Watch Out! A Meme From Skimble

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 — first sentence
3. Book #2 — last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 — second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 — next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.

The flotillas of the dead sailed around the world on underwater rivers. The one exception was a silver cigarette case in a pocket of Tania’s coat. I swam steadily, in a smooth arc, from the first Standing Stone to the second. It’s too sizes too big for her. I’m going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer…

1. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
2. A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright
3. Five Quarters Of The Orange by Joanne Harris
4. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

It almost makes sense doesn’t it, like some sort of stream of conciousness…maybe it’s trying to tell me something…or maybe I’m tripping a bit!

8 thoughts on “Watch Out! A Meme From Skimble

  1. It’s kinda like a cut-up. William Burroughs used them for sorcery. It’s a bit different of course, ‘cos the only intent is pure entertainment…I think! Not sure it counts as a meme either of course. Then again, I guess it is, it’s just not like the ones I usually consider!

  2. I was about to say much the same as Jez. Oh, and Jez – apart from the original Dawkin-coined meaning of meme, there’s now a meaning of the word involving blog tests and other pointless quizzes…

  3. Ah! Thanks for the wisdom dear sir. They are still memes in the wider sense of the word…just at the bottom end of the pool…as it were… ;o)

  4. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not
    shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. The
    pitchman tossed a handful of food pellets — Fred Costner could not see
    pricisly what — at the head; it opened its mouth to enormous, frightning
    proportions, managed to snare most of what landed near it. Each session she
    usually manages to say something intended to shock my bourgeois
    respectability.
    "Whats that mean?"
    He loved Big Brother.

    With slightly less sense than your sentence, and a little weird. The gelling between 2 and 3 could be better but there we go.

    "The Big Sleep", Raymond Chandler
    "We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale", Phillip K. Dick, many short stories.
    "The Diceman", Luke Rhinehart
    "Idoru", William Gibson
    "1984", George Orwell.

  5. Grey clouds hovered above the tiled rooftops of the city, stretching across the horizon like a gigantic shroud. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and on the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar. He had his back to us as I did the briefing, covering his arcs. In fact, we found the silencer under the bed. I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said.

    1. Witch Finder, by C.L. Werner.
    2. 1984, by George Orwell.
    3. Bravo Two Zero, by Andy McNab.
    4. Godwalker, by Greg Stolze.
    5. Mort, by Terry Pratchett.

  6. Mine’s ended up scanning reasonably well. Almost. It’s almost all first person, anyway. Sort of. Okay, maybe not, but here we go:

    The bells of St. Mark’s were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlour to upgrade his skull gun. The townspeople were advised to practice extreme cleanliness, and any who found fleas on their persons were directed to call at the municipal dispensaries. I ought to be hardened by this stage; but there are some experiences and intimations that scar too deeply to permit healing, and leave only such an added sensitiveness that memory reinspires all the original horror. It was the obvious thing to do: why did he hesitate? I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger . . . a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.

    From The Diamond Plague Mountains of Amber SpygLas Vegas…

    Or:
    1. Neal Stephenson – The Diamond Age
    2. Albert Camus – The Plague
    3. HP Lovecraft – At the Mountains of Madness (and other novels of terror)
    4. Philip Pullman – The Amber Spyglass
    5. Hunter S Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (appropriaely enough)

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