If you like oily food, this cookbook’s for you
By Nury Vittachi
*
Guys, want to save time and money? Simply stick raw food items under your car hood. By the time you get home, dinner will be cooked perfectly!
But that’s only if you have carefully followed the instructions in a unique cook book called “Manifold Destiny". The slogan is "More recipes per gallon".
To serve its largely male audience, recipe times are given in motoring terms. A quick trip from supermarket to home will flash fry vegetables, but to cook a whole turkey, simply drive 320 kilometers for a constant four hours on a high-speed expressway.
This is just one of many volumes which readers sent in following my request for odd books.
Today, we will focus on books aimed at men. Men like danger, destruction and doing-it-yourself, so they buy a lot of “how to” books. All the following are real volumes, some still available on Amazon.com.
*
1) “How to Start Your Own Country”.
*
2) “How to be Happy Though Married”.
*
3) “How to Rent a Negro”.
*
4) “How to Become a Schizophrenic”. (This had only one named author—surely a mistake?)
*
5) “How to Read a Book”. (Clever, this. Technically speaking, you can’t read this without reading it first.)
*
6) “How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men”. (This book is lagging at number 827,338 in the Amazon.com bestseller lists, so I hope the author is more successful with women than he is with book sales.)
*
Oddly, many of the books for men tried to get us to be more successful in our social lives. As if men lack social graces!
One title was “Well, Blow Me Down: A Guy’s Guide to Talking Like a Pirate”. Apparently women are driven wild with lust if a man comes limping into the room and says things like, “Avast, Jim lad, you saucy wench.” Well, I tried it with my woman last night and she just laughed. Of course, that could be because I had removed my lower garments, which has always been a signal for her to go into hysterics.
Not all the books tried to make men nicer. There was one called “English as a Second F***ing Language: How to Swear Effectively, Explained in Detail with Numerous Examples Taken From Everyday Life.”
This book I definitely don’t need. I get quite enough of that sort of thing from my visits as “guest speaker” to rowdy, raucous groups such as rugby clubs, drinking clubs and (you’d be surprised) parent-teacher association meetings.
Also for men was an intriguing book entitled: “Are Women Human?”
Now that is one of those questions which probably every man on the planet has asked himself in the privacy of his own thoughts, but I dare to venture that none of us has ever asked out loud. Or at least, none of us has asked and lived to tell the tale.
There were also a small number of biographies for men. One of them was called “Exile in Guyville: How a Punk Rock Redneck Faggot Texan Moved to West Hollywood and Refused to Be Shiny and Happy”. The title says so much that you really no longer need to read the book, do you?
To get female readers excited, I shall sign off in pirate language: “Time to haul the gangplank, me hearty buxom wenches.”
I know you love it.
