ST. CATHARINES, Canada – If you ever find yourself employing lies to keep from getting into trouble, here’s an important tip to bear in mind: Whatever bullshit you float as you’re trying to wriggle your way off the hook, make sure it’s plausible bullshit.

Another, related piece of advice to consider: Maybe don’t use the same line of obvious bullshit more than once.

These are pieces of advice nobody ever gave to St. Catharines Regional Councilor Andy Petrowski, evidently. Or, if someone did pass along such nuggets to him at some point, Petrowski chose to ignore them.

Last year, when a regional police chief received an insulting text from Petrowski’s phone, Petrowski called upon an excuse somewhere between “my account was hacked” and the old favorite internet porn company line about the “rogue graphic designer” who used some other porn company’s intellectual property to create a pay-site tour.

As he couldn’t very well claim the text hadn’t come from his phone, Petrowski instead blamed it on a “friend” (whom Petrowski declined to identify, naturally) who allegedly picked up his phone while he was away from the breakfast table and took it upon himself to insult the police chief.

Riiiiight. Tell us another one, Andy.

Fast-forward to Memorial Day this year, and (wouldn’t you know it?) another of Petrowski’s devices allegedly fell into the wrong hands, this time sending an email with a pornographic image attached to a large list of recipients.

“I take full responsibility for the lack of judgement in leaving my Regional e-mail system unlocked,” Petrowski wrote in a statement after news of the email broke. “I apologize to everyone for the previous e-mail just sent… This was sent in error as a terrible message by someone who was using my iPad, I thought, to send a private message. I am very sorry for this unacceptable and inappropriate transmission.”

Petrowski continued by terming his innocent iPad-loaning “an extremely reckless situation” but maintained it was “not deliberate” and stated he had “no intention of divulging the person behind this accident.”

In other words, someone else did it, but only by accident, and I’m not going to say who it was, but I still expect you to somehow swallow whole this entirely implausible explanation.

As ridiculous as it was to begin with, Petrowski’s excuse has since evolved into an even more ridiculous load of mouth-manure.

At this point, the councilor isn’t blaming the entire mishap on the unidentified friend. Petrowski now acknowledges he wrote the text of the email, but claims someone else attached the porn image without his knowledge.

How did this go down, exactly? Petrowski composed a snarky message, then passed his government-issued iPad off to a friend to proofread it. This unnamed joker then unilaterally decided what the message really needed was a picture of a naked woman with her legs spread open?

If Petrowski was a small child giving this same excuse to his mother, this would be the point at which mom would cross her arms and say something like: “Andrew Petrowski, do you think I was born yesterday? Go to your room. You’re grounded. No writing new legislation — or composing dumb, ill-conceived tweets — for at least two weeks.”

While it appears there’s nobody empowered to ground Petrowski, he has mercifully grounded himself by taking an immediate leave of absence.

Petrowski didn’t depart without taking a quick shot at his critics on his way out the door, though.

“The only thing ‘outstanding’ is when will the hit job storytellers/opinion-makers at your financially struggling penny-stock Fake News fish wrapper/bird cage linger find their place in a museum,” Petrowski wrote in an email to the St. Catharines Standard. “Or is that pedestal already taken by the dodo?”

Thus far, at least, Petrowski’s not claiming the above message was written by a friend, intern or random homeless person to whom he loaned his government-issued mobile device. Maybe he’s finally learning something, after all.

On the other hand, if Petrowski’s history is any indication, this is probably just the calm before the tweetstorm.