ZAANDD FunnyAsA Fictoid (NAPSA)—While truth may be stranger than fiction, a fictoid is definitely funnier than a factoid, says the author of an hysterical new book. What exactly is a fictoid? A fic- toid is a bit of fictional history making a statement or telling a story in one sentence. “A typical fictoid tells who did what, when and where,” says Bill Dutcher, author of “Fictoids: Short Fiction...Very Short” (Dutcher & r == Company, $12). = Neither histori- cally accurate nor politically correct, the book takes a random walk through tural cul- history from 1220 B.C. oo to 2004. Readers can learn who invented self-storage and who invented both the periodic table and the occa- sional chair; why Henry the Ninth couldn’t get a date; who founded General Eclectic; who recorded “You were always there for me...but I was always here”; who told his bankers “You can call my loan, but it won’t come”; who opened a high-priced helium bar, believed to be New York’s first Squeak Easy; and whose unauthorized autobiography sold more than one million copies. The book introduces such color- ful characters as Sleeping Beauty’s sister Lazy Susan, Nor- wegian film star Harrison Fjord, classical rap artist Yo Yo Mama and assistant press secretary Feckless Spinmeister. The illus- trations were done by The New Yorker magazine cartoonist Jack Ziegler. For more information, visit www.fictoids.com.
