This kind of random, but here’s a meme I ran across somewhere in my blog-wanderings today that looked kind of fun. First up, the obligatory description of The Rules:
- Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
- Open the book to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the next three sentences.
- Tag five people.
Let’s proceed, shall we?
As it happens, the two books that are closest to me are not very well suited to this exercise — Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary doesn’t even have sentences in the traditional sense, and the Chicago Manual of Style, while fully sentenced, isn’t terribly interesting. So I reached into my personal bag and brought out the book I’m currently reading on the train during my commutes: The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45 by Stephen E. Ambrose. Turning to page 123…
The German army had to abandon most of its trucks and other vehicles and revert to being a horse-drawn army.
For the airmen, what mattered most was the cutbacks the Luftwaffe was forced to adopt, especially in its training period for pilots, which was reduced to a few insufficient days. Further, along with a severe shortage of good pilots, morale in the Luftwaffe was declining or becoming almost nonexistent.
And there you go. Exciting, eh?
For the final step, I’m not crazy about tagging other people, as that implies an obligation that I don’t think anyone should have to feel. I’ll go ahead and name some folks I’m pretty sure will have a book handy, but nobody feel like you have to do this if you don’t want to, okay?
The names are:
Thanks for playing. That is, if you choose to…
Which Lie Did I Tell – William Goldman
-not one f***ing sound on the set now.
And quietly, this: “Could you help me, please, I’d like to get this done.” And the crew, roadrunners all now, finished their work, watched while he nailed his take. The crew was ready.
Man, and if Kimber wouldn’t have cleaned the bathroom and cleared out my reading stash, this may not have been right next to me 😉