The Weekly LitWit Challenge 6.7: Endangered specifics
The winner of the Weekly LitWit Challenge 6.6: Let’s hear from the villains is amoysafeguard. Clever and succinct always beats melodramatic contortions.
Congratulations, amoysafeguard, please post your full name in Comments (It won’t be published) and we’ll alert you when your prize is ready.
Update: amoysafeguard, your prize will be ready for claiming on Tuesday, 23 August at the Customer Service counter, National Bookstore, Power Plant, Rockwell, Makati. Enjoy your books.
Your challenge this week is to save words from extinction. Visit savethewords.org and look at the words that are in danger of being dropped from the English language. Then use as many of those words as you can (a minimum of 5) in a 500-word story about anything.
No tricks. The story cannot be about words. No “I adopted the words pamphagous and jussulent” or tales of the Spelling Bee, please. The words have to mean something.
Deadline: Sunday, 21 August 2011 at 11.59. The prize is this thesaurus (of course).
The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 16th, 2011 at 11:07
amoysafeguard!!!! winner!!!
August 22nd, 2011 at 00:12
It happened on a rainy Wednesday night – not that it matters since it was the sort of thing that did not pick a date. I was on my way home from a friend’s house, aboard a jeepney that was carrying four or five other people. It was the latest I have traveled on a PUV alone, and the roomthily sparse passenger carriage made me jittery. The jeep being the most plebicolar form of transportation in the area, it catered to a variety of passengers you’re never sure what to expect of – irate menopausal women who refuse to help your fare reach the driver, teenagers so engrossed in their blateration that they almost miss their stop, and among them, hooligans waiting for the perfect moment to pounce on their prey. (Trust issues and stereotypes – the trademark of the sodalitious. Of course, the elite have their own robbers; although they do not pounce, the gentle perpetrators.)
Ironically, the sluggish flow of traffic calmed my anxiety to a lull, resigning me to staring at the shiny damp floor of the vehicle. After a few minutes, a flyer slid rather quickly across my field of vision, as if it had been cast to the floor on purpose.
I looked up to see the guy beside me holding a clear book-full of brochures, flyers and calling cards. The other few passengers turned their heads to look at him as well, but he was oblivious to us as he intently skimmed through the files with what seemed like an acrasial expression on his face. As if in silent agreement, the others shifted their glances somewhere else, probably attributing the misplaced flyer to a sudden gust of wind. I, on the other hand, continued to stare at him, mentally debating on whether or not his irate countenance was something to worry about – or if he really was annoyed, to begin with (some people are just unlucky enough to be born with a default expression). The latter was confirmed when the brazen foppotee grabbed the piece of paper he had finished reading, crumpled it, and tossed it behind him without even bothering to aim for the window. He WAS in a sour disposition and to worry or not was not really a choice I could make – my heart went ahead and raced frantically. Litter Peter then looked around, making it clear that he had little remorse for what he had just done. His eyes were not those of a lurking predator but ones that belonged to a starved house pet. In retrospect, littering and mugging had no strong logical connection but I was too nervous to realize it then. I quickly checked my bag for hiulcities and secured the pockets, eager for the patration of my ride and at the same time overflowing with the lubency to get off at the nearest stop.
I then noticed the man sitting on Litter Peter’s other side, and how he, too stared oddly at our common neighbor like something was off. That his body displayed a predilection for pugnastics comforted me a little, but as the jeep approached the side of the road I was still determined to make the jump – only Peter went ahead and gracefully alighted. I let out a long sigh of relief – which was truncated by Boxer Guy’s plegnic announcement that he was holding us up.
August 28th, 2011 at 18:31
Hi, Jessica. Nakuha ko na yung mga books. Thanks! :-)