Debt Slaves

Subsistence farming was never remotely part of his plan. He had grown up in a semi-urban environment, not needing to think about food beyond the knowledge that it came from "the store." Now he found himself outside every day, no longer sitting in his fancy office typing threatening letters for his clients on his fancy letterhead, but farming the combined acreage of his and six of his neighbors' backyards. It would have been nice to have that eighth house, to make it nice and square, but old-man Witherell still had his pension and said they were all "bat-shit nuts."

The events that led the neighbors to convoke their small parcels was similar to what had happened in many communities across the country. To start with, they had all purchased houses that had been wildly over-valued. And as chance would have it, almost all the people in this portion of the block had been fired, laid-off, downsized, or had a business fail. Now they were all just plain fucked at about the same time. Some took in boarders, others began selling off their stuff on eBay, but all agreed that as newly-minted debt slaves they would make the best of it.

Now, as he learned the lingo of farming and worked with his neighbors to keep the pests and serpents and critters at bay, he made a pact with himself to medicate only with heavy doses of cooperation. But if that failed, he always had his Colt 1911A1 with the mother-of-pearl grips in his sock drawer.

Seed Words: subsistence, letterhead, convoke, outside, boarder, acreage, lingo, serpent, medicate, mother-of-pearl

(These words were randomly generated on coyotecult.com.)

Barry Bonds's Head

There was malaise in the clubhouse. Guys looking over their shoulders and wondering who they could trust. Even though this was the minor leagues, baseball is ostensibly a sport of honor. True, guys have been known to run the odd small-time con. A couple hundred bucks a game and a per diem don't go that far. But extortion was a whole other thing.

The polyphony of murmurs suggested that Vincent "Happy" Tortorella was to be indicted on federal racketeering charges. Over the course of the season, his importunate manner had led guys to agree to loan him cash, a few hundred bucks at a time, to get him off their backs. Happy would repay them the following week via bank wire under a couple different names. When questioned about it he would offer some equivocation, raising further suspicions.

The nature of the minor league scene is young guys with cash in their pockets looking to curry favor with the putative club leader. Then they're off to another back-water team, or perhaps home to Palookaville. Most of these guys are not masters of deduction and polemics. It's all kinesthetics with these meatheads; if they can't figure it out with their muscles or their cocks they're not figuring it out.

So, what's the likelihood that a bullpen catcher could posit a scheme to go Charles Ponzi by laundering rookies' lunch money using only platitudes and peer-pressure as collateral? About as likely as Barry Bonds's head growing to twice its original size.

Seed words: putative, Kinesthetic, polemics, platitude, posit, importunate, polyphony, malaise, equivocation, ostensibly

(These words came out of a notebook I found from college in which I kept track of new words culled from my reading.)