Book Review: Hippo Eats Dwarf
A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.
Tanya A. Brown

In a South Park spoof of The Lion King's Circle of Life, the famous fecal philosopher Mr. Hankey explains the importance of poop to his turdly young son. As the music swells, we're treated to an inspiring montage of creatures lifting their tails and excreting, thus nourishing the soil and helping plants grow.

In the real world there's a similar Circle of Bullshit, a complex and self-sustaining ecosystem in which nonsense is generated and distributed. In this world Michael Jackson's nose is on the verge of imploding, monkey men rampage through the Indian countryside, and kittens are grown in glass containers.

What's true? What's untrue? Who knows? As Harry Frankfurt points out in his seminal book On Bullshit, the people purveying these tidbits don't care whether they're true or not. In fact, most links in the information chain not only don't care but it's in their best interest not to care. As the classic editor's credo says, "some stories are too good to check."

Enter Alex Boese, who not only cares what is true but has some helpful pointers for telling the difference. Of his book Hippo Eats Dwarf, he writes: "Assembled in the following pages are thousands of examples of the hoaxes, urban legends, spoofs, scams, advertising ploys, political doublespeak, and other forms of b.s. that lurk in the modern world. Later, when you're trying to figure out if a website selling dehydrated water is real, or that photo of a two-hundred-pound cat that just arrived in your in-box is genuine, these examples should provide some guidance on which to base your decision."

The title is a reference to an urban legend which periodically appears as news in newspapers around the world. According to this story, a circus dwarf died when he bounced off a trampoline and into the mouth of a yawning hippo, where he was swallowed. Spectators, believing this was part of the act, applauded wildly.

This story encapsulates the best qualities of pseudo-news: freakishness, gruesomeness, and a willful suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. In addition, as Boese points out, although it masquerades as real news, it's almost certainly fake. This set of attributes, he contends, describes quite a lot in the modern world. "Our world isn't just fake or phony. Any society that produces Michael Jackson's nose, breast-enlarging ringtones, and human-flavored tofu has gone well beyond that. Our world is hippo-eats-dwarf."

Beyond dwarf-eating hippos, Boese covers a range of topics beginning at birth, ending with death, and making many pit stops in between. As befits any recent book on issues of popular culture, a large chunk is devoted to the web, email, eBay, and technology. It was gratifying, for instance, to have it confirmed that many of the glowing reviews on Amazon are written by the author's friends, relatives, or even the author. (To underscore this point, Boese ran a contest in which he offered a copy of his newest book to the writer of the most "creative" review of it. The results are both bizarre and very funny.)

If some of the information is a bit old hat, such as the section on the trickery employed by advertising food stylists, other tidbits are pure delight. In a section titled "Bait and Switch" we learn that 80,000 cans of faux pâté de foie gras were once seized in Israel. Inspectors found that instead of containing the pulverized livers of hapless geese, these cans contained Bulgarian dog food. Not just any dog food, mind you, but Bulgarian dog food! This detail gives the story a special panache and, considering how foie gras is produced, the substitution is arguably just treatment for those who ingest the stuff.

In the hoax department, we are informed that "Not only is Velveeta clear before food coloring is added ... its composition is also very similar to that of plastic explosives." This falls under the category of things which aren't true but, in a just world, would be.

Periodically the author throws out a "reality rule" and a quiz question to see if we're paying attention. Although these aren't very snappy, they're worth going through in order to beef up one's nonsense detector. For example, "Did the energy company Powergen really register the domain name powergenitalia.com for its Italian subsidiary, not realizing this URL could be read two ways?" In this case the answer is no, although, the author informs us, other organizations haven't been so canny. (My personal favorites in the latter category are whorepresents.com, the website of Who Represents, and cummingfirst.com, website of the Cumming, Georgia, First United Methodist Church.)

At times the book moves a bit sluggishly, but that's forgiveable given the diverting nature of the material. Let's face it: trying to beat order into an unwieldy, bizarre group of stories is a difficult task. The information presented is up to date, even including the finger-in-the-Wendy's-chili debacle of 2005. One could do far worse for a bathroom read.

If I do have an issue with the book, it's that it doesn't address the sociological issues of why our world has become "unreal". However, beyond offering an off-the-cuff synopsis of his opinions, the author is at least up front about admitting this. The book is a field guide, after all, meant to help identify b.s. the same way an Audubon guide helps one identify a red-crested titmouse. Speaking of which, you won't believe the story of how that bird got its name. My sister emailed it to me, so I'm pretty sure it's true.

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