You know your reading habits have gone to hell when you play this game (link spotted here and here, among other places) and you get the following result:

After you discover Flight, your Workers can construct Airfields.

Well, hey, they said "the closest book." I'm at the computer. Where all the computer books are. And obviously, the most important book to have by the computer is the mini-manual for Civilization III: Play the World.

Obviously.

Researching the origins of this was a trip. The farthest back I could track the game's origins was here, though the post in which it appears calls it a "Q & A meme" in which the author has decided to participate, so this likely is not the original. What's interesting is that between here and here, the original instruction to "Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says," becomes:

1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Also, the remaining questions in the original (or the nearest I can get to the original, anyway) die the death of the unmemetic.

I know! It's almost as fascinating as those Airfield-constructing Workers!

Posted by Ilyka at April 18, 2004 05:40 PM in navel gazing