Epergesis

Epergesis (e-per-gee’-sis): Interposing an apposition, often in order to clarify what has just been stated.

Stop singing “goat milk kefir in in the sky.” It’s “ghost riders in the sky.” Your mind is like an cosmic merry-go-round—orbiting around inside your head, decorated with shiny silver meteorites and painted plastic space creatures blurting gibberish as they go up and down, up and down, around and around.

That’s you, or I should say, that’s what I envision as your mind, which is pretty complimentary if you think about it.

Please stop singing “grackles keep falling on my head”—it’s “raindrops keep falling on my head” from the movie Midnight Cowboy’s instrumental theme with the lyrics added later for a Johnny Mathis album. Jeez! Oh come on: “Hey Moe, where you goin’ with Curly’s comb in your hand?” Really? It’s actually “Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?”

Mama and I named you Alfred after your grandfather, but everybody calls you Weird Al, even your grandfather! It’s because of your nearly constant public lyric twisting: at the mall, at school, at the bowling alley—everywhere! We know you can’t help it. Maybe you can make a career of it somehow.

Our weird son Al, the musical genius!

Stop that! It isn’t “You ain’t nothin’ but a peat bog.” It’s “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” But you know that, don’t you, Weird Al?

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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