diesel therapy
n.— «There are men here with five year sentences for inconsequential crimes, men who were detained in county jails for months because of lost or delayed paperwork.…Many of these stories emanate from a common practice called “diesel therapy.”…Many of these men are taken in shackles directly from the courtroom on the day of sentencing. Thereafter, and during the two to seven month period while their paperwork is being processed, and depending on the extent off overcrowding in their ultimately designated facility, they are shuttled in shackles from one facility to another on a bus, and are treated like mass murderers. They have no clothing or possessions and no money and suffer tremendously.» —by Jim Coyne The Repugnant Warehouse Nov. 1, 1996. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...