Charles Martin's Blog, page 40

Long Walk to Valhalla

I really, really love this story and have been eagerly awaiting the print comic of Part 1 to come out for over a year. I finally got ahold of it in Kansas City during Planet Comicon from Wet Black Ghost Comic‘s booth. I brought extra copies home so my Oklahoma brethren could share in the wonder of this beautiful and elegant story of a man discussing death with a crazy kid claiming to be divine. The art is stunning and the storytelling is so refined and delicate that it pisses me off I didn’t write it nor did Literati release it.

You can find copies at Speeding Bullet in Norman and New World in Oklahoma City. This is worth your five dollars, I guarantee. Plus, artist Matt Fox was the one behind the Issue Three cover of The Wonderboy Serials!

This Week in Word of the Day 4/7/13

ha-ha \HAH-hah\, noun:

sunk fence.

After the doors broke down and the enraged peasantry flooded through, the young girl fled into the fields. She knew what her father had done, it was all her mother could talk about.

“That man will finally be the death of us,” her mother gasped as they saw the mob approaching with scythes, axes and clubs.

The girl was the only one to have slipped through the madness after a dark man with a butcher knife smeared with blood nodded her toward the back door.

Now, with the screams of her family screeching out across their ancestral estate, the girl sprinted barefoot through the grass still gleaming from the morning dew. She dove over the stoned ha-ha and pressed against the cold wall. Following its ridge, she crawled toward the stables, but froze when she heard their voices, growling in an angry, ugly dialect her father derided as “impenetrable, sloppy, and indicative of people barely an intellectual rung above sheep.”

She clung to the ha-ha, squeezing against the wall so tightly she hoped she would pass through the stone and into the earth where she would never be found.

“I have smelt that perfume before, girl,” a man growled from above. “It’s what your daddy buys the whores that survived him to keep them quiet.”

Her face trembled, she held onto every small breath in terror. Then, just a few inches above her, she heard the man whisper:

“You’ve born into a wicked family, my dear, and we are pulling it out by the roots.”

splenetic \spli-NET-ik\, adjective:

1. irritable; peevish; spiteful.

2. of the spleen; splenic.

3. Obsolete. affected with, characterized by, or tending to produce melancholy.

Astonishingly nimble, despite the creeping arthritis, the ancient juggler mystified children visiting the park between the hours of 2-4 pm with his amazing skills honed over seven decades. The children awed as he hurled up to seven balls, five clubs and twelve rings – if the wind was calm. Yet, they stood their distance, quickly learning that the juggler was foul and splenetic when approached by strangers.

A few parents attempted casual conversation, but were only greeted with a dismissive eye and a sharply tuned “humpf”.

The old man remained an enigma for years and, as the crowds swelled with anticipation, he never failed to impress.

In time, his fabulous skills began to falter and he would scale back to five balls, then four, then three. Then he disappeared.

Upon a young nurse’s first day at a rest home, she encountered the mysterious man gazing out of the front window. Among her barrage of questions, he only responded to one:

“You were so wonderful, but you would not let any of us close to you. Why? Please tell me!” she gasped, now nearly at tears.

“I have lost too many for one lifetime, I could not bear the thought of loving another. But it was still important for me to be loved.”

aperture \AP-er-cher\, noun:

1. an opening, as a hole, slit, crack, gap, etc.

2. Also called aperture stop. Optics. an opening, usually circular, that limits the quantity of light that can enter an optical instrument.

As the aperture narrowed on the dying human, the gigantic robot amazed at the way the man’s heat signatures swayed and dipped like the retreating tides, the way his brain sparked in desperation like a pilot trying to save his starship, the way his eyes gazed up into the heavens, pleading for help from someone who could not be there.

In that moment, the robot felt confusion, uncertainty, and even something akin to pity. He turned to his army sweeping in from the heavens and held up his massive, mechanical hands.

“Stop!” the robot’s harsh, digital voice boomed. “These animals do not live as we do, and they do not die as we do! They do not stop functioning in hopes of repair, they extinguish like a drowning flame! We must reassess this war until we understand what we are losing with each human’s death!”

The robot soldiers stumbled to a stop and looked up to their brave general. The fortified human military huddled into their holes on the other side of the battle lines held their fire and prayed.

“Well,” one smaller yellow robot called out, hand raised timidly in the air. “Does that also mean there will be no anal probes?”

“No, of course there will be anal probes,” the general responded with a delighted laugh. “That’s just science.”

ingratiate \in-GREY-shee-eyt\, verb:

to establish (oneself) in the favor or good graces of others, especially by deliberate effort (usually followed by with): He ingratiated himself with all the guests.

It helped, no doubt, that the young man was beautiful, but many stunning faces had been locked out of the tight-knit band of artists and intellectuals roaming the streets of Vienna. One could not ingratiate themselves with these mighty, pretentious minds easily, yet the young man seemed to slip into their fold like a hand into a silken glove.

You see, it was the way he talked about everything and nothing with complete delight that stole their hearts. His mind flowed like an winding brook, tumbling effortlessly from one topic to the next with no hesitation or filter. That zeal to which he recounted the highs and lows of his wide open life was entrancing.

Locked away in sheltered privileged for so long, they never thought to talk openly about the subtle nuances of constipation and impotence, of bumbling through prostitutes sock drawers to find money for a cab ride home, inadvertently bedding transexuals, climbing down into outhouse sewage pits to hide from enraged boyfriends, or of self-diagnosing and treating venereal diseases. Yet he relished every moment of the wild adventure equally.

A man of so few years who lived so much and showed no shame of it was intoxicating to those who thought so highly of their own existence, but had nothing to show for it.

codicil \KOD-uh-suhl\, noun:

1. any supplement; appendix.

2. a supplement to a will, containing an addition, explanation, modification, etc., of something in the will.

Sam could not understand why his younger brother, Waldo, would have his father add, in a codicil, that Waldo would receive the vast collection of aluminum foil balls upon the father’s death. The brothers has always joked about the insane obsession, but now that Waldo had moved to take over the oddity, Sam began to rethink the collection’s value.

As his mind spun, Sam only became more confused, then angry. In a heated phone exchange, Sam accused Waldo of thievery and disgracing the nobility of the family line. Sam called his lawyer and ordered an investigation of the circumstances of the codicil. Sam refused to stand in the same room with Waldo until he agreed to have the collection professionally appraised.

Waldo, of course, thought it was all just hilarious.

idiolect \ID-ee-uh-lekt\, noun:

a person’s individual speech pattern. Compare dialect (def. 1).

A king of small talk, the ancient gas station owner was a relic of a time when refueling a car was a full service experience. His sons took over the maintenance shop long ago and a grandson squeegeed the windshields, leaving the old man free to shuffle out of the shop and chat up customers with his eccentric idiolect filled with rapid fire and innocent one-liners, a bottomless well of nicknames, and a high pitched and delighted giggle.

It was widely known that the man had been diagnosed with lung cancer and been given six months to live, but that was seven years ago and the old man savored each handshake and each new face like a drowning man gasping in a fresh breath of oxygen.

demimonde \DEM-ee-mond; Fr. duh-mee-MAWND\, noun:

1. a group characterized by lack of success or status: the literary demimonde.

2. (especially during the last half of the 19th century) a class of women who have lost their standing in respectable society because of indiscreet behavior or sexual promiscuity.

3. a demimondaine.

4. prostitutes or courtesans in general.

5. a group whose activities are ethically or legally questionable: a demimonde of investigative journalists writing for the sensationalist tabloids.

Sarah wilted against the brick wall and slumped down in a heap. Flanked by rows of lockers stretching deep into the darkened high school hallways, she hid her face from the football team photos leering down on her in her moment of wretched shame.

The floor tile was cool and inviting against her cheek, but reeked of bleach. She sat up, smoothed out her homecoming dress, tossed away her tiara and buried her face in her hands.

The laughter still followed her out of the dance, drowning out the limp pop music drooling out of the school’s staticky sound system.

Sarah expected a friend or two to chase after her, but no one, not even a teacher, emerged out of the double doors. She woke up that morning as a borderline member of a demimonde comprised of theater geeks, fag hags, goth trash, and full-blood nerds. She decided prom was where she would make her move, scale the social ladder and hope that, a few feet above the riff raff, she wouldn’t feel so suffocated by loneliness.

Yet, months of planning, clever posturing, and sacrifices of some of her closest friendships resulted in a catastrophic collapse after her vote rigging ploy got her elected homecoming queen.

A chuckle finally fought its way out of her lips. She lifted up her eyes defiantly.

“I survived,” Sarah mumbled, the smile spreading across her face. “I am invincible.”

She wiped the mascara from her cheeks, stood up, retrieved her tiara, threw open the double doors and stormed back into the dance.

Welcome to Ralton in the Daily Oklahoman!

We are heading to Planet Comicon this weekend to spread the Literati goodness! Kansas folks need to come out and eyeball our wares.

Also, Nerdage’s Matt Price interviewed the Welcome to Ralton crew for the Daily Oklahoman. Check out the story HERE.

This Week in Word of the Day – 03/31/13

Still from a documentary I helped produce called Domestic Bliss. Click on image to check out their Kickstarter.

marmoreal \mahr-MAWR-ee-uhl, -MOHR-\, adjective:

of or like marble: skin of marmoreal smoothness.

With a delicate, almost inhumane marmoreal face and soulful blue eyes, the medical examiners solemnly agreed the young Russian immigrant was the loveliest thing any of them had ever seen. They took great care in zipping up the body bag and handled her as gently as possible. The nameless woman had been through so much.

No paperwork ever emerged, no trace of her life to indicate who she was before her tragic path led her to the dungeon. Yet, she would forever be remembered as the woman who did what a legion of law enforcement agents could not. She killed the Badlands Butcher. In so doing, she saved the lives of a dozen other women who were trapped inside his web-work of subterranean cells and helped the Department of Justice cripple the largest human trafficking organization in the nation.

wrest \rest\, verb:

1. to take away by force: to wrest a knife from a child.

2. to twist or turn; pull, jerk, or force by a violent twist.

3. to get by effort: to wrest a living from the soil.

4. to twist or turn from the proper course, application, use, meaning, or the like; wrench.

Hugh lunged and swiped at the rifle, but he was unable to wrest it from the Jap. As the wooden stock slipped out of his fingers and the barrel swung towards his forehead, Hugh was reminded of the weightless feeling of jumping from the lifeguard observation deck down into the muddy waters of the lake near his home in Arkansas. There was no life flashing before him, no flood of memories, no waves of love, hope and regret – just weightless suspension as he watched the sight steady and the Jap scream before pulling the trigger.

His last sliver of thought: “What do I do if the rifle jams?”

tranche \trahnch, trahnsh\, noun:

1. any part, division, or installment: We’ve hired the first tranche of researchers.

2. Finance. a. one part or division of a larger unit, as of an asset pool or investment: The loan will be repaid in three tranches. b. a group of securities that share a certain characteristic and form part of a larger offering: The second tranche of the bond issue has a five-year maturity.

verb:

1. Finance. to divide into parts: tranched debt; A credit portfolio can be tranched into a variety of components that are then further subdivided.

Larry lost a wife to another man, then lost a second wife to cancer. Between the two, windowing was a much simpler emotional wound to suffer. He would have, of course, preferred Wilma to have left him for another slick attorney in a convertible than to have her suffer so miserably as her own body betrayed her. But in his selfish core that he would never admit aloud, he was glad for the simplicity. He didn’t know if he could survive another divorce.

Their house still appeared to be lived in by two and he was happy to draw our the chore of packing and donating her clothes, knick knacks, books, and hand-knitted sweaters in smaller and smaller tranches. The simple act of sifting through her belongings unsettled her memory like a cloud of dust, swirling it about the house. It stuck to his skin, he could smell her again, feel her spirit, almost hear her awkward, boyish laugh as her lingering presence glittered in the afternoon sunlight. It was pleasant, revitalizing, but also agonizing. He hoped to draw out the task until the end of his days, then leave it to his children to finish the task in the course of a day or two.

pharaonic \fair-ey-ON-ik, far-\, adjective:

1. (usually lowercase) impressively or overwhelmingly large, luxurious, etc.: a construction project of pharaonic proportions.

2. (sometimes lowercase) of or like a Pharaoh: living in Pharaonic splendor.

3. (lowercase) cruelly oppressive; tyrannical: pharaonic tax laws.

“You must love this mongrel language of ours. It is ugly, awkward and unwieldy because of its fidelity. It eagerly adopts each and every trivial, linguistic fad without question, because it so desperately wants to please us. Some of you may already possess an appropriate amount of zeal and wonder, but most of you do not. That is fine, neither did I at your age.

You must love someone beyond reason, and know that it is someone else that loves you with equal abandon. You must make a habit of building up ballads like decadent, pharaonic temples. Never hesitate to embellish. As writers, we are all professional liars.

And, most of all, live life with all your might. Absorb and endure, then expose the festering wounds to the world. Art cannot be created from the safety of your writing desk. If you lack the stomach to attack this world, that is fine as well. The publishing industry is always in need of another hobbyist.”

swivet \SWIV-it\, noun:

a state of nervous excitement, haste, or anxiety; flutter: I was in such a swivet that I could hardly speak.

She was a sweet and brilliant soul with potential only bound by time and finance. She gazed up at the skyscrapers blazing with light, stretching into the heavens, silencing the girl in an awed swivet.

“This town will make me famous,” she finally whispered with a timid smile.

gaumless \GAWM-lis\, adjective:

lacking in vitality or intelligence; stupid, dull, or clumsy.

Cleverness beams from her eyes like blistering rays of sunshine. I feel like a gaumless oaf, an unworthy knave thrilled to just be polishing her armor before she charges at the world.

Yet, as dull as I may be, she still curls against me, clinging tightly as if I was the strong one. I say nothing, for illusion is all I have anymore.

impawn \im-PAWN\, verb:

1. to put in pawn; pledge.

The brittle old farmer rubbed at the sparse and bristled stubble growing out of his dark, gaunt, and sun-scorched face. He stood before a tribunal of tribal elders representing the local militia, demanding the population impawn their land and loyalty.

The ancient farmer knew little about poppies, but he knew their value as well as the repercussions others have endured after defying the clerics.

On the other hand, he lost two sons and three daughters to war. His only peace in their loss was the belief that they died to protect their family’s place in this world. The rest of the family fled across the border to wait out the troubles, so the only life that would be saved by fidelity would be the farmer’s.

The old man didn’t bother with a reply, he knew they couldn’t be swayed by arguments or entreaties. Instead, he simply shook his head and shuffled back toward the long road leading to his farm.

With a lethargic sweep of the pen, the chief judge signed the old farmer’s death warrant. After signing so many in the past year, the act of condemning a man had lost all its thrill.

Domestic Bliss Documentary

I traveled to New York City a few years ago to help with a documentary for a bizarre and exciting art project. A world famous sculptor and an emerging street artist were teaming up to build a concept house named Bradgelina in the midst of a punishing housing crisis. Dave Smith directed the documentary and I served as a producer, but mostly a cheerleader. Dave is nearing the end of the journey and needs a little more help to push through. If you have time, check out his Kickstarter for the project and see if you can help him push to the end.

The link is: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1620384494/domestic-bliss-feature-length-documentary

 Kickstarter is a fundraising site where projects are crowd funded and only receive your hard earned dollars if they reach their goal.
- Charles

This Week in Word of the Day/3-24-13

qualm \kwahm, kwawm\, noun:

1. an uneasy feeling or pang of conscience as to conduct; compunction: He has no qualms about lying.

2. a sudden feeling of apprehensive uneasiness; misgiving: a sudden qualm about the success of the venture.

3. a sudden sensation or onset of faintness or illness, especially of nausea.

Henry would be the fifth generation to be touched by war in the family’s honorable military tradition. As the surviving combat veterans stood quietly, watching the young man board a plane that would take him to another plane that would eventually deposit him into a blistering hot and barren battlefield, they all squashed shared qualms about the integrity of war and the callous disregard for young lives shown by government leaders. These were hushed conversations reserved only for those that survived to see the other side of military service.

Fathers wanted to warn their sons away from the horrors they faced because of their foolish pride and misplaced sense of duty, but they couldn’t. It would be shameful. War had become an inherited nightmare perpetuated by a code of silence. It was their tragic legacy.

hypothecate \hahy-POTH-i-keyt, hi-\, verb:

1. to pledge to a creditor as security without delivering over; mortgage.

2. to put in pledge by delivery, as stocks given as security for a loan.

Topeka just got a lot cooler when Aaron Jackson successfully worked with Planting Peace to hypothecate* for an $86,000 home catty-corner from the dreaded Westboro Baptist Church. Jackson and friends painted the outside the same colors as the pride rainbow flag and dubbed it the “Equality House.”*

*I don’t actually know the details on whether a loan was used for the house or it was bought outright, but hypothecate was my word of the day, so that’s what I went with. Good job Planting Peace!

primaveral \prahy-muh-VEER-uhl\, adjective:

of, in, or pertaining to the early springtime: primaveral longings to sail around the world.

The primaveral onslaught of pollen makes me want to snort pipe cleaner and take a scrub brush to my eyeballs.

insouciance \in-SOO-see-uhns; Fr. an-soo-SYAHNS\, noun:

the quality of being insouciant; lack of care or concern; indifference.

The painter faced the empty canvas with distracted insouciance. No imagery floated to the foreground of his mind, no inspiration sparked inside his heart. He was cold, spent, and tired.

His art robbed him of so much: family, career, love, security – but he had braved every storm and charged on.

Until that very moment.

As the paint slowly congealed on his wooden palette, he realized he was finally done.

He had promised himself a quiet suicide when he lost “it”, but now that he felt the passion truly and irrevocably extinguished, all he desired was a stable job, a stable life, and to shuffle through his final days bolstered by the knowledge that he had, at least, tried.

serpentine \SUR-puhn-teen, -tahyn\, adjective:

1. having a winding course, as a road; sinuous.

2. of, characteristic of, or resembling a serpent, as in form or movement.

3. shrewd, wily, or cunning.

Wil E. timidly nosed her way under the sheets to poke her owner’s hand to beg a head scratch. A classic omega dog, Wil E. was needy, easily startled, and surprisingly sly and serpentine.

She needed her owner to wake up and start his day so Wil E. could finally enact the plot that would wrestle power from Tobey, the privileged Alpha that lacked the vision and will to fully eradicate the squirrel menace and expand their empire beyond the quarter acre in the backyard.

Her coup could possibly anger her owner and jeopardize her position in the royal court, but she was committed. If her savvy series of political maneuvers and subtle sabotage unfolded perfectly, then she would secure her position as empress of the backyard and she would bring order and justice to a land that had only ever seen darkness and chaos.

preterition \pret-uh-RISH-uhn\, noun:

1. the act of passing by or over; omission; disregard.

2. Law. the passing over by a testator of an heir otherwise entitled to a portion.

3. Calvinistic Theology. the passing over by God of those not elected to salvation or eternal life.

4. Rhetoric. paralipsis.

No reason was given for the preterition, the souls were not offered a chance to look over their sins and virtues listed in the Book of Life. They were simply dismissed and led away to a distant cloud to wait and to watch the chosen file through the Golden Gates. A few souls overheard angels muttering about an expanded eastern wing of “the palace” eating up land that was meant for settlements.

Or maybe it was just the imaginings of bitter believers still stunned they were not welcomed into the bosom of their Creator.

It was clear that the angels were terribly uncomfortable and could not look the souls in the eyes. They refused to engage in conversation or answer questions, instead shrugging apologetically and returning ri huddles, whispering amongst themselves.

The numbers of the outcasts grew from dozens to hundreds to thousands.

No official word ever came down from heaven to what the next step was for the overlooked souls. Days passed. Far below, on the dying Earth, a lake of fire swallowed the condemned by the millions as they were cast down like bread crumbs. Some imagined they could hear the collective screams faintly when the winds changed.

The denied believers wondered when it would be their turn to burn. Others feared worse, that they’d simply been forgotten.

daven \DAH-vuhn\, verb:

to pray.

Stan lived a quiet existence on the northern rim of a muddy lake where the humans rarely wandered. Overrun with weeds and snakes, most of his kin had moved away or died off, but Stan managed just fine. He was clever and resourceful.

The salamander was also unusually soulful for a cold-blooded amphibian, but he mostly kept his ideas to himself. There were a few moonlit conversations with an ancient turtle who was the oldest being the salamander had ever encountered. The turtle was tragically dim, though, and his fixation with fireflies quickly exhausted Stan.

Following the death of his wife, Stan took to a daily daven to no particular deity, just a vague hope that his messages might spread across the ether and reach whatever existence his beloved had slipped into. He sometimes gazed at the stars and thought of them both being reborn as wasps zipping across the lake to harass tiresome humans in their noisy boats, and he would chuckle himself to sleep.

This Week in Word of the Day/3-17-13

shilly-shally \SHIL-ee-shal-ee\, verb:

1. to show indecision or hesitation; be irresolute; vacillate.

2. to waste time; dawdle.

noun:

1. irresolution; indecision; vacillation: It was sheer shilly-shally on his part.

Scouts should have recognized that the giant’s shilly-shally and clumsy post up game as well as a complete lack of leadership were clear signs his heart wasn’t in basketball. They were seduced by his 7’1, muscular frame and surprising agility, so the giant was fast-tracked to the NBA.

He showed a smile on draft day because he owed it to his family for being the one blessed with an extraordinary body. When the catastrophic knee injury extinguished his career only three seasons later, the giant made his apologies to the city of Atlanta and to the fans, but in private, could not stop smiling as he dreamt of the moment he could step back into the chemistry lab to resume the life of science ripped from him the summer he sprouted eight inches.

bevel \BEV-uhl\, adverb:

1. irresolutely.

noun:

1. the inclination that one line or surface makes with another when not at right angles.

2. a surface that does not form a right angle with adjacent surfaces.

verb:

1. to cut or slant at a bevel: to bevel an edge to prevent splintering.

He left his California Widow crying on the front porch with the children’s heads poked curiously around her apron. It was a terrible, lasting image, but happiness doesn’t keep the bank’s bulldozers from growling at the edge of their homestead.

He found construction work in San Diego through the spring and summer. Menial labor, just remember to bevel the studs, to set the nails, to ignore the vitriolic insults by the drunken and racist foreman.

He returned in September. She welcomed him inside his own home with a distant smile. The youngest didn’t recognize him, the oldest was too shy to give his father a hug. The meal was quiet, the bed was cold, but the bank was satisfied and that was all that mattered.

truant \TROO-uhnt\, noun:

adjective:

1. absent from school without permission.

2. neglectful of duty or responsibility; idle.

3. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a truant.

No one pictured Jeffrey as a truant lad, rather the picture of a vibrant, responsible, and destined prodigy. But middle school was drowning Chester and he owed his closest friend a perfect day.

The pair met during their elementary days where the wealth and influence of Jeffrey’s family meant nothing on the brutal playground. Chester would never say why, but the hulking bully pulled Jeffrey from a scrum one day and backed off the pack of rivals. Ever since, Jeffrey basked in Chester’s protective glow.

But as Chester aged, his size advantage diminished as well as his respect. Familial complications and psychic scars became increasingly evident. Jeffrey watched Chester retreating into himself.

To save his friend, Jeffrey pulled money from his savings, arranged transportation by a burnout friend of the family, and prepared to rekindle his loyal guardian.

There would be repercussions, of course, but after all the battles Chester faced in his sad life, it was time that Jeffrey started protecting him.

madcap \MAD-kap\, adjective:

1. wildly or heedlessly impulsive; reckless; rash: a madcap scheme.

noun:

1. a madcap person.

In the crumbling catacombs of his failing memory, he held onto that one, perfect night as a madcap rampage throughout the darkened streets of New Orleans.

What happened, really? Nothing of note to the average soul. A little drink, perhaps. Too many cigarettes, without a doubt. Sex and violence were still just distant storm clouds.

But the ideas! Those wonderful little things were everywhere. An infestation and they formed a mob and carried the pair off into the night and he truly believed, for a moment, that they would never be seen again.

furl \furl\, verb:

1. to gather into a compact roll and bind securely, as a sail against a spar or a flag against its staff.

2. to become furled.

noun:

1. the act of furling.

2. something furled, as a roll.

It was not entirely clear how little Kimberly managed to rip a water pipe out of the wall, place a sofa up on the roof, punch thirteen holes through the interior and exterior walls, and melt a stainless steel sink into a bulbous hunk of metal.

What is clear is that the pint sized superhero, currently furled up in a comforter in the dire hope her parents wouldn’t find her, needed to work on her anger control issues.

prolepsis \proh-LEP-sis\, noun:

1. Rhetoric. the anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance.

2. the assigning of a person, event, etc., to a period earlier than the actual one; the representation of something in the future as if it already existed or had occurred; prochronism.

3. the use of a descriptive word in anticipation of its becoming applicable.

4. a fundamental conception or assumption in Epicureanism or Stoicism arising spontaneously in the mind without conscious reflection; thought provoked by sense perception.

5. Pathology. the return of an attack of a periodic disease or of a paroxysm before the expected time or at progressively shorter intervals.

Walter launched into a well-reasoned and thorough prolepsis to diffuse any anxiety the owners might have about the roll-out of the new website for the jewelry store that has stood, mostly unchanged, downtown for sixty-two years. As Mildred and Morris peered up at Walter through spectacles thicker than bullet-proof glass, he addressed their fears one by one, including:

1. The addition of a fully trained webmaster to take care of all the site’s needs so the owners didn’t even have to even touch a computer.

2. The impenetrable firewall that would protect the site from hackers.

3. The impossibility of the website to become sentient.

4. All money earned on the website is real money that can be transferred into real banks.

5. Even though the webmaster is of Asian decent, his family has lived in the US for over 100 years, so is likely not a sleeper agent.

6. The website does not make their store prone to robot attacks.

7. None of the images on the site are “photobombs,” as they heard their grandson mention once while showing them “The Facebooks.” That term does not even mean what they think it means.

8. That North Korea, Pakistan, China, or the KGB had no interest in hijacking their site in an effort to destabilize the US economy.

9. The computer does not have the ability to look at you and certainly not when you are in the bathroom.

sundry \SUHN-dree\, adjective:

various or diverse: sundry persons.

He scanned his walls, sweeping over the numerous and sundry movies, video games, records, books – it was how he measured his life. He tracked his memories, his friends, his lovers by the media he consumed when they fell in and fell out of his life.

And the Great Love of his Life? Well, that was the most perfect and humiliating of all.

Their first song was Jann Arden’s “Insensitive” – don’t ask. Their last?

Get this: they swam together nearly a year ago, their bond brittle and crumbling. She was sad and desperate, he was terrified of losing her. Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” sounded over the loud speakers and, for just a moment, that tepid and saccharin song inspired a brief flare of passion.

Then, a month later, she sang Etta James’ “At Last” and he realized that her voice, soaked with scotch and smolder, was no longer directed at him, but at the man sitting just a few feet away.

This Week in Word of the Day/3-10-13

bibelot \BIB-loh; Fr. beebuh-LOH\, noun:

a small object of curiosity, beauty, or rarity.

Precious bibelots rained in from all over the globe: ivory hair pins, gold snuff boxes, trinkets once owned by royal families. She loved the little things dearly, each one, crafting stories of romance, adventure, and harrowing tragedy to track their journey to her front door.

But she missed her husband’s warm breath on her neck. She missed the way he bounded from the bed to turn off the alarm and rushed into the day with infectious enthusiasm.

She would never suggest that he should rein in his ambitions, but a little more time together would do so much to lift her spirits.

indite \in-DAHYT\, verb:

1. to compose or write, as a poem.

2. to treat in a literary composition.

3. Obsolete. to dictate.

4. Obsolete. to prescribe.

Long into the night, his mind spun. Words, metaphors, movements, turns, phrases, timing – inditing desperately in hopes that she would stay if he could just continue to create. She was slipping, her eyes always turned away, her thoughts ever outside any moment they should have shared. He sent the ballads out like bloodhounds to the darkened bars and the shadowed alleys to sniff out the deep hole that swallowed her wandering heart and bring it back home.

But there was never any going back, not after where she’d been.

rialto \ree-AL-toh\, noun:

an exchange or mart.

Frank’s early to mid-twenties were spent prize-fighting and bartending his way through Central and South America. His late twenties saw a brief stint of combat in Vietnam followed by a long stint as a drug runner throughout Indo-China. Frank enjoyed a few months as kept man, then as a stocker at a rialto in Venice to pay off the gambling debts his lover left him when she was whisked back to America by her husband.

Three years were devoted to deep sea fishing where he survived two capsizings. Neither were his fault, but no other crew would let him near their boat. After four years searching Israel for oil hidden deep under the ground with a crazy Christian zealot, he finally earned enough money to return to America. Instead he joined a millionaire eccentric for a trip up Mount Everest. The man fell to his death after only three days, so Frank wasted three years wandering the Himalayas and lost eighty pounds and killed four bandits in the process.

Frank finally settled down with a beautiful Tibetan girl and tried his hand at farming. On Frank’s forty-eighth birthday, his wife died at the hands of Chinese army regulars. Frank caught and killed two of the men and fled under a torrent of gunfire.

In India, he tried to calm his soul by falling in with a cult built around a charismatic yogi. Frank served as the man’s bodyguard and, more than a few times, his lover.

Frank finally bought that plane ticket at fifty-three and returned home to find his family devastated by bad fortune. His mother welcomed her only living offspring with open arms. She died three years later, but not before teaching Frank everything he needed to know about managing a bottling factory.

At seventy, Frank retired a wealthy man and tried his hand at writing. It never came through like he wanted, but that was okay. It all just seemed like bragging anyway.

tertiary \TUR-shee-er-ee, TUR-shuh-ree\, adjective:

1. of the third order, rank, stage, formation, etc.; third.

2. Chemistry. A. noting or containing a carbon atom united to three other carbon atoms. B. formed by replacement of three atoms or groups.

3. (initial capital letter) Geology. noting or pertaining to the period forming the earlier part of the Cenozoic Era, occurring from 65 million to 2 million years ago, characterized by the development and proliferation of mammals.

4. Ornithology. tertial.

5. Ecclesiastical. noting or pertaining to a branch, or third order, of certain religious orders that consists of lay members living in community (regular tertiaries) or living in the world (secular tertiaries).

noun:

1. (initial capital letter) Geology. the Tertiary Period or System.

2. Ornithology. a tertial feather.

3. (often initial capital letter) Ecclesiastical. a member of a tertiary branch of a religious order.

4. tertiary color.

Following the revolution, many of the churches blessed with Petrov’s lush and inspired murals were destroyed or converted into party offices. Some clergy’s hastily built secondary walls to hide the masterpieces, others stood their ground against party officials, only to never be seen again.

So many urged the artist to flee or to shift his talents to propaganda posters, but instead he took to the streets, painting graffiti by lamplight throughout the streets of Stalingrad. Icons appeared overnight, then were painted over by noon.

Petrov knew they would catch him eventually, that his fate was to die in Siberia, but when stalking the moonlit streets with a bucket of paint and an overused brush, he felt the angels whispering like never before.

scupper \SKUHP-er\, verb:

1. Informal. to prevent from happening or succeeding; ruin; wreck.

2. Military. to overwhelm; surprise and destroy, disable, or massacre.

Dakota took the news with a brave smile. The role of Mrs. Claus in the fifth grade musical should have been hers, yet it was unjustly awarded to Lacey, a talentless bimbo that got caught kissing a fourth grader behind the cafeteria.

And so she set in motion a devious plan to set the world back in order, to right this grievous wrong by ruthlessly scuppering the production.

After four weeks of sabotage, misinformation, and fermenting social unrest, the fifth grade music teacher watched an all out melee ensue on stage while Dakota stood by with a satisfied smile.

“I – I just can’t do this this anymore,” the teacher muttered, lips trembling and tears streaking eyeliner down her cheeks.

“But Santa!” Dakota erupted as she strode to center stage. “Christmas must go on!”

Slowly the rumble grew quiet. Santa adjusted his torn beard.

“Christmas must go on!” Dakota repeated holding her hand out to Santa.

“Yes, you are right, Mrs. Claus,” Santa replied, taking Dakota’s hand. “The children must have their toys!”

And Dakota’s coup d’état was complete.

linchpin \LINCH-pin\, noun:

1. something that holds the various elements of a complicated structure together: The monarchy was the linchpin of the nation’s traditions and society.

2. a pin inserted through the end of an axletree to keep the wheel on.

Just yesterday, Clint was a humble barista at a coffee shop. Today, his mastery of Missile Command on the Atari 2600 made him the critical linchpin in an intricate intergalactic plot to assassinate the mutant clone of Adolf Hitler before the madman could rally a vast Martian military empire to overwhelm the Earth.

“This is why I hate online dating,” Clint grumbled as he cracked his knuckles, then clutched the joystick.

haberdashery \HAB-er-dash-uh-ree\, noun:

1. a retail shop dealing in men’s furnishings, as shirts, ties, gloves, socks, and hats.

2. the goods sold there.

Pretenses were dropped immediately within the marriage between Melvin, the proprietor of a quite modern and fashionable haberdashery, and Lucille, a robust and brazen suffragette.

Upon crossing the threshold, Melvin excused himself to a separate bedroom to unpack. A kindly agreement was struck that they would always exude a vibrant romantic union when among family and “uninitiated” friends, even as offspring failed to materialize. “Visitors” were to be welcomed discretely through the servants’ entrance and they must never risk messy encounters that would give ammunition to restless gossips.

But it was not a loveless marriage. On the contrary, Melvin and Lucille were deeply devoted to one another, if not as a mating alliance, then as a rich and enduring friendship between two peers with no need for the illusion that the wold demanded outside the walls of their merry homestead.

This Week in Word of the Day – 3/3/13

yare \yair\, adjective:

1. quick; agile; lively.

2. (of a ship) quick to the helm; easily handled or maneuvered.

3. Archaic. a. ready; prepared. b. nimble; quick.

He ran from her love like a mongrel escaping the flash and wonder of a lightning storm. Her heart was wide open and welcomed the young man without reservation, but within its chambers was a passion unbridled by sense or caution.

Before drowning in the torrent, he escaped to the fishing trawler and set out for the high seas. Not a yare or lithe vessel, but it was enough to whisk the man away from her bed long enough that they could forget why they were impossible.

zakuska \zuh-KOOS-kuh\, noun:

an hors d’oeuvre.

Humphrey themed the gathering exquisitely and was bursting with pride as the guests dined on zakuska and caviar plucked off trays carried by servants dressed as Cossack peasantry. All the cocktails were mixed with an illegally imported vodka from a micro-distillery outside Moscow that used unexplored ordinances from the Afghan war as stills.

He was dressed as Rasputin and made a sport of whispering indecencies into the ears of strangers.

But at the height of the revelry, when performance artists crashed the party and tossed about communist fliers, Humphrey grew sullen. She was not there, nor did he expect that she would be. He suspected that she might sneak away from the new man in her life for a few minutes to give him a call. Humphrey knew she did this on the sly because she only called when she was outside. It gave him a sliver of satisfaction that she was already lying to him as she had lied to Humphrey.

Even so, he knew he would not be the last lingering thought tickling her brain as she faded into her pillow.

He sourly missed those long-delayed “goodnights”, even if made from separate beds. They were the only thing that gave him a sense of place.

zephyrean \zef-uh-REE-uhn\, adjective:

of, pertaining to, or like a zephyr; full of or containing light breezes.

She bore the practiced smile and the zephyrean voice of a woman so pretty, her beauty was her career. She did not need to speak with authority, she did not have to exert her opinion, she merely needed to exist. No children, no taxing employment, no worries of money or retirement. She only needed to stand in the midst of crowds and giggle softly whether or not she understood. She needed to be seen, not heard. She needed to elevate the status of important men by lacing her arm around theirs and not speak unless spoken to, to not eat the last three bites of dessert, to fake it in bed and in church with measured enthusiasm.

But the fire robbed her of her future and she was alone for the first time in her life. Her parents only equipped her with the tools of quiet grace and tact. Self-reliance and bitter obstinance, which pulled the rest of the world through the difficult period of maturation, were alien concepts to the once beautiful creature. Every time she gazed at her reflection, counting the scars webbed across her face, her fury grew. The way her father wouldn’t look her in the eyes, the way her mother avoided lunch dates and sent a check in her stead, the friends that never returned her phone calls, the boyfriend that abandoned her – it all boiled violently inside the depths of her soul.

She finally concluded that the world completely betrayed her and eagerly awaited her suicide.

But she wouldn’t allow them the satisfaction. She would show that face and, in doing so, show them their shame. She would endure and thrive, if only in spite. On this new path, paved with pain, fear, and resentment, she would, one day, find happiness.

ziggurat \ZIG-oo-rat\, noun:

(among the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians) a temple of Sumerian origin in the form of a pyramidal tower, consisting of a number of stories and having about the outside a broad ascent winding round the structure, presenting the appearance of a series of terraces.

She gazed up at the ziggurat, sweat beading on her face as she shifted the straps of the backpack digging into her shoulders. The archeological find was extraordinary, especially for someone so young.

Tucked between ancient, towering rock formations amidst a vast, barren landscape, the search for the rumored temple bankrupted her, cost her her the respect of her peers, and the last of her guides abandoned her three nights ago.

But she found it and if she could just survive the trip home, her place in the science community was secure.

She sat on the sand and savored the moment. She unzipped her backpack and dug for water, finding her last bottle deep in the pack along with a forgotten slip of paper. She pulled them both out and unraveled the paper.

“No matter the time and space that separates us, know that I will always love you. There will be other men for you, there will be other women for me, but I will remain yours, in whatever capacity you require. Friend, lover, peer, I remain steadfast and am honored to have once called you my own.”

She’d carried that note for five years, across twelve countries, into the most inhospitable regions in Southeast Asia and North Africa. She wasn’t sure why.

No, that’s not true, she knew exactly why.

leeward \LEE-werd; Naut. LOO-erd\, adjective:

1. pertaining to, situated in, or moving toward the quarter toward which the wind blows (opposed to windward).

noun:

1. the lee side; the point or quarter toward which the wind blows.

adverb:

1. toward the lee.

Days passed like a slow drip following the night he tossed the charts overboard and simply allowed the boat to drift leeward. He waited for death patiently, watching the moon stalk across the sky to be replaced by the sun. They oversaw the broken man in shifts, like somber missionaries in a hospice.

When the clean water ran out, his strength went with it. He slumbered throughout the next day on the deck, hoping the exposure would finally snuff out his light.

But he felt a tap on the bow. The boat rocked gently and he struggled to pry open his dry eyelids. An angelic glow poured down on him. A face emerged, a soft coffee brown with high, regal cheekbones, hair tucked under a Coast Guard hat, impossibly bright and perfect green eyes.

She spoke, but his tangled mind couldn’t hear.

“Marry me,” he managed in a breath like the gasp from a sarcophagus.

She chuckled as she eased water into his mouth, saying something about “not the marrying type”, yet, eighteen months later, she would.

mazuma \muh-ZOO-muh\, noun:

money.

It was generally assumed that Anshel was never concerned with mazuma, but a life of vagrancy was wearing on the aging musician. Anshel always slept in a warm bed in every village he brightened with his fevered violin. That bed was also often occupied with an equally fevered young woman or wayward wife.

Yet, Anshel had been so long without love that he wondered if he could recognize it if it passed him in the daylight as he shuffled from one community to the next.

He still longed to impart his skills to a precocious young boy with the same glint of genius in his eyes. Anshel also wanted to simply own new clothes, to wake in his own bed in his own house with his own wife and enjoy the luxury of foolishly proclaiming his once migratory and impoverished career as the happiest time in his life.

panoptic \pan-OP-tik\, adjective:

1. permitting the viewing of all parts or elements: a panoptic stain used in microscopy; a panoptic aerial photograph of an enemy missile base.

2. considering all parts or elements; all inclusive: a panoptic criticism of modern poetry.

“We can safely assume that by saying ‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away’ George Lucas is tethering our current reality to the Star Wars universe.”

“Um. Okay.”

“Hey, you wanted to know what I was doing.”

“Your right, sorry. Go ahead.”

“So, if we can agree that is a fair statement, then it is also fair to assume that he might have also tailored his story based on existing star systems.”

“That is a lot to assume, my friend.”

“Well, regardless, my goal is to develop a panoptic view of the Star Wars universe and then align that to current maps of our own universe to identify a candidate galaxy, then see if that galaxy is near enough to reasonably assume it would have been within reach of Earth, therefore strengthening the Star Wars pilgrim theory of human evolution.”

“Uh huh. So, how is the high schooler?”

“She’s in college, thank you very much – and she is fine.”

This Week in Word of the Day / 2-24-13

recant \ri-KANT\, verb:

1. to withdraw or disavow (a statement, opinion, etc.), especially formally; retract.

2. to withdraw or disavow a statement, opinion, etc., especially formally.

“I am not certain this is a good fit,” Satan grumbled as he dug through a paper sack filled with Daemeon’s paperwork. “I mean – I asked for your financial records, birth certificate, and social security card and all I am seeing are twenty year old report cards, parking tickets, and a shocking amount of receipts from Hot Topic and Christie’s Toy Box.”

Daemeon smirked and flicked his long, raven black hair back away from his eyes, though it immediately settled right back into place.

“I am an amoral creature that revels in the darkest delights,” Daemeon muttered with a slight lisp.

“Oh – um – gross,” Satan responded uncomfortably. He sat the bag aside, removed his bifocals and rubbed at his weary eyes.

“Look,” Satan began slowly. “I like your enthusiasm, I really do. I don’t really need creepy white guys in my army. I have plenty. I need accountants and the only reason I approached you is because that’s what you majored in.”

“Money is a construct of an oppressive Anglo-Saxon culture where sin is cornered and caged rather than unleashed to be free …”

“All right, all right, I got it,” Satan sighed. “You are missing the point. I have provisions to account for, I have weapons to track and disseminate, bribes to dole out. If you can’t even track your own personal records, I am going to have recant my offer. I am sorry.”

“But, but,” Daemeon blubbered, tears beginning to smear his thick eyeliner. “I am a child of darkness! I am a prince of man’s dark soul!”

“No,” Satan replied, collecting his briefcase. “You really are not. Good day, sir.”

satrap \SEY-trap\, noun:

1. a subordinate ruler, often a despotic one.

2. a governor of a province under the ancient Persian monarchy.

Ryan was a good kid, despite whatever happened that tragic summer. The Organization received so much scorn following the deaths, and as a satrap governing three neighborhoods in south central Oklahoma City, he was in the epicenter once the media firestorm ignited.

But people forget what it was like before – bullies preying on the weak kids, muggings, abusive stepdads, drug dealers owning the streets. With an educated elite at its head, The Organization was going to change all that, but they were just teenagers that had no idea how desperately the world clung to chaos.

tensile \TEN-suhl\, adjective:

1. capable of being stretched or drawn out; ductile.

2. of or pertaining to tension: tensile strain.

Carrie couldn’t raise her eyes from the steering wheel to the turnoff to her neighborhood. Her foot feathered the brake pedals, her eyes welled with tears, her fingers trembled. “Home” terrified her. Home was an empty bed where she found the corpse of her husband seven months before. Home was three damaged children who still didn’t understand blamed her for their father’s absence. Home was the grandfather, cocooned in a thickening senility. Home was the sister, who ran all the way from LA to Carrie’s front porch to escape the latest abusive prick.

A decent woman waits at least a year to lift the widow’s shroud to look into the eyes of other men. She lasted two months and the guilt tore away at her soul. She retained a 48 hour work week and cared for what amounted to five children. The tensile strain was so great, she longed for the great and terrible snap, just for the finality.

Instead, she drove on to Steve’s house, just a few miles away. He would be home and would make love to her. They would lay in bed for an hour afterward chatting about everything but real life.

And she would be buoyed just enough to survive another day.

umber \UHM-ber\, noun:

1. North England Dialect. shade; shadow.

2. an earth consisting chiefly of a hydrated oxide of iron and some oxide of manganese, used in its natural state as a brown pigment (raw umber) or, after heating, as a reddish-brown pigment (burnt umber).

3. the color of such a pigment; dark dusky brown or dark reddish brown.

4. Ichthyology. the European grayling, Thymallus thymallus.

adjective:

1. of the color umber.

verb:

1. to color with or as if with umber.

It began with a smudge of burnt umber, a color she always detested. She found a tube of burnt umber buried deep in her art case and listlessly smeared it on the canvas. She stared at the messy stroke for over an hour, then, timidly, added more. The smear widened, consuming the white canvas like an infestation. Phone calls rang deep into the night and erupted again in the morning, all unanswered and passing to her voice mail.

Fifteen days fell off the calendar. She emerged once every other day, just to restock groceries and secure more burnt umber and canvases. Throughout her studio were abstract clouds, all a muddy reddish-brown, some with careful black inking that outlined shapes only she could see.

Her father finally busted through the locked front door and found his daughter sleeping on the floor, surrounded by dozens of canvases filled with amorphous oceans of burnt umber.

Days later, resting on the back porch of her parents’ home, she insisted that the spell had nothing to do with the anniversary of her husband’s death.

varia \VAIR-ee-uh\, noun:

miscellaneous items, especially a miscellany of literary works.

She found the book stuffed deep in the discount bin. The dense anthology of varia and throwaway stories was hastily published following Will’s sudden breakthrough success. She slapped down a dollar and took the book home, fairly certain it was a waste of 97 cents and the three cent contribution to take a penny, leave a penny.

Her story began on page 213. A detail by detail account of the death of her child. The sickness, the long battle, the doctor visits, the bitterness, the horror of finding the child lifeless inside his playpen.

The violation was maddening. She tore the pages out, burned them, screamed at the flames and settled into a bottle of wine as the book was left open, brutalized, like the victim of a violent mugging.

Morning came and she laughed off her mania but, all the same, she threw away what was left of the book.

When Will’s latest book tour swept through her town, her curiosity forced her out of the house and across town to the very same bookstore she found the accursed book.

She’d convinced herself it was a fluke, so many stories written by so many writers – surely they overlap with reality from time to time.

Will sealed his fate when he signed her book with his customary personalization: “To the one and only …”.

whipsaw \HWIP-saw\, verb:

1. to subject to two opposing forces at the same time: The real-estate market has been whipsawed by high interest rates and unemployment.

2. to cut with a whipsaw.

3. to win two bets from (a person) at one turn or play, as at faro.

4. (of a trailer, railroad car, etc.) to swing suddenly to the right or left, as in rounding a sharp curve at high speed.

noun:

1. a saw for two persons, as a pitsaw, used to divide timbers lengthwise.

Blood and entrails poured out onto the grass like a spilled vat of spaghetti as the absently discarded whipsaw inadvertently severed the monstrous attacker at his waist. The deformed man with one good eye, scars all across his face and a spiked humpback convulsed violently as his deranged brain sparked desperately to cling to life. The killer bled out in just over a minute, falling into death like an infant drifting to sleep.

“Oh,” Ted breathed out heavily as he and the other seven college students looked down on the brute’s bisected body.

“Oh?” Marybelle asked. “You sound disappointed .”

“No – well – it’s just a little, I don’t know, anti-climactic,” Ted said with a careless shrug. “I mean, he’d only been chasing us for a couple minutes and tripped over nothing and then it’s all over.”

“What would you have preferred?” Cliff (the lone black guy) snapped. “That he butcher all of us?”

“No, of course not,” Ted replied defensively. “But, it did feel like a horror movie there for a second, right? And – it’s not that I wanted any of us dead, it’s just sort of a letdown that it – don’t take this the wrong way – that it didn’t play out more classically. You know what I mean?”

Stunned eyes from all across the group leveled on Ted.

“As the guy that would have died first had it gone ‘classically’, you can go to hell Ted,” Cliff grunted and stormed off to the van.

“Is it really just me? No one else is let down by how this played out?”

Eyes rolled and heads shook. Ted looked away from the would-be serial killer and turned to the woods, walking dejectedly off into the moonlight.

“Hey!” Autumn called as she jogged to catch up. She threw her arm around Ted. “It’s okay, don’t worry about them. They are just shook up. Almost being killed by an inbred mountain man with a flaming jackhammer does that.”

“I guess,” Ted grumbled as he kicked a small rock off the dirt trail. “But the flaming jackhammer was sooo cool and now we will never know what it was supposed to do.”

Autumn frowned softly, putting her hand on Ted’s cheek. He turned away.

“No one ever understands me.”

“I do, Ted,” Autumn said with a gentle smile. “I do.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Ted spit back, knocking her hand off his shoulder and storming back up the path to join the others. “Stupid virgin.”

xeric \ZEER-ik\, adjective:

of, pertaining to, or adapted to a dry environment.

He studied the Joshua Tree, the twisted mass of fibers, tightly packed, squeezing in every drop of rain it absorbed in the vast, empty desert. A sturdy, xeric, and resolute existence. Discomfort granted it strength. It no longer looked to the horizon for reprieve, it simply endured. It needed no other motivation than the obligation of survival.

He would become a Joshua Tree and the pain of isolation would fade. It must.