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Can you name all the "Stuff White People Like" that author Christian Lander is sporting in this photo? (1. glasses, 2. beard, 3. reusable shopping bag, 4. red hair, 5. New Balance shoes, 6. artisanal French bread from a neighborhood bakery, 7. organic vegetables, 8. the New Yorker, 9. Apple products (iPod), 10. shorts, 11. (fixed gear) bicycle, 12. bottled water. Extra credit: 1. making you feel bad for going outside, 2. trying too hard, 3. following your dream.) - Jess Lander

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• Stuff White People Like

Madison almost made the list of "Stuff White People Like." But Christian Lander, the author of the blog (www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com) and now book by the same name, went with Portland, Ore., instead.

"I thought about writing it as an entry. I feel like a lot of people end up in Madison for school, whereas Portland is a very conscious choice," he said.

Choice is a crucial component to his list of Stuff White People Like, which he started as a blog just this past January, and is already a book.

"You don't have to be white to be 'white.' The white that I'm talking about is a class thing. A lot of second-generation immigrants or upper-class black people love these things," he said.

And maybe it's good that Madison's not on the list -- Lander describes Portland with biting sarcasm: "a Lord of the Flies scenario with white people in the Pacific Northwest," where "the euphoria and self-congratulation devolves into savagery and murder."

Other stuff white people like includes coffee, bad memories of high school, David Sedaris, gentrification, study abroad, standing still at concerts and knowing what's best for poor people.

In the 10 months since he started the blog, the popularity of his site skyrocketed, he quit his day job at a California ad agency and turned into an overnight "cewebrity," joining the echelons of other online stars like the One Red Paperclip Guy (aka Kyle MacDonald) or the "I Can Has Cheezburger" team.

In August, he attended the first annual ROFLCon, a conference in San Francisco for the creators of such internet phenomena (ROFL is Internet shorthand for "Rolling on [the] Floor Laughing").

"That was such an amazing conference. Everybody there who had found cewebrity success, especially on the comedy side -- none of them were trying," he said. "No one started their little project thinking, 'You know what? This is totally going to make me famous or get me a book.'"

Getting a book published has been "a once-in-a-lifetime miracle" and not something he's planning on doing again. As soon as the book tour for "Stuff White People Like" is in the books, he's planning on getting into television writing, in the comedic vein of Comedy Central's Adult Swim shows.

Lander, 30, is the son of an "ethnically Canadian" father. His mother was born in England -- the closest thing he's got to a "spicy heritage."

He grew up in Toronto's East Chinatown, which was still pretty working class at the time. Half the students at his high school spoke English as a second language, and he was surrounded by people from lots of different countries. Since then, the forces of gentrification have closed and torn down all the factories in his old neighborhood.

The only white people he knew growing up were the people he writes about now: liberal, upper middle class hipsters. "The right-wing voice doesn't exist in Toronto," Lander said. "Somewhat like Madison I would imagine."

He's never tried to generalize about all white people as a race, because he doesn't see any unifying characteristic. "One thing you can be guaranteed of about white people is that they dislike some other group of white people more than you could ever possibly imagine," he said.

White people like the stuff they like because of their own lack of identity, caused by an embarrassment in their heritage and the "pain and suffering" white people have inflicted throughout history.

"You can take pride in your family -- and most white people don't because they think their family is crazy -- but you can't quite take pride in your heritage the way other people do," Lander said. So, white people search for other ways to define themselves, or latch onto other cultures to deflect attention from their whiteness.

"A lot of it becomes very selfish. You really focus on you," he said. Much of the stuff in his book is about flaunting behavior self-consciously, like eating organic food or not having a TV.

Sometimes he worries how the celebrities on his list will react. So far, he hasn't heard any responses.

"I'm actually petrified. David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers of all time. He's brilliant and I don't want him to possibly think I'm insulting him," Lander said. Ultimately, he added, it's about how white people "use" the stuff included on the list to advance their whiteness.

Although "Stuff White People Like" started out and has always stayed a joke, Lander sees it as a way to get people talking about race and stereotypes. Several spin-off Web sites -- like Stuff Educated Black People Like and Stuff Asian People Like -- have pleased him because they get "the essence" of what he was going for in his own blog.

He was following in the footsteps of earlier satire blogs on race, like "Black People Love Us" -- a site that mocks the stereotypical fascination white people have with accumulating black friends to preemptively disprove any accusations of racism.

"I think a lot of people are ready to talk about race and to recognize difference," he said. "It's been too long -- and this has been my experience at grad school -- where people are petrified to say anything so they say nothing. I think that through comedy and through these sites, it's OK to say, 'You know what? Growing up black and growing up Asian in America is a different experience than growing up white.'"

By Christian Lander

Random House

224 pages, $14

Lander will discuss "Stuff White People Like" at Borders West, 3740 University Ave. at 7 p.m. next Wednesday, Oct. 15, as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival.