This is as far back as I could go.

This probably wasn't where the meme started, but what the heck. Does LiveJournal have server logs?

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"Upon opening the fridge, a ridiculous monster pops out."

... of course, Masked Depravity: Poverty Row Mexican Wrestling/Horror Films From New Jersey and their Role in the Pollution of Children's Minds. A Cinematic Handbook of Incompetence isn't actually mine, it's my girlfriend's. It just happened to be on top of The Zombie Survival Guide ("Even movies that are based on actual events will sacrifice pure reality for good storytelling.").

Just so we're clear about that.

Comments

[Edward]

Don't have a live journal, but want to play anyway...

Closest book:

Still humming, he half filled the wash-basin with water.

Somewhat uninspiring...

Second closet book:

This tragedy of a man of high principles and probing intelligence who follows the promting of that intelligennce to the final consequence of true self-knowledge, which makes him put out his eyes, was as full of significance for Sophocles' contemporaries as it is for us.

Well it's as full of something...

last try...third closest book:

According to you, there was a choice between Hamlet and Siegfried.

perfect.

[carpeicthus]

"Another related worry was that the paradoxes of logic, such as the Epimenides paradox, might turn out to be internal to mathematics, and thereby cast in doubt all of mathematics."

Several points to someone who can guess the book. It's fairly famous, and, as a hint, is one of the few books that can contain many sentences like that and yet also some decent, carefully scripted humor.

[bob mcmanus]

"Back home, Bloom finds the morning mail on the floor of the hall--a letter to himself from Milly, his daughter, a letter and a card for his wife"....Blamires, The Bloombury Book (God, feeding the stereotype)
...desk right
"He was admiring the gold-threaded waistcoat once more."...Robert McCammon, Speaks the Nightbird (horror novel)
....right floor
"When Cesare, in a jealous rage orders Kierska to be tortured, his son is driven to patricide and takes over the city, turning its churches into sites of sexual frenzy"
...Encyclopedia of Horroe Movies, ed Phil Hardy

Maybe also fits my image :)

[engineer_charley]

I'm surrounded by books. The first three that come to hand, then:

The relentless ambiguity of geekwork imprints itself on both geeks and leaders, as well as the relationship between them.

from "Leading Geeks", by Paul Glen. Really, it was just sitting there.

Here's another one, also just sitting there:

But the potential for the Web to transform a broad range of business operations drew them deeper into their clients' organizations--and budgets.

from "No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs", by Andrew Ross.

And, finally:

No need for an autopsy, his face made it clear: Rudi Weissmann had died of sadness.

from "Full Circle: A South American Journey", by Luis Sepulveda.

[crionna]

"Lifts her cup of black, unsweetened coffee."

Pattern Recognition, William Gibson

[Jesurgislac]

Curse you, Moe! I don't *do* memes on livejournal, but I feel an unaccountable urge to obey...

"there were cafes springing up everywhere, full of conversations,"

(Enchantment Orson Scott Card.)

[rilkefan]

But careful: back to our lines; it is unsafe there,
Passports are issued no longer; that area is closed;
There's no fire in the waiting-room now at the climber's junction,
And all this year
Work has been stopped on the power-house; the wind whistles under
The half-built culverts.

(poem 16 from Auden's _Selected Poems_ - the Amy Clampitt Collected, which I grabbed first, doesn't have a 5th sentence on pg 23...)

(p.s. Jes, how can you read OSC? He can sure write but his politics give me the heebie-jeebies.)

[Phillip J. Birmingham]

"Her voice trembled into silence; Igraine, too, was silent, in awe."

The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

[Jesurgislac]

Jes, how can you read OSC? He can sure write but his politics give me the heebie-jeebies.

I read Orson Scott Card's novels (some of them - hell, most of them, though some of the later Ender novels are pretty much crap) because he can tell a story so damn well, and there just aren't that many good writers out there that I can afford to quit reading one just because his politics make me ill. For the most part, I find his novels aren't deformed by his politics: he knows how to tell a story, and he knows the difference between telling a story and making propaganda for his politics. I read Robert Heinlein and Rudyard Kipling for pleasure, too, and I don't agree with their politics, believe me. With respect to his politics, take it that I agree completely with this.

[forgetting]

got it, pg 23, 5th etc (no cheating):

The emphasis on financial variables was a distinct break from traditional economic planning, which had relied primarily on physical output targets to both guide and judge enterprise performance.

Ohh, that's why I never read this book...

[James Casey]

'"The early bird catches the worm," said Švejk to his fellow travellers when the Green Antony drove out of the gates of police headquarters.'

No prizes for guessing the book, really...

[C Anthony]

047 Meningitis due to enterovirus
       Includes: meningitis:
                   abacterial
                   aseptic
                   viral

       Excludes: meningitis due to:
                   adenovirus (049.1)
                   arthropod-borne virus (060.0-066.9)
                   leptospira (100.81)
                   virus of:
                      herpes simplex (054.72)
                      herpes zoster (053.0)
                      lymphocytic choriomeningitis (049.0)
                      mumps (072.1)
                      poliomyelitis (045.0-045.9)
                   any other infection specifically classified elsewhere

HCIA Annotated International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification, Volume 1

[Edward]

Are there prizes for geekiest entry...C Anthony's deserves an honorable mention at least.

: )

[nagoya ryan]

"The test-taker is expected to answer this phone call, and deal with it as the person in charge of Sakura Department Store."

JETRO Business Japanese Proficiency Test Official Guide

Yeah, as you can tell, I like to rock and roll all night and party every day. Hrumph.

[double-plus-ungood]

"It describes the syntax that XML documents have to follow, the rules that XML parsers have to follow, and anything else you need to know to read or write an XML document."

Oh wait. On rescanning my desk, I note that that was from the second closest book. Here's the closest:

"The arcolRef element MUST apply only to xlink:arcrole attribute values where the xlink:arcrole attribute has an ancestor that is the parent element of the arcroleRef element."

And if you know the source of these, you have my deepest sympathies.

[Slartibartfast]

A vertical accelerometer at rest on the earth's surface measures the upward support, or thrust acceleration, of the structure which keeps it from falling.

The closest book at hand was the dictionary, and page 23 had no sentences. Second closest contained the above. This isn't nearly as geeky as it (or other books that are more properly placed on the bookshelf) gets, of course. But I think any really decent advanced stats book is going to win major points for geeky opacity.

[Skip]

Watching these things proliferate is one of the coolest parts about being on LJ. But I digress.

From the explanations to a practice LSAT that I jacked from work:

For matching games, make lists; we'll designate the options as p, l, and s respectively.

[Gary Farber]

I'd just like to note, without unnecessarily long quoting, that the idea that one should boycott art because of the artist's politics, is an old debate, an odd debate, and the answer turns out to be that art is separable from artist, work is separable from man/woman.

And, hey, I disagree with Orson Scott Card, Ezra Pound, and Boris Kustodiev, as well.

On a completely discordant note, I had over 4000 hits yesterday, and am still getting over 300 hits per hour, on my Limbaugh post that no one here found worth linking to, despite my pointers here. I guess it was a boring post.

[Slartibartfast]

When trolling for links, sometimes you just plain get no hits.

[Gary Farber]

I hate to be reminded of how much better Marion Bradley's fanzine reviews in Stellar were than her last fiction.

I was pretty annoyed in 1977 when she defaced one of my issues of Dimensions with her signature, as well.

I was glad, however, to help save her life after she walked through the plate glass window at Iguanacon.

I don't expect anyone here to ever note what the heck I'm talking about. It's just hypertext, I guess.

[Slartibartfast]

And just what the hell is this doing at work?

Another says, well, it's going to be a comet, but you might not see it without field glasses.

Shows you just how much clutter is in my office.

[rilkefan]

Gary, I think the answer is that great art is separable from the artist, and I don't think OSC qualifies (I'm thinking in particular of the plot line about the gay man in _Songmaster_, the whole superkid thing, and the whole pain thing).

Re the Limbaugh post, I don't understand your comments about liberal bloggers - I've seen the park quip discussed on a number of lefty blogs, and I've seen worse comments from Republican politicians.

[sidereal]

Oh dear God have mercy. Livejournal memes are spreading into the blogosphere.

Next up: questionnaires determining which My Little Pony, member of the Chinese Politburo, and flavor of Jelly Belly you are most identified with.

[Jesurgislac]

I dunno, Rilke. To me, the gift of being able to tell a story is a greatly unappreciated art: and OSC has it in spades.

I'm certainly not saying everyone should read Card's fiction - if you don't like it, you don't like it, and de gustibus non est disputandum. (Also, I've never been good on drawing hard-and-fast lines between "high art" and "low art".) Also, there are many of Card's novels *I* don't like, or find tedious (though the ones I like, I like a lot) and I can imagine that if I'd started out reading the Alvin Maker series, for example, I'd be very wary of future recommendations re. Card.

There are lots of "Alsos" in that paragraph, but basically for me it comes down to: While I enjoy reading something, I'm going to go on reading it, whatever I think of the writer's personal life and/or their politics.

[zeke L]

the application behaves consistently and is coded consistently because of reuse of both components and code (tapestry in action)

make life easier with lights that are triggered when you open the door (ikea catalog)

not the most inspired choices, but both within arms reach. i like carpe's sentence better. godel, escher, bach perhaps?

[Slartibartfast]

Formerly, the propellant was usually slowly burning gunpowder, to which more carbon was added to retard the combustion.