Monthly Archives: September 2022

Acrostic

Posted on September 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

Acrostic: When the first letters of successive lines are arranged either in alphabetical order (= abecedarian) or in such a way as to spell a word.

GAS

Greedy

Avaricious

Saudis

This is an angry acrostic. I am so mad. I am paying $5.00 per gallon for gas and I have to blame somebody. There are so many conspiracy theories floating around on my social media sites, it was hard to believe which one to choose. The most believable, “Your Worst Nightmare Revealed!” puts the Saudis in cahoots with oil swilling sentient space microbes from a planet we can’t even see, and who’re willing to pay $1,000 per barrel for crude oil. How pernicious! The Saudis are diverting the world’s supply of oil to the space microbes, driving up the price of all petroleum-based products. The space microbes’s planet is rumored to littered with unlimited amounts of gold, diamonds, and Medjool dates—a triple whammy for the Saudis. Almost hypnotic, and surely irresistible! The ultimate plan is world conquest. Once everything’s gone totally to hell, the space microbes will blow around the world, dispersing to every corner, enslaving everybody but the Saudis, who will act as their enforcers, pushing around the world’s population by threatening to “pull the plug” without specifying what that means. “Your Worst Nightmare Revealed!” says “It’s a fact that the space microbes have ‘Dinosaur Guns’ that turn people into puddles of crude oil that they consume by a process of osmosis. They don’t have to do this. For them, shooting people with their “Dinosaur Gun” is a sport like deer hunting.” That did it!

I can remember when gasoline was 19 cents per gallon. It was full of good smelling lead and was a beautiful golden-brown color. I used to sit in the back seat of the family car and watch the colored balls being agitated by the gas flowing through a glass dome on the side of the pump. The attendant would clean the windshield no matter what, and he wore a military-style uniform, including a shiny black plastic bow tie. If you said “gimme’ the works,” the attendant would check your tires’ air pressure, battery water, radiator, and oil. We didn’t have windshield washers on our car, or he would’ve checked their fluid level too. Now the whole fueling process is DYI, except in states where attendants are mandated to pump the gas for “safety” reasons. What a crock! They inevitably squeeze in a few more drops after the pump nozzle has done it’s auto shut-off, even though it says on the gas filler door “DO NOT TOP OFF.”

Now, with the end in sight, I bought an electric car. I don’t want to end my life as a puddle of crude oil in my front yard or living room. In fact, I’ve heard that the space microbes are getting into the electric car business so there will be more crude oil for them. This may be true. The person who sold me my Faraday, was weird. The Faraday was state of the art—a 6,000 mile range, numerous safety features, and an inward-facing dash cam monitoring me, with no off-on switch. I asked the salesperson Thad what was up with that. He told me it would record my “Driving Diary” or DD, to make sure I honored the Faraday creed. I had no idea what the creed was, but at that point I didn’t care. When I finally read it, I was kind of shocked, but it didn’t seem so bad. It’s reference to being “courteous to your overlords no matter where you drive or park” was the most off-putting provision, but I didn’t question it. I just wanted to drive.

Thad said, “Take the wheel, my carbon-based underling, and go where you will.” That was weird, but I got in my car and took off. I muttered “What a bunch of assholes” and my Faraday shut down. Thad came out of the air conditioning duct as a sparkling multi-colored mist and reconstituted in the seat next to me. He said, “You have violated a provision of the Faraday creed. ‘Assholes’ is not courteous. This is strike one. You have three strikes. On strike three, I will take control of your Faraday and drive it into a bridge abutment at 120 MPH with you in the back seat with your seatbelt unbuckled.” My first thought was “Where the hell did this guy find out about baseball?” He was obviously a space microbe. I had a precautionary bottle of crude oil in an old screw cap wine bottle in my backpack. I handed it to Thad and said “Let’s let bygones be bygones.” He smiled and he guzzled it down, pressing the bottle to his forehead. He immediately fell asleep. According to “Your Worst Nightmare Revealed!,” space microbes passed out and lost their memories of the past day when they consumed crude oil. I covered my DD’s lens and microphone with a tab of duct tape and shoved Thad out the car door, backed up, and drove over him a few times. He lay there on his back with a smile on his face, hopefully dead, and I took off. The next day, he came to my house and asked me how I liked my Faraday so far. He also informed me there was a bug in my DD’s camera and audio, and that maintenance people were examining it as we spoke. I had already taken the tape off the lens and microphone. I was clear! What a goddamn nightmare. But I liked Thad, and I told him so. Thad’s face turned into a substance like cream of wheat and dripped on his shirt, and smoke drifted out of his left ear that smelled like car exhaust. He returned to normal in a couple of seconds and said “We can be friends.” And friends we were! His family was very powerful and I was appointed Minister of Dietary Supplements.

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

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Adage

Posted on September 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Adage (ad’-age): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings, or traditional expressions of conventional wisdom.

“The clothes make the man“ the homeless man’s sign read. He was wearing a pair of shoes that didn’t match—a brown loafer and a yellow and green running shoe, black pin-striped dress pants with a broken zipper held shut with a strip of duct tape and held up by a green and black bungee chord, and a t-shirt with a picture of two sexually engaged pigs captioned “Makin’ Bacon.” His hair was so dirty there were actually flies flying around it, and it looked like he was using vegetable oil to keep in place, hanging down to his shoulders and staining his t-shirt. He was collecting “donations” in an old Cohiba box from people walking by. I gave him a One-hundred dollar bill. He saw me and jumped up and started singing Elvis Presley’s “Surrender” in a voice killed by tobacco, alcohol, and possibly, tuberculosis.

I recognized the homeless man. He was Matthew Norder, but he did not recognize me. I was surprised, but I understood. We were childhood friends and went all the way through high school together. We went our separate ways when we graduated— I went to California, to UC Santa Barbara, and he went to a shady religious college: Slaves of Christ in Buffalo Plaid, Manitoba. His parents were very religious. I don’t know where they got it, but they had a machine that ground paper into dust. They would grind up pages from the New Testament and sprinkle the dust on their dinner every night. They believed that eating ground-up Bible pages would nourish their spirits, make them more godly, and sanctify their bowel movements as they excreted “the truth and the light.” They were not bad people, at least as far as everybody knew. They did not proselytize. They looked normal, except for the matching tattoos of bumblebees on the inside of their forearms. Matthew never said anything about his and their beliefs, and he seemed pretty much like everybody else in our small Central New Jersey town.

But that changed when he came back home after he graduated from Slaves of Christ. He told me the Dean of his school, “John Smith,” had counseled him to become a pimp for Jesus. At first, Matthew thought it was some kind of metaphor or a bad joke, but he quickly learned it wasn’t when he started taking classes: “Building a Stable,” “Disciplining your Whores,” “Guarding your Turf,” “Dressing Like a Proper Pimp.” It hit me like a lightning bolt! Matthew’s sign “The clothes make the man” was a reference to what John Smith had taught him all those years ago, and what he took up with great gusto. I remember the last time I saw him before he was arrested, tried and convicted of aiding in prostitution, he looked the part—he had a red beaver felt hat with a pheasant feather, at least five pounds of gold chains and bracelets, a purple hand-tailored suit, black suede Guccis, and a custom-made Hermes shoulder bag. He was leaning against a gold Cadillac, with a Rolls-Royce grill, and mounted behind the trunk, a spare tire with a gold cover and a huge gold cross with flashing blue lights. When I saw him, I ran.

I asked around and found out that Matthew had gotten out of jail two years ago. He couldn’t get a job and became homeless, and true to his education, he was dressing the part: Homeless Man. I still don’t understand the whole John Smith thing. It was crazy. I should have told Matthew’s parents, but I was a coward and they were staunch supporters of Slaves of Christ College. Matthew’s parents had gone to Slaves of Christ. We never talked about what they studied, but Matthew’s father had a store in the mall called “Big Steals” where he sold all kinds of things out of dented and scraped up cardboard boxes that he “recovered” once-a-week from a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway. Matthew’s mother produced “Documentary Movies” in their basement. When I was a kid, sometimes I’d go over for lunch and hear banging and moaning coming out of the basement. Matthew said it was their old washing machine making the noise.

As I put on my Burberry coat and got ready to kiss my perfect wife, and hug my beautiful children, and leave for work, I thought for a second about Matthew. His trajectory through life almost made me sick. I had checked: John Smith is still alive. How can he teach vulnerable students to be pimps for Jesus? What am I missing? Is there anything you can’t do for Jesus?

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

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Adianoeta

Posted on September 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Adianoeta: An expression that, in addition to an obvious meaning, carries a second, subtle meaning (often at variance with the ostensible meaning).

I really liked my job. It was an adventure in living. It was 1970. I had landed in New Orleans—in the Vieux Carre—broke and half insane. All I owned in the world was my BSA Thunderbolt motorcycle, my Levi’s, a Brady Bunch T-shirt, motorcycle boots, leather jacket, leather gloves and a helmet. I had a wallet—it held my motorcycle’s registration, my New Jersey driver’s license, and proof of insurance. I had been in the US for six months after returning from Vietnam after being discharged from the Army. My term of service in the war was fun. I was stationed in Saigon, living in my own room in a US government-owned hotel, and having no clear-cut military responsibilities. I had my own Jeep and spent my time chasing whores, smoking weed, drinking Ba Mươi Ba beer and Japanese scotch, and sightseeing. These pursuits were hard to stop when I returned to the US. I had drifted to the Vieux Carre because I had heard it was free flowing—a site of depravity akin to a war zone. I thought I would be able to find a job and melt into the morass. I looked and looked for a job. Luckily, in the meantime, I had found a woman to keep me afloat. She was a waitress, was 22 and had a heart of gold. I specialized in waitresses as my life preservers. I never truly loved any of them, but I was grateful for their help and affection—putting a roof over my head, feeding me, loving me when I showed up, and sadly, crying when I left.

Finally, I landed a job. I was hired as a male “underpants dancer” at Molly’s Magnum 25, a bar that closed for only one hour and drew a crowd considered the most raucous in the Vieux Carre. I was clueless about underpants dancing, and when I showed up for work the first night, I hadn’t bothered to watch a show yet. I asked Molly what I was supposed to do. She said “Stand there and make a humping movement with your hips—speed up and slow down with the music, and every once-in-while make a heavy thrust and turn around and wiggle your ass. Also, always keep a blank look on your face.” Ok! I was ready! For ten bucks an hour and tips, I would’ve run over a baby carriage.

I went to my “dressing” room, took off all my clothes, and pulled on my black spandex panties. I stepped out on the tiny stage elevated about one foot from the floor with no railing or any kind of barrier between me and the audience, who were packed shoulder to shoulder, and almost all women. They were all holding drinks and were yelling things at me like “bounce that weiner baby” or “ass, ass, ass.” It was inspiring! The music started and I started humping. The song was Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ “Wooly Bully,” and it was perfect—the women were pushing toward the stage and shoving crumpled-up money into my underpants. When my panties’ crotch was full, I reached in and emptied the bills into a bucket I had on stage. I was having the time of my life when suddenly I saw my mother pushing through the crowd, coming toward me waving a ten-dollar bill in her outstretched hand. “Son” she yelled over the din, “I’m so proud of you!” She handed me the money and smiled. At that, my hip thruster went dead for a second. I wanted to hit her with my money bucket, but, I still wanted to talk to mom and ask her why she had left us with our father, “King Lout”—the drunken idiot who fed us cornflakes and sour milk for dinner and made us beg for money on a street corner in downtown Jersey City. Mom had abandoned us when I was six. I had no fond memories, but I still remembered what she looked like.

Yelling over the music we agreed to meet at the Ruby Slipper at 5:30 for breakfast. She didn’t show up. She never showed up. I carried my bucket full of money back to my waitress’s apartment. She was glad to see me. I showed her my underpants dance and we laughed and we looked into each other’s eyes. Two huge Palmetto bugs skittered up the wall. We laughed again, and holding hands, we headed to the bedroom.

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

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Adnominatio

Posted on September 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Adnominatio (ad-no-mi-na’-ti-o): 1. A synonym for paronomasia[punning]. 2. A synonym for polyptoton. 3. Assigning to a proper name its literal or homophonic meaning.

My great-great grandfather, Rezbo Clocker, played ice hockey on ice left over from the Ice Age. Ha ha! Just kidding. My great grandmother used to say he was born wearing hockey skates with a hockey stick in his hands. I was only six, but I knew where babies came from. I would just think every time it was said, how much the skates must have hurt Rezbo’s mother. I would nearly cry. Then, I found out it meant he was born to play hockey, not wearing the equipment. It was a great relief, and relieved, I started saying it myself. It made me feel grown up, like swearing. And back then, a hockey stick and a pair of hockey skates was all you had—safety was almost a swear word among the players.

Rezbo played hockey all his life. He lived in a part of Canada where it was winter nearly year-round. He played for the Northwest Territories Assassins. Their logo was crossed hockey sticks with spear points, dripping blood. By today’s standards this logo would not be allowed. In fact, in 1970, the Assassins changed their name to the Wildflowers and replaced the pointed hockey sticks with hockey stick vases filled with assorted brightly colored wildflowers.

As a goalie with no protection, Rezbo’s front teeth were always in jeopardy. Nevertheless, his signature move was to catch incoming pucks with his front teeth. The fans loved it and he would end many games with bleeding gums and a bloodstained jersey. He had had his knocked out teeth replaced with dentures numerous times when he got a brilliant idea. He would become a spokesperson for a mail oder false teeth manufacturer in Yellowknife. He made millions touting their product on the radio, broadcasting from hockey games around Canada.

He was getting old, but he desperately wanted to keep playing hockey—icing his knees did’t work any more and he did not want to become addicted to pain medication. The team captain, Loki, told him about a Finnish Sámi, who was a Shaman who held sway over ice and snow as agents for healing the body. The shaman’s name was Magnus, and he was very, very old. Rezbo flew to Finland, and through an interpreter, told Magnus what he wanted. Magnus nodded his agreement and told Rezbo to strip naked and sit on the rock in the middle of the floor. Then, Magnus held up his hands and started yelling at Rezbo. Rezbo started shaking, looking cross-eyed, and turning ice-cold. Magnus clutched his own chest, cried out, and, in the middle of the spell, died of a heart attack. The spell went awry, and Rezbo was turned into a hockey puck. The former Rezbo was bagged and shipped back home to Canada. Every once in awhile I take Rezbo to the pond out back and give him a little workout on the ice with my friend Jasper. Sometimes, I think I hear him laughing when I smash him across the ice. As a hockey puck, his immortality is assured. As long as there are Clockers, Rezbo’s zip-loc shipping bag will shelter him on our mantle, specially painted the color of freshly Zabonied ice.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

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Adynaton

Posted on September 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

Adynaton (a-dyn’-a-ton): A declaration of impossibility, usually in terms of an exaggerated comparison. Sometimes, the expression of the impossibility of expression.

Dear Diary 9/1/22:

I was walking in the woods adjacent to my house. I went for a walk on the trails every day. I was getting old and thought I needed exercise to add a few years to my life. It was early September and I had wandered off the trail looking for mushrooms—usually oyster mushrooms because they were easy to identify. Suddenly I heard a tiny muffled voice. It sounded like it was coming out of the ground—it was a woman’s voice crying “Help me! Help me! Please!” I looked around and there was a beautifully colored ceramic urn laying underneath a small rotting tree that had fallen down years ago. The little voice was coming from the urn! I was astonished and frightened, but I lifted the tree and kicked the urn out from under it. “Unscrew the lid” the voice said. I did. Out crawled a woman about six inches tall. She had midnight black hair, gentle brown eyes, an open smile, wore a red silk dress, and had the kind of body I lusted after when I was in high school. I didn’t care if she was the size of a Barbie Doll. She was beautiful. My fear melted away and I yelled “This can’t be! Holy shit, I’ve won the lotto—this is like flying to the moon in a Cadillac! Marry me!” She touched my big toe sticking out of my sandal. I started to shrink and she started to grow. When I stopped shrinking, she grabbed me by my shirt collar and shoved me in the urn, and quickly screwed on the lid. I was terror stricken. I begged her to let me out. She said, “As long as you are sealed in The Magic Urn you will not age, you will not need to relieve yourself, you will not need food and water, and you will not need air. When liberated you will remain whole.” She said her name was Anya and that her husband Rudra had fallen in love with an imp from South Jersey named Boopsie, and Boopsie had cast the “Shrinker Spell” on Anya so Boopsie and Rudra could run off together. “I must find them and reverse the spell.” I could hear the leaves rustle as she hurried away.

I was totally dejected until I remembered my cellphone and wondered if it’s shrunken version would work. I called my daughter Madeleine who was visiting for a week from her job in NYC. Her mother had left us a few years earlier and Madeleine had developed the grit to handle anything. The phone connected! I told her to use the find my phone app and she would find me in a ceramic urn in the woods by our house. She was skeptical, but soon I heard her feet swishing through the leaves. She picked up the urn, unscrewed it’s lid, and looked inside. I told her not to touch me, and to put down the jar. Madeleine took it all in stride.

As soon as my tiny feet hit the ground there was a bright flash of red light and the smell of cedar shavings all around us. It was Anya! She touched my forehead and I started to grow, and she didn’t shrink! She put a surgical glove on her hand and opened the mesh bag she was carrying and pulled out a little flailing man, shoved him into the urn, and screwed on the lid. “Meet Rudra,” she said “I found him and Boopsie in a small suburban town in New Jersey. I forced Boopsie to shrink him by threatening to hit her in the face with a cricket bat. As soon as she shrunk my husband, I made her disappear forever with this Thai vanishing monkey dust I bought in Newark.” I was impressed and in love. Anya and I have been living together for 6 years. We keep her husband in a linen closet in our home’s media room. We enjoy listening to him whine and beg in his sealed urn each night before Anya and I watch “Murdoch Mysteries” and eat dinner.

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

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Aetiologia

Posted on September 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Aetiologia (ae-ti-o-log’-i-a): A figure of reasoning by which one attributes a cause for a statement or claim made, often as a simple relative clause of explanation.

Ever since I was 11 I’ve done everything I can to stop being crazy, because I had done a lot of crazy things. When I was 12, I put lighter fluid on my hand and lit it. I put it out in a bucket of water and decided that I would light it on fire again the next day when I was on the school bus. I could wave goodbye to Mom out the bus window with a flaming hand. So, I lit my hand. The lighter fluid had dripped down my shirt sleeve and started my shirt on fire. The bus driver heard all the kids screaming “Joey’s on fire” and ran to the back of the bus, and put me out with the bus’s fire extinguisher. I wasn’t badly burned, but I was suspended from school for one week for “distracting the bus driver.” I was also put into counseling with Dr. Brander. We would sit there for ten minutes and she’d suddenly ask “Do you want to light yourself on fire?” I would aways say “Yes” and squirm around in my chair. She would say “Hmmm” and write something down on her notepad. After another ten minutes, she would ask if I wet my bed. I would say “No, but sometimes I wet my sister’s bed right before dinner.” Dr. Brander would say “Hmmm” and write something on her notepad. One day she asked me if I wanted to torture the mailman and crush his skull with a sledge hammer. That was crazy, and I said so. Dr. Brander smiled and had me meet for 2 hours, on her orders, with the mailman to affirm to his satisfaction that I would never torture and kill him. Me and the mailman thought it was really funny, but he was being paid to meet with me, so he did it. While we were sitting there, he told me how infuriated he would become when he had to redeliver a letter marked “Return to Sender.” He never told me why it made him so mad, but sometimes he would pull letters out of his mail pouch that he hadn’t delivered yet, and tear them into little pieces while he would say “Return to asshole.” I didn’t know what an “asshole” was. He said “It’s the place your poop comes out.” I said “Oh, but how can you call a whole person an asshole?” He said, “Shut up you little asshole. Ask Dr. Brander.” I was eventually cleared by Dr. Brander and returned to school. Her advice was “Get a grip Joey.” When I got back to school, everybody called me “Pyro” and the older students held up their lit cigarette lighters and everybody applauded and cheered. It made me happy, like I was a celebrity.

There are countless additional episodes I could cite. For example, when I was 16, I threw a rock at the back window of my father’s car. It was a hot day and the window exploded outward, scattering glass all over the driveway. I called what I did an “experiment” to make it sound scientific. My father tied me to a tree in our back yard and said he was going to crash the car into me as punishment. Dad gunned the engine of his 1952 Dodge, popped the clutch and came roaring at me. At the last minute he swerved around the tree, but he smashed into the side of our garage, putting a hole in it and totaling his Dodge. This was pre-seatbelts, so his face hit the windshield and looked like a giant raw hamburger as he ran around the yard yelling “You little asshole. Come back here.” I was tied to a tree! He must’ve been delirious. Mom untied me and I went inside and hid under my bed. Dad had back problems and had trouble bending over, so ‘under the bed’ was a safe haven.

For a number of years now, my life has smoothed out. There are modern-day drugs that keep me under control. I think Dr. Brander and all the others who tried, and who were sincere, can’t beat drugs to wipe out the weirdness. The only time I have a problem now, is when I forget to take my drugs. I get manic without them. Last time I forgot, I drove from Syracuse, NY to Jackson Hole, WY with the goal of killing a couple of Buffalo, and joining the Arapaho Tribe. When I got there, I thought I was ordering a pizza, but I called home by accident and talked to my wife. She sent my drugs via FEDEX. I took them and returned to normal. Now, I have my own business where I use the skill I learned during my brief sojourn at Upstate Hospital. I knit bowling ball bags, steering wheel covers, litter box scoops, and doo rags. Some day, I hope to knit a statue of Jodie Foster.

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

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