qqotd: savoir-faire, piffle, leviathan, gallimaufry (plus a few earlier ones)

When QQ is a linguistic leviathan with sole authority to regulate and police sesquipedalianism, it will ensure that no public square, real or virtual, is without a gallimaufry of long words in every language and a rich macédoine of examples of their usage in groups of four; but, despite its awesome power and the ubiquity of its myrmidons, there will be piffling subversives among its ranks who will weaken the prevailing esprit de corps with claptrap disguised as charm and savoir-faire.

Cross-posted: QuadrivialQuandary.com

qqotd: chef-d'oeuvre, flaneur, winnow, roborant

Another pointless morning, countless days into the media fuss over his one and only chef-d'oeuvre, he spotted two roborant words in the Classifieds that rescued him from the morass of notoriety: "Flaneurs Wanted," the ad read, "Explore the landscapes of your choice, physical or otherwise, at your pace, on your terms, with our implanted, patent-pending Human Condition Aggregator (HCA) that will winnow from your experiences (and those of other networked testers) the beta version of the Human Condition Genome (TM)."

Cross-posted: QuadrivialQuandary.com

qqotd: amour-propre, hebetude, disputatious, couture

Using the latest couture, he mixed and matched popular designers to create au courant, sartorially iconoclastic attires that had a disputatious effect at fashion events, thus replenishing his amour-propre with a vindicating superiority over the hebetude of the unimaginative designers who were far more influential than he.

Cross-posted: QuadrivialQuandary.com

qqotd: scienter, languish, imbroglio, malleable

This mind, this macédoine of passionate fancies, fickle enthusiasms and perverse proclivities, is ultimately a listless imbroglio languishing in the confines of corporeal possibilities, accused of renouncing scienter its storied ability to keep reality malleable in the face of all manner of relentless adversity.

Cross-posted: QuadrivialQuandary.com

qqotd: videlicet, shill, temerarious, Brobdingnagian

Knowing that the farmers had been indentured for generations, he picked the most temerarious youths in the village, trained them in the Universal Capitalist Arts, videlicet price gouging, predatory lending, bait and switch, etc., and sent them off to the powerful and ruthless money-lenders to shill for his plans for building a Brobdingnagian shopping mall on the villagers' farms.

Cross-posted from QuadrivialQuandary.com.

qqotd: cap-a-pie, claptrap, macédoine, martinet

Amidst the macédoine of antique furniture and objets d'art, he stood uandorned, wearing cap-a-pie the adoring gaze of his mistress, which the martinet she was playing couldn't belie; so, when she pointed the whip at him and said, "I don't want to hear any mushy, romantic claptrap from you," he could tell she was finding it difficult to stay in character and he knew that the magic between them was gone.

[qqotd = QuadrivialQuandary of the day]

qqotd: doggo, gestalt, pedantic, benison

When challenged, his characteristically pedantic response was that sitting doggo (except for pressing buttons on the remote) and staring at TV shows, his only benison, just about summed up the gestalt of his existence.

Cross-posted from: QuadrivialQuandary.com

qqotd: nettle, leaven, mollycoddle, affable

She seemed at her affable best, greeting every insufferable guest with charm and poise, as if she had decided to mollycoddle their fragile egos, which she later told me was precisely the case, and that every time one of them nettled her with their self-importance, it only leavened her distaste for the milieu she had married into and fortified her resolve to escape from it.

Cross-posted from QuadrivialQuandary.com.

qqotd: nettle, plicate, pittance, germane

In the picture he sat on an exquisite yet unassuming chair that he had designed, against the backdrop of sheer, plicate curtains through which you could see the lake outside the window, all of which nettled me because he had made for himself a much nicer home than my suburban McMansion, despite earning a pittance compared to my seven-figure income and never ever considering success to be germane to his life.


Cross-posted from QuadrivialQuandary.

qqotd: nettle, Jezebel, galvanize, billingsgate

The Jezebel married the quantum physicist for his beautiful mind and bragged about him to nettle her many paramours enough to galvanize their alpha-male instincts, which made them try to outdo his genius with the intensity of their lovemaking, but her deceit paled in comparison to her husband's who was taping the poetic billingsgate she tended to spew in conversation and publishing it as his own in the prestigious Journal of Slumming Geniuses.

Cross-posted from QuadrivialQuandary.com.

qqotd: expiate, buttress, littoral, exegesis

Put a couple of drinks in him and any mention of writing will launch him into an exegesis of his last novel set in a small, coastal town where watching the littoral erosion seems to be the favorite pastime and the inhabitants zealously prosecute tourists caught using pot, as if to expiate their own epidemic of meth addiction and buttress their respectability among neighboring communities.


[qqotd = QuadrivialQuandary Of The Day]

When Tomorrow Comes

Take the train that left the station when tomorrow comes
Give in to the lost temptation when tomorrow comes

Hope and lust will grow a tree and shade forever
Mediocre aspiration when tomorrow comes

Books lined up to fend off love between breathing bookends
Left bereft of sublimation when tomorrow comes

All the prickly heat desire soothes to pamper touch
Won't subside and save sensation when tomorrow comes

Left alone with TV shows, time will make peace with space
Skip the ads of admonition when tomorrow comes

Groundhogs scared of shadows and robins obsessed with Spring
Will tell tales of pride in nation when tomorrow comes

In the heart of fortune lies the blind comfort of bliss
Drink from fountains of damnation when tomorrow comes

The mess, Aslam, at meaning's last horizon of faith
Could show proof of evolution when tomorrow comes


(A ghazal. I had some fun with this one -- goes from personal/"deep" to silly to topical, tries to mix it all up, and isn't ashamed of a few clichés...)

And Lie

Quiet truths rise with evening's fall from grace and lie
Morning beckons dreams to fly in life's face and lie

No more, no less this everlasting absent time
What demise will life's work adorn, efface and lie?

Win for me love's lavender bounty in daylight
My prize, I pray, this time I won't deface and lie

Soon it will begin, the promised epoch of naught
Today's still moment must know this disgrace and lie

Worlds turn, Aslam, dancing with all of your past loves
Would that you could eke out one true embrace and lie


(This is a ghazal.)

Happiness

Attention abates as soon as
the distraction fades

Colors don't dance on
the macular focal points
once illumination strikes

Inevitable dreams find
time's lost interstices
rummaging through the recesses
of accumulated skins

Comforts stand witness
to the reclines of last resort
on a separate plane of touch
innocent of the pain

The road's end is everywhere
the distance knows
its festering stories

Home is the unknown
that outlasts all wisdom

[Claiming for Bloglines]