Tagged

Tagged by Seabee! So, with the same reservations as one has when forwarding an 'amusing 'email, here goes:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)

'Unspeak' by Steven Poole

2. Open the book to page 123.

Okey Dokey

3. Find the fifth sentence.

In April 2005, new Iraqi President Jalal Talibani proved himself agreeably on-message when he wrote, in a letter to Tony Blair: 'Saddam himself was [...] Iraq's most dangerous WMD.'

4. Post the next three sentences.

In the interim, three Britons were indicted in the US for planning an attack with 'weapons of mass destruction', identified not as nukes, viruses, or evil chemistry, but home-made bombs: 'improvised explosive devices', in the jargon all too familiar from the situation in Iraq.

Deputy Attorney General James Comey explained: 'A weapon of mass destruction in our world goes beyond [chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons] and includes improvised explosive devices.'

Comey's world, let us hope, is well insulated from the one the rest of us live in, or the contradiction might prove impossible for him to bear.

5. Tag five people.

I must obey:

Chris Saul: Evil son of Sun

Gianni: Lotus Lout

Samer: Casual? This casual? >:)

Who-Sane: Time for a post, my man!

Bluey: The same!!!! A post! A post!

By the way, the next sentence in the book is: 'For if a home-made explosive device is a WMD, what is the Mother Of All Bombs?'

I'm just starting to read this book and it's so far proved most enjoyable - particularly given your humble correspondent's word-mangling, machinating day job! Like Naomi Kleine's 'No Logo' I rather suspect that it will prove inspirational in ways that its author really would disagree strongly with. But that's the breaks, y'all.

I did want to post quotes from my second favourite book of all time, Michael Moorcock's delicious, wickedly sensual and marvellously observed fin de siècle melodrama, 'The Brothel in Rosenstrasse' but page 123 is, amazingly, dull and simply unrepresentative...