Random Lines

Here's a game:

1. Choose a set of books, magazines, or whatever discrete pieces of text you wish.
2. Assign a random number to each, and then arrange by random number, smallest to largest.
3. Generate a series of random numbers from 1 to the number of pages in the biggest book. Apply these random numbers to the list of books. (These are the page numbers, so of course you may have to adjust for the shorter books.)
4. Generate a final set of random numbers between 1 and 40 or 50, or based on how many lines are on a typical page of text. (This is the line number, and may need to be adjusted.)
5. For each book, find the page and the line corresponding to the random numbers assigned.
6. Put 'em all together. Or connect them with text of your own, or whatever you want to do!

Here's how some of mine turned out:

Random Lines #1: Poetry
And in these virtues of delight
digested, shat out, growing again and eaten
My lord—' said Barlyng, 'I! Your friend!
A warmth within the breast would melt
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
fold out the lungs and a jungle of bronchiols
From pent-up aching rivers,
[blank line]
one she'd rather forget.
[redacted line]
I will change trees though I am almost eighty
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth
tied like a noose to my belt.
oh god it's wonderful
                    searching the punk-dry rot
Have understood what love can do.
and the rose bobs to the surface
one of the many pink and white blossoms,
Touch me into light



"The Divine Image" Songs of Innocence, Blake
"____Their Eyes Were Opened, III: And the Birds Too Pecked the Flesh" She Heads into the Wilderness, Macari
"John Deth: A Metaphysical Legend" Collected Poems, Aiken
"In Memoriam A.H.H." Selected Poems, Tennyson
"The Little Vagabond" Songs of Experience, Blake
"The Fold-Out Atlas of the Human Body," William Olsen New Poems from the Third Coast
"From Pent-up Aching Rivers" Leaves of Grass, WW
Striking the Earth, Woods
"In the House," Martha Ronk American Hybrid
Little White Shadow, Ruefle
Save the Last Dance, Stern
"Rice Pudding" When We Were Very Young, Milne
"Venus and Adonis" Annotated Shakespeare (Poems)
"Fishing the Backwash" Fishing the Backwash, Driscoll
"Steps" Lunch Poems, O'Hara
Paterson, "Book Two" Paterson, WCW
"The Murderer's Wine" Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire
Dove in Santiago, Yevtushenko
Early Collected Poems, Stern
"Scene that Curls Edges: Three Lü-Shihs and a Couplet" Odds of Being, Wardrop

Random Lines #2: Self-Help
in the middle of my eyes …
that happened in the past or something that's coming up in the future? What does your body feel
5. If you continue to retain the image of yourself within the new frame, what difference
ships, the blaming, the guilt and shame, and the excuses—lots and lots of excuses—it all fits
pulls it out by the wings, and continues
[blank]
as clubs or hospitals which require much property or administration, ought to be incor-
and treatment, the media hardly know BPD ex-
studies seem to point to a multifaceted recovery approach. However,
politics. And my attention was focused by another event. In the used
but of their emotional security and piece of mind. We
If a child could designate a parent's act as "wrong," then the
sobriety.
putting hallucinogens into my food. I wasn't able to sleep at all.
He was shut out from all family affairs. No one
Where are you going?
her own life and in supporting her own daughter. The arche-
dividuals.
family. Approach through a doctor or an institution
gram of recovery from alcoholism, and they are not going to be listed

King Warrior Magician Lover
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art
Anger Busting Workbook
Rabbit Walks into a Bar
High Risk
AA Service Manual
New Hope for People with BPD
12-Step Buddhist
Drinking Life
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Cutting
Writing from the Body
Came to Believe
Touchstones
Million Little Pieces
Descent to the Goddess
Reviving Ophelia
Alcoholics Anonymous (The Big Book)
Living Sober

Random Lines #3: Mixed Nonfiction
-He makes their breast close and constricted, as if they had to
ments. The reader is being manipulated and aroused, his or her own
Violet of secret earth.
[blank page]
Dusty sparrows in a crowd.
family. Although he did not have a beard, he did have a moustache. The bearded lady left
tured and some took refuge in Athens
a coarse mantle—by which he sought to protect himself against the raging elements. His
found, and to them an incomplete version is better than
the Emperor Otto, who had stabbed himself, that he
It was an omen: forthwith the plan of Darius was unanimously ac-
A low growl made him reach for his pistol. Whirling
"Easy man, take it easy, boy—stop yellin',
ing Commissions which shall expire at the End of their
drop-outs! Clara said that would be no problem - she would keep Pat for a few weeks
"It's for your own good, Toady, you know," says the Rat."Think
assail us, I have transcribed from The Times one strain of this kind, full of
out of one everything shaped, final not in mere driblets, as sanity does.
The police were standing in line in front of Republic Steel, quite a dis-
of all this, of having to think of my father as someone bul-
No. 98.Van Gogh's House in Arles (drawing). V.W. van Gogh
really needs to cover its aggression with some pretext or
To something greater than before.
Wir sind ja alle genötigt, unsere Ziele weiter zu stecken, als unsere Kräfte
6     And the children of Ger'-shon had by lot out of the

Qur'an
Sexual Personae
Essential Margaret Fuller
Touched With Fire
Works of Emerson
American Sideshow
Peloponnesian War
6th and 7th Books of Moses
Double Helix
Savage God
Histories
Vampires, Werewolves, and Ghouls
Cat
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America
My Lifetime of Changes
Exuberance
Culture and Anarchy
Social History of Madness
Hard Times
Shadow Man
Van Gogh: Paintings and Drawings
Waiting for God
Nothing Was the Same
The Great Mother
Holy Bible, King James Version