OK, I promise this is the last Daily 5 you’ll get for awhile, but this one was too much fun not to share. My answers in italics.

Try concocting euphemisms for the following:

- candy for breakfast
Carb preloading

- a defective tricycle
training jalopy

- a gas guzzler
Carbon surplus

- a ridiculously big bouffant hairdo
luxuriant extra body

- unemployed
dilettante

- painted the wrong color
chromatic liberties were taken

- a stolen election / ballot stuffing
democratic correction

- excessive redtape
bureaucratic aid program

- a cover-up of heinous corruption
minimizing unintended consequences

- the dog peed on the carpet
Pet-initiated carpet upgrade

- civil war
intra-state negotiations

- a failing grade
educational incentive

- tax evasion
federal budget reappropriation

- a size too small
athletic fit

- this building could not withstand a minor tremor
green construction

- the living room is the size of a mop closet
efficient use of square footage

Ford Motor Sells Land Rover, Jaguar to India’s Tata
(from Bloomberg)

An icon of British imperialism, sold by one former British colony to another.

(I’m a former owner of both brands, and the son of a Ford devotee — so this is sad news to me.)

I’ve been keeping up my Daily 5 exercises most days, and enjoying it. The exercises are a mix of all kinds of techniques, from character development to plotting to descriptiveness to simple brainstorming. I had fun with the one I did yesterday. Here it is, just because.

Write a brief scene that includes the following:

• a quilt
• the word “quotient”
• a ball of rubber bands
• a morbidly obese hippopotamus
• the perfume of lilies
• the sound of popcorn underfoot

She threw the quilt off her lap. “I’m tired of lying around all weekend like some fat hippo. I’m going to a movie.”

She primped, put on a sundress and plenty of makeup, and gave herself a good dose of lily-scented perfume. Her husband watched meekly, picking at his prized ball of rubber bands with one hand while scribbling on tax forms with the other. “Divide the value in box 6A by the number of dependents… enter the quotient in box 12C…” he muttered, not entirely to himself.

She rolled her eyes and headed to the door. She could already smell the popcorn and hear it crunching under her pedicured, sandaled feet. She was free.

My old reading list was getting long in the tooth, and it was a pain to update, so yesterday I replaced it with the Shelfari plugin. If you’re on Shelfari, click through and add me as a friend. I know, it’s yet another social network, but they have a Facebook app, so you can keep all of that sort of thing in one place.

Speaking of Facebook apps, Bryan took his Facebook application from zero to live in about five minutes. If you’re interested in liturgical music with a modern edge, please take a look at Sharebit.

I have the day off today, so I’m going to go knock out some chores and then get to all that writing I’ve been putting off. Somehow, it still creeps down the priority list even on free days.