Chapter 18:

In Which We Discover the Some Things Are Not as They Are, and Others Are Not as They Should Be... or Something Completely Unrelated to That Subject.

Have you ever tried to be completely random on command? It's very difficult.
Take what happened to a friend of mine the other day...

Jack was seated in a small, out of the way Cafe reading a book when a woman walked up to him and asked if she could borrow his salt shaker. He looked up to her, and their eyes met breifly, and, as they sat there staring at each other, he said:

"Do you have a dog?"

Now, the woman was taken aback by such a random question, and the smile on the man's face said that he actually wanted to know. So she asked him why he wanted to know if she had a dog, and he replied:

"No reason"

And handed her the salt shaker; then promptly went back to his novel.

Now, many would say, this man was obviously either trying to start up a conversation, or commenting on a smell, but neither of these was the case. Someone else might ask whether the question had anything to do with the book he was reading, but that would also be barking (excuse the dog reference) up the wrong tree. Another would say, "it's because he was thinking about dogs," but that would also be wrong.
The truth of the matter was that my friend was a master of randomness:

Randomness: n. or v. depending on context The ability to pull something entirely unrelated into a situation without others knowing, or being able to find out, a logical connection with the context of the action or remark. (Taken from the Unabridged Superspectacular Dictionary of Made-up Words: Second Edition)

How do I know this? It is because I was sitting with him at the time, and I asked him specifficaly about all dog related questions trying to pinpoint the origin of that comment.

However, later on, at a party, when asked to "say something random," he was unable to do so. He actually said something related to the topic of our conversation, and that ruined the effect, and it wasn't funny.

This goes to prove that randomness can not be instigated by a second party without losing the randomness of the random act.

Potato.