Former TOC associate music editor turned classical music record label fat cat Marc Geelhoed tagged me with this. I think if I don’t respond, a cousin of mine will die of malaria or something…

The rules of the meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

My desk sits next to my bookshelf so finding the nearest book is easy. But when I lean back in my chair, the books nearest me on the shelves* are those by P.J. O’Rourke. And so, from Eat The Rich:

And is there some middle way like the ball-up in Sweden? All the world’s Russia experts (and most of its Russians) are trying to figure these things out. But Russia is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, tied in a hankie, rolled in a blanket, and packed in a box of little Styrofoam peanuts,” said Winston Churchill, or something like that.

Yeah, kinda dated, huh?

And so, I tag ejshea, Tankboy, Wood-Tang, Bridgeport Seasonings, and Tales of a Post-Grad Nothing.

More to come in the next few days: book reviews and the return of the Wood-Tang/OMIC letters.