This is such a great contest: The Diagram Prize’s Oddest Book Title of the Year. Its 2009 winner is The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais.

I’m sure you are wondering, how could that possibly have beat out Baboon Metaphysics (#2) and Curbside Consultation of the Colon (#3)? Such is the nature of the wonderfully whimsical contest, now in its 31st year after being conceived by The Diagram Group’s Bruce Robertson as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Bookseller posted a short list of six books vying for the prestigious title, receiving just over 5,000 votes in an online poll to come up with the winner. “Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as Excrement in the Late Middle Ages and All Dogs Have ADHD were rejected,” said Philip Stone, a sales analyst at The Bookseller.

He added that The Diagram Prize “celebrates the diversity within book publishing today, the risks publishers are willing to take to support freedom of information, the beauty of print-on-demand for fascinatingly niche titles, and perhaps most of all, complete and utter oddity.”

(Thanks to Gloria for reminding me to blog about this.)

Writing in an interesting, funny, thoughtful, expressive way is always worth a try. Here are some recent examples I’ve run across:

• “By yearend, investors of all stripes were bloodied and confused, much as if they were small birds that had strayed into a badminton game.” – Warren Buffet in his 2008 annual report message for Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
• When networking, “you’ve got to jiggle all the doorknobs.” – a comment on a MyRagan post
• “In recent years, celebrity hasn’t just come down off its pedestal. It’s barged into your house. It has emptied the liquor cabinet, commandeered the couch and spent all afternoon whining about the difficulties of the artist’s life.” – writer Cathal Kelly in the Toronto Star
• “It was exhausting, like climbing into a clothes dryer for a ride.” – writer Ian Brown in the Globe and Mail.

What expressive language have you seen?

There is still debate about whether turning out the lights for Earth Hour makes a difference, but I think there’s no question. It’s done an amazing job of showing the power of individuals to make a difference.

Nearly 4,000 cities were involved this year, up from 400 last year. (See a video of scenes from around the world here.) In Toronto, city-wide demand for electricity was 15 per cent below typical demand for a Saturday night, and 7 per cent below the lowest amount during Earth Hour 2008.

In my house, the indoor and outdoor lights and computers were off even before Earth Hour, and we dined by candlelight. However, we did watch TV by candlelight, too, since the resident Bruins fan had to see the hockey game.

So, awareness is going up. Next step, joining together for more than one hour once a year to make a difference.

Update:

Cool before and after photos from around the world: Rome’s Coliseum, Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, Las Vegas strip. Click on the “lit up” photo to see it with lights dimmed.

Before and after shots across Canada.

Everyone is trying to be like the shiny new toy, Twitter.

My Internet service provider, Bell Mail, has launched their new “enhanced” mail service, and it wants me to invite people to join my network and update them on what I’m doing. LinkedIn and Facebook want me to invite people to join my network and update them on what I’m doing. The Air Miles loyalty program just announced a new “community” and invited me to pick my user name and join in, sharing travel and Air Miles reward stories. No doubt, they also want me to invite people to join my network and update them on what I’m doing.

But Twitter is the place everyone seems to want to be.

The thing I’ve noticed lately is that people who are busy Twittering are slowly neglecting other parts of their online life. They aren’t updating their blogs as often, or they’re letting a Twitter feed take the place of posts. Twitter comments (yes, I know they are called tweets) are replacing Facebook status updates.

An article by Michael Learmonth in Advertising Age asks, “Why did Facebook suddenly get so much more Twitter-like?” He notes that Facebook “started emulating key functions of Twitter earlier in March after a redesign made status updates central and immediate,” but that “The tweet is replacing the status update among the digerati.”

Not everyone thinks this is good. I ran across Carpe Media and Emily Sussman’s musings on the back-and-forth Facebook encourages by letting people comment on friends’ status updates. She says:

“Unlike Facebook, micro-blogging on Twitter strikes me as the equivalent of shouting into a vacuum…Essentially, Twitter posts are graffiti while Facebook’s status updates function as a dynamic community bulletin board — the latter succeeds because of its context’s fully interactive interface.”

Twitterer kevinrose asks, “is personal blogging dead? w/my facebook page/twitter, I’m not sure I need a blog anymore.”

Do you agree?

Car sales representatives have a reputation that’s hard to shake. There are exceptions, of course, but would you generally link them with words like “honest,” “trustworthy” and “working for me”? I didn’t think so. They also bring to mind the words “high-pressure sales” and “let me talk to the manager.”

My car is 10 years old this year, and I have been planning to buy something new this year. It must be made in Canada, and get better fuel economy than my current car. Now that I don’t regularly have a car full of large teenage boys, it can be smaller.

I have my choice of all kinds of Canadian-built trucks and vans, but the small, made-in-Canada requirements narrow the field. So yesterday I found myself at my local Honda dealer, talking to a sales rep who assured me I would qualify for a $3,000 in various discounts, twice mentioning his honesty, although reading the newspaper later that night I saw an ad that promised $4,000. He hinted these might be fleeting discounts, suggesting others in the past had been good only for a weekend, but I told him I was on a fact-finding mission only. He assured me I am in the driver’s seat, as he tried to find out how much I had set aside to spend and what I thought my car might be worth as a trade-in.

The literature connected with cars is filled with all sorts of weasel words. An accessory that used to be optional (clearly not included) is now called available. The former sports utility vehicles are now called crossovers, whatever that means, given the bad perception of SUV. Used cars are pre-owned. Special car pricing is extended to well qualified customers, which I guess these days means solvent.

So, the ride for a new ride without being taken for a ride has begun. I’m going for a test drive on Wednesday (when I expect pressure to seal the deal before the end of March) and setting up an appointment with another dealer to view/drive another couple of cars. Should be interesting. Wish me luck!

Here’s a rare sight: a television ad that makes you smile, and you don’t even mind when it repeats several times during the show you’re watching. I’m talking about the Discovery Channel’s “I love the world” ad, sometimes known as “Boom dee yada.”

You know the one. It starts with two astronauts in space, looking down at the Earth. “It never gets old, huh?” “Nope.” “It kinda makes you wanna…” “Break into song?” “Yep.”

The song continues with different people representing Discovery Channel shows, such as Survivorman, Man Vs. Wild and MythBusters. The final frame just has the words, “The world is just awesome,” which mirrors the print ads.

Congratulations to the many people who worked on the ad (credits here) and to agency 72andSunny for a great ad! Of course, now I have the song stuck in my head…

Tired of reading/hearing about all the layoffs, bankruptcies and other bad news filling the media these days? Do something! Here’s Michael Katz’s suggestion: spend your way to an economic boost for your own town.

Michael is “Chief Penguin” (aka president) of Blue Penguin Development and author of the e-newsletter that’s at the top of my “Damn, I wish I wrote that” file. He tells engaging stories that always have a point related to newsletters and building relationships with your customers.

“Here’s the problem,” he says. “Expectation plays a big role in the state of the economy. A good part of our decision to spend money is based on what we think will happen…So we hang onto our money. Even if we still have a job and a paycheck, and even though we understand that by spending less we’re only contributing to the problem.”

His idea is that once a month, on the 20th, we should agree to spend $20 “in the towns where we live and watch as it gives our neighbors (and ourselves) an economic boost.”

Sign up with Michael to receive a reminder every Thursday to go and spend $20. Then, go and spend $20. Really, life is too short not to.

Have you noticed that companies seem to be deliberately managing our expectations downwards? I’ve run across this a couple of times lately :

When I traded in loyalty points for lift tickets for a recent ski trip, the web site said it would take about two weeks to get the reward certificate by mail. The confirmation e-mail I received shortly afterward downgraded that to three to four weeks. The certificate actually arrived within a few days.

Calling a government ministry to make an appointment to replace an I.D. card, I got a message that “All our agents our busy. Because we are currently experiencing a higher than usual number of calls, it may take more than five minutes to answer your call.” (As an aside, the same message ran when I called at different times, leading me to believe the higher number IS the usual number.) Having set my expectations for a longish wait, they actually answered within two.

There’s nothing wrong with under-promising and over-delivering; it’s way better than the reverse, which just about guarantees customer dissatisfaction. But I’m suspicious. The examples here sound like these outfits are trying to artificially set expectations so low that an average performance will seem amazing and the customer will be “delighted.”

Here’s a thought. Give an honest estimate of how long it will take to deliver good service. Meet that timing. Try, as I always do, to bring the service/product/project in early. But don’t double your estimate to make meeting a normal deadline look like a miracle.

Happy birthday to Barbie, who turned 50 today. Talk about a toy with legs! Whether 50 is the new 40 or 50 is the new 30, she sure looks good. And she’s got all kinds of “dream” things — dream bedroom, dream dining room, dream kitchen, dream game room and more, much of it pink, like the dream bathtub (pink clawfoot tub with a pretend flat screen TV). You can see it all on the Mattel site, which sports wallpaper in a violent pink with tiny paired images of her classic slip-on shoes.

Oh, Barbie. Yes, I had her, and a black case with tiny hangers holding her vast wardrobe of snug sheaths, pencil skirts and evening gowns, both store bought and lovingly sewn by my talented mother. I had little boxes holding multiple tiny accessories, like those iconic shoes. I had a cardboard Barbie Dream House, built by inserting tab A into slot B — my handyman father took on that chore, probably late one Christmas Eve. I briefly had a Barbie cake, made out of the stacked icing from four or five Oreos, until a visiting neighour kid ate it.

I also had Skipper, Barbie’s little sister. She had long blonde hair but few other features of her curvy sister; she had flat feet and a chest to match, so I totally identified with her.  She also had sensible shoes and raincoats and shorts, and I don’t recall ever seeing a ballgown. I had a flashback moment visiting BarbieCollector.com when I spotted my “Dreamtime” set: dotted two-piece PJs with a lightweight fleece robe and slippers (all pink, of course) and a tiny blue felt stuffed cat.

Oh, you’re thinking this collection stuff is a girly thing. Nuh uh. My two sons had an enormous collection of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle gear that far surpassed my Barbie/Skipper collection. They had several different versions of the original four Turtles — Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael and Michaelangelo — plus assorted vehicles, a whack of bad guys to fight, and seemingly millions of tiny plastic weapons and accessories like pizza slices. The Turtles’ version of the Dream House was a sewer lair; we had that, too. (We may actually still have much of it all in our basement. Make me an offer, please!)

Some people scoff at toys like Barbie and the Turtles (hey, that would be a great band name, as humour columnist Dave Barry used to say). It’s true they seem to inspire an unfortunate need to collect, but a lot of imaginative play goes on amidst the piles of stuff. So keep on dreaming, Barbie!

“There are huge problems in this world, and then there are problems that can be solved by everyday people with red pens and a little moxie.”

So says the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, which (along with MSN Encarta) has proclaimed today National Grammar Day. Not coincidentally, it is smack in the middle of Words Matter Week, sponsored by the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors.

The Society (fondly known as SPOGG) is for “pen-toters appalled by wanton displays of Bad English.” On this special day, SPOGG encourages us to speak well and write well. And please, do not get caught making errors such as these, which I found recently in print and online:

• I have fallen foul of this (afoul)
• Loose the weight I gained (lose)
• Next time you or your sweetie is looking for (are)
• Take a peak at the table of contents (peek)

Join SPOGG by submitting your e-mail address, setting you up to receive “periodic e-mails about grammar, usage and outrages to your inbox…you can sleep easier at night knowing you’re doing your part to rid the world of bad grammar.”

(Thanks to Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty for the reminder!)