Wednesday, February 6, 2008

TAGS and CHAIN LETTERS and ME, BEING FAMOUS

Mental Momma from The Mental Pause Chronicles tagged me. Here's the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Hearing the Voice of the Lord, Principles and Patterns of Personal Revelation by Gerald N. Lund

Page 123, 5th sentence to 8th sentence: She said: "Joseph (that was her brother's name), they have not waited for us, and I see no necessity for us to wait for them."

So we hitched up and rolled up the mountain, leaving the company behind, and this was on the 23rd day of September, 1884. We reached the Old Fort about 10 o'clock that Saturday night. The next morning, in the Old Bowery, we had the privilege of listening to President Brigham Young and President Kimball, Erastus Snow, and some others, give some very excellent instructions.

If you're not Mormon that was probably boring as can be. It was about Mary Fielding Smith, a widow who traversed the plains to come to the Salt Lake Valley with the pioneers. She was a fantastically faithful saint who had the courage to do things I cannot imagine doing.

There you have it. The middle of a story in the first third of the book.

I'm supposed to tag 5 people but this is kind of like a chain letter isn't it? And also kind of like the email forwards that come with a prediction: "If you send this to ten people in the next ten minutes you will have great fortune in ten days. If you don't you will have bad luck for ten days." If I ever send those emails on I remove the promise/threat at the end.

Now, dear Mental Momma--don't you love that name and the name of her blog?--I'm not going to tag five other people because I'm lazy and have a chain letter memory-of-sadness, which is almost like a tag. If anyone wants to participate, feel free to do so.

I participated in two chain letters. Once, in high school, I got one instructing me to send a quarter to the person on the top of the list, take his name off, put mine on the bottom and send it to five people. I think this was the infancy of the pyramid scheme. I taped a quarter to a 3x5 card, stuck it in an envelope and sent it to person number one, sent off five letters, and waited anxiously for my flood of quarters. I waited for a l-o-o-o-ng time. I'm still waiting. And I'll bet the person I sent a quarter to got just one--mine.

The second one was when my kids were little. It was a picture book chain letter. Send one picture book to the first person, blah, blah, blah. I did. Nothing, no library full of picture books for me so I bought my own.

By the way, sometimes you can get wonderful book bargains from sellers, linking from Amazon, for out of print books. Shipping is $3.95 or maybe it's $3.99 and sometimes you can get a book for a penny so that makes your book four bucks. I have bought about five books this way and they were all brand new and less than $ 8.00 for the most expensive one.

Of course sometimes the out of print books are big bucks. There is one I am not willing to pay $18.00 for because I don't know if it will have information on something I need for a picture book I want to write. When I finally get all that money from people who have been feeling guilty since the 1960's about not sending me their quarters, then I will buy that book.

Yes siree, it will be a great day and I will have to give the mailman a tip for lugging all those quarter'd letters to my mail box. Then I will buy the book for research. Then I will write my brilliant picture book and it will be so brilliant that the large publishing houses in New York City will have a bidding war. Then my agent--who I have not communicated with for thirteen years so she probably will not remember me--will sell my book to a motion picture studio in Hollywood and then I will be rich and famous and you will all clap and cheer. Won't you?

8 comments:

Unknown said...

You want to know a coincidence? I opened the book that I am reading at my bookmark and I am on page 123.

Lynne's Somewhat Invented Life said...

And what did it say on sentence five through eight?

Elizabeth Byler Younts said...

i appreciate your comment on my blog...thanks so much for stopping by! *elizabeth

Mental P Mama said...

Lynne! Well done, and I totally understand not tagging...i hanging up my meme-er for a while, too.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least you have your whole life planned out now ; )

tearese said...

hey, I did your meme, it looked like fun.

Kellan said...

I love your plan - rich and famous doesn't sound so bad to me!!

Thanks so much for coming by my site - very nice to see you. Have a good day and I hope to see you again soon. Kellan

Colette Amelia said...

OK my book I am reading I stopped on page 137 but on page 123... For decades there has been much apprehension about the negative effects of aging populations. Around the world, headlines have warned that we will not be able to afford the growing costs of pensions and health care.

And, indeed, deep change can be expected in the coming years.

Isn't Political Science interesting stuff? and I have 2 tests next week!