Crazy Book Titles

 

An annual staple of early Frydays was the Hamilton Public Library Book of Lists. It listed those books which, for various reasons, attained a special place among the portfolio of books offered for loan by the library.

Unfortunately, the same books kept appearing on the list every year. Fifty Shades of Grey was the perpetual most loaned book; the most popular career book was A life in Hairdressing, and when it came to computers, the most popular books were A Step-by-Step Picture Guide to Finding Google on your Computer and A Step-by-Step Picture Guide to Turning on Your Computer. The only new books to puncture the status quo were: the most stolen book (from the library), Shoplifting for Dummies (2020), Jacinda—A Love Story (2021) and A Dummies’ Guide to loving Jacinda, Despite Everything. (2021).

With so few entries on the list, the list became unsustainable. So, I scrapped it.

Now, however, I have become aware of The Diagram Group and its awards for the oddest book titles of the year. These are, believe me or not, real published books. They make for interesting reading--the titles, not, I suggest, the books themselves.

I’ll start with the most scatorial of the year 2014. Finalists that year included:

·      How to Poo on a Date: The Lovers' Guide to Toilet Etiquette.

·      The Origin of Faeces.

 

Over the years the Awards have managed to accumulate some strange titles indeed. Here is a sample. Remember, they are real books and can be found on Amazon. I have given you links.

·       BOMBPROOF YOUR HORSE

·        WHO CARES ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE?

·       DOES GOD EVER SPEAK THROUGH CATS?

·        HOW TO DISSAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND

·       SUN-BEAMS MAY BE EXTRACTED FROM CUCUMBERS, BUT THE PROCESS IS TEDIOUS

·        HOW GREEN WERE THE NAZIS?: NATURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND NATION IN THE THIRD REICH 

·       HOW TO SURVIVE A GARDEN GNOME ATTACK: DEFEND YOURSELF WHEN THE LAWN WARRIORS STRIKE (AND THEY WILL) 

·        KNITTING WITH DOG HAIR: BETTER A SWEATER FROM A DOG YOU KNOW AND LOVE THAN FROM A SHEEP YOU'LL NEVER MEET

·        HOW TO TEACH PHYSICS TO YOUR DOG

·        MANIFOLD DESTINY: THE ONE! THE ONLY! GUIDE TO COOKING ON YOUR CAR ENGINE!

·       DATING FOR UNDER A DOLLAR: 301 IDEAS 

And my favourite:

·      TEACH YOUR WIFE TO BE A WIDOW[1]

So, there are some strange book titles out there and it seems to be that you can find someone, somewhere who has written on just about every subject imaginable. For example, a few years back I wrote a Fryday on the subject of toilet lids and their usage. I went on google to research that and found no fewer than 7,290,000 documents on the subject.

But me, I am above all that. I have life, substance, pride, self-respect and intelligence. You won’t find your Fryday friend writing drivel. Never! God help me if, through sheer boredom, I ever resort to putting pen to paper on meaningless subjects such as, well, for example,  Crazy Book Titles.

---

[1] This was one reader’s review of Teach Your Wife to be a Widow: I got my wife an Amazon gift card for Christmas, and she used part of it to buy this book. My health hasn't been the best lately and I've been very busy at work, so I think that she's being very prudent in learning how to deal with "final expenses" and take over the household finances and maintenance of the house and car. Yesterday another book arrived for her from Amazon: A Field Guide To Toxic Plants Of North America. I have such a thoughtful wife! She knows that I have a number of life-threatening allergies, and she wants to make sure that I stay away from anything that might harm me. Gotta go now, it's dinner time. She's made me a big salad that she says will end all of my worries about cholesterol.

 

The Second Coming

 

The Political Podium and how it is being used

 

The Prime Minister’s daily covid updates, usually at 1.00, are past their use-by date, no longer serve any useful purpose and have deteriorated to where they are little more than cynical manipulation for political purposes, bordering on the disgraceful.

Now, you may disagree with me on that. You may think the Prime Minister is doing a superb job communicating with the country and keeping us in touch and keeping us calm.

And keeping us kind.

But I would like to list the reasons that is not true. Some of the following may seem incredibly trivial to you, some of them are just nuances that normally would go unnoticed, but collectively they build a picture of pitch-perfect politicking. So, here we go.

·      Timing: The press conferences are scheduled for 1.00 pm. The Prime Minister is invariably late arriving, sometimes by up to 15 minutes (though she has got better of late). Why is that? If Chris Hipkins or Grant Robertson are running the conferences, they turn up on time. But the Prime Minister? No. There is no, I repeat no, valid reason for her to be consistently late. It is unbecoming of a prime minister and, to be honest, it’s rude. Simple as that. But I can tell you why I think it happens. Could it be because it gives time for fawning sycophantic Press Gallery journalists such as Jessica Much-McKay to blow the government’s trumpet as a curtain-raiser to the “big event”. Pure theatre.

·      Then there is the time the Prime Minister takes to get to the point—again, keeping us waiting for effect. These days, the announcement we are principally looking for is whether we are going up or down levels. Instead, we must wait for that one simple piece of information until Ashley Bloomfield has, in his droning delivery, gone on about the number of cases, scanning rates, genome sequencing, and vaccination rates. Why? Couldn’t that wait until later? But no, the Prime Minister needs to keep us waiting.

·      About Ashley Bloomfield, he has joined the growing list of bureaucrats and media that can’t bring themselves to say Auckland. I am sorry. But I am failing to understand why we are increasingly defaulting to a language of just 15 percent of the population, many of whom don’t speak or understand it themselves. And what is it about his use of the word motu as in “across the motu.” Motu means the country. Why can’t he just say the country? Dr Ashley Bloomfield has become the Andy Coster of the medical fraternity and is condescending and patronising of Maori and, for many of us, offensive and so unnecessary.

·      But now we come to the crux of why I think the Political Podium is past its use-by date—the Prime Minister and the Director General are bringing nothing new to the table. Watch this afternoon’s conference carefully—or, more accurately—listen to it carefully. The Prime Minister is prefacing just about every sentence with “As you have just heard Dr Bloomfield say…” or “You will recall me saying…” So, she is repeating what we have already been told. Why? Does she have nothing new to say and is just hungry for the screen-time?

My point is that if these press conferences no longer have anything to say, other than an update on the statistics, and possibly grandstanding by the Prime Minister. They should be mothballed, and a press release for the Department of Health could distribute the statistics. Now, you may counter that by saying that the press conferences open the Prime Minister to questions from the media. Do they? How about this question to the Prime Minister last week: “How important is it that people follow the rules of Level 4?”

Really?

Let’s dispense with the “press conferences" and, for goodness’ sake, get back to being treated like adults.

Have you woken up yet?

 

For those who don’t know, and many of you don’t, Fryday started four decades ago as an attempt by me to prove the pen was indeed mightier than the sword. I created the Fryday e-letter, one of the first in New Zealand, to fry a Glen Innes panel beater who demonstrably screwed me. That post is lost. Anyway, it didn’t work; he is still in business. But so, too, is Fryday, though it has mellowed and has recently taken a hiatus of a couple of years…until last week’s revival and my homage to Charlie Watts.

Thank you very much for your response to that.

My problem with Fryday is that I have no idea when I start what I am going to write. I get up at 6.00 Friday mornings, go to my computer and suffer. There is nothing.

So, this week I thought I would write about…nothing.

One definition of nothing is a lack of something.

Here in New Zealand and around the world there is a lack of common sense, augmented by a paucity of maturity. How else can we explain the deluge of wokeness that has rushed to fill the void left by the departure of those two great human traits—the remnants of which can be found only in the far reaches of the Outer Hebrides and visitors to Spike Milligan’s grave?

If I had seen that flood of wokeness coming, I would have got Donald J. Trump to ask God to send Moses back.

Examples abound, and I don’t want to give them credence by promoting them here. However, some of them are just plain silly and nonsensical. Why on earth would you not put a baby’s gender on the birthday certificate? Why would you tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln (of all people) in Lincoln Park (of all places)? Why would you appoint newsreaders seemingly incapable of pronouncing Auckland and New Zealand? And don’t start me on the endless “issues du jour”.

None of this is, of course, new. When I worked in advertising in the 70s, an edict came out from Radio New Zealand stating that it was no longer acceptable to use the word manhole; it was to be replaced with person-hole. Thank goodness that didn’t take off, it could have injured someone.

The “issue” I have is that anybody who won’t embrace wokeness or criticises it is automatically labelled out of touch, reactionary, middle-aged or older, white, racist, and inferior. They might have a point on some of those points. I am white and at my age, if I bent a knee, I might not manage to get back up.

But look, don’t label me the way you want to label me. Don’t label me at all. You don’t know me. You only think you know me.

And don’t automatically assume that because you think you are right, I am wrong.

There is in my world, room for diversity. In yours? Apparently not. Ironic, eh?

Yes, the world was asleep before you woke us up. And good on you for doing that. But now you are taking it over the top and getting boring. So boring, in fact, that you are sending me back to sleep.

Good night.