Not That Different

Six-Legged Sex: The Erotic Lives of Bugs

This book was written by: James K. Wangberg, who writes that "much of my early research focused on insect natural history, which entailed countless hours of observing insect behaviors, including their most intimate acts"(p.8). Although some readers may be put off by this insect voyeurism, "the study of insect genitalia is a significant and highly legitimate area of scientific research"(p.63).

What is in this book: Every fetish you can find on the internet, replicated in the insect kingdom. "Long before teenagers discovered favorite spots to park, overlooking romantic city lights, bot flies were congregating in similar locations for much the same purpose"(p.50), and other insects engage in necrophilia (the digger bee, p.126), S&M/Bondage (Chapter 18), orgies (Chapter 19), bukkake (the springtail, p.72), Prostitution (Chapter 20), cosplay (the velvet ant, p.59), vegetable fetishes (the tiphiid wasp, p.80), and even the Wolbachia bacterium can turn wood lice into the equivalent of Thai ladyboys. Insects also have their own equivalent of Axe body spray. "Some insect males may produce their own powerful scent, which they conveniently leave on the body of the female after mating with her. Tainted with the odor of a male, she is no longer recognizable as a sexy female, consequently other males seeking a sex partner bypass her on their mating quest"(p.13).

What is not in this book: Concern about upsetting squeamish readers with graphic details. Dr. Wangberg's description of the male feather-winged beetle discusses how:

[Its] sperm are up to two-thirds the length of the beetle himself. The gigantic sperm are so large that they literally fill up the female's reproductive system, leaving no room for others. Mated females have been found with sperm tails protruding from their vaginas, the competing sperm unable to enter(p.70)

Although this might seem to make oral sex a daunting proposition, "with literally millions of insects still to be discovered, imagine the delicious opportunities awaiting biologists, entomologists, and insect voyeurs"(p.133).

Would you recommend this book to Robert Donner or Curt Johnson? No. I respect their work on Minesweeper, which is a solid game, but got help us if they had read about how a male springtail will tend to a sperm field, "eating older sperm droplets and replacing them with fresh ones, to ensure the highest quality sperm for the female that wanders upon his property"(p.72). The resulting game would not have been nearly as popular beyond certain specialized niches.

Would you recommend this book to a Pick-Up Artist? Yes. You know how people tend to read items in a way that will confirm their own biases? Well, after seeing that "virgin females are strongly attracted to sexy sounding males who own nice property,"(p.46) they are going to see what other strategies from this book can be applied to their own lives, and the results will be hilarious.

What was interesting about this book? "The anal hairs on a cockroach can detect the on-rushing tongue of a toad!"(p.19). Now you know.

_{Six-Legged Sex: The Erotic Lives of Bugs, by James K. Wangberg, with illustrations by Marjorie C. Leggitt (Fulcrum Publishing, 2001, ISBN:1-55591-292-3}

The Ungulate Menace

Outwitting Deer: 101 Truly Ingenious Methods and Proven Techniques to Prevent Deer from Devouring Your Garden and Destroying Your Yard

This book was written by: Bill Adler, Jr., a scarred veteran of countless battles of wits. He has shared his experiences through this and other books, including Outwitting Fish and How to Negotiate like a Child.

What is in this book: This book is a strategy guide for people willing to admit that Ungulates, including deer, moose, and elk, are their intellectual superiors and outmatched only by the diabolical cunning of the Ford F150 truck. Although "deer are very, very big squirrels"(p.4), their intelligence is not to be underestimated. Deer "may not be rocket scientists, [but] they are very, very good at doing what deer are supposed to do—find food. [....] To do it well, they need to overcome all obstacles that we humans put in their path—that is to say, outwit our cleverest schemes to outwit them"(p.165, emphasis from the author). Worse yet, deer are just as much of an eyesore as tramps and vagrants—and like the homeless, "they've even been caught eating fish in a lake, sleeping by the interstate, jumping off bridges, feasting on ornamental gardens, and sleeping under decks"(p.34).

What is not in this book: Tips for beating deer at Mah Jong or Canasta. The book's advice ranges from appeasement, suggesting that you "use plants such as alfalfa on the outskirts of your yard to keep deer full and happy"(p.60), to scorched earth, telling you to "empty your vacuum-cleaner bag on your flower bed"(p.170) or "ask your city or town to build a highway through your backyard"(p.171), but they are all deer management techniques for gardeners. There is no advice for hunters, although readers interested in gratuitous animal cruelty will want to check out tip 66, "Attract deer to electric fencing by stringing it with peanut butter-smeared aluminum foil flags—one zap and they won't return"(p.170).

Would you recommend this book to Richard Connell? Yes. "Deer, after all, are enemies—enemies of those of us who garden for the joy of it, for relaxation, for food, for something fulfilling to do while our significant other watches sports on television"(p.51). Connell might want to rethink the plotting of "The Most Dangerous Game" since the unending struggle of man vs. deer makes Zaroff vs. Rainsford look like two kittens tussling over a bit of string.

Would you recommend this book to someone with a scat fetish? Maybe, maybe not. I think they're already following tip 10, "experiment with products like predator urine"(p.167), tip 64, "purchase predator urine and feces and place strategically throughout your garden"(p.169), tip 76, "get a hold of bear droppings and sprinkle throughout garden,"(p.170) and maybe even tip 78, "buy or beg coyote and/or wolf urine and leave sponges around your yard that are soaked in the stuff"(p.170). Like my crazy ex-gym teacher, I bet they're already following tip 81, "Urinate around the perimeter of your garden"(p.170).

What was interesting about this book? This book is part of a series on outwitting various subjects. Bill Adler, Jr., and his wife have formed an agency to develop other titles in the series to help readers with topics including Outwitting Constipation and Outwitting Cats (although some may question the patriotism of their proposed book on Outwitting the Immigration Process). They are also looking for authors willing to write some of these books, and according to their website, Mr. Adler and his wife are very interested in help with Outwitting Sexual Problems.

Working with or without Mayonnaise

Bringing out the Best in Yourself at Work: How to Use the ENNEAGRAM System for Success

This book was written by: Ginger Lapid-Bogda, PhD, a therapist who had been practicing for 20 years before discovering the power of the Enneagram in the 1990s. She has since become an advocate of the Enneagram system, taking her consulting career in a new direction. “While the Enneagram may be used solely as a psychological tool, many prefer to use the system with the psychological and spiritual elements intertwined”(p.xix).

What is in this book: A discussion of ways to apply the Enneagram system in a business environment. “No one knows the precise origins of the Enneagram, though its roots appear to lie in Asia and the Middle East and date from several thousand years ago”(p.xvii). This ancient technique was not widely publicized until two mystics and a psychiatrist started teaching it in the early twentieth century, but we can rely on their archaeological and anthropological credentials to give the Enneagram the same unimpeachable authenticity as Calgon and pearl cream.
The Enneagram system arranges people around a nine-pointed figure, assigning a number and a corresponding “style” to each point. It then makes use of geometry and mathematical relationships to show clear, intuitive linkages, like the way 1 leads to 4 but 8 leads to 5 while 4 leads to 2 and 7 leads to 1. It’s perfect for people who want something a little more decorative than a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator but think that the Zodiac is too fancy.

What is not in this book: A cookie-cutter approach that treats all personalities the same. People experience different “pinches” and “crunches” depending on their Enneagram style, and deal with them in a number of ways. For example, one Two notes that “’at family functions, I offer each person a foot rub. If the person refuses, I get quite upset and wonder why they don’t like me!’”(p.14) “Eights may amuse themselves by making comments to themselves about the events or by engaging in conversation about what they are observing, sometimes using profanity or body-based humor”(p.48), while “people often do not realize that Twos want to be explicitly thanked”(p.99). Readers can make use of this information to put others at ease, trading dick jokes with Eights and thanking Twos with the help of explicit lyricists like 2 Live Crew.

Would you recommend this book to The Prisoner? Yes. If Number 6 is concerned about being a free man, “the Enneagram provides a great step forward in helping people to develop their humanity at work”(p.xx). What better way to do that than to assign yourself a number?

Would you recommend this book to Tim Allen? Yes. If there’s one thing I learned from Home Improvement, it’s that he loves tools, and “The Enneagram is the single most useful, profound, insightful, and practical tool available to help us grasp the depth and complexity of the human personality”(p.xvii, emphasized by the author). Better yet, because “the Enneagram is the single most powerful tool available to help you develop your emotional intelligence”(p.xvi, emphasized by the author), it’s also a power tool.

What was interesting about this book? The book’s section on teams will help a wide variety of people, no matter how they prefer to work together. “Some prefer low interdependence, akin to that of a golf team; some prefer medium interdependence, as on a baseball team; and others prefer high interdependence, as on a basketball team”(p.149), although people who prefer to avoid sports metaphors are shit out of luck. Understanding and applying the Enneagram is important because “gaining a true understanding of your personality frees you from being constricted by certain aspects of it, allowing you to use all facets of yourself to become more of who you really are”(p.260). However, this may not be a good idea if you really are a jerk.

_{Bringing out the Best in Yourself at Work: How to Use the ENNEAGRAM System for Success, by Ginger Lapid-Bogda, PhD (McGraw Hill, 2004, ISBN 0-07-143960-9)}

Keep Watching the Skies for the Cops

Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens among Us

This book was written by: Whitley Strieber, author of The Wolfen. Mr. Strieber’s other books, Warday and The Coming Global Superstorm, have proven that he can provide measured, non-alarmist views that are sorely needed in the field of alien abduction, a subject where "the lack of authoritative answers has meant that hucksters and false experts have been exploiting public ignorance"(p.87). However, as an alien abductee and implant recipient himself, Mr. Strieber is worried that aliens may be controlling his thoughts. He has published other books on alien visitors, but "when I read the books months after writing them, I could see a disturbing difference between what I had written and what I had intended [....] I appeared to have become a propagandist for aliens"(p.221).

What is in this book: An examination of the evidence for the existence of extraterrestrials. If space aliens do not exist, "this would mean that a part of humankind has technology so extraordinary that the rest of us are virtually a different, lesser species, confined to an overcrowded, dying planet while the others traverse the heavens like gods"(p.81). Some of the evidence reviewed by Mr. Strieber could be explained by human involvement, and "if there are aliens here and they have co-opted our own military and intelligence infrastructure, then there could be the very combination of human and apparent alien activities that are being reported"(p.248). That may sound a little paranoid, but "in this society, someone who isn't at least somewhat paranoid probably isn't entirely sane"(p.232) and Mr. Strieber offers exhaustive proof of his own sanity. The government has already been provided with the evidence discussed in this book, but "if—fantastically—the data really have been ignored just as the government claims, then we need to stop doing that"(p.74).

What is not in this book: Probing, anal or otherwise. This book contains zero occurrences of the word "probe," and only one instance of "probing," in a context where it is being done by a human surgeon. Mr. Strieber does not understand the public fixation on purported alien colonoscopies, asking "even if this sort of script were commonplace, which it is not, why would the UFO stories take such a frightening turn?"(p.91)
However, "if our close encounters are indeed with aliens, wouldn't they have an obvious motive for obtaining sexual and genetic material?"(p.93), and the aliens have no aversion to violence, as seen by their involvement in scenarios where "one witness's head explodes, another goes blasting through a windshield, a third is slammed in the chest, [and] a fourth gets attacked with machine guns"(p.100). In fact, "the visitors may be at once tempting us with their theater in the sky and forcing us into action by the outrageous invasion of our bodies represented by the close encounter"(p.259).

Would you recommend this book to a fourth grader? Yes. Like a nostril, "the deeper you mine the close encounter experience—always refusing to submit to the temptation to rush to explanations—the richer and more profound are the questions it returns"(p.171). In fact:

One of the strangest implants ever found was contributed by Dr. John Mack. Expelled from a witness's nose, it is described as an organic, plasticlike, three-lobed fiber with an internal structure organized into intricate layers in a seemingly irregular manner. The specimen was a 'tough,' pinkish-colored, one-inch-long, kinky, wirelike object. A pathologist found it to be about twenty to thirty microns in thickness, and it could be stretched out more than three inches. It was reported to have a gelatinous sheath with bumpy outcroppings; it was clearly not a hair(p.236)

Would you recommend this book to an exotic dancer concerned about losing her job to illegal immigrants who received cut-rate cosmetic surgery from shady overseas clinics? That would be a hell of a reach just for a joke about "alien implants" but it would totally be worth it.

What was interesting about this book? White spaceman's burden. On Earth, "as technological civilization spread, the native cultures that weren't subjugated and destroyed succumbed to irrelevance and died,"(p.256) which makes it likely that alien visitors have refrained from contacting us directly because they do not want to ruin the developmental purity of our race. This hands-off approach of theirs means that "the visitors are not going to give us anything. But what we can take, we can keep"(p.252), so it's time to get aggressive. "To wrest knowledge from them, we need to be tough and smart and courageous, not passive and secretive and scared"(p.253). In other words, we need to become intergalactic carjackers.

_{Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens among Us by Whitley Strieber (St. Martin's Press, 1998, ISBN 0-312-18557-X)}

Glow Ball Enlightenment

Healing Society: A Prescription for Global Enlightenment by Dr. Seung Heun Lee (Walsch Books, 2000, ISBN: 1-57174-189-5)

This book was written by: Dr. Seung Heun Lee, creator and grand master of Dahn Hak and Brain Respiration, which is less painful than it sounds. Dr. Lee writes that his work with Ki energy has allowed him "to perform some so-called miraculous feats, such as communing with spirits, curing incurable diseases, helping paralyzed people walk, and calming mentally unstable people"(p.xiii).

What is in this book: A discussion of the mindset and approaches that will be necessary to heal society, relayed via anecdotes from Dr. Lee and metaphors that may be more commonly used in Korea. Some of them translate across cultures, like the statement that "we human beings are like puppets dancing on a stage, unable to look beyond the curtains and realize that we are not dancing to the rhythm of the divine music that's playing in the theater"(p.79). Other references, like Dr. Lee's description of a series of pictures where "the second frame has the now-grown calf with a nose ring and getting a spanking from the farmer for misbehaving"(p.3), may need to be re-interpreted—try replacing "farmer" with "parent" or "teacher," and swap out "calf" for "child" or "hooker." However, some of the references are completely inscrutable, like his statement that "humans insist upon differentiating everything, ever since we ate of the grape in Margo's Castle"(p.74).

Seriously, I googled the hell out of "Margo's Castle" and only came up with some terrible music, a realtor, a bar, and a shopping mall development, which are tough to connect to either enlightenment or grapes.

What is not in this book: Undue weight placed on Christianity as the only path to a healed society. We are caught in a system of constant competition driving us to ruin, and "one or two enlightened people cannot stop this machine. Twelve disciples cannot help us now"(p.79). Did you hear that, Jesus? In your FACE. And that business about God sacrificing his only son for our sins? "Even a porcupine loves its young. Even a lowly rodent knows to die for its offspring"(p.19), so by Dr. Lee's reckoning, God has no more common sense than a porcupine.
This book also doesn't place a lot of importance on our physical shells. "The physical body and mental acuity that you have been born with are not you, but just tools temporarily lent you for you to experience things that will mature you spiritually"(p.xiv). Hopefully, you have borrowed these tools from someone who isn't in a hurry to get them back, but it's a perspective that helps you remember that "you are not a quick-tempered Latino male with a penchant for computer programming who enjoys football games on weekends and good detective stories. You are not a patient, virtuous woman who has good judgment and shrewd mind when it comes to 'too good to be true' offers"(p.10). Also, you are not a robot crimefighter from the steam age, a transgendered Swede who constructs scale models of global landmarks out of earwax, or a dog who solves mysteries with the help of a sassy talking pocket calculator.

Would you recommend this book to Suzanne Somers? Yes, she seems pretty interested in health programs, so she might like to learn more about Brain Respiration, which "is a training regimen maximized to meet the needs of the twenty-first century"(p.49). "The actual Brain Respiration program consists of five levels"(p.63), which are—in sequential order—Brain Sensitizing, Brain Softening, Brain Cleaning, Brain Reinforming, and Brain Energizing. Ms. Somers may be pretty familiar with the second level already, but she could still learn something new.

Would you recommend this book to an adolescent male? Yes. "All the problems we face now in this world came about because we, as human beings, could not play well with each other. We don't play well with ourselves, first of all"(p.90), so getting them to play well with themselves could solve all the world's problems without being much of a challenge.

What is interesting about this book? Although the title of this book promises a prescription, "Brain Respiration is done by your own hands, through your own choice, for the advancement of your own spiritual awareness, and for the betterment of yourself and all mankind"(p.48) without any of the harmful poisons that the western world calls medication.
Dr. Lee does not think small, stating that he wants "to call upon the world to embark on an Enlightenment Revolution, a massive spiritual awakening that will sweep across the Earth with a thundering speed, bringing the joy of enlightenment to everyone"(p.xii-xiii). It's a bold vision that will yield dramatic results:

When these one hundred million people make the choice to reach a collective enlightenment, then we will change the destiny of the Earth itself. The healing vibration of their choices and determination will cure the Earth of the ills that we have caused. Then we will finally be on our way to Margo's Castle again.(p.75)

The Peter Lewis Guide to Soliciting Charitable Donations

Are you trying to raise money for a pet project? Are your billionaire friends a bunch of tightwads who wouldn't donate a dollar bill to save their own kin from a firing squad? Getting them to give until it hurts is easy with the Peter Lewis Guide to Soliciting Charitable Donations, as described in Ralph Nader's Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!

• STEP 1: Spy on them. "I've got his net-worth details on my desk, and they show he's lying through his teeth."(p.206)


• STEP 2: Quote Kid Rock lyrics to them. "Bruce, I was born at night but not last night"(p.206, baby).


• STEP 3: Discuss their interests. "Last year you gave five million just to encourage Jews to marry Jews. What kind of country do you want their children to grow up in?"(p.207) A segregated one, obviously, so tailor your pitch accordingly.


• STEP 4: Remind them that they can afford to pay. "You've had a bang-up year in commercial real estate, flat out and nonstop."(p.207) Since he's going to keep making money at that pace forever, he'll be more amenable to sharing some of it.


• STEP 5: Smoothly return the conversation to whatever it was you were talking about. "Now, when do you want to have lunch?"(p.207)