Write the start of a novel...

Mulling over the evening's tragic events Maude had to admit that touching up the anchovy and Charlotte Rouse casserole with fingerpaint had been an egregious error in judgment but never had she expected such erudite ferocity on the judge's part. " A cloture of acerbic toxins," he had declared, retching into his cambric hankie. And to think, it had all been televised!

*At work (!), no time for a novel... only a sentence.
----------------------------------------

Stopping near the dining room, I watched her obnoxious and egregious child using the casserole as fingerpaint, furiously creating something with wild sweeps of angry ferocity across the place mat before him, as if he were a mad yet erudite vanGogh.

systemic
sphincter
subzero
Aleutian
quadratic

*Sure glad I'm not next.

Oh... I see Shakey beat me! But, no words were offered, so I'll just let them stand.

systemic
sphincter
subzero
Aleutian
quadratic

“The problem is only partly with your sphincter,” Dr. Anusberg said. “It’s just one reason you haven’t had a movement in six months, causing the systemic bloating. The best way to proceed is one developed in the Aleutian Islands some years ago by a surgeon who specialized in quadratic functions. We will reduce your body to subzero temperatures, rearrange your intestines into a square, and then everything will work normally, I think.”

Mesmerize
Salute
Doggerel
Objectify
Budapest

The romantic setting of Budapest at sunset was enough to mesmerize the most dedicated cynic. On a park bench, a lovestruck youth labored to objectify his sweetheart's virtues; she gazed into his eyes, rapt with his doggerel. An old man stood in the doorway of a nearby tavern, raising his Tokay in salute to the young lovers as he reminisced of times long past. The air was redolent of spring, and hope, and anticipation.

Cantankerous
Cephalopod
Cirrus
Conundrum
Curiosity

Jimmy was ten, and he lived with his cantankerous old uncle, but nothing could squelch his natural curiosity. This afternoon, he sat on a log contemplating the cirrus clouds in the incredibly blue sky. Why were the clouds there? Why was the sky there? Why was anything there? Today in school he learned that an octopus was a cephalopod, and so were a squid and a cuttlefish and a nautilus. The whole thing was a conundrum he would solve when he grew up.

Mildew
Schematic
Radio
Byzantine
Rumble

The mosaic was exquisite. In his estimation, the finest example of Byzantine art in existence; but that paled in comparison to the image depicted - my god, this would shake the world!

The map and schematic he had uncovered in the ancient Bible had revealed something nobody could possibly believe existed. They'd labelled him a crackpot and a fraud, but here it was, in the dank basement of an ancient church perched on an Anatolian cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. It was covered in mildew and looked to be cracked in several places, but its condition was better than he could have hoped.

He had dared not tell anyone of his whereabouts, but had a friend on call at the other end of a radio. He reached for it... Just at that moment a rumble began to build up under the floor. Moments later the mosaic split in two, the roof collapsed and the church slipped off the cliff and disappeared into the sea. Minutes later the cliff showed no sign it had ever supported a building, and the ripples on the sea had calmed to flat nothing and the world continued oblivious.

---

Mayhem
Dessert
Accoutrement
Zeitgeist
Love

The parking lot at the mall on Saturday afternoon was, in a word, mayhem. Young girls, bedecked with all the accoutrements of modern-day adolescence, embodied the zeitgeist of the iPod generation. Torn between her love for chocolate and her aspirations of super-modeldom, one of them stuffed her mouth with a food court brownie, swallowed it nearly whole, then proceeded to stick her finger down her throat and heave it up into a trash can. Hail and farewell to dessert and dignity in the 21st century.

Bituminous
Egalitarian
Symptom
Fratricide
Orthogonal

Bituminous coal and iron, to steel, to building, and so the process goes. Anathema to egalitarian ideals, the industrialists struggle for supremacy oblivious to humanist concerns. Fratricide is rife as brother devours brother, to grow large and strong, to survive and devour others. Symptom of the struggle is civilizations rapid advance, the full realisation of which is never quite reached, but always just there. The result: a harsh orthogonal world, unyielding, devoid of soft edges, deficient in generosity, freedom, love.

---

Rancour
Paean
Fat
Echelon
Eyrie

From the eyrie of his pulpit, the fat, bald, sweating preacher rode the pendulum of his Sunday sermon from an outpourig of rancour for the Devil and his evil works to a paean of ecstatic praise for the Almighty God. The rear echelon of his parishoners fidgeted in their seats, wondering how many times more the pendulum would swing before they were released from their involuntary servitude. A little boy clutched the coin his father had given him for the collection plate, mentally rehearsing the motions of dropping it in. A teenage girl fretted in her pew, wondering if her adventure the evening before would keep her out of Heaven.

Jambalaya
Sazerac
Zombie
Balcony
Cypress

Jambalaya and sazerac on the balcony over looking a delightful local cypress, the setting could not be more romantic, except for the zombie hordes approaching from all directions.

"We're all gonna dieeeeee!", he wailed, breaking down in dispair at his girlfriends feet.

---

Dummy
Oboe
Intransigence
Predicate
Kowtow

I was an aspiring musician; my instrument, the oboe. I passed my spare time for an actual paycheck as a window dresser for Griffin's department store. The dummy in the window was half-dressed that night when the tyrant night shift manager streaked into the window with me, her minion trailing behind her. I knew my job was predicate on how well I could answer this upcoming crisis.

"What's this?" she said to me, screeching in her birdlike voice.

"It's the new clothing line we got in receiving yesterday," I calmly answered her.

"This cannot go up tonight. Mazer's down the street has the exact same item in their window!" She was frenetic, and her intransigence on anything to do with her competition was well known.

Her flunky began to kowtow and tremble in front of her. "Ma'am, we'll fix it, don't worry." He looked over to me with fearful eyes. "Right, Karen?"

exponentially
cartwheel
asiago
artistic
descent

Talented, artistic, beautiful, she was a superstar, and that year at the Oscars she cartwheeled across the red carpet in sheer delight. The paparazzi were aghast, but snapped away, and not long afterward everyone was doing it. The cartwheel craze grew exponentially across the world. Before long no-one would be caught dead walking.

It was too much for the starlet, her loved pastime cheapened by the masses. From there her descent into madness was swift; she returned to Asiago where she was born, and vanished into obscurity.

But her legacy lives on. Nobody on the planet has ever walked again. Cartwheels for ever, woohoo!

---

Theosophy
Hellenologophobia
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu
Poo

Cecilia was an extraordinary eight-month-old. Like most children her age, she played with her poo, but her first word after “mama” and “papa” was “Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakit anatahu,” and she soon was discussing hellenologophobia with her Greek teacher. However, her parents, who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, were troubled over her rapidly developing interest in theosophy.

Starch
Ineluctable
Marathon
Zigzag
Prune

The air was burning in my lungs as I continued along the zigzag path for the Flying Pigs Marathon. I didn't know if I'd finish this year. My wife used too much starch on my underwear so I was chaffing, and the prune I ate for dinner last night was making itself known and no bathroom in sight. I would have to come to terms with the ineluctable facts of aging slowing me down as well.

platinum
hampster
paradise
abyss
disintegration

The disintegration of my own private paradise began with the arrival of a "hampster". Joey, the little boy next door, got a new pet for his birthday, which he brought over to introduce to me the next day.

"See my hampster?" he crowed, holding the wriggling rodent by the scruff of its neck. "His name is Henry. He loves veggies. Can he play in your garden?"

I chuckled, and replied "Well, Joey, maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea; he might get lost, he's so tiny."

"Henry is a very good boy, he would never run away," came Joey's reply.

At that moment Joey's mother, a pleasantly plump platinum blonde, came over to fetch her son and his hampster. I waved goodbye to the three of them and returned to my weeding and watering, not knowing that life as I knew it was teetering on the brink of the abyss.

Engorged
Furniture
Helicopter
Placebo
Walnut

As a physician, I always consider my patient’s state of mind. For example, the furniture in my waiting room is in a warm shade of walnut with attractive pastel covers, to create a peaceful mood. I am extremely hesitant to prescribe medication. Once, I received a call that an emergency case was being brought in by helicopter. The patient was a woman engorged after eating 25 chickens. I gave her a placebo.

Spurt
Rambunctious
Porcelain
Defer
Altitude

After praying to the porcelain gods yet again, Monica swore that she would stick to a few rum and Cokes and leave the more rambunctious drinking to the college crowd. Nothing was more humiliating than having to spurt for the bathroom and give the old heave-ho to your belly. Perhaps it was the altitude here? She would defer to her doctor on that opinion, though.

Michaelmas
confunded
spectacle
uvula
hazel

Michaelmas arrived with the spectacle of Alumni Weekend. Old grads, confunded by the various spirituous beverages with which they had washed down their kippers and eggs, were being bored to tears by the keynote speaker in the auditorium. One ancient geezer in the back row, struggling to keep his rheumy hazel eyes open, was unable to conceal a truly prize-winning yawn. It was as though his uvula was a deadly weapon that he was attempting to aim at the man at the podium.

Halogen
Latency
Twerp
Edition
Parachute

Oddly enough, Dimby came up with his idea for a perpetual halogen bulb halfway through his parachute jump. Everybody thought of Dimby as a twerp, but it really was just that the latency period of his cognitive processes was longer than that of most people. As soon as he landed, he would rush a report of his idea to Brilliant Ideas magazine so they would put it in their next edition.

Crispate
Narcotize
Scum
Babble
Guava

Replete with the feast that the innkeeper had laid before him an hour ago, he sat in a battered but comfortable leather chair near the fire and lit his pipe. Ah, what a meal! The bountiful kitchen had issued a masterpiece from amidst the babble of the scullions. From the crispate leaves of the local farmer's lettuce in the salad to the guava jelly filling in the delicate pastries for dessert, everything was superb. With the glass of port at his hand to top it all off, it would be an experience that would narcotize him into a dreamless slumber in short order.

He idly fingered the leather pouch and its heavy payload of coins within. It was amazing what a little gold and a little good luck could do for one's outlook. A week ago he had mingled with the scum that infested the seamier side of any large town; his windfall had given him the means to escape to more congenial surroundings. And, in the bargain, his benefactor's clothes fit him as though they had been tailored to his exact dimensions.

Talisman
Lumber
Leverage
Crumbling
Woodpecker

Rufus had grown fond of the woodpecker that turned up every day, because it feasted on termites that had been eroding the crumbling old cabin for years. He had even begun to regard Caesar, as he called him, as a kind of talisman. Of course, now that Rufus was trucking in lumber to build a new cabin, he didn’t want the bird to keep coming around. What kind of leverage could he use to make Caesar go away without harming the innocent creature?

Breach
Disingenuous
Libertine
Simpatico
Napoleon

The libertine warmed the snifter of Napoleon brandy in the palm of his hand. In a disingenuous breach of decorum, he turned to the woman and growled, "We used to be so sympatico together. Wherever did you go wrong?"

Arachnid
Beeswax
Cherub
Dolomite
Enigma

The enchanted vale of Skordýr Dal was an enigma to humans. It was bounded on all sides by sheer dolomite rock and home to a teeming civilization of diminutive creatures: the arachnid enclave of the Tarant-Regal, the industrious Swarm of Beeswax Citedal, the wise Mantis Lords.

And then there were The Cherub.

---

Serenity
Tenets
A propos
Attractive
Rebel

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to know the difference." The tenets of the embroidery hanging in the foyer of the funeral home were particularly apropos on this gloomy morning as she knelt before the closed casket one last time. The framed photographs of the attractive young rebel that lay within captured a face that would remain forever young. Her face had aged an eternity over the last three days.

Impish
Cauldron
Burgee
Gust
Torque