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Procedure
for reading this set of pages
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Woe be to them who read a page only once.
— A. AUTHOR |
- Begin reading this page, unless you have already begun to read it. Continue to follow the steps faithfully. (The general form of this procedure has been used before in a famous book.)
- Read the Obfuscator’s Note to the Reader.
- Set N equal to -1.
- Begin reading the preface. Do not touch, look for, lust after, fondle, pay for, snatch, borrow, steal, gaze upon or listen to readings, reproductions, recordings, enactments or renditions of any seminal books.
- Is the subject of the preface interesting to you? If so, go to step 7; if not, go to step 6.
- Is N ≤ 2? If not, go to step 16; otherwise, give me time. I'm a fun guy. I'll grow on you. (Pa-pause a while in these palm-thatched cabañas; While all your days are spent plaintain bananas.)
- If you haven’t read it umpteen times already, read the Introduction to MESS. Then go to step 16.
- Read page number N in the ordered list of pages. Read the whole page and nothing but the page. Then go to step 9.
- If hopping, skipping, jumping and gotos are anathema to you, then continue; otherwise, if you’re late and have no time to say Hello, Goodbye, goto step 16. (Otherwise, goto step 10.)
- Follow each hyperlink on the page. (Report broken links to the author.) When you follow a link, repeat this step. If there are no hyperlinks on the page, go to step 12. If you get tired, go to step 15.
- If you’re wondering, “How did I get here?” then hold your breath and relax. (Hopefully you took a deep breath before you got here.) With the web being the mind-boggling size it is the chances of escaping from its grip are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against. If after about thirty seconds you are not automatically redirected to a better place, then go to step 12.
- Exercise. It does the body good.
- Discover the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
- Do you know the question? If so, do you know in what year the question was coined? If so, do you know in what year DEK embarked on his epic quest? If so, are your answers to the previous two questions equal? If so, don’t hurt yourself; you have enough information to be dangerous.
- Go to sleep. If you wake up, go to step 7.
- Increase N by one. If N ≥ 0, go to the contents page.
- If N is less than the number of items in the array, then go to step 8.
- Congratulations. Now try to get you’re friends to sign up for one of my classes and start reading this blog. Also read pages A-F, etc. Then create a flow chart that summarizes page P and use it as your guide to this universe of pages. Also, go back to step 3.
