information, I then found one of his old Internet incarnations posting on a forum called "Old Tools." One of his more recent posts was this delicious bio:

Back in April 2005, as some of you may recall, we bought a small farm in the south of Italy. I spent most of 2005 and all of 2006 getting it habitable… Got the garden going, raising chickens, pheasant, quail and olives, plus a couple of fattening hogs per year. Once the farm was ticking over nicely, with a good friend basically running the farm side of things, I came back to London to carry on work here, the plan being one month on and one month off in the summer, winters in Italy. Unfortunately........

I am (now was) a reservist (Technically an OTC reserve, but never mind - if they can find you they will use you). Yep, you guessed it, 6 weeks before I would be safe for all time, I got called up. A few weeks retraining, a few months in wonderful, sunny, cheerful Helmand province, and several months hospital time (and a rather interesting set of abdominal scars that look like a 3D map of the Alps) later, I make it back to the Porch.

That’s right, stealing money intended for Kiva loans recipients just wasn't classy enough for El Marsay; he's also a fake vet. Who got blown up, right before retirement. When all he wanted to do was raise quails. Because you know, that's totally how people talk about their war injuries.

I won’t lie: I’m a bad person, and it takes a lot to rouse my pissed-off-ness. I probably wouldn’t have taken the time to write this if Mark had just done the Kiva loans thing and run. But fake veterans are just kind of a trigger point with me. (You know what else is? Public bathrooms that don’t provide a hook or something to hang your purse. I mean you can sometimes awkwardly balance it in your lap but what if you have multiple bags? Is there anything filthier than the floor in a public bathroom? How many people rest their purses on the floor without thinking about it and then lay them on the kitchen counter later? Doesn’t anyone think about this but me? Anyway I am not accusing Mark Marsay of maliciously removing bathroom hooks, but I wouldn’t put it past him, if you know what I’m saying.)

Note: I’m putting up this information for the sake of information/warning people. Please do not take anything I have written here as an invitation to stalk the guy. He does have a family, and any information about them should stay out of this since I'm sure their lives are already hard enough. Please also note that there is a popular science fiction writer from Yorkshire by the name of Mark Marsay, and also a WWI historian who I think is from Scarborough. And probably many others. They are real, and are probably very nice people. However, Mark Marsay, antique restorer of London, is probably lying if his lips are moving. Do not trust him. He is a fugly slut.