Category: Fake Book Titles

Fake Book Titles V: Self-Help for the Online World

Yes, there are so many book titles for people on the internet and social media that it has its own entry, separate from the plain “self-help” category.

Found on laughingsquid.com

Trolling is part of “The Big Book of Online” series, of which this entry has various selections. Trolls are defined as persons or bots who post messages which is designed to inflame and incite to online chat groups, be it Twitter, Facebook, 4Chan, Reddit, or any other online chatroom.

I will give you one bit of advice that will save you from having to read this book: Don’t feed the trolls!

Trolls are looking for an audience and prey on anyone with weaknesses and insecurities. They also crave attention to themselves. Don’t give them that attention. Don’t respond to or even refer to their messages. If your chatroom doesn’t have a way to hide messages that you find disturbing, find another chatroom that does. If others are piling on to give reactions the trolls probably deserve, ignore them also, and find non-toxic online places to have the discussions you were hoping to have.

Found on sadanduseless.com

Because if you do, the troll could just dismiss you and other responders as Haters. The idea is to keep everyone upset and attentive to the troll and their ignorant remarks.

The troll then acts as if he or she is entirely unable to allow him or herself to be confused by facts or reason. This might be an act, or this might actually be the case. Either way, the participants slowly realize their time has been wasted and they move on.

That is, until another time when the same troll posts in the same discussion group about something else they know will upset other people. Other kinds of trolls are featured in the following books:

  • Found on sadanduseless.com.
  • Found on sadanduseless.com. The online world is not a healthy place for airing details of your private life. Find someone you can confide in, preferably in real life; or seek the help of a qualified counsellor.
  • Found on sadanduseless.com. This is another form of trolling, but amounts to the same thing.
  • Found on sadanduseless.com.
From somethingawful.com

Honey Bunch is a children’s book written to tell a cautionary tale about a little girl who finds her favourite song online and decides to download it. But really, the book is just another annoying extension of the “children are digital natives” trope that contains the myth that small children understand the complexities of what could be going on, on the other end of the internet connection. No. What they understand is: “I like this song and I know I can click on this link to get it.” There are many reasons to not click on that link, which go beyond “the law”. It is possible that she could be downloading a Trojan, or that she is on a website where each keystroke she makes is being logged in a phishing expedition on the part of the website. A small child doesn’t understand the forces at work that causes such corrupt websites to exist, simply because small children do not understand that there are people in the world that can be evil and hurtful; and that small children provide just that infinite amount of trust in the adult world that online predators crave. And I wasn’t even talking about sexual predators. They are open and accepting of what the online world is, but that is why I would say they should not be exposed to the internet until they are past a certain age.

Small children, contrary to online marketing bullshit, do not understand the online world, primarily because they are too naive to understand the world in its real form either. They are just curious little monkeys who click on stuff to see what happens. And they have more spare time than you to do it with. And yes, along the way, they click on stuff that isn’t a web browser, and now they know how to send an email containing daddy’s browsing history to every email address in daddy’s entire address book through Microsoft Office’s Mail Merge, because of what they saw on a YouTube video they randomly clicked on. The irony is that you were trying for weeks to do this with a business letter you were going to send out to a few dozen recipients as part of your job, and couldn’t figure it out. Great job, Honey Bunch!

The Man Who Walked Away From Facebook appears to be a story about a cowboy with a Facebook account. It is another cautionary tale about not letting online distractions keep your attention away from your horse. I think.

 

 

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Visits: 101

Fake Book Titles IV: Everyday Dramas

Apparently, this website has turned making fake book covers into something of a cottage industry. This is a bit of a trend, following the fake book titles meme. I think the art is in the ingenuity of the ‘shop job. Changing letters behind the cracks and dog-ears in the book cover is an art form I have respect for.

The Connor Brothers have offered a fake title that is not really that far removed from the original title.

It is basically the kind of modern translation you kind of wished you found in the Coles’ “Everyday English” Shakespeare series. That would have had me even more hooked on literature back in university.

There are certain scenes in this play (the real one, by William Shakespeare) where profanity would have worked, such as when characters about to marry are dancing with each other while hiding their identities by wearing masks. While dancing they begin to talk smack about other people, but actually have no idea they are talking smack about each other, and hearing about themselves in the third person, unknowingly spoken to them directly. Comedy gold.

You’ve Won a Free Timeshare Vacation, for years, has been the quintessential telemarketing con. Darryl Dawkins, former NBA star, dabbled in pulp fiction after his carrer as a basketball icon, offering this book, published by Fuxley Books.

This is the drama of a couple in Ajax receiving a phonecall from a telemarketer about winning a raffle to win their own timeshare in The Bahamas. It sounded absolutely unbelievable.

This novel is the prequel to the next novel, Timeshare Exit, where the same protagonists get another telemarketer phonecall offering to get out of their timeshare for a “small upfront fee” of $11,000.

Women have their way of knowing how she measures up in her marriage, such as seeing how she competes with a game on TV. From the point of view of the husband, it’s lousy timing. From the wife’s point of view, it is perfect timing.

Since the publication of this book, she might have to compete with The Playboy Channel, or something similar. Her only advantage in that case, is to remind her husband that he can’t marry the Playboy Channel.

The Most Glorious Bowel Movement, is a pulp fiction page turner if there ever was one. Goliath Dumper’s artistic challenge here is to get his character to describe the bowel movement in a way that would hold the reader’s attention for 198 pages. We get the story from the wife’s point of view. What she was doing before, during and after; what it felt like before and after in intricate detail that illustrates the slow start, the buildup and the climax.

Spanky McFarland has embarked on writing a Fanfiction novel based on Dumper’s obvious million-selling pulp classic. These are the in fact the four words you don’t want to hear from an attractive woman if you were ever “in the mood” at the time.

I didn’t want this post to deteriorate into “potty humor” but I had these two in stock, and thought they should go together.

Now, where were we …? Oh yeah, this was supposed to be a post of “everyday dramas” in fake book titles.

Oh, for Fuck’s Sake, What Have You Done Now? could also have been called “Smooth Moves” but illustrate the hell of children dealing with a collapsing treehouse.

You have to read the book to know why the tree was made to collapse. Shoddy workmanship? Too many people sitting on one side? Using too much hay on the roof and walls? Why is the little girl licking her hand as she is crawling away from the disaster? What was the guy in the background doing that caused him to helplessly fall out and faceplant himself on the ground? Will he ever get up?

Handicapped Parking Posse is the story about a librarian named Annie who really takes handicapped parking enforcement to heart.

If an able-bodied patron so much as thought of parking in the handicapped parking spot, then a pissed-off librarian and her Second Amendment rights would be there to greet them with a loaded .22 calibre rifle. All the patron would have to do is look down where he is standing, at the blood stains on the pavement from previous patrons who thought she was neither serious, nor a good shooter. But Annie is not a bloodthirsty killer. She doesn’t shoot to kill. She just shoots to disable. Once shot, you were allowed to take the disabled parking spot and drag your bloodied body into the library and make yourself comfortable. Sit on one of their bloodstained chairs; borrow a bloodstained book; or just ask Annie to phone you an ambulance.

Visits: 106

Fake Book Titles III: Self-Help Suggestions

Boredpanda.com discusses a bunch of actual fake covers you can use to cover your boring copy of Plato’s Republic or Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Many of these titles are in the self-help genre, and are sure to attract attention.

Passengers all moved away from this person when they saw the cover.

For example, why publically show your preference for Tess of the D’ubervilles, or War and Peace, when you can show off your interest in Hiding Your Erection from God? Covers like these have been shown to give you much more room on that rush hour subway ride, according to studies.

Boredpanda.com also had many titles below, that are too long, and don’t appear to satirize any existing covers. Some examples are below:

The self-help genre is a deep well, with titles that speak deeply about human angst and ennui. Harrowing tales! Horror! Suspicion! And who can resist a book describing in scientific detail a video about a puppy with the hiccups (the video in this link has 18 million views, but this one is closer to 7 minutes)?

Boris wants to mess with your coiff’. BTW, his hair is not this nice in real life.

And in case you need to know How to be Incompetent from the experts, here is a easy to read book with a very familiar British Prime Minister on the cover for those needing a mentor by which they can model their incompetent behaviour.

You get to learn the meaning of big words like anosognosia. While that word has medical connotations, the generally incompetent can interpret it in the sense of “not knowing that you don’t know”. That is, you are actually incompetent, yet not aware that you are incompetent. This is not to be confused with denial. Oh no, my dear reader! This is just incompetence raised to a new dimension: you are too incompetent to know that you are incompetent. It would be as if Boris Johnson styled his own hair, and was so impressed with the results that he opened a salon, charging top dollar.

Of course, we don’t want to give Donald Trump short shrift here, so we have two books which are the most likely titles to not have been ghostwritten by someone else with his name on the cover. And because they are likely to have been written by Trump, both books are 50 pages, tops! Free copies will distributed in the Trump hotel rooms alongside the Gideons’ Bible.

These are parodies of covers of classic titles put out by Penguin Books. In a sudden fit of “FTFY“, I see its category is “Mystery and Crime”. But really, I’ve Seen the Future: I Can’t Afford It should be “self-help”, as we all like to know how to cope.

But also another possibility is that it is part of a futuristic dystopia, which makes it, maybe science fiction or fantasy. But I do prefer to think of this as self-help. What are the choices we have as a species going into a future we can’t afford? The scary part is that it may involve sharing resources, rent, food and generally getting along together. It potentially could be a subversive book in today’s neocon climate.

The Weirdo Always Sits Next To Me is a classic problem plaguing certain passengers using public transit. Now, I know about all of the talk that we can all be a little, shall we say, “different”, and some of us dye our hair strange colors, wear strange clothes, makeup and tattoos. Maybe some of us have strange piercings or whatnot. But that is a normal weird. All that is is “different”, really.

What I have in mind is more of the kind of weirdo that comes on the bus, pays his fare, and on his head is a paper hat which has printed on it what he feels to be “The Seven Commandments“. He wears a shirt made of newspaper whose characters are in Hebrew, and clutches in both hands inkjet-printed and hand-folded pamphlets describing the end of the world. And he thinks to himself, ‘you seem like a nice person to sit next to’, and he does, uninvited. His smell is a mixture of schnapps and body odour, and you can’t figure out if there is something crawling under his beard. You begin to itch. You try to stare out the window. It will be a long bus ride. And it happens the next day and the next.

And this makes the book the basis for self-help. You begin to wonder what the hell is it about you that attracts weirdos on the bus? What signals do you give off that make you a choice for weirdos to sit next to? Is the character in this anecdote the only one that attracts weirdos? What scientific studies discussing what proportion of the population attract weirdos on public transit? Are certain personality types more likely to attract weirdos on the bus than others? Should you seek help? Is there a remedy? Are weirdos contagious? So many questions.

The last title in this article is what we all feel. Let’s face it. Youth, with all of its brash confidence, bravado, and disrespect for authority, is wasted on the young, since it lacks worldly wisdom. A title such as this one really sums up what any self-help book ever written has ever been about. And that is, when you combine your wisdom with confidence, you become a tour de force. But the perennial problem has nearly always been that we usually have way more of one than the other. It is one of the paradoxes of a life lived: You can only gain wisdom by making mistakes and learning from them — that is, you gain wisdom by having previously failed at something. But failing at something saps confidence and your motivation decreases. To regain our confidence and motivation is a purely psychological effort, and a difficult one for us as we get older. The humbling feeling we get by making mistakes should not be mistaken for a “reason” to lose confidence in ourselves, since no reason exists or can exist. There is only learning, and with learning there can only be future success, but that means we need to keep trying. This particular book doesn’t exist, but if it did, I just saved you the trouble of having to buy it. You’re welcome.

Visits: 117

Fake Book Titles II: Personal Tragedies

By now you may have read the first installment of Fake Book Titles, and the rationale for this simple concept. Show fake book title, write highly plausible nonsense about it.

Toaster Oven Inferno is the kind of drama that should be written into a book. It begins with optimism, a promise of convenience, all ruined by a single burrito. And out of the flames runs a housewife wearing tattered garments as if she had barely escaped a grizzly bear attack, barely surviving the inferno, not knowing where the kids are, and wondering what his husband would say when he came home from work.

No information on the originator of this graphic.

Mummy’s Breaking Point is not a property of mothers, but of parents generally. Here a bunch of small kids decide to form an indie marching band. The book proves that insanity is hereditary: you get it from your children.

It was reported that they had to take mummy away that week, leaving Dad to do the housework and tend to 7 little terrors who appear to have boundless energy and below average music skills.

Wait for the sequel, Daddy’s Breaking Point, starring Daddy as a new mental hospital inmate, sharing a room with co-star Mommy. Supporting cast include the Children’s Aid Society.

This is Sam. Sam he is. The title of this book should be considered to be a natural reaction to being served green eggs and ham.

Either of You Boys Want a Coke? I don’t recognize the series this book originates from; it isn’t Hardy Boys, but it is kind of like Hardy Boys in that there are two teen-age dudes that are depicted on the cover.

Apparently, they don’t mind being tied up in the basement and only feel thirsty.

This next tome has a cover depicting a space mission, but not any actual one, since the space capsule appears to contain only one astronaut.

So, some kid who always dreamed of space travel steals the keys to a rocketship, and after entering space and the third stage of the rocket disappears into zero gravity, he now contemplates the consequences of his actions. What now? His boy scout magnetic compass is no good to him anymore as he sees the beach ball of Earth shrink away from him to the size of a quarter. He doesn’t know how to control the oxygen or navigate the ship, and it is getting harder to breathe. It dawns on him that space travel is more complicated than he remembered seeing it on TV. He never thought he would actually look forward to being grounded when he gets back home.

Visits: 71

Fake Book Titles: Classic Rock Legends

The old books your parents or grandparents kept have been repurposed, with humourous effect. About a year ago, I had been tracking these on Pinterest, but I understand some fake titles have been mentioned on The Chive as far back as 2016. On a recent search, it appears as though the titles have proliferated and have become viral in their own way.

There are so many out there, that they are no longer confined to the now-commonplace parodies of pulp fiction covers. These have now expanded to nearly every kind of book.

I would like to say in advance that the stories relating the cover to something “real” in the lives of the subjects of the titles are totally made up. Highly plausible bullshit, if you will.

Stories about Kenny Loggins

Stories About Kenny Loggins Obviously this artist’s rendition was drawn long before Kenny’s foray into blockbuster movie-themed 80’s rock. He was, at one time, more of a back-to-the-land folkie type, who had a following with songs like Danny’s Song. Surely, that is what this book will cover.

You can see him here, backstage at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, talking to a young fan in attendance.

The History of Fleetwood Mac I haven’t been a huge follower of this band, but it has an incredibly long history, going back to about 1967, more than half a century ago. But back in those days, Fleetwood Mac were also caught up in the folk movement, and played with mostly acoustic instruments.

They later evolved into blues rock by the ’70s, and stayed that way for a while, and undergoing many personnel changes until their classic lineup in 1975, after which albums like Fleetwood Mac and Rumors were released. It is made clear that by then, they had long since done away with the mandolin, cello, flute and harpsichord as shown in this book cover.

Visits: 65