Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Tag This

She stood on the scales. Her Christmas present from Denise. What sort of a fuckin' present is that?
--I got it for the colour, said Denise.

David Sedaris is out of the room, so the closest book was the (as yet unread) Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle. I'm still waiting for him to finish that A Star Called Henry trilogy. Come awn, ye daft wee...

And welcome back Reverend Dick! Ye daft wee...

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Pick up your nearest book and go to page 123. Find the fifth sentence, and post on your blog the next three sentences. Acknowledge who tagged you, and then tag five more people.

I tag :
Archival Clothing (la lars)
Hot Air (the haskes)
And three non-bloggers who usually have good books close at hand:
DWilton
Mr. Bascomb
Wuh
(non-blogs can post in comments or email me and I'll post it in the Big Show ... either way works. It's a free-flowin' organic summer project, man.)

--

Side note: Week 2 and no one's interested in buying the duplex. Not only that, but we're so unpopular and unnoticeable that we can't even get the abandoned Volkswagon towed from the street in front of the house. That's going on week 7. I thought it might belong to the hillbillies across the street, but they park on the lawn. For those coming into town for the fair next week our neighbors will sell you a spot on their lawn for $5, but you have to clear out by midnight, because that's when they like to ride their ATVs around in the backyard.

5 comments:

reverend dick said...

At least they know where their kids are?

li'l hateful said...

They let kids ride back and forth on the sidewalk island, but not without concern:

"My greatest fear is that one day that little son of a bitch will ride that fucker into the street."

- quote by "dad", who was standing in a gut-hitched wife-beater drinking a Silver Bullet.

reverend dick said...

Wow. That's outstanding.

Anonymous said...

Oooh, fun! I'm not ashamed to say that I think this whole "tagging" thing you kids are doing is great fun indeed.

So, the three lines from page 123 of "Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Secret Shame" is as follows:
'I started to wonder why he was telling me of the mess he had made of his bathroom. Was this monologue on his lack of aim some kind of metaphor? Then it dawned. He thought I was a cleaner and was instructing me to erase his jottings.'
That's it! Thank you Louise Welsh. She's the author who happens to share her mortification on p.123, and I like her stuff. I'd be remiss if I didn't include the fourth line, to whit:
'Keeping in character I told him he was too old to expect anyone to mop up his toileting accidents and to do it himself or I'd phone the Times Literary Supplement.'

Good stuff, wot?

Oh, and if you haven't heard Jeff S. tell his Funyuns story (hicks, messy kids, mollifying fake onion ring snack food), it's one for the ages. Be sure to ask next time you clap eyes on the man.

Wuh.

Anonymous said...

Editing here, after the fact. The line should read, "The three lines are as follows," not "is". As soon as I pushed 'publish' I saw the hideous error! Sadly, I could not leave it alone. Speaks to some problem in my brain, I imagine.

Roger wilco,
Wuh