offer

A leftist with too many teeth sings as he daubs the trees. He speaks to you of the witches who live separate. In their cauldron they endeavor to overproduce a decline of pleasure. The leftist offers a new multilateralism, but it is still seen by 85% of those polled as treason against the builders.

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pivot hand

She was sent out fowling, which made her feel like a chess piece. Then she saw the conflagration. What a twist. Chess pieces aren’t held in reserve. This was more of a card game than a board game. Although she climbed the walls, she finally endured her penance sewing pincushions until the autopsy results were returned. The fire mysteriously left many delicate membranes intact. In return for the right to publish their findings, the doctors offered to waive their fee. Not if you want to live, she wrote back. She was in a low state.

upbuildings

In order to promote the improvement of the commons, those who built upon it were exempt from taxation, while those who mderely hunted along it were not. It perversely promotes its use to be less common, as the buildings thus erected were skewed toward certain tastes. And although it was illegal to put locks on these buildings, they were often built in such a way that entry was difficult for all but a certain set of people, or the interior was made to be extremely distasteful to all but some. A councillor convinced the public solicitor into prosecuting those builders, using the existing regulations which required the structures to be safe for those with allergies. He was ridiculed in the press (which was funded by those building these structures) for trying to legislate taste.

news worthy

The rival station is stealing away viewership with its singing newscast. It hires a new producer who brings elements of magical realism to the newscast. Even after the assassination attempt he refuses to call it editorializing, preferring to style it explanatory.

aural testimony

A spiritualist gave testimony for the unconscious man. But his neutrality was under pressure, it could be inked on his face like tectonic fault lines. An anesthesiologist was called in to produce similar effects in a control subject, fro whom the spiritualist would interpret, and then the control subject was to be awakened and confirm his testimony.

smarten up

During a break in the competition a coach from one of the competing teams took Simon aside and said to him, “I advise against ploughing through. Put it another way: give up now. Don’t try anymore. Know when you’re beaten. And I don’t say this just because I’ve got money riding on the event. Go do something else, something easy that will make you a decent amount of money. Something you can get through connections with friends.”

It didn’t make sense to Simon, because what he was doing should have been easy. He fully expected to win, and not through effort, but through the connections of his friends. He realized then that his group of friends weren’t as powerful as he thought. He had no problem, no qualms, about switching sides. But that was assuming the other side would have him, and they saw no particular value in taking him on. He would have to show them. But then he was back at the problem of putting forth effort. Where exactly was the easy way out?

deserving

The chemotherapy had made Peter a dull person. Actually, worse than dull. He constantly spouted inanities. He had become a thorough bore. All of his friends had drifted away except for Evelyn. She had become acclimatized to his tiresome droning on. She drifted off into her own thoughts until they turned too sour, at which point she would turn her attention back to Peter as if brining her head up from the water and mutter a small phrase of agreement. In fact the reason she still visited him was that his situation was the only thing that made her problems seem smaller and perhaps manageable. Peter of course took her attendance as the faithful constancy of love.

wandering traces

Out grandfather babysat the two of us during the holidays in the large empty house. He was very strict and confined our activities to two or three rooms so that he would not have to run all over corralling us. When we couldn’t appease him we settled for lulling him to sleep. Then we would go to another room to perpetrate our mischief, a room he wouldn’t investigate. What we didn’t expect was that when our father returned and discovered the damage in our improvised playroom, it was our grandfather that he punished.

argument of melody

The leader of the nation felt pangs of guilt, almost remorse, for approving the building of the dam that would flood so many villages. That day a delegation from the displaced villagers was coming to meet him. His mind was disturbed. He was troubled by what he could say. As he walked to his office from the breakfast room he heard the beautiful dissonance of a Thelonius Monk tune coming from his daughter’s practice room. This erases his doubt and his guilt, and he could now meet the delegates with a calm unbent conscience.

at right angles

Ben was going participating in a study that measured his brainwaves while he got a massage. A pleasant way to earn twenty bucks. Then he slipped a disc lifting one of the props in his theater group and had to bow out of the study. The researcher came to see him. He was upset because now he didn’t have enough subjects to make his statistics reliable. This was going to mess up his grant big time. Ben didn’t see how that was his problem. The researcher refused to leave.