The Friday Challenge - 10/10/08

I've been remiss, and for that I must apologize. I've been ridiculously busy since mid-August, with no end in sight before late December, and by my reckoning still owe you judgment and prizes for the following Friday Challenges:

8/15/08: The Ultimate Snowdogging Championship
8/22/08: Gary Seven Meets Logan Five At The G8
8/29/08: Your Favorite Labor Day Weekend Story
9/19/08: The One Car You Most Hate

I'll try to get all these loose ends tidied up this coming weekend, but as of this morning, it's time to post a fresh challenge.

To reboot something like the Friday Challenge, it's often helpful to revisit roots and fundamentals. Ergo, this time I've gone way back and selected a real "deep roots" exercise. Taking my Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary off the shelf and flipping it open at random, I've produced the following list:

frangible
owlish
Paush
constructive
caldera
yen-shee
delicate
spurious
orangutan
counteract

The challenge? Somewhere in these words there is a story. You have one week to find and tell it. And just to make things interesting, you must use all of these words at least once in your story.

Helpful hints: At first I was just going to leave it at that, but given the presence of two non-English words on the list and the ambiguities over their proper transliteration, I decided to give you a titch more help. Yen-shee is the Cantonese word for the residue left in the bottom of an opium pipe after it's been smoked, and if you Google that one you'll come up with some really disturbing links that I'd just as soon spare you. Paush, on the other hand (or Pus, Puus, Paus, Poush, Pushya, etc.), is the tenth month of the Hindu calendar, which generally starts right around the Winter solstice. The Hindu lunisolar calendar is a fascinatingly obtuse thing that makes Western ecclesiastical and astrological calendars look simple, and you can learn lots more about it here. (0h, and in case I forgot to mention it, Happy Navaratri, everyone!)

As always, we're playing by the published Rules of the Friday Challenge, and any others I happen to think to make up, and we're playing for whatever is behind Door #2. The deadline is Thursday, October 16, and always remember: the object here is to have fun.