The Hungry Hungry Hippos Games

The Hungry Hungry Hippos Games is up on The Huffington Post--it's a satirical take on The Hunger Games. I know, spoofs of The Hunger Games abound, and a couple of them mash up the movie with the children's game Hungry Hungry Hippos. So I can't claim originality, but at least mine is distinguished by the fact that it spoofs the original novel instead of the movie. That counts for something.

I hope you'll check it out. As you'll see, for me it's all about the games.

Bush's Book

George W. Bush has been out of work for some time, poor fellow.  Having been without full-time employment for about fifteen months myself, I sympathize. 

Bush has put the time to good use by writing a book.  Apparently all the brush in Crawford had been cleared, and he had nothing else to do. The book is called Decision Points and focuses on fourteen key decisions he's made in his lifetime.  It comes out in November.

I thought I'd do him a solid and start seeding the market now.  Being a book flack, I thought some advance publicity was in order.  So I've leaked the fourteen decisions to the press. This way the public can get an early taste of Decision Points so they'll know what to expect in the fall.  The first one concerns his decision to name his dog Spot.

You'll find the other fourteen (yes, there are actually fifteen decisions--that George W. Bush is full of surprises) on The Huffington Post.

Incivility is Where You Find It

There's a lot of media attention focused on the bad behavior of some elements of the Tea Party movement, and it's quite true that some of it is heated, hostile, and reprehensible.  But there's plenty of incivility to go around.  Tea Partiers don't hold a monopoly.

An interesting example can be found on Amazon.com and is centered on Michael Lewis's new book The Big Short.  In the Customer Reviews section of the book's Amazon page, a lot of Kindle users are complaining because no electronic edition is available.  To express their displeasure, they are assigning the book a meager one-star rating.  Other Amazon customers are pushing back at the Kindle crowd, slapping them down for posting "reviews" of a book they haven't read yet.

Some of the posted comments and replies are pretty ugly.  Seems like the perception of anonymity--whether in a crowd of protestors or on the internet--brings out the worst in some people.

To make this point, I came up with a quiz called "Tea Party Rhetoric or Amazon Review?" which you'll find on The Huffington Post.  See if you can tell which nasty comments were made in a heated Tea Party exchange and which were posted on Amazon.

Which Is More Interesting, E-Books or E. Coli?

All you hear about in the publishing news these days is e-books and e-readers--important topics, to be sure, as they are transforming the entire industry.

Still, you can reach a level of e-book saturation. I mean, the terms "e-book" and "e-reader" are u-biquitous. There's a certain monotony to seeing them repeated endlessly in everything you read. Frankly, it gets a bit tedious. And that "e" sticking out at the front starts to grate.

I came up with a trick that helps keep the publishing news interesting. As I explain on The Huffington Post, it's a simple substitution system: Every time you come across the words "e-book" and "e-reader," simply substitute a different, more interesting word. As long as it has an isolated letter tacked onto the front, it qualifies. The title of the piece will give you the idea: "If E-Books Were G-Strings."

Try this experiment: Next time you're socializing, tell your friends "I'll be happy to share my e-reader with you." The reaction is likely to be a polite "thanks" with an unspoken "whatever" as the subtext. Then say "I'll be happy to share my E. coli with you," and see what kind of stampede results.