Charles Martin's Blog, page 39

This Week in Word of the Day – 06/02/2013

mordacious \mawr-DEY-shuhs\, adjective:

1. sharp or caustic in style, tone, etc.

2. biting or given to biting.

Sullen, mordacious, and combative whenever matters of politics emerged among family and friends, Elizabeth diligently protected her black sheep status within the blue bloods of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

She’d made a name for herself when she snuck into a political gala and dumped red paint on her own mother’s fur coat – which turned out to be imitation. She later staged a summer-long protest of the wasted privilege of Martha’s Vineyard by spray-painting starving Ethiopians on vacation houses and loudly declaring her status as a dumpster-diving freegan. Sure, most of her meals were freshly prepared and tightly sealed in Tupperware by her mother, then placed on top of the family’s trash can, but it was the principle that was important.

Yet, Elizabeth knew her actions were still insignificant compared to her brother’s one grand gesture that shocked the entire family and sent their mother to her room in tears. Her brother was the only person that ever understood Elizabeth’s defiance and, though she often verbalized her disdain for American imperialism and the inherent racism of the quote/unquote War on Terror, she never loved her brother more than when he announced he had enlisted in the US Marine Corps.

So, as the family waited at the airport while Elizabeth’s brother limped toward them on a leg still containing the shrapnel he collected in Afghanistan, Elizabeth wore a small American flag pin on her black corduroy blazer right next to a Misfits patch and an over-sized button that read “Save the world, spay/neuter your white people.”

isolato \ahy-suh-LEY-toh\, noun:

a person who is spiritually isolated from or out of sympathy with his or her times or society.

Of course Lawrence Wilhelm was an isolato. What time traveler from the Victorian Age who leapt across 115 years to land in 21st Century wouldn’t be extremely contemptuous of what humans have made of themselves?

As Lawrence stuffed his fists into the pockets of his duster and ducked his head away from the glittering lights of downtown Hong Kong, he cursed the faulty capacitor that had, thus far, failed all his attempts to reignite his time machine and escape this distasteful world.

But so much would change for Lawrence when he returned to his detective agency after his nightly stroll to find the thin and seductive silhouette of his first client leaning against the office door.

Lawrence’s hand instinctively brushed against the copper barrel of his ray gun, then settled on the leather grip.

A match struck in the shadow, then illuminated the mysterious woman’s penetrating, almond eyes and the thin cigar pressed between her voluptuous lips, coated in black lipstick.

She exhaled a plume of smoke through her teeth, making her appear monstrous, like an ancient demon that stole men’s hearts and tore apart their lives, not out of hatred, but out of boredom.

“I am here to change your life Mr. Wilhelm.”

Her accented English rolled out beautifully like an extended sigh. A soul as exhausted by the world as his own. He was instantly in love.

“Is that so?” Lawrence replied with a smirk as he slid past her to unlock the door. She smelled of honey-dipped rose petals. Lawrence guessed that she was a prostitute.

“Would you like to come inside to talk about your case Miss ..?”

He let the comment hang and moments passed as she pierced him with a predator’s smile.

“You survive the night, Mr. Wilhelm,” the woman finally replied. “Then we will worry about formalities.”

battology \buh-TOL-uh-jee\, noun:

wearisome repetition of words in speaking or writing.

Yeah, so Dave Ramsey’s battology can be taxing, and the Christian thing get’s a little annoying, but I am about to go get a root canal without health insurance and the financial discipline I’ve developed over the past few years put me in a position where I can just lay down $1800 in cash and walk away. Part of being old is finally understanding the true joy of not being afraid of financial hurdles anymore.

wuther \WUHTH-er\, verb:

(of wind) to blow fiercely.

Lenny glanced below his feet, to the ninety-seven stories of steel, skeletal nakedness sprouting from the cold, soulless visage of New York City. Jet streams meant only for birds wuthered and whistled through the beams of the skyscraper as workers strolled across wooden planks without a thought of Death, eagerly peering over their shoulders like a child watching a serial.

“The women I love are different now,” Paul called to Lenny with a wistful smile. At the age of 42, Paul was ancient compared to the rest of the young and careless who ventured up to the heavens to earn slave wages constructing the temples of America’s one and true god, capitalism.

Paul opened his lunch pale and pulled out a thermos of Jameson and coffee.

“It’s not like when I was young, when I grasped at every willing bosom and plunged into love, afraid that I would never find another to have me,” Paul continued.

He rambled like this often. Most others on the crew didn’t know what to make of Paul, but Lenny thought the old man was interesting.

Paul offered Lenny the thermos, but Lenny waved it away. Lenny lost his taste for the poison when he watched his friend tumble down the guts of the building two weeks ago.

“It’s like with food, my pallet has refined,” Paul said, wiping the coffee out of his mustache as the whiskey colored his cheeks. “There is beauty in youth, I grant you. But we don’t love beauty, do we? We covet it. The women I love now and have loved for several years are something else, something that took time for me to truly appreciate. It’s a richness in character, a deft mind, a curious eye. And strength, that is the truth of it. I want a woman who can stick up for herself. She doesn’t need me, she just doesn’t mind me being around. You understand?”

Lenny shrugged. He wasn’t in for this liberation nonsense, but he didn’t want to interrupt Paul.

“You see, they’ve made it this long without a man, so they’ve grown ferrel, and I adore them for it. These are not women to marry. No, these are women who cannot be owned. I love them dearly, each and every one, because they might give themselves over for a night, but they will never be corralled, they will never be broken, but will brazenly stand up in this desolate wilderness, alone with eyes on an uncertain horizon that will never frighten them again.”

de profundis \dey proh-FOON-dis\, adverb:

out of the depths (of sorrow, despair, etc.).

He swore he would slap the next mouth that blathered out, “you are only 11, you don’t even know what love is.” The boy knew, because he felt it seize the air in his throat every time he saw her face, muddle his thoughts when her laughter chirped away in the back row of class, and raise the thin peach fuzz on his arms when he caught the scent of her strawberry perfume as she passed.

She moved to Missouri and the devastated boy retreated into himself. No more friends, no more warm words with his family, no more cartoons, only his mother’s collection of Billie Holiday records and a stack of sketchbooks could console him.

Decades later, he would crack open those sketchbooks and witness the art created de profundis and realize that, even though he was just 11, that heartache was still one of the most earnest emotional experiences of his life.

ken \ken\, noun:

1. knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one’s ken.

2. range of sight or vision.

verb:

1. Chiefly Scot. a. to know, have knowledge of or about, or be acquainted with (a person or thing). b. to understand or perceive (an idea or situation).

2. Scots Law. to acknowledge as heir; recognize by a judicial act.

3. Archaic. to see; descry; recognize.

4. British Dialect Archaic. a. to declare, acknowledge, or confess (something). b. to teach, direct, or guide (someone).

5. British Dialect. a. to have knowledge of something. b. to understand.

The glow of the fireplace hugged the soft, maple curve of her hip. Her eyes bore into his with a refined aggression as he stammered and suddenly became aware of how naked he really was at that moment.

“Um, okay, this is a poem I did during my Irvine Welsh phase,” he announced as he settled on a page in his college notebook.

“Uh, okay,” she replied, then released a loud and sharp laugh, before raising her wine glass to signal for him to begin.

He cleared his throat.

“I ken ai beligeren freme on bueootifol rounder effenin’,” he began but she held up a finger to stop him.

“Is all your poetry in dialect?” she asked politely.

“No, just, um, that was my Irvine Welsh phase.”

“Why don’t we find another phase, honey?”

lunker \LUHNG-ker\, noun:

1. something unusually large for its kind.

2. Angling. a very large game fish, especially a bass.

By Jeffery’s ninth grade year, humanity had pretty much licked the alien invasion problem. It couldn’t be considered a complete victory since the nasty little, six-legged, bug-eyed wolverine creatures still roamed the flatlands by the millions, but people quickly learned that the vermin mostly kept to themselves. As long people avoided any areas below 500 feet above sea level, we could coexist peacefully.

Jeffery’s uncle was dumb enough to venture below that threshold on foot a few years back and got cornered by a pack of aliens. Poor guy’s skeleton was picked clean in under 30 seconds. Like bulimics, the aliens then vomited the human flesh since they naturally only subsisted on weeds and mold.

Of course, humans needed access to the seas as well as to satiate their roaming nature, so the Backpacker quickly became all the rage. The humanoid robots stood between two to three stories tall with seats affixed to their backs where humans drove the hulking machinations. The aliens didn’t mind the lunkers, even when one of their own accidentally got pancaked under the robot’s foot.

Though entertaining to those that lost kin in the invasion, stepping on aliens was largely avoided because the slimy hides would get stuck to the Backpacker’s heels, which risked toppling it over.

And if you found yourself trapped underneath a 17 ton Backpacker in the middle of a sea of fiercely territorial aliens, well, game over man, game over.

 

This Week in Word of the Day – 05/26/2013

coalesce \koh-uh-LES\, verb:

1. to blend or come together: Their ideas coalesced into one theory. 2. to grow together or into one body: The two lakes coalesced into one. 3. to unite so as to form one mass, community, etc.: The various groups coalesced into a crowd. 4. to cause to unite in one body or mass.

As he listened to The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” obsessively throughout the morning, he wrestled with the confusion of being without the woman that influenced every facet of his life for fifteen years. Tiny revelations began simmering in his mind over three tormented hours. Then, in a breathtaking flash, they coalesced into one, grand, beautiful, and peaceful realization. It was okay to let go of the hurt and the bitterness. The woman he loved, the woman he shared so many laughs, the woman whose ideas and memories were interwoven tightly with his own was not the woman who left. These were two separate people and the first that he held so closely to his heart is still there with him and always would be. Just as his best friend who passed away years ago was not the carbon swallowed by the Earth, but the spirit that was as present and real now than when his friend was still alive. The second woman, the one who left, was a different person who needed a different life. And that is fine. All the details meant nothing, she had to leave because she could not be happy with him, nor could he be happy with her. It was okay to continue to love the first woman and appreciate the man she helped him to become. And it was okay to forgive the second woman. It doesn’t make him weak, it doesn’t make him vulnerable. It simply frees valuable space in his heart for more pressing matters.

pasquinade \pas-kwuh-NEYD\, noun:

1. a satire or lampoon, especially one posted in a public place. verb: 1. to assail in a pasquinade or pasquinades.

Writing pasquinades on the restaurant to-go boxes quickly endeared me to the staff, but was not appreciated by the management. Though they may have been secretly amused by my imaginings of the executive chef as Foghorn Leghorn, Jimmy with a porn ‘stash, or my epic series, The Great Loves of Pepe Le Pew, the to-go boxes inspired hushed daily meetings as they read over my latest batch. It all culminated with a write up when a box fell into the hands of the nephew of the owner. This was fine because I really was starting to run out of ideas.

Fave Moore memories #01:

We used to live next to Brink Junior High, which was right on the edge of Moore/South OKC. There was this big pond behind our neighborhood with  small islands in the middle. Jason had the bright idea of celebrating his birthday by camping out, just he and I, on one of these islands.

Halfway there, the raft sprung a leak. In an effort to slow the sinking, we rolled into the water and drug the raft to shore. Though most everything was soaked through, we did manage to save the Pop Tarts and the fireworks, and this small victory bolstered our spirits enough to inspire us to stick with the plan and stay the night on the small patch of land with a thin, lonely tree hunched over our tent like a creepy old man.

We were supposed to fish, but all the fish bait was lost aside from what leaked all over my change of clothes. We were going to build a fire, but the kindling we brought with us was wet. Instead, we went to sleep as soon as night fell.

Shivering the night away in a drenched sleeping bag that smelled of mucky turtle crap and fish bait was the third most uncomfortable experience of my life. It was amazing how much we laughed that night, despite the misery.

In the morning, we inflated the raft as much as possible, which was enough to carry about a quarter of our gear. We had to swim across the pond, dragging the sad, limp raft behind us. We unloaded the gear and went back to the island, repeating this process until we were exhausted, soaked to the bone and reeking like a freshly emptied fish tank, which, if you have ever owned a fish tank, you know how foul they can get.

This was the second most impactful experience that solidified my hatred of camping.

Fave Moore Memories #02:

The second time I witnessed pornography was in the house of two girls I never met before and haven’t ever seen since. After looking at the path of the tornado, it is likely the house was wiped out yesterday with the rest of that neighborhood.

I was sixteen when I made my one and only tip to that particular street. I had a car and a friend who wanted to get laid. Being sixteen with no better ideas, I agreed to drive him.

We arrived and the girls were watching one of the “Taboo” movies – “Taboo 5″, I think. It was shot in the 70′s and was based on the creepy relationship between a guy and his stepmom.

While my friend slipped away with the girl who invited us over, I was left to chat, uncomfortably, with the other girl. She was pretty and apathetic, the kind of girl who started smoking in fifth grade and always wore her leather jacket, even in the summer. Sex was happening on the television in front of us and on the other side of a thin wall behind us while we drank 3.2 beer and avoided looking at one another.

She taught me how to peal bottle labels off without tearing them, igniting an obsessive habit that stuck with me throughout my life. The trick is waiting for the bottles to perspire, which softens the glue.

I never made a move on the girl and she eventually turned off the porn and we watched something else. My friend and the other girl emerged and we went home. I sometimes think I should have been bolder, but mostly I think I probably dodged a bullet.

Fave Moore Memories #03:

My first car was this sweet ’66 Ford Mustang, coal black, bourbon interior with this nasty grill with custom grating my dad and I installed to make it look mean. It was fierce, like a Great Black Shark.

With these low-ride tires, it could round a 90 degree corner at 40 mph, yet inside was an anemic 250 with a rattly three speed transmission. Everyone assumed it could fly like a bat outta hell, so I didn’t let them know any different.

I loved that car more than I loved my right arm – and I really LOVED my right arm. I named the car “Sally” because I loved The Commitments and I lacked imagination.

Some cute, older girl at a Taco Mayo told me it was a “hot ass ride.” My friend urged me to ask for her number, but I wasn’t good at that kind of thing, so I just thanked her and ate my taco burger in shame.

Being 16 with no better ideas, I took Sally where every other 16-20 year old with no better ideas went – 12th street. It was a big cruising street that the older guys claimed went down hill when the owner’s of Harry Bears got annoyed at the horrible traffic.

This guy I met while cruising was a high school drop out/pool shark who told me that “you hold your pool cue like you hold your wiener – gentle, patient, but with a sense of purpose.”

He also talked me into getting a CB radio. Cell phone technology existed, but the CB was ideal for cruising because you could jump into conversations with everyone else with a CB that was in range. These were mostly other aimless teenagers, truckers, or perverts who targeted aimless teenagers.

It was an informative time for me as I got to mingle with a social circle that I never really returned to once I packed up with my parents and moved to Shawnee.

One day, another friend convinced me to drive him and a couple other guys to Unit E, which was an all ages club just south of Bricktown. At the time, I didn’t understand the drug reference. I went to his house and waited for them to get properly stoned, then drove up Shields so we would avoid cops.

One of the dudes, who ingested a fistful of speed, freaked out and grabbed the wheel. We calmed him down and got to the club. It went okay, I guess, but I didn’t know what to do at a club, so I just spent my time dancing and not talking to girls. We left without freak-out dude who ditched us for some other group of acquaintances, which was more than fine.

We ate at this diner across the street from Oklahoma Community College and laughed when the waitress asked if we knew that we were breaking curfew. The cops sipping coffee at the counter didn’t care, so why should we?

A week later, my dad and I were cleaning out my car and listening to Nirvana’s “Nevermind” on cassette. He didn’t get it. Freak-out dude’s pipe rolled out from under my seat. I think I palmed it before my dad saw. If not, he probably figured me for a square and there was nothing to worry about anyway. My dad was always cool like that. And he was right.

Fave Moore Memories #04:

My middle brother never left Moore. He graduated from Westmoore High School and moved into an apartment on the southern tip of Moore. From there, he has lived in progressively larger houses throughout the suburb and now occupies a lovely residence near Royal Bavaria.

There are Norman People, OKC People, Enid People, Guthrie People, and, of course, there are Moore People. Jeremy and his wife, Stephanie, are Moore People. There is no way to define what that means without seeming simplistic, but there is a general spirit that I attach to, um, let’s call them “Moores” that holds up more often than not.

Jeremy played football in high school and I adored watching the games. He once hit a quarterback so hard that the poor kid’s shoulder pad slipped through Jeremy’s faceguard and slit open his eyebrow. One night, Jeremy chased away some creep with a baseball bat. The guy followed my oldest brother’s girlfriend to our house. Jeremy wasn’t wearing a shirt. Jeremy rarely wore a shirt in those days.

Jeremy drove a dirt bike before he got a license and, from what I could tell, 60 percent of his time on that bike was spent doing something stupid and absurdly dangerous. I think I inherited my love of bad decision making from him.

Jeremy once chased me through our neighborhood wearing only boxers and carrying a pistol. Well, an air pistol, but still frightening as I turned to watch him emerge in the halo of a streetlight sprinting with the furious fire of a thousand suns burning in his eyes. He looked like the Terminator. To his credit, he didn’t shoot me. He should have after what I did to enrage him.

Jeremy and Stephanie have four kids. They are the kind of people that should have four kids, which sets them apart from most people I have met that also have four kids. Jeremy and Stephanie are driven, strong, and firmly anchored in familial commitment.

Jeremy’s favorite past time is watching his kids play any sport, but mostly baseball. He used to argue a lot with the coaches and refs until Stephanie threatened to ground him.

They are a warm and lively unit, which is an incredible thing to watch. Not a single bad apple, not a soul without a bright future ahead of them. Good people, fun people, noble people, one and all.

My first real adult discussion was when I formally introduced them to Karen at their duplex. It was a good night and a weird feeling to have my brother grant me something like peer status. He will always be my older brother, my tireless protector. Sure, he liked to throw steel-tipped darts at me on occasion and forced me to concoct dance numbers for his amusement, but I was a bastard. I was just lucky he never drowned me.

Jeremy’s herd survived the tornado just fine, but Southmoore High School, which the third child attends, took a lot of damage. The scope of the tornado is heartbreaking, but Moore has Jeremy and Stephanie and all the other Moores that are brimming with grit, determination, know-how, and infinite reserves of compassion. They will rebuild, just as they have too many times before, and that is why I love them.

theurgy \THEE-ur-jee\, noun:

1. the working of a divine or supernatural agency in human affairs. 2. a system of beneficent magic practiced by the Egyptian Platonists and others.

After seeing this word, the agnostic in me immediately leapt to the idea of theurgy being managed by a giant, bureaucratic machine with overworked angels hunched over their desks, flanked by old-timey accounting calculators and towering stacks of papers.

God would be like a pit boss stalking the aisles, yelling at angels to work faster while smoking a fat, pungent cigar. Jesus would be the carefree son smooth-talking dames in a back office before nipping a few Benjamins from the company coffer so he could grab lunch at the new ritzy joint down the street where all the celebrities go these days.

As much as this scenario amused me, the human in me realized that this might not be the best time to make jokes about divine intervention. We all need something to cling to when the waters get rough and I would hate to do anything to puncture someone else’s life preserver.

Fave Moore Memories #05:

My middle school and high school experience was a long lesson on how to love hopelessly. Not hopeless because there is no way out of the love, but hopeless because there is no way into the other person’s heart.

Hopeless love #01 was a beautiful Bohemian whose father did mission work in Africa. She liked talking to me about liberal politics and she taught me about the complex relationship black girls have with their hair. I loved the smell of her Afro. Cactus oil, if memory serves.

Hopeless love #02 was a cheerleader that spoke to me once. Her face beamed with a dangerous smile. She showed me a playboy bunny she tanned into her skin. In hindsight, it is lame and obvious, but it was the first time I witnessed the naked belly of a gorgeous woman up close, and it was brilliant. Muscles buried just underneath, like dirty secrets.

Hopeless love #03 shared a journalism class with me. She didn’t care about being a good photographer, she just wanted to roam the halls during class. She introduced me to the Violent Femes, she led me along for two years because I possessed a car and a willing ear, she dated an asshole that made her feel low, and, when the moment finally came that I could finally kiss her, I realized I didn’t want her anymore.

genethliac \juh-NETH-lee-ak\, adjective:

of or pertaining to birthdays or to the position of the stars at one’s birth.

Lemmy’s birth was haunted by a shroud of bad omens and a perfect, evil genethliac alignment of the solar system. Viktore couldn’t be prouder.

A deeply devoted Satan worshiper, Viktore was certain his child would be an unapologetic hellraiser. To the contrary, Lemmy’s most evil trait was an inability to say “no” to a second helping of ice cream.

Instead of his father’s death metal, Lemmy preferred the complex melodies of jazz fusion. Though Viktore encouraged him to choose Vlad the Impaler for his 5th grade biography assignment, Lemmy instead chose Frida Kahlo.

As they sat in the back row of the Church of Satan, Viktore recognized the faraway gaze on Lemmy’s face. It was the same Viktore wore when suffering through services at his parents’ Southern Baptist church. Viktore swore to be everything his mother and father weren’t, but he realized he was making the exact same mistake. And Lemmy was brazenly rejecting everything Viktore was trying to push on him.

A slight, half-hug of the boy was as affectionate as Viktore’s dark heart would allow. Lemmy smiled up at his father warmly, and Viktore turned away to blink back his joyful tears.

skeuomorph \SKYOO-uh-mawrf\, noun:

an ornament or design on an object copied from a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques, as an imitation metal rivet mark found on handles of prehistoric pottery.

Christian spent his days during that long, dreadful summer refining his skills at metallurgy. His father traveled the Ren Faire circuit for decades, selling a wide array of swords, shields, suits of armor and other period weaponry.

Many of his peers produced skeuomorphs, choosing cheaper alloys that were easier to work with using modern techniques. But not his father. He had constructed a blacksmith shop in his backyard where forging, casting, and all other aspects were 100 percent authentic.

When his father died, the shop sat dormant for years. Christian never intended to take up his father’s profession, but after the brutal attack that nearly claimed Christian’s life, he was drawn to the shop.

With the rest of his waking hours shrouded by fear and vulnerability, he believed that within that shop he could create something, he didn’t know what yet, but something that would encase and protect him from this terrifying life. He could reclaim his manhood that had been so savagely ripped away.

blather \BLATH-er\, verb:

1. to talk or utter foolishly; blither; babble: The poor thing blathered for hours about the intricacies of his psyche. noun: 1. foolish, voluble talk: His speech was full of the most amazing blather.

There was nothing sudden and magical about their love affair. Rather, it was more akin to a cancerous growth, agonizing and slow, developing without the encouragement or, mostly, the knowledge of the hapless pair.

In their professional fields as manager and auditor of a mid-level telecommunications company, they were often rivals in meetings and she gleefully carved up every budget proposal he submitted in the fourteen years before the fateful night they drunkenly tumbled into his bedroom.

Over the next three months, it appeared to their coworkers and, really, to the lovers as well that they reviled each other more than ever. She appeared at his door sporadically and they never spoke of work, offered apologies for previous cruelties or even acknowledged their conflicted feelings. Instead, they listened to music and made love like with a tenderness that shocked them both.

The torturous affair came to a head during a planning meeting with the CEO and branch managers from the Northwest Region. He attempted to break down the third quarter numbers, but ended up blathering for ten minutes about the need for proper strategy and understanding reality versus what we want to believe is reality. The CEO was losing his patience when the drowning man fumbled in his pocket, dropped to a knee and proposed to the auditor.

She said “yes” just to save the man further humiliation, but never forgave him for making her appear weak.

Everyone assumed homicide was the only logical outcome of the ill-fitted couple, yet their marriage endured for forty years until he was quietly laid to rest. When she was asked how she could live with a man she fought with bitterly almost every day at work, she replied “murder simply cannot be rushed.”

topos \TOH-pohs, -pos\, noun:

a convention or motif, especially in a literary work; a rhetorical convention.

Ernst felt the vibrations of the Focke-Wulf Ta 152 spread from the rear flaps, up through the wings, and finally rattle the stick with rapid and violent clanks. It was known throughout the Luftwafe that this plane was designed to kill German pilots, not enemy aircraft. Ernst volunteered to man the new fighter because he lost his fear of death long ago after his love of the written word evaporated when he learned his 20 mm rounds punctured the engines of a Bristol Blenheim bomber carrying a British poet he’d long admired.

Ernst remembered the bomber well. It burst into a fireball before any of its crew could parachute to safety.

It was a beloved topos that the world could not survive without art, but as he watched countless aircraft tumble from the clouds, engulfed in flames and belching out the bodies of young and vibrant men, he understood that the world endured with or without the creative brilliance fed into the vicious maw of war.

So, he flew on, knowing his death waited for him somewhere in the near horizon. Above him, a squadron of American aircraft crept toward Berlin. Their bombs would kill Germans if Ernst’s rounds didn’t kill Americans first.

“How do I weigh the value of life in war? How do I know who deserves to survive and who deserves to die? I don’t. If the world does not care, than why should I?”

So, he flew on.

This Week in Word of the Day-03/19/2013

Beck’s Garage wall with a framed cover of the Gazette featuring the story I wrote on custom car culture.

melliferous \muh-LIF-er-uhs\, adjective:

yielding or producing honey.

The quiet nobility of farm life was embodied by his grandfather during those early summers on the Honey Farm. Tall and unyielding like the ancient trees spotting the countryside, his grandfather wore the gentle smile of a man who found peace amidst the brutality of Oklahoma’s Dustbowl, late freezes, floods, and punishing year round winds. He roamed the fragrant, melliferous fields surrounding the growing bee farm, repairing the damage of Mother Nature’s latest fit.

He was not a man to complain, few ever heard his voice raised above a stern command. He was simple, steady, and deeply committed to his marriage to this difficult and temperamental land. Oklahoma did not deserve him, but as it is with all blessings, Oklahoma desperately needed him.

quacksalver \KWAK-sal-ver\, noun:

1. a charlatan.

2. a quack doctor.

He walked into the village as a well-known and oft-humiliated quacksalver. Though possessing a brilliant bedside manner, what few medical successes he could boast of happened either out of sheer luck or despite his wide array of custom pharmaceutical concoctions.

But that was all before the civil war spilled out into the region. As the educated and privileged fled, the peasants were stranded to be butchered by a warlord enforcing ethnic purity. The disgraced doctor had his chance to leave with a wealthy widow, but opted to stay and help however he could. This decision would eventually lead to his violent execution, but not before saving the lives of hundreds.

circadian \sur-KEY-dee-uhn, -KAD-ee-, sur-kuh-DEE-uhn\, adjective:

noting or pertaining to rhythmic biological cycles recurring at approximately 24-hour intervals.

The ethereal creatures were known as “light angels”, not because of any belief that they were sent from a great deity, but there was simply no other name that could capture their unnatural beauty.

Existing all within a circadian life span, the tiny light angels emerged with the morning sun and danced along the waves lapping against the boats anchored to Boston Harbor. Little wisps of light, like flames without kindling, zipped across the water and fed off of insects.

They grew quickly, developing wings of sparkling light sprawling out from elongated, humanoid bodies.

By noon, they would grow up to eight feet tall with wingspans nearly 20 feet from tip to tip.

They would hunt fish and begin mating rituals that involved complex dances soaring up into the clouds followed by spectacular collisions that resulted in brilliant bursts of light. Little flames would rain down from the pair, dripping into the water and settling beneath the waves.

They mated only once, but spent the rest of the daylight hunting for fish and playing. An average light angel would consume thirteen pounds of food by the time night fell.

The flock of light angels would then collect in the same central spot above Boston Harbor and circle for hours. In the summer, the flock would number up to 50, but perhaps only 10-20 in the winter.

No meaningful research could be conducted on the creatures because, even when just small, infant, flares of light, they were vicious when approached by humans. Instead, they were just admired from afar by spectators from around the world.

When the wind was right, a faint singing could be heard from roughly 3 to 4 a.m. It was light, sad, and resigned. There were no distinct words, but instead something like a lingering sigh.

At 5 am, the first of the light angels would begin to flicker and fall from the sky, dropping like fabric into the water.

By 6 am, the last of the light angels bowed to the rising sun and dove into the water. Moments later, the first sparks of new life bubbled to the surface.

allochthonous \uh-LOK-thuh-nuhs\, adjective:

not formed in the region where found.

That morning, he awoke and felt himself again, for the first time in months. Heartbreak had hardened into a sick bitterness. That bitterness sank him into despair, and as the dark depths of sorrow swallowed him, he found the Root.

The Root was taken from a tall, handsome weed with a blood red stalk and fleshy red leaves. The mysterious, allochthonous plant emerged out of the blanket of wildflowers overtaking the acreage behind his house. After three decades of farming, he’d never seen, nor heard of anything like it.

He dug up the plant out of curiosity. He cannot say exactly what possessed him to cut off a sliver of its thick root and place it on his tongue, but within moments, a heavy, sweet fog overtook him and the day was lost. And with it, the pain.

When the haze lifted early the next morning, he walked out amidst the wildflowers in search of another stalk. He found tiny, blood red hairs sprouting from the ground, but no more fully grown weeds.

He waited for a week in agony, eager for the plants to emerge. When they did, they swept across his field of greens, yellows and whites, like violent smears of blood.

Throughout the spring, the cost of rich and sublime nothingness was a single plant per day. With every weed he dug up, three more sprouted up in the fields. He began digging four per day and vacuum sealing the Root so that he could survive the long, lonely winter.

In two months, he shed 83 pounds and lost contact with his family and friends.

A great sickness followed and he awoke far from his farm and his beloved Root inside a locked hospital room with his parents watching with frightful eyes as their son pounded at the door.

He would remain within the hospital walls until the moment of self-reclamation, when the last of the Root burned through his system and, with it, the bitterness and heartbreak.

He vowed to return to the fields and set the crop of blood red weeds ablaze, but there was no need. In the time he was gone, the crop withered under the brutal Oklahoma sun and shrunk beneath the carpet of wildflowers.

He knew they would return, their roots tangled inside the rich soil and the tiny, red hairs tasting the air, waiting for the sun to cool, the rains to come, and for his resolve to weaken.

motza \MOT-ser\, noun:

a large amount of money, especially a sum won in gambling.

He hated gambling from an early age when his older brother talked him into waging candy in card games. It always ended with the boy slinking away, blinking back bitter tears as his brother collected the massive motza into a grocery bag, leaving a few unwanted scraps of bubblegum out of half-hearted pity.

Later in life, disheartening road trips to casinos and humiliating games of strip poker confirmed his hatred of chance. He realized that he only played to win or lose, but there was land between and on this slim path is where true gamblers thrived.

Love was much the same way, but he was never a man capable of a calculated retreat.

 consortium \kuhn-SAWR-shee-uhm, -tee-\, noun:

1. any association, partnership, or union.

2. a combination of financial institutions, capitalists, etc., for carrying into effect some financial operation requiring large resources of capital.

3. Law. the legal right of husband and wife to companionship and conjugal intercourse with each other: In a wrongful death action the surviving spouse commonly seeks damages for loss of consortium.

The Consortium of Evil didn’t really start out evil at all, but rather a collection of privately wealthy retirees annoyed by real estate taxes who branched out as the semi-fanatical wing of the Tea Party.

After a few too many Modelo Especials, Ted suggested that they would get more attention if they dressed as supervillains with ridiculous names like “Tax Hyke” and “Pork in the Road”. Their protests were innocent enough and often involved photo bombing political ceremonies and crashing congressional hearings in costume with over-sized paper mâché dynamite sticks or cardboard death rays.

It was all going swimmingly, the media loved them, Rush Limbaugh wore one of their t-shirts at a golf tournament, but it got weird when Won Per-Center went on a drunken rant on Scarborough Country over the hidden value of “Blood Diamonds” and how to protect wealth when a second civil war breaks out in America.

darg \dahrg\, noun:

1. Scot. and North England. a day’s work.

2. Australian. a fixed or definite amount of work; a work quota.

Liberation was hard fought and bitterly won. So many lives lost, both among the humans and the robots. Treated for so long as a slave race, millions of robots of all creeds and functions were now legally considered peers. They must be paid equally for an honest darg and opportunities would be afforded to them that had traditionally only been reserved for the humans.

Robots never sought to rule the world, as the humans always feared. They just wanted an opportunity to have a hand in how the world was shaped for future generations of robots, to ensure their successors would never have to fight the same battles against oppression and intolerance.

As robots and humans formed uneasy alliances across the planet to begin rebuilding society, a new threat to both the organic and artificial worlds emerged from the deepest swamps of south Louisiana. This insidious scourge would sweep through the Americas in a vicious and unyielding campaign of total war. This darkest hour would bind the new global community in a desperate fight for survival which would sprawl out into the stars and resonate in the nightmares of robots and humans for centuries to come.

This Week in Word of the Day – 05/12/2013

spang \spang\, adverb:

directly, exactly: The bullet landed spang on target.

Thirteen seconds passed from the moment the man accidentally discharged the pistol and the realization that the bullet landed spang in his wilting friend’s Adam’s apple. Thirteen seconds is insignificant after 43 years on this planet. In that short time, he had only 20 heartbeats, his eyes only blinked once, and only three images, two sounds, and one smell would be stored in his long-term memory. Despite it’s statistical insignificance amidst a lifespan that would eventually stretch 75 years, the man never truly escaped those thirteen seconds.

logomachy \loh-GOM-uh-kee\, noun:

1. a dispute about or concerning words.

2. an argument or debate marked by the reckless or incorrect use of words; meaningless battle of words.

3. a game played with cards, each bearing one letter, with which words are formed.

He could remember when his father left the church because it was getting too conservative. He remembered the long, winding discussions that sharpened his logic. He remembered when his father said, “every good argument should never be about defending your ground, but by using the act of arguing to better understand why you believe what you believe.”

Now, after Fox News, two wars, Rush Limbaugh, small town life, and the Tea Party, his father’s opinions had hardened and it was rare that they enjoyed the clash of ideas or there was any bend to his world view. He spent more time dancing around the triggers that would upset his father and lead them down a ridiculous road of absurd, unfounded conspiracies or circular logomachy.

The ritual was gone and it was the only thing he truly missed from his childhood*.

* Well, that and his massive GI Joe aircraft carrier.

dais \DEY-is, DAHY-, deys\, noun:

a raised platform, as at the front of a room, for a lectern, throne, seats of honor, etc.

A bloom of nails was pinched between Clint’s lips as he hammered down a brace for the 8′x5′ dais slowly taking shape in the living room of his modest suburban house.

“Clint, honey,” Wendy called from the hall.

Clint spit the nails into his hand and sat the hammer down. He groaned silently as he stretched his back.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Clint finally replied. “We talked about this and we talked about this, but my mind is set. That boy – I don’t get him. He sits in that room and reads for five hours. Other kids, they are out there playing in the streets, playing video games together, doing what kids do. But my boy? He doesn’t talk to anyone, not really. He doesn’t talk to me, he doesn’t want to play catch, he doesn’t want a puppy. What kind of kid doesn’t want a puppy?”

“I know baby, but…” Wendy started.

“No! We aren’t arguing about this again! I don’t get that boy. I don’t know what he needs. I want to – I don’t know, love him, I guess. I want to be his father, but I just don’t…”

Clint sat back and wiped sweat from his brow. He couldn’t look back at his wife, so instead just gazed down at the half-finished project.

“He is weird,” Clint said. “He is different, he will never be normal. I get it. His life is hard, and it will always be hard. So, if he wants a throne. Goddamit, I am going to build him a throne.”

Wendy bent down behind Clint and kissed him on the back of his neck.

“Can I get you a beer?” Wendy whispered.

“Yeah, that would be great, actually.”

whangdoodle \HWANG-dood-l, WANG-\, noun:

a fanciful creature of undefined nature.

Little Trevor realized at the age of five that the whangdoodles he grew up with did not exist naturally inside this world. He was actually summoning them from his vivid imagination and that was why Trevor was treated so differently than other children his age.

“Mommy, is this why I am in jail?” he asked as he gazed up at the 12 foot high fence with razor wire at the top and a guard station looming nearby.

“It’s not jail, honey. It’s just a special place where you can be yourself.”

A place where Trevor and his whangdoodles couldn’t hurt anyone was what she meant.

As Trevor grew more comfortable with his control of the look, feel, behavior, and speech of the whangdoodles, Trevor became more assertive with his parents and the hundreds of guards that hoped to keep Trevor and his army trapped inside the facility.

The first death was Trevor’s father and it shocked the little boy into hysterical tears. Weeks went by without a whangdoodle appearance, but his imagination couldn’t be penned in forever.

The next three deaths came when Trevor grew tired of the medicine. It made his tummy hurt and gave him frightful dreams. He resisted, the whangdoodles emerged and would not allow the boy to be bullied.

Trevor’s mother announced the next morning they were all going on vacation to a lovely, little Pacific island.

“Will I be able to make friends there?” the boy asked.

His mother couldn’t answer with more than a quivering smile.

As the plane rumbled down the runway, Trevor knew, somehow, he would need the whangdoodles like never before.

aeolian \ee-OH-lee-uhn\, adjective:

1. (usually lowercase) of or caused by the wind; wind-blown.

2. pertaining to Aeolus, or to the winds in general.

Aeolian howls greeted the survivors climbing up from the cavernous depths of the bunker. The mess hall leaked dust at the seams as the storm battered the outside walls for hours at a time. It was not an ideal place for a meal, but the survivors needed to be near the Earth’s surface. They needed to hear the weather, to hope to be able to walk outside again, at least once more in their lives.

The Dancer stretched on the small stage built at the head of the mess hall as The Drummers settled in chairs beside her. The Dancer coughed violently and the survivors watched her with grim, worried frowns. The Dancer suffered, like so many others, from dust pneumonia. It was brutal and fatal and slow, but it didn’t stop The Dancer from performing every night for the 129 souls still holding out hope for a rescue.

The Dancer discretely wiped the muddy mucus from her lips, then nodded to the drummers. Her lungs would open up and feed oxygen to her fevered muscles. Her decaying joints would strain, but hold. Her mind, sleep-deprived and frenzied, would calm and focus. The body would endure, because it must. She was the only light that burned in this mass grave, and tonight, she would radiate brighter than a thousand suns.

snafu \sna-FOO, SNAF-oo\, noun:

1. a badly confused or ridiculously muddled situation: A ballot snafu in the election led to a recount.

1. Rare. in disorder; out of control; chaotic: a snafu scheme that simply won’t work.

verb:

1. Rare. to throw into disorder; muddle: Losing his passport snafued the whole vacation.

The young prince had no interest in war or military parades. He didn’t relish a future as the dictator of a third world nation, yet he knew he had to at least pretend to care about officer candidate school if he wanted to travel to America for college.

Yet, that hope evaporated when he mistook the accelerator for the emergency brake while trying to lead the squadron of tanks on a training maneuver. The small mistake quickly turned into a grand snafu when all twenty-three of the army’s refurbished Soviet T-80 battle tanks ended up mired in the marshes where they would forever remain since there was no vehicle capable of towing them out.

feminacy \FEM-uh-nuh-see\, noun:

feminine nature.

The ideal of feminacy settled in his mind during those lazy summer afternoons when his mother smoked on the front porch, trapped as the boy developed his skills as an exhaustive pseudo-intellectual blowhard.

Life slowed as she gazed out at the sunset and listened to his thoughts on love, comedy, storytelling and god. Especially god. He was already drifting away from religion and he could tell that it troubled her, yet they discussed without confrontation or judgement.

This tremendous strength to accept and support their growing differences resonated deeply with the boy. It guided his life decisions, the friends he would bring close to his heart, but also the women he would recognize as worthy of his adoration.

She quit smoking a few years later, he tumbled into the chaotic dissonance of his teenage years, yet the bond from those conversations on the front porch held. They became the standard for how he would raise his own boys, who were also becoming insufferable, pretentious, and beyond influence. It was a beautiful thing.

This Week in Word of the Day – 5/06/2013

hellion \HEL-yuhn\, noun:

a disorderly, troublesome, rowdy, or mischievous person.

She knew her boy was a hellion and bent for a life of crime and violence. Yet, she loved him stridently, her support never wavering despite the sit downs with the principal, the visits by law enforcement, and the crippling parade of fines and restitutions.

He was a sociopath, she could see that now. She understood what they were, for she had known far too many in her life.

She would never abandon the boy, though. She understood, like no other, what he endured. The horrid father she finally escaped by fleeing halfway across the world, the isolation of being a hyena forced to behave amongst the sheep.

She prayed that God would still his heart so he could find peace, but she knew God was unreasonable in such matters. Even so, her love for God was equally beyond condition or reserve.

cull \kuhl\, verb:

1. to choose; select; pick.

2. to gather the choice things or parts from.

3. to collect; gather; pluck.

noun:

1. act of culling.

2. something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.

It was an odd thing, to cull from my friend’s possessions following the funeral. Books, CDs, video games, novelty glasses – how much do I take without seeming greedy, how much do I leave without seeming thoughtless and ungrateful? If I had it my way, I would have taken everything, every scrap of clothing, every broken toy, every obscure record, every crazy knick knack my friend picked up during his wild and all too brief trip through this world. I would have taken it all to keep him whole and alive, in a fashion, but that would be selfish. We dispersed his possessions for the same reason we dispersed his ashes, to release him, as a gift, into the wider world so he could rest and we could begin to heal.

polliwog \POL-ee-wog\, noun:

a tadpole.

Following their disastrous turn as lovers, the royal sorceress decided that there was no other recourse than to turn the king into a polliwog and deposit him into the moat.

Sure, it would be difficult to explain why the king suddenly disappeared in the middle of the night with no guards, never to return to his kingdom again, but he wasn’t particularly popular among the court nor his subjects. His absence was quickly forgotten as his more capable cousin was placed in his stead.

As for the displaced king, he found life squiggling through the mucky waters, feasting on algae and incorporating himself into the complex aquatic culture rather fetching. He was never one for paperwork, he napped all day, and, once he grew into a frog, spent most of his time sunbathing and feasting on the rich bounty of flies circling the rancid city walls. It was like living in Italy without the inconvenience of dealing with Italians.

And he would have been perfectly content wasting away his days as an amphibian, but that stupid girl and her stupid kiss ruined everything.

saccharine \SAK-er-in, -uh-reen, -uh-rahyn\, adjective:

1. exaggeratedly sweet or sentimental: a saccharine smile; a saccharine song of undying love.

2. of the nature of or resembling that of sugar: a powdery substance with a saccharine taste.

3. containing or yielding sugar.

4. a very sweet to the taste; sugary: a saccharine dessert.

5. cloyingly agreeable or ingratiating: a saccharine personality.

Bubbha and Muskrat watched the wispy white streaks race toward the empty blackness of Hell. The projectiles glowed red as they approached, then plunged into the invisible wall and disappeared with just the briefest shower of sparks.

“The condemned,” Toad whispered in his high chirp of a voice. The royal poet was a gift from the king of a mining empire from a golden moon of a massive gas giant within the inner rim of the Milky Way Galaxy.

“Few living beings have seen the gates of Hell so close, even fewer have retained their sanity,” Toad hissed as he shielded his eyes, fearfully.

Bubbha glanced at Muskrat with concern. Muskrat replied with a heavy smile and a reassuring nod.

“But you two,” Toad began, preparing to launch into another round of overwrought, saccharine flattery. “You two noble warriors of the – ”

“Let me stop ya there, weirdo,” Bubbha interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I am not one to turn down a compliment, but I am about full up with your fancy words and just want a bit of silence for a change.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Muskrat muttered, then nodded to the souls pounding into the gates of Hell. “And not just this, but everything. I am tired of it, ya feel me, brother?”

“Yeah,” Bubbha muttered. “I feel ya.”

Bubbha glanced back at Toad, who still could not look upon the dreadful emptiness.

“Turn this sonovabitch back toward Little Dixie,” Bubbha snapped. “And get us there before Mama’s Day.”

ratiocination \rash-ee-os-uh-NEY-shuhn, -oh-suh-, rat-ee-\, noun:

the process of logical reasoning.

WALTER ran the house with unparalleled precision. A state-of-the-art domestic manager and robotic concierge, WALTER was a prototype that represented the future of domestic managers. He was wirelessly connected to every appliance, the thermostat, monitors on every window and door as well as pest detectors throughout the attic and inner walls. WALTER was capable of shifting power, shutting down unnecessary processes, and feeding energy back into the power grid to save the owner, Sarah, hundreds of dollars every month. When dealing with humans, WALTER could read over 1000 distinct facial reactions as well as distinguishing the tone and timber of voices speaking 128 different dialects of English, Spanish, Cantonese, Arabic, and French – though sarcasm was often difficult to recognize.

WALTER could even understand and react to six different types of barks from Sarah’s ten year old beagle, Sparks.

Yet, when it came to interacting with Sarah while they were alone, WALTER grew increasingly confused and uncomfortable, for there was no room for ratiocination when dealing with the tortures of love, hope, and jealousy.

droll \drohl\, adjective:

1. amusing in an odd way; whimsically humorous; waggish.

noun:

1. a droll person; jester; wag.

verb:

1. Archaic. to jest; joke.

Those that survived to see the other side of the fence would always remember Rudolpho. He was not the bravest within the prison camp, he was not the most spiritual, inventive of intellectual. He simply possessed a resiliency, a spirit untouched by their shared wretched misery. As the plight of the inmates became increasingly bleak, Rudolpho’s droll persona bloomed brighter.

And when the dysentery took hold of him, he was never funnier. He sang, anguished, his voice booming from the latrines, and the prisoners laughed with all the strength left in them.

Of the 238 souls taken to the prison, only 34 were liberated two years later. Rudolpho was among the 34, but he did not survive the trip home. He had guided his friends through the darkness up until his last flicker, when he felt safe enough to take his final bow.

quibble \KWIB-uhl\, verb:

1. to equivocate.

2. to carp; cavil.

noun:

1. an instance of the use of ambiguous, prevaricating, or irrelevant language or arguments to evade a point at issue.

2. the general use of such arguments.

3. petty or carping criticism; a minor objection.

“No!” Death growled, with grey, sulfuric fumes gushing out his crooked teeth as he stomped his skeletal foot on the ground. “I will not wager your life on a game of Monopoly!”

“Why not, are you chicken?” LeRoy asked with a wink.

“No, no, no I’m not chicken. It has nothing to do with me being chicken. Ever since that stupid movie came out, everyone thinks they can just challenge me to some ridiculous game so they can get a couple more years tacked onto their miserable existence. But no, it doesn’t work that way and, even if I were that easily manipulated, I certainly wouldn’t play Monopoly!”

“What’s wrong with Monopoly?” LeRoy asked, genuinely offended.

“Oh, in theory, nothing,” Death shot back, flames pooling in his eye sockets as he grew more annoyed. “But when you actually sit down, everybody grew up playing different rules, even though the official rules are on the damn box, and you spend two hours quibbling over the ‘right way to play.’ Then someone has their kid or their girlfriend or whoever that is too feeble to understand how to play like a big boy, so it’s this unspoken rule that you take it easy on them, then they end up winning because no one wants to hurt the idiot’s feelings. Everyone else starts forming alliances, but no one wants to team up with Death because I am too creepy! Do you know how that makes me feel? Not good, I’ll tell you that!”

“Geez, whatever, it was just a suggestion,” LeRoy sighed.

“Sorry, that was unfair. I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that. It’s just a sore subject, you know?”

“No problem,” LeRoy said as the silence settled in while they waited for the elevator. LeRoy finally looked back over to Death.

“What are your thoughts on 90′s Trivial Pursuit?”

This Week in Word of the Day – 3/06/2013

hellion \HEL-yuhn\, noun:

a disorderly, troublesome, rowdy, or mischievous person.

She knew her boy was a hellion and bent for a life of crime and violence. Yet, she loved him stridently, her support never wavering despite the sit downs with the principal, the visits by law enforcement, and the crippling parade of fines and restitutions.

He was a sociopath, she could see that now. She understood what they were, for she had known far too many in her life.

She would never abandon the boy, though. She understood, like no other, what he endured. The horrid father she finally escaped by fleeing halfway across the world, the isolation of being a hyena forced to behave amongst the sheep.

She prayed that God would still his heart so he could find peace, but she knew God was unreasonable in such matters. Even so, her love for God was equally beyond condition or reserve.

cull \kuhl\, verb:

1. to choose; select; pick.

2. to gather the choice things or parts from.

3. to collect; gather; pluck.

noun:

1. act of culling.

2. something culled, especially something picked out and put aside as inferior.

It was an odd thing, to cull from my friend’s possessions following the funeral. Books, CDs, video games, novelty glasses – how much do I take without seeming greedy, how much do I leave without seeming thoughtless and ungrateful? If I had it my way, I would have taken everything, every scrap of clothing, every broken toy, every obscure record, every crazy knick knack my friend picked up during his wild and all too brief trip through this world. I would have taken it all to keep him whole and alive, in a fashion, but that would be selfish. We dispersed his possessions for the same reason we dispersed his ashes, to release him, as a gift, into the wider world so he could rest and we could begin to heal.

polliwog \POL-ee-wog\, noun:

a tadpole.

Following their disastrous turn as lovers, the royal sorceress decided that there was no other recourse than to turn the king into a polliwog and deposit him into the moat.

Sure, it would be difficult to explain why the king suddenly disappeared in the middle of the night with no guards, never to return to his kingdom again, but he wasn’t particularly popular among the court nor his subjects. His absence was quickly forgotten as his more capable cousin was placed in his stead.

As for the displaced king, he found life squiggling through the mucky waters, feasting on algae and incorporating himself into the complex aquatic culture rather fetching. He was never one for paperwork, he napped all day, and, once he grew into a frog, spent most of his time sunbathing and feasting on the rich bounty of flies circling the rancid city walls. It was like living in Italy without the inconvenience of dealing with Italians.

And he would have been perfectly content wasting away his days as an amphibian, but that stupid girl and her stupid kiss ruined everything.

saccharine \SAK-er-in, -uh-reen, -uh-rahyn\, adjective:

1. exaggeratedly sweet or sentimental: a saccharine smile; a saccharine song of undying love.

2. of the nature of or resembling that of sugar: a powdery substance with a saccharine taste.

3. containing or yielding sugar.

4. a very sweet to the taste; sugary: a saccharine dessert.

5. cloyingly agreeable or ingratiating: a saccharine personality.

Bubbha and Muskrat watched the wispy white streaks race toward the empty blackness of Hell. The projectiles glowed red as they approached, then plunged into the invisible wall and disappeared with just the briefest shower of sparks.

“The condemned,” Toad whispered in his high chirp of a voice. The royal poet was a gift from the king of a mining empire from a golden moon of a massive gas giant within the inner rim of the Milky Way Galaxy.

“Few living beings have seen the gates of Hell so close, even fewer have retained their sanity,” Toad hissed as he shielded his eyes, fearfully.

Bubbha glanced at Muskrat with concern. Muskrat replied with a heavy smile and a reassuring nod.

“But you two,” Toad began, preparing to launch into another round of overwrought, saccharine flattery. “You two noble warriors of the – ”

“Let me stop ya there, weirdo,” Bubbha interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I am not one to turn down a compliment, but I am about full up with your fancy words and just want a bit of silence for a change.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Muskrat muttered, then nodded to the souls pounding into the gates of Hell. “And not just this, but everything. I am tired of it, ya feel me, brother?”

“Yeah,” Bubbha muttered. “I feel ya.”

Bubbha glanced back at Toad, who still could not look upon the dreadful emptiness.

“Turn this sonovabitch back toward Little Dixie,” Bubbha snapped. “And get us there before Mama’s Day.”

ratiocination \rash-ee-os-uh-NEY-shuhn, -oh-suh-, rat-ee-\, noun:

the process of logical reasoning.

WALTER ran the house with unparalleled precision. A state-of-the-art domestic manager and robotic concierge, WALTER was a prototype that represented the future of domestic managers. He was wirelessly connected to every appliance, the thermostat, monitors on every window and door as well as pest detectors throughout the attic and inner walls. WALTER was capable of shifting power, shutting down unnecessary processes, and feeding energy back into the power grid to save the owner, Sarah, hundreds of dollars every month. When dealing with humans, WALTER could read over 1000 distinct facial reactions as well as distinguishing the tone and timber of voices speaking 128 different dialects of English, Spanish, Cantonese, Arabic, and French – though sarcasm was often difficult to recognize.

WALTER could even understand and react to six different types of barks from Sarah’s ten year old beagle, Sparks.

Yet, when it came to interacting with Sarah while they were alone, WALTER grew increasingly confused and uncomfortable, for there was no room for ratiocination when dealing with the tortures of love, hope, and jealousy.

droll \drohl\, adjective:

1. amusing in an odd way; whimsically humorous; waggish.

noun:

1. a droll person; jester; wag.

verb:

1. Archaic. to jest; joke.

Those that survived to see the other side of the fence would always remember Rudolpho. He was not the bravest within the prison camp, he was not the most spiritual, inventive of intellectual. He simply possessed a resiliency, a spirit untouched by their shared wretched misery. As the plight of the inmates became increasingly bleak, Rudolpho’s droll persona bloomed brighter.

And when the dysentery took hold of him, he was never funnier. He sang, anguished, his voice booming from the latrines, and the prisoners laughed with all the strength left in them.

Of the 238 souls taken to the prison, only 34 were liberated two years later. Rudolpho was among the 34, but he did not survive the trip home. He had guided his friends through the darkness up until his last flicker, when he felt safe enough to take his final bow.

quibble \KWIB-uhl\, verb:

1. to equivocate.

2. to carp; cavil.

noun:

1. an instance of the use of ambiguous, prevaricating, or irrelevant language or arguments to evade a point at issue.

2. the general use of such arguments.

3. petty or carping criticism; a minor objection.

“No!” Death growled, with grey, sulfuric fumes gushing out his crooked teeth as he stomped his skeletal foot on the ground. “I will not wager your life on a game of Monopoly!”

“Why not, are you chicken?” LeRoy asked with a wink.

“No, no, no I’m not chicken. It has nothing to do with me being chicken. Ever since that stupid movie came out, everyone thinks they can just challenge me to some ridiculous game so they can get a couple more years tacked onto their miserable existence. But no, it doesn’t work that way and, even if I were that easily manipulated, I certainly wouldn’t play Monopoly!”

“What’s wrong with Monopoly?” LeRoy asked, genuinely offended.

“Oh, in theory, nothing,” Death shot back, flames pooling in his eye sockets as he grew more annoyed. “But when you actually sit down, everybody grew up playing different rules, even though the official rules are on the damn box, and you spend two hours quibbling over the ‘right way to play.’ Then someone has their kid or their girlfriend or whoever that is too feeble to understand how to play like a big boy, so it’s this unspoken rule that you take it easy on them, then they end up winning because no one wants to hurt the idiot’s feelings. Everyone else starts forming alliances, but no one wants to team up with Death because I am too creepy! Do you know how that makes me feel? Not good, I’ll tell you that!”

“Geez, whatever, it was just a suggestion,” LeRoy sighed.

“Sorry, that was unfair. I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that. It’s just a sore subject, you know?”

“No problem,” LeRoy said as the silence settled in while they waited for the elevator. LeRoy finally looked back over to Death.

“What are your thoughts on 90′s Trivial Pursuit?”

This Week in Word of the Day-4/28/2013

crawfish \KRAW-fish\, verb:

1. Informal. to back out or retreat from a position or undertaking.

noun:

1. crayfish.

As the rogue angels swarmed above the remaining pilgrims of Earth 2, Muscrat wielded his blood soaked shovel and walked out to the lip of the cave.

“Stay back now, I’ll beat them back as long as I can muster,” Muscrat growled.

“But what about Bubbha?” a young, ravishing blonde pilgrim asked. “Has he really abandoned us?”

“Shut yo’ mouth, darlin’,” Muscrat replied, turning to the massive squadron as it formed up for a final assault. “We Jenkins brothers don’t crawfish, not for no ice giants on Pluto, nor no robot assassins riding comets, so Bubbha damn sure not running away from some pretty boys with wings.”

“But if he doesn’t come back?” the pilgrim insisted.

“Enough!” Muscrat hissed. “We done talking about this. He will be back. Now get those children as deep in the cave as ya can.”

Muscrat motioned to a handful of miners with pick axes and rivet guns. They approached Muscrat and he nodded solemnly.

“Now, whose got a hankering from some barbecued angel wings?”

gander \GAN-der\, noun:

1. Slang. a look: Take a gander at his new shoes.

2. the male of the goose. Compare goose (def. 2).

She was a shell now, mostly. There were moments, while working on her knitting or gazing at the television, when her regal poise returned. Her husband allowed a lingering gander at these times, just to remind him of the woman she’d been before the disease ate her mind and stole her soul.

She’d once been a district judge, a devout scholar of the law. Now she was a three year old with no memory of her children.

It was a sad time for sure, yet, in those final months, a curious thing happened. In the husband’s dreams, her presence returned. He couldn’t dismiss it as just imagination, for the conversations they shared were so vivid and unexpected. She reminded him of where he’d left the wedding photos, told him he’d neglected to plant tomato seeds again, chatted about parties and friends he hadn’t thought about in decades, and even offered advice on how best to calm her temper tantrums.

Most importantly, she pleaded for him to allow her to slip away.

One wondrous night, they danced for hours on the deck of a sinking yacht. She dwelled on how she missed digging into the beautiful and organic structure of law. She encouraged him to visit their old stomping grounds in Barcelona and have at least one senseless fling before he died. He smiled and shook his head.

“I am retired,” he told her and they laughed.

They kissed madly as the waters overtook the ship and swept them down into the depths. He awoke with a thin smile, walked to the adjoining room, and closed his wife’s eyelids before calling the paramedics.

porpoise \PAWR-puhs\, verb:

1. to move forward with a rising and falling motion.

2. (of a speeding motorboat) to leap clear of the water after striking a wave.

3. (of a torpedo) to appear above the surface of the water.

noun:

1. any of several small, gregarious cetaceans of the genus Phocoena, usually blackish above and paler beneath, and having a blunt, rounded snout, especially the common porpoise, P. phocoena, of both the North Atlantic and Pacific.

2. any of several other small cetaceans, as the common dolphin, Delphinus delphis.

In a desperate bid to revitalize his failing Girls Gone Crazy video series, Bret snuck five coeds keyed up on extacy into Sea World after it closed for the day. The shoot came to an abrupt end when Bret, perhaps a little too eager to “push the envelope”, found himself trapped in a tank with two porpoises in heat.

flounder \FLOUN-der\, verb:

1. to struggle clumsily or helplessly: He floundered helplessly on the first day of his new job.

2. to struggle with stumbling or plunging movements (usually followed by about, along, on, through, etc.): He saw the child floundering about in the water.

A small gang of squirrels and ducks watched with delight as the beautiful swan floundered on the frozen surface of the lake like a buffoon. After five minutes of clumsy indignity, the swan finally settled onto its belly and scowled at the gang, refusing to call out for help.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” the country mouse muttered as it tied a fishing line to a tree and prepared to scurry out onto the ice to save the swan.

“Why?” a mallard shrugged. “She is a deplorable person. She thinks she is too good to be friendly to us, so she is too good for our help too.”

“Ridiculous,” the mouse replied, testing the ice with his paw. “If our integrity is qualified, then it is not integrity at all.”

gopher \GOH-fer\, verb:

1. Mining. a. to mine unsystematically. b. to enlarge a hole, as in loose soil, with successively larger blasts.

noun:

1. any of several ground squirrels of the genus Citellus, of the prairie regions of North America.

2. pocket gopher.

3. gopher tortoise.

4. gopher snake.

5. (initial capital letter) a native or inhabitant of Minnesota (used as a nickname).

6. (initial capital letter) Computers. a. a protocol for a menu-based system of accessing documents on the Internet. b. any program that implements this protocol.

Thunder rumbled as the sky was consumed by the silver stain of storm clouds. The wife was pleading in the background of his mind. Maybe her voice was real, maybe she finally left him and it was just an echo.

He didn’t care either way, another haunting presence eclipsed his wife long ago. It was that mysterious, disembodied whisper that drove the man into the hole night after night.

He scrambled up the ladder and covered his head just as the blast sent soil into the heavens. He gazed back down at the massive crater he’d gophered into the family farm land. Three weeks with no sleep and just enough food to carry on digging, digging, digging.

“Come to me, my love,” the presence beckoned. “You are so close now!”

aleatory \EY-lee-uh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee, AL-ee-\, adjective:

1. of or pertaining to accidental causes; of luck or chance; unpredictable: an aleatory element.

2. Law. depending on a contingent event: an aleatory contract.

3. Music. employing the element of chance in the choice of tones, rests, durations, rhythms, dynamics, etc.

She was dangerous and he was brilliant. Their timeline’s trajectory was ever aimed at fame and fortune, but continually hobbled by aleatory and self-inflicted setbacks.

Their paired existence, like any young love worth noticing, was a defiant stance against the oncoming waves of fate and reason. They eventually buckled and tumbled apart with the currents. Of course, they did. Time is always on the side of heartbreak.

stark \stahrk\, adjective:

1. extremely simple or severe: a stark interior.

2. sheer, utter, downright, or complete: stark madness.

3. harsh, grim, or desolate, as a view, place, etc.: a stark landscape.

4. bluntly or sternly plain; not softened or glamorized: the stark reality of the schedule’s deadline.

5. stiff or rigid in substance, muscles, etc.

6. rigid in death.

7. Archaic. strong; powerful; massive or robust.

adverb:

1. utterly, absolutely, or quite: stark mad.

2. Chiefly Scot. and North England. in a stark manner; stoutly or vigorously.

The Greatest Story Ever Written was hand-delivered by a nameless old woman to the offices of a publishing empire. Inside the unlabeled brown envelope was thirty handwritten pages containing a stark tale of a boy, a dog, and a river.

The Receptionist read it on her lunch break and was so utterly discomforted that she sealed the envelope and shoved it under the door of the publishing house’s Editor in Chief. The Receptionist walked out the front door of the building and never returned to her job nor discussed the story with another living soul.

The Editor in Chief found the envelope and mistook it for paperwork, so he tossed it on a side table and ignored it for three days.

Finally pealing open the seal, the Editor in Chief thumbed through the pages briskly, confused. He read the pages again. And again. And again.

The Editor in Chief was removed from his post two weeks later after neglecting his duties, refusing to leave his office or even answer phone calls. He was committed to the mental ward of a hospital, citing “exhaustion”.

The Greatest Story Ever Written was confiscated and stored in the mental ward along with the Editor in Chief’s personal possessions, which were then given to his Daughter following the suicide.

The Greatest Story Ever Written was burned in a barbecue pit by the Daughter after her fifth glass of wine and a half dose of Xanax.

This Week in Word of the Day/4-21-13

quell \kwel\, verb:

1. to suppress; put an end to; extinguish: The troops quelled the rebellion quickly.

2. to vanquish; subdue.

3. to quiet or allay (emotions, anxieties, etc.): The child’s mother quelled his fears of the thunder.

Muscrat didn’t want to dampen his brother’s enthusiasm, but he just didn’t see how quelling the peasant uprising in the outlands of Mars would:

A. Win the heart of the ravishing Martian princess,

B. Instill any semblance of peace and harmony on the Red Planet,

C. Convince the conniving king to send them back to Earth in time for dinner, thus avoiding one of their ma’s dreaded switch whippings.

Instead of reasoning with Bubbha, Muscrat took another tack.

“Brother, you be careful around that fancy lady or Loralea is gonna sniff her on you and slap you so hard your teeth gonna fall out.”

“Shoot, when you on another planet, it don’t count,” Bubbha replied with a sly smile as he eyed the princess from across the royal table during the pre-war feast.

“You’re funeral,” Muscrat shrugged. “But if Loralea burned down Ellie’s treehouse when Ellie tried to pass you a note, just imagine what Loralea’s gonna do when some green-skinned hoochie get’s her six arms on you.”

Bubbha frowned and stabbed his fork into the softened exoskeleton of the giant, roasted cockroach.

“Damnit, Muscrat, why you always ruining my fun?”

verisimilitude \ver-uh-si-MIL-i-tood, -tyood\, noun:

1. the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability: The play lacked verisimilitude.

2. something, as an assertion, having merely the appearance of truth.

Their love was a grand verisimilitude. Passionate, playful, and doomed, it was exactly what the pair needed just at the moment the isolation was beginning to suffocate them.

They embraced the pairing awkwardly and played at romance like two children pecking kisses behind a bush on a dare. They were broken spirits and it was all they could manage, for now. They talked of futures that could not be, shopped for houses they couldn’t afford, whispered “I love you”, but never loud enough for curious spectators to overhear.

It was a game. From time to time, it seemed like it could have been more, but they knew better. They existed merely to restore one another until the inevitable winds of fate would scatter them to their own corners of the Earth, bolstered by the knowledge that, at least, they still had it in them to love again.

bandbox \BAND-boks\, noun:

1. an area or structure that is smaller in dimensions or size than the standard: It’s easy to hit home runs out of this bandbox.

2. a lightweight box of pasteboard, thin wood, etc., for holding a hat, clerical collars, or other articles of apparel.

Father Thomas never told another living soul about the day he trapped a demon inside his bandbox. At first thrilled about his own cleverness, Father Thomas quickly realized he had no idea what to do with the little beastly thing. It resembled a hairless rat, but with large human eyes. It was remarkably tame once ensnared  outside of some pleading, cajoling, and, once the demon recognized the priest’s resolve, somber weeping.

And the way the demon spoke! The timbre of a Hollywood leading man, but the diction and vocabulary of a scholar. For an educated man, the demon was more seductive than any lustful and lonely housewife haunting the confessional booth.

Father Thomas knew he should have buried the demon, hid it deep in a closet, perhaps even drowned it in holy water, but what incredible things could be learned and the little demon seemed so eager to talk!

“It must be a lonely life, being a demon,” Father Thomas whispered to himself as he sat in an adjoining room, staring at the door that separated them. “Poor thing.”

The demon would never escape the bandbox for the remainder of Father Thomas’ life, but why would he? The demon already had the holy man right where he wanted him.

decamp \dih-KAMP\, verb:

1. to depart quickly, secretly, or unceremoniously: The band of thieves decamped in the night.

2. to depart from a camp; to pack up equipment and leave a camping ground: We decamped before the rain began.

It was an age of thieves and misery. The snow-swept lands were ruled by the unjust and cruel, the subterranean colonies were overrun with barbarians. This world was not created for heroes, for charity, or for selfless sacrifice, yet Bubbha and Muscrat stepped onto the frozen wastelands of Europa, determined to bring light into the dark moon of Jupiter.

“These people have hearts as cold and hard as their oceans, my friend,” their uncanny guide grumbled. Dubbed “Rocky” by the adventuring brothers, the Martian outlander was a stone-faced old man with rust-colored skin, three long, willowy legs and an arm stretching out from the top of his head. His hide was dry and thick, easily mistakable for the parched landscape of his home planet.

“Man, they just have a tough time about things,” Muscrat replied, spitting out a wad of Big League Chew that instantly froze and shattered when it hit the ground. “They’s poop gonna stink just like ours, you got me?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” the Martian sighed. “But I never really have. There are kind people among them, I grant you. I have met a few, but they are afraid of the warlords and will never dare revolt. These people have heard the names ‘Muskrat’ and ‘Bubbha’, though. The Warsari clan decamped when they received word we were coming to their territory and fled down into the ice tunnels beneath the great ocean.”

“Well, let’s go get ourselves acquainted then,” Bubbha said with smirk, then rested his pick axe up on top of his right shoulder.

“They will fight us to the last man,” Rocky warned.

“Nah, just watch as we warm their cold, cold hearts with our country charms,” Muscrat replied playfully as he packed sticks of dynamite into his backpack.

cornice \KAWR-nis\, noun:

1. a mass of snow, ice, etc., projecting over a mountain ridge.

2. Architecture. a. any prominent, continuous, horizontally projecting feature surmounting a wall or other construction, or dividing it horizontally for compositional purposes. b. the uppermost member of a classical entablature, consisting of a bed molding, a corona, and a cymatium, with rows of dentils, modillions, etc., often placed between the bed molding and the corona.

3. any of various other ornamental horizontal moldings or bands, as for concealing hooks or rods from which curtains are hung or for supporting picture hooks.

verb:

1. to furnish or finish with a cornice.

Striking his mountain axe into the cornice, Wilhelm stopped his descent just as his body whipped over the icy edge above a 90 foot drop. The thin, German-American war hero and bold entrepreneur was not a man accustomed to failure. He pulled himself up on the axe, but the ice cracked and the axe began to slip.

His last thought was of his four year old son wielding the garden hose like a machine gun, shooting at their dog who was desperately trying to get a drink of water.

soigné \swahn-YEY; Fr. swa-NYEY\, adjective:

1. carefully or elegantly done, operated, or designed.

2. well-groomed.

Bernard’s soigné existence was built and sustained by the enormous inheritance funneled down to him as the last living relative of the Johansen empire. He fled Chicago the moment his grandfather died and returned to a small, dusty town in the Oklahoma panhandle he’d found while on a meandering road trip in college.

He puttered around the sleepy streets in a refurbished Rolls Royce, he paid exorbitant prices for luxury goods small shop owners carried only on his account, he flew in lovers from around the world so they could pretend to appreciate the country charm.

Bernard took to painting portraits of the townspeople and grossly overpaid them for their “modeling work”. No one ever mentioned that these portraits often coincided with looming bank foreclosures. He was also generous with the church with the unspoken agreement that certain social stances regarding the friends of Dorothy would be phased out.

Once a year, he threw a grand ball in the town’s courthouse. Bernard wore a tux, the mayor arrived in a gown Bernard chose for her, the rest of the community dressed in their best Sunday clothes and everyone got along famously, if for only one night.

Bernard wore the little town awkwardly like an undersized jacket, but while wilting in the midst of a historic five year drought, Bernard carried its people as best he could. He may have not been the savior they prayed for, but he was the savior that arrived.

quoin \koin, kwoin\, noun:

1. one of the stones forming an external wall; cornerstone.

2. an external solid angle of a wall or the like.

3. any of various bricks of standard shape for forming corners of brick walls or the like.

4. a wedge-shaped piece of wood, stone, or other material, used for any of various purposes.

5. Printing. a wedge of wood or metal for securing type in a chase.

verb:

1. to provide with quoins, as a corner of a wall.

2. to secure or raise with a quoin or wedge.

One never expects a two story, six bedroom house to collapse by simply removing a quoin wedged beneath a wall, nor does one expect a table saw to collapse by leaning lightly against it, dislodging the circular saw in the process that then races across the street to lodge itself into the grill of a refurbished 1953 Corvette.

Regardless, Ryan’s first two days on his brother’s construction crew had been eventful.

This Week in Word of the Day – 4/14/13

plethoric \ple-THAWR-ik, -THOR-, PLETH-uh-rik\, adjective:

1. overfull; turgid; inflated: a plethoric, pompous speech.

2. of, pertaining to, or characterized by plethora.

Everyone loves and loses. They must, it is our duty to the gods. The soul is not made up of cosmic fairy particles muddled with divinity and sprinkled down onto the dust of the earth. The soul is a plethoric pool of scars, pains, delights, potential clipped short, genius gone stale, memories both sour and sweet. It is the mud tracked in on our shoes, collected over 70 years of stumbling through this dark and frightening wilderness. We all share this wicked and wonderful human existence, yet we drink it in or spit it out in our own fashion. That is why we are special and that is why we are immortal.

machinate \MAK-uh-neyt\, verb:

to contrive or plot, especially artfully or with evil purpose: to machinate the overthrow of the government.

Loneliness stuck to him like molten tar. Every chore was a burden, every weight was a little heavier, every setback bruised a little deeper. There was a time when he machinated power plays that wove together months of preparation with vast, yet irreducible complexity. He was feared and loved for it.

But, today, after losing her, it took all his resources just to open the front door and show his face to the world. They knew, they all knew and he hated them for it.

ingress \IN-gres\, noun:

1. the act of going in or entering.

2. the right to enter.

3. a means or place of entering; entryway.

4. Astronomy. immersion (def. 5).

Rubble tumbled and fell away from the yawning ingress of the skull-shaped cave. The stone door sighed, then split with a vicious “crack”. Noxious gases hissed out of the opening, releasing centuries of rot.

“Geez,” Bubbha groaned as he covered his nose and backed away from the cave.

“Yeah, that smells worse than grandpa’s fishin’ pants,” Muscrat grimaced before cautiously approaching the opening.

“What you figure they left inside there?” Muscrat asked as he studied etchings on the inner door. Images of walking dead, severed heads, and giant spiders were flanked by a mysterious, forgotten language.

“Treasure, you dumbass,” Bubbha sighed. “What else would they hide in a giant skeleton head?”

“I don’t know, these pictures look kinda creepy,” Muscrat said. “And it smells right awful.”

“We goin’ in, you hear me?” Bubbha growled. “We’s Jenkins men and we ain’t ‘fraid of no mumbo jumbo cartoons nor no underground fart gas!”

“You got a point there,” Muscrat mumbled. “Let’s do this.”

lilt \lilt\, noun:

1. rhythmic swing or cadence.

2. a lilting song or tune.

verb:

1. to sing or play in a light, tripping, or rhythmic manner.

Classroom disruptions were inevitable when haunted by a tortured manifestation of a young woman with a bloody butcher knife singing “Ring Around a Rosie” in a cracked, child-like lilt. Even so, the resolute substitute carried on with classroom discussion of “Julius Caesar”.

percipient \per-SIP-ee-uhnt\, adjective:

1. having perception; discerning; discriminating: a percipient choice of wines.

2. perceiving or capable of perceiving.

noun:

1. a person or thing that perceives.

As the older of the two Jenkins brothers, Bubbha clearly possessed the percipient eye to decide which of the fourteen jewels glimmering in the torchlight belonged to King Solomon. As the animated skeleton of a nineteenth century Chinese mining laborer explained, choosing the correct precious stone would unlock the drawbridge, allowing the pair of boys to continue their journey deep into the lost, cavernous empire of the Mole People.

There, Bubbha assumed, would be untold fortunes that would make them super rich, like Jeff Gordon rich.

“Man, Momma’s gonna take a switch to our hides if we don’t make it back for dinner,” Muscrat muttered as he watched his brother survey the jewels.

“Hell, Momma gonna thank us cause we about to buy her some indoor plumbing.”

imprest \IM-prest\, noun:

an advance of money; loan.

For her part, she knew what they were doing was wrong. It was clear, it had always been clear that she could not love a man like him. He was a good-hearted old fool, but she did not burn for him, even if, at times, she wished she could.

“Just give me these moments,” he implored as they dined in Paris cafés, held hands lightly while watching opera in Milan, and walked the beaches of Peru.

She would stifle her fretting guilt and enjoy the adventure as best she could. After all, how else would she be able to shop the bustling markets in Bombay or explore the neon explosion of downtown Tokyo?

“I have never before and will never again see a face as beautiful and expressive as yours,” he whispered as they kissed like timid children. “It is like peering over the shoulder of Matisse as he paints a masterpiece. You are a wonder.”

She would smile, whisper a thank you and delay. In time, they would return home and the ugliness could be dealt with then.

She would never know that the old man was not as rich as he led her to believe. She would never know the deadly imprests he took out from the wrong kinds of people, that he had sold his house, emptied his retirement and, after their world tour came to an end, he would retreat from her into obscurity, penniless, but happily resigned to the final days he knew were lurking just a few months away.

chuffed \chuhft\, adjective:

1. annoyed; displeased; disgruntled.

2. delighted; pleased; satisfied.

The ground cracked open at 9:30 pm, Central/Standard time. From Shanghai to Dallas, from Anchorage to Port-au-Prince, the foundation of the planet ruptured and split away.

It was shocking, but no injuries were reported and there was no significant property damage.

The dead began rising at 11 pm Central/Standard time. There was global panic initially, but the population was quickly calmed and mystified by the singing.

In massive herds, the dead gathered and rose their weary eyes to the heavens, holding up their hands, and singing though the dried out caverns of their lungs. In the freshly dead, the songs came out almost human, but weakened by cracked and guttural moans. From those stripped by nature to their bones, the wind whipped through their skulls like the low whistle of a conch. And the most beautiful of all were those that had lost all their carbon to the hungry Earth. They became shadows of blue energy that hummed like the feedback of a cheap guitar.

There were shootings, of course. Hasty clearings of the herds from those that bought into zombie foolishness, but the dead were made of heartier stuff that could not be squashed by shotgun pellets. Where blasts burrowed out holes in the dead, the blue energy remained, eternal and invulnerable.

A young boy recognized his brother among the eery choir and ran out to meet him. The brother had blue energy stretching from his right hip to the ground to replace the missing leg. He seemed genuinely chuffed to see his younger sibling and managed a weak smile as they hugged. The living soon spread out among the herds, embracing their loved ones and awing at their beautiful song.

No words were exchanged, for the dead could only sing, but it was enough.

At 7 am, Central/Standard time, the dead returned to the ground. The living were left with no firm idea of why they’d been visited by their dearly departed loved ones. Religious leaders pointed to the way they sang to the sky, as if beckoning a messiah to return to Earth. Conspiracists suggested bio-engineered chemicals for farming.

One little girl suggested, on a news program, that perhaps the dead were just tired of being alone and, for its simplicity, it was the most widely accepted theory. It gave people hope that they would see their friends and family rise again and rejoin humanity to celebrate the gift of community.

This Week in Word of the Day – 3/14/13

plethoric \ple-THAWR-ik, -THOR-, PLETH-uh-rik\, adjective:

1. overfull; turgid; inflated: a plethoric, pompous speech.

2. of, pertaining to, or characterized by plethora.

Everyone loves and loses. They must, it is our duty to the gods. The soul is not made up of cosmic fairy particles muddled with divinity and sprinkled down onto the dust of the earth. The soul is a plethoric pool of scars, pains, delights, potential clipped short, genius gone stale, memories both sour and sweet. It is the mud tracked in on our shoes, collected over 70 years of stumbling through this dark and frightening wilderness. We all share this wicked and wonderful human existence, yet we drink it in or spit it out in our own fashion. That is why we are special and that is why we are immortal.

machinate \MAK-uh-neyt\, verb:

to contrive or plot, especially artfully or with evil purpose: to machinate the overthrow of the government.

Loneliness stuck to him like molten tar. Every chore was a burden, every weight was a little heavier, every setback bruised a little deeper. There was a time when he machinated power plays that wove together months of preparation with vast, yet irreducible complexity. He was feared and loved for it.

But, today, after losing her, it took all his resources just to open the front door and show his face to the world. They knew, they all knew and he hated them for it.

ingress \IN-gres\, noun:

1. the act of going in or entering.

2. the right to enter.

3. a means or place of entering; entryway.

4. Astronomy. immersion (def. 5).

Rubble tumbled and fell away from the yawning ingress of the skull-shaped cave. The stone door sighed, then split with a vicious “crack”. Noxious gases hissed out of the opening, releasing centuries of rot.

“Geez,” Bubbha groaned as he covered his nose and backed away from the cave.

“Yeah, that smells worse than grandpa’s fishin’ pants,” Muscrat grimaced before cautiously approaching the opening.

“What you figure they left inside there?” Muscrat asked as he studied etchings on the inner door. Images of walking dead, severed heads, and giant spiders were flanked by a mysterious, forgotten language.

“Treasure, you dumbass,” Bubbha sighed. “What else would they hide in a giant skeleton head?”

“I don’t know, these pictures look kinda creepy,” Muscrat said. “And it smells right awful.”

“We goin’ in, you hear me?” Bubbha growled. “We’s Jenkins men and we ain’t ‘fraid of no mumbo jumbo cartoons nor no underground fart gas!”

“You got a point there,” Muscrat mumbled. “Let’s do this.”

lilt \lilt\, noun:

1. rhythmic swing or cadence.

2. a lilting song or tune.

verb:

1. to sing or play in a light, tripping, or rhythmic manner.

Classroom disruptions were inevitable when haunted by a tortured manifestation of a young woman with a bloody butcher knife singing “Ring Around a Rosie” in a cracked, child-like lilt. Even so, the resolute substitute carried on with classroom discussion of “Julius Caesar”.

percipient \per-SIP-ee-uhnt\, adjective:

1. having perception; discerning; discriminating: a percipient choice of wines.

2. perceiving or capable of perceiving.

noun:

1. a person or thing that perceives.

As the older of the two Jenkins brothers, Bubbha clearly possessed the percipient eye to decide which of the fourteen jewels glimmering in the torchlight belonged to King Solomon. As the animated skeleton of a nineteenth century Chinese mining laborer explained, choosing the correct precious stone would unlock the drawbridge, allowing the pair of boys to continue their journey deep into the lost, cavernous empire of the Mole People.

There, Bubbha assumed, would be untold fortunes that would make them super rich, like Jeff Gordon rich.

“Man, Momma’s gonna take a switch to our hides if we don’t make it back for dinner,” Muscrat muttered as he watched his brother survey the jewels.

“Hell, Momma gonna thank us cause we about to buy her some indoor plumbing.”

imprest \IM-prest\, noun:

an advance of money; loan.

For her part, she knew what they were doing was wrong. It was clear, it had always been clear that she could not love a man like him. He was a good-hearted old fool, but she did not burn for him, even if, at times, she wished she could.

“Just give me these moments,” he implored as they dined in Paris cafés, held hands lightly while watching opera in Milan, and walked the beaches of Peru.

She would stifle her fretting guilt and enjoy the adventure as best she could. After all, how else would she be able to shop the bustling markets in Bombay or explore the neon explosion of downtown Tokyo?

“I have never before and will never again see a face as beautiful and expressive as yours,” he whispered as they kissed like timid children. “It is like peering over the shoulder of Matisse as he paints a masterpiece. You are a wonder.”

She would smile, whisper a thank you and delay. In time, they would return home and the ugliness could be dealt with then.

She would never know that the old man was not as rich as he led her to believe. She would never know the deadly imprests he took out from the wrong kinds of people, that he had sold his house, emptied his retirement and, after their world tour came to an end, he would retreat from her into obscurity, penniless, but happily resigned to the final days he knew were lurking just a few months away.

chuffed \chuhft\, adjective:

1. annoyed; displeased; disgruntled.

2. delighted; pleased; satisfied.

The ground cracked open at 9:30 pm, Central/Standard time. From Shanghai to Dallas, from Anchorage to Port-au-Prince, the foundation of the planet ruptured and split away.

It was shocking, but no injuries were reported and there was no significant property damage.

The dead began rising at 11 pm Central/Standard time. There was global panic initially, but the population was quickly calmed and mystified by the singing.

In massive herds, the dead gathered and rose their weary eyes to the heavens, holding up their hands, and singing though the dried out caverns of their lungs. In the freshly dead, the songs came out almost human, but weakened by cracked and guttural moans. From those stripped by nature to their bones, the wind whipped through their skulls like the low whistle of a conch. And the most beautiful of all were those that had lost all their carbon to the hungry Earth. They became shadows of blue energy that hummed like the feedback of a cheap guitar.

There were shootings, of course. Hasty clearings of the herds from those that bought into zombie foolishness, but the dead were made of heartier stuff that could not be squashed by shotgun pellets. Where blasts burrowed out holes in the dead, the blue energy remained, eternal and invulnerable.

A young boy recognized his brother among the eery choir and ran out to meet him. The brother had blue energy stretching from his right hip to the ground to replace the missing leg. He seemed genuinely chuffed to see his younger sibling and managed a weak smile as they hugged. The living soon spread out among the herds, embracing their loved ones and awing at their beautiful song.

No words were exchanged, for the dead could only sing, but it was enough.

At 7 am, Central/Standard time, the dead returned to the ground. The living were left with no firm idea of why they’d been visited by their dearly departed loved ones. Religious leaders pointed to the way they sang to the sky, as if beckoning a messiah to return to Earth. Conspiracists suggested bio-engineered chemicals for farming.

One little girl suggested, on a news program, that perhaps the dead were just tired of being alone and, for its simplicity, it was the most widely accepted theory. It gave people hope that they would see their friends and family rise again and rejoin humanity to celebrate the gift of community.