On 2010-03-14, at 4:09 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
> *pas de touché .*
>>
>> ======================
>> Eek - my late mom's response to mice; EKE = to squeeze out, to barely
>> manage, etc. :)
=============================== Brings to mind no. 5 of the top ten entries to this year's Bulwer-Lytton ("It was a dark and stormy night...") contest for the first line of a bad novel: "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."
I didn't think that groaner, though, deserved a higher ranking than: "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."
And it definitely lacked the dramatic tension of the winning entry: "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"
Others here: http://gpsinformation.info/main/Bulwer.txt