Now I know I posted a disdainful item about the 23/5 meme down below. This variant, proposed on Incoming Signals, seems more interesting:
“Take the nearest six to ten books from your shelf.
Open them to page 23, and find the fifth sentence.
Write down those sentences and arrange them to form a short story.
Post the text in your journal along with these instructions.”
Incoming Signals links to several of the results submitted to them. However, it strikes me that most of the participants have ignored the instruction to use the books nearest at hand and gone, instead, for those that will impress most.
1For those who don’t know, here is the explanation of the term “exquisite corpse”:
Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
