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09 October 2011

Pick up the closet book to you and close your eyes, open to a random page and read the first complete sentence.

It will tell you your future. [More:]

"One can't be totally devoted to Science you know."
The Pawn falls at last, giving White a passed Pawn on the Queen file and a Rook on the seventh rank (in addition to the Pawns he picked up).


Hmmm, which Pawn am I? That phrase "The Pawn falls at last" sounds kind of ominous and too apropos for comfort.

This is from Logical Chess Move by Move by Irving Chernev. I just returned from a book sale and this was top of the stack next to me. This book was free. The four others were .50 apiece.
posted by DarkForest 09 October | 15:45
"Women who feel like they're doing a bad job or who generally don't like the job may be depressed."

I like it.
posted by occhiblu 09 October | 16:01
I'm an expert in social erosion techniques, martial arts as applied to whole societies; taming and breaking a culture is the same as brainwashing a human being.

I really need to quit reading Grant Morrison. He's gonnna get me in trouble.
posted by WolfDaddy 09 October | 16:13
At first he had dropped to the ground for cover at any sign of life, more recently he had just continued walking.


Um, not too promising. But I seem to be alive in The Future, and things are improving?
posted by TheophileEscargot 09 October | 16:14
"Wilkie had been first to arrive, a small, wiry person with slightly too much hair and wire-framed spectacles."

Vince & Joy, Lisa Jewell (i have no idea how this got in the bookcase. not through me!)

the too much unkempt hair is 100% me before I started going close cropped a couple months ago
posted by Firas 09 October | 16:18
It's as easy as that.

The Future sounds rather promising.
posted by bluesapphires 09 October | 16:19
"After that, the three of us had parted as friends, if not necessarily allies, and I considered that an ample reward for my efforts."

from Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which I'm reading because I got a free copy by coming in 2nd in an online writing contest (Twitter-short poems about '80s videogames. My winning entry: "Her eyes were so limpid, her hair so flaxen, I should've let her beat me at least once on Zaxxon.")*

Now, if you'd said the nearest printed reading matter of any kind, since it's Sunday and I'm ensconced in the Dead Tree Daily:

"Work as if you had all the time in the world and that you would die tomorrow." (On the studio wall of a local artist being profiled)

of course, if I included the Comics...

"My dad got me a pedometer to help me stay all active." (Frazz)

and if I included the copious advertising circulars:

"All slow cookers, coffeemakers and microwaves on sale." (Kmart)
posted by oneswellfoop 09 October | 16:59
Moreover, in contrast to the reinvention rhetoric, the vast majority of these programs contain not the slightest hint of backing away from enforcement when it helps accomplish the identified purpose.

The Regulatory Craft - controlling risk, solving problems and managing compliance by Malcolm K Sparrow. What can I say - I'm at work and hardly surrounded by literary greats.
posted by dg 09 October | 17:11
In sum, GP, which was mainly based on GTR and Einstein's other works, in all its three phases is radically different from Newtonian physics in that it is a field theory.

Perhaps there is a widely-held theory that I would be better suited to working in a field somewhere.
posted by Wolfdog 09 October | 17:37
Chernev's book is a great one, by the way, DarkForest.
posted by Wolfdog 09 October | 17:39
"Dwiggins' cry to the gods is one with which we are all familiar."

Typography is life.

posted by faineant 09 October | 17:48
I shrugged my shoulders, "It's all right. I . . ."

I like that my future will be okay but I am left wondering the rest of the sentence. What will I be doing?
posted by MonkeyButter 09 October | 17:52
Ah, thanks, wolfdog. I don't really know that much chess. I played (rather badly, never much of a plan) in high school an eternity ago. Now my daughter is playing and I'd like to be able to teach her a little something. She's not beating me yet, but she's getting closer... Looking that book over, I liked the way it started from the very first moves, explaining everything. I've always had a hard time explaining to her why such-and-such a move might be good, etc.
posted by DarkForest 09 October | 17:58
And that was only one world.

Oh so vague. Typical.
posted by deborah 09 October | 18:04
Neverwinter Nights includes a powerful but simple to use magic system that sticks closely to the D&D rules.


It seems that I shall be a wizard!
posted by Splunge 09 October | 18:12
The best two-player games have two stages or more, which makes them complicated to learn but more challenging to play.


So true. So very very true. Well, I won't be bored, that's good to know!
posted by Sil 09 October | 19:16
Normally a driver that performs as little processing on messages as this driver does would handle all messages in the put routine

But I already knew I was destined to be a bad example.
posted by fleacircus 09 October | 19:38
Moreover, the sale of a slave in free territory should not have been valid anywhere.


My future sounds more like the past. (Mrs. Dred Scott by Lea VanderVelde)
posted by crush-onastick 09 October | 20:12
Uh Oh..... this could be trouble lol

"I know it sounds like madness," I said, "But the agency is driving me batshit, and I haven't wrung nearly enough money out of the sex industry."
posted by rollick 09 October | 20:26
"The power is within her, as she takes off her clothes."
posted by Ardiril 09 October | 20:37
Luxury hotels, as Westerners understand the term, are rare in Mali.

I'll be in Mali next spring, so yes, having a travel guide next to me might be cheating a little.
posted by mykescipark 09 October | 20:45
He was male.

Sounds promising! Let's continue!

He is called Orogrim by my people.

Less promising. Don't think I can quite do Orogrim.

His fur is gray, she said, although in the right light, it pales.

Well, that tears it. I try never to date guys with gray fur.
posted by mygothlaundry 09 October | 21:08
Ageist!
posted by dg 09 October | 21:20
"Black's play in diagram 4 was remarkably fine."

Oddly, I used a chess book (nearest to me) before reading the OP.
posted by Obscure Reference 09 October | 22:02
Not the first sentence on the random page, but random finger touch without having looked at the page at all:

I have learned these things from the older people, whose custom it has always been to pass down the history of these things by word of mouth, since they did not have writing.
posted by D.C. 09 October | 22:38
"A landfill that is wet, teeming with roisterous activity, and spilling its insides into the outside world, is the situation one wants to avoid."
posted by cp311 10 October | 00:08
"You kept the arm, then."


Oh, thank goodness.
posted by Rhaomi 10 October | 00:34
"He was tall and wide, like a human vehicle."

Hmmm.
posted by arse_hat 10 October | 00:35
Well, that tears it. I try never to date guys with gray fur.
Prejudice!
posted by Wolfdog 10 October | 06:06
Okay, okay, I yield. Send me this Orogrim with his gray fur and I will toss aside these despicable ageist, speciesist prejudices and date him.

Except I already read the whole book and he turns out to be a psycho killer anyway. No, really. Not to mention a vaguely lion like member of a non human race. In other words, the future, it is like the past: guys I date often turn out to be non human psychos.
posted by mygothlaundry 10 October | 08:23
Tireseus, the blinded seer, was both male and female: his eyes were closed to the broken forms of the light-world of the pairs of opposites, yet he saw in his own interior darkness the destiny of Oedipus.
posted by jim in austin 10 October | 10:29
They sat in their boxers and undershirts on the front balcony that looked out towards Menachem's horse farm.

Ponies!! Although I must say that I'm jealous of Splunge's future wizardry.
posted by monkeys with typewriters 10 October | 13:00
"Eating fruits and vegetables is still the best preventive measure."


Aye aye, cap'n. Apt advice since Halloween candy abounds.
posted by chewatadistance 10 October | 14:14
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIZARD AND DOOHICKIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! || So does anyone here

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