Tag, I'm It

I've been tagged with a meme, but don't worry; I have access to the finest doctors money can buy.

Seriously, though, Jen at Et Tu? has tagged me with a book meme. She doesn't think I'll respond, but I'm so touched by being tagged (Ha!) that I don't see how I couldn't. Here's what I'm supposed to do:

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.

The nearest book to hand is P.J. O'Rourke's On the Wealth of Nations, a book-length book review and summary of Adam Smith's economic treatise. I've had The Wealth of Nations lying around my house for years, but I am in fact too lazy to read it, and Adam Smith is nowhere near as funny as P.J. O'Rourke anyway. Here's what we find after the fifth sentence on page 123:

Smith was so infuriated by the trade restrictions on the American colonies that, uncharacteristically, he indulged himself himself in a protracted jeremiad--his "nation of shopkeepers" tirade.

The slur that Britain was nothing more than that is often attributed to the diminutive Corsican who was soon to give the British more trouble even than the Americans. But it was a common phrase, used to describe any commercial nation.

See, what did I tell you? Funny, right? Well, it's funny in some places, anyway. I tag What the Crap?, Insert Creative Name Here (to encourage him to get back to blogging), Gather Little By Little, Comeaux's Collection of Contemplations, and LaShawn Barber (because, why not?).

To be perfectly honest, I cheated a little bit. The closest book to where I sit writing this is actually a tedious PHP manual. But who wants to read that crap? Not me, brother.