Monthly Archives: October 2022

Repotia

Posted on October 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

Repotia (re-po’-ti-a): 1. The repetition of a phrase with slight differences in style, diction, tone, etc. 2. A discourse celebrating a wedding feast.

A: Who the hell is getting married? I’ll take another gin & tonic, and another pinch on your ass. But I know you can do better than that. Remember the Christmas party last year. You were serving drinks and you let me unwrap your package behind the bar and nobody suspected anything as I gave you the stealth B-hind bomber treatment. Ha ha! Oh, and oh my God—what about New Years this year? We bumped in the new year on the floor under the dining room table. We kept our clothes on, and I made it look like we were dancing. Nobody suspected a thing. How’re we going to do it at this dum ass wedding?

B: It’s your wedding dipshit. Here, have another drink and maybe you’ll forget who you are and go home, cancel the wedding, and save Emily a lot of grief. Oh! Whoops! I forgot, you already got married to Emily.

A: Wah? You’re putting me on. What a sick joke. You’re fired! I’m going to take a nap somewhere. And then maybe have you arrested for serving me too much to drink.

B: You better not. The wedding feast is about to begin. Believe it or not, you got married one hour ago. You fell down twice during the ceremony and vomited on Emily. I have returned you to sobriety.

A: Who the hell is Emily? I don’t know any Emily.

B: Emily is your wife. She is a very special being. Get ready for this: she is 2,500 years old. She has produced numerous eggs in this cycle and is due to be impregnated again. For some reason, she chose you to mate with—you—an inconsiderate, self-centered fool. Emily is a magical creature and deserves far better than you, but she loves only the fool. Her Fool is the Tarot’s Fool, zero in the Tarot’s deck, infinitely empty, and infinitely full of possibilities, brimming with optimism and oblivious to the future: forever poised at the abyss, forever safe, looking up, inspired by the void.

Emily was born on the winds of Western Africa, succored on the sweet-flowing springs beneath Rome’s Palatine Hill, and sustained by ambrosia as she grew into womanhood. Emily is the goddess of Pregnancy. She is immortal, but must mate with a mortal every 100 years, at a wedding in celebration of the profane pursuits that bring pregnancy: joy, pleasure, faith, insemination, and life. Without the wedding, the cycle of her life may be disrupted and she may die a painful death, in a pit of rats, screaming like an owl at dawn’s light.

A: So I’m invited to a wedding that becomes my wedding? My wedding to a friggin’ Goddess? I get married while I’m obliviated on 6 gin and tonics. This sounds like some kind of cheap (and bad) piece of fiction written by a brain-damaged sky diver. But, what have I got to lose? It could be true. Not even I am stupid enough to pass this one up. If I’m married, I’m married. I don’t care if Emily’s a goat, I’m going to give it a shot.

I entered the banquet hall. Everybody cheered and applauded. The bride was easy to spot—she was wearing a wedding dress that looked like it was made of sunlit clouds shifting and moving as though they were rolling across the sky. Emily was a goddess. Her beauty and the warmth of her smile were transformative—without hesitation, I walked toward her slowly with my arms outstretched. She stood and opened her arms, lifted me off the floor, and I glided to her. We embraced and kissed, and I reveled in the taste, like dark maple syrup. It was crazy and totally sane at the same time. She whispered in my ear: “I love you because you are a fool.” For some reason that didn’t make me mad, maybe I was a fool, this Tarot fool the bartender had spoken of. But there was more to it than that. We held hands and our life stories flowed into each other’s consciousness. We feasted on ambrosia and wedding cake, and I asked her who all the guests were. She told me they were her “beloved” minions, except for the bartender who was her scout, who had found me, and who brought me here with the wedding invitation.

Suddenly, the guests started yelling at me: “Speech, speech, speech. I stood up.

A: I am standing here at hope’s abyss—in the bright light of a shining mystery called “The Future.” I was summoned today from the shadows of selfishness, immaturity, and a wasted life. In seconds, Emily brought me to my senses. She has made me feel at home in this world of fading promises and the turbulence of unexpected change. Through the warmth of her smile and the power of her ancient heartfelt embrace, I am redeemed. I am whole. I have found love. I think it was Shakespeare who wrote: “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” I am Emily’s fool.

I did my best with the speech. The guests cheered. I was one with the moment. Emily blew me a kiss and it struck my lips like warm sunlight, and coursed through my soul.

So, we left the wedding and went to a nearby motel where we had sex so many times I lost count. When I woke up, she was gone. She left a note: “When our child is born, we will visit. Maybe we will stay—if you will be my fool.”

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

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Restrictio

Posted on October 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Restrictio (re-strik’-ti-o): Making an exception to a previously made statement. Restricting or limiting what has already been said.

“Things change.” The ancient Greek Heraclitus said that after he reneged on a marriage contract and ran off to Phoenicia with his best friend’s mother. Unfortunately she fell overboard in a sudden storm and drowned. Undaunted, because of being prepared for change, no matter how drastic, Heraclitus bought the ship’s young cook Euthalia and sailed on to Phonecia, where Euthalia “fell” off a cliff and was killed. But Heraclitus was ready—he knew that change was inevitable, and that one had to yield to its power and see it as a beginning instead of an end. People began to question the parade of wives, or possible wives, through Heraclitus’ life. Was it the inevitability of change, or something more sinister? As the rumors started to circulate, Heraclitus decided to leave Phoenicia and go some place where nobody knew him. But, before he left, he gathered the Phoenicians and told them, “You can’t step into the same river twice.” The Phoenicians had just discovered irrigation and drainage ditches and were angered by Heraclitus’ reckless statement. They demanded that he recant and leave Phoenicia as swiftly as possible. They were so anxious for him leave, they booked him a first class ticket on Pegasus, whose hoof caused the fountain Hippocrene to spring forth from Mount Helicon.

Heraclitus was ready to go—more change, more openings for development and growth. Heraclitus opened a famed Indo-Greco restaurant in Madras, India called “Wine Dark Sea.” The restaurant had an extensive vegetarian menu and Heraclitus was a respected member of the community. His nan won awards, and he invented what he called the σάντουιτς, or santouits. It consisted of two pieces of nan, with something between them: this could range from spicy “Eggplant Mt. Olympus,” to “Sardine feta Boeotia.”

But, Heraclitus’ success was his undoing. As the man who celebrated change, once again things were changing. Heraclitus’ success at negotiating change prepared him, he thought, for what was coming. But he never could have been prepared for the ire of his Indian hosts when they heard of his story about stepping in the same river twice. When applied to the river Ganges, it was catastrophic.

Now, we get to the point I’m trying make this afternoon with this “story” that I got from “Big Boss Man” magazine, the number one magazine read by big boss men around the world.

I’ve made a lot of promises to you all: executives, line staff, laborers, part timers—to everybody. I envisioned a future that we would all romp into like nymphs and satyrs, bare-footed and spilling cups of wine all over each other. I thought there would always be a place for white patent leather Go-Go Boots in peoples’ lives. But, that place is no more. Now, it’s Doc Martins, or, Blundstones, or Birkenstocks. I should’ve seen it coming when Queen Elizabeth stopped wearing Go-Go Boots. But instead, I took out massive loans and built a Go-Go Boot factory in China. We haven’t sold a single boot this year. We are finished. Change has destroyed us. But as Heraclitus shows us, change can be a beginning of something better, something we couldn’t imagine without having our lives completely destroyed—without the searing pain and chaos and nearly unbearable feeling of betrayal that may induce some of you to want to kill me.

Now, everybody gets a $50 severance bonus to help pick up the pieces, glue them back together, and start again. Please don’t complain—“What will be will be, the future is not ours to see.” The future can’t be known, but we spend much of our lives planning for it. I tried. I had hopes. I had dreams. We have Tarot Cards. We have Horoscopes. If only our optimism could come to fruition—we’d all enthusiastically sing “Tomorrow” with Little Orphan Annie.

In the end, then, it all comes down to luck. So, I say “good luck” and viva Las Vegas.

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

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Sarcasmus

Posted on October 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Sarcasmus (sar’kaz’-mus): Use of mockery, verbal taunts, or bitter irony.

You chicken-shit blubber butt. You hide behind Mommy pants pooper. You macaroni-armed lord of the limp dicks. You face-stuffing food fiend. You part-time human. You beet-brained barn smell. You fart-breathed toilet face. You bag of dirty bandaids.

Mel Rose is my name. Insults are my game. I am an “Insult Contractor.” I mostly write what I call “Nastygrams” for pay, and help people “get back” at other people, and initiate what I call an “insulgasm.” The insulgasm is the feeling of deep satisfaction and relaxation that one feels when one’s insult hits home—when it can’t be denied as an accurate, compressed, description of a target’s shortcoming in a specific category—from honesty to body shape, and more.

But my insults aren’t solely about “getting back,” I have clients who don’t care who the particular people are who they insult. They just fling the insults around, often at “types” of people who aren’t used to being insulted for any reason. For example, I have a client who specializes in elderly women in wheelchairs. One insult I wrote for him was: “You can’t even stand up for what you believe in.” As an act of resistance the woman tried to stand up, fell out of her chair, and fractured her skull. My client was delighted and ordered three more insults. This is what I came up with: “You’ll never run for office,” “Why do you let somebody push you around all time?,” “Your ankles look like coffee cans wearing stockings.”

I first realized my talent for producing insults for others when I was nearly 18. I was riding the train home from school. A drunken bum stumbled up to where I was sitting. He started asking the guy sitting next to me for money, and sex, and his briefcase. He stunk of the classic homeless blend: alcohol, urine, and B.O. Suddenly, my brain lit up. I whispered in the guy next to me’s ear: “Ask him: ‘When’s the last time you wiped your ass? You smell like a pile of shit’ and he’ll fold.” The guy next to me said it, and bam, the drunk hung his head and staggered away asking the other passengers if they had any toilet paper. Then, I realized I had a gift for reading insult targets and insulting them with one or two sentences that hit home, maybe tearing it down to the ground and leaving it reduced to smoking rubble. So, I started my own little insult business and advertised myself as “Insult Contractor.” My tag line is: “Revenge is an Insult.” I started off advertising on bondage chats where people routinely demean others with words. The business started to come in. I had found my niche. Within my moral compass, everything was fair game, from alopecia to xenophobia. However, I did reserve the right to turn down a contract for “personal reasons.”

My first commission as “Insult Contractor” was directed at an unfaithful wife that the client had seen (by accident) on the bondage site “Lucky Whip.” The insult: “Our kids don’t need a whore for a role model.” The insult illustrates the outside edge of all insults. The depth of their viscousness may insult anybody who hears or reads them. Their effect is not limited to their target—they have the power to offend one and all, everywhere, all the time, regardless of the context of their presentation, or to whom they’re presented. And, of course, they squarely contradict basic religious dogma that sets agape or selfless love as a foundation for human happiness and eternal life. What I traffic in rides in the fast lane on the Highway to Hell. The Highway is packed with cruel and vengeful travelers. It’s almost like the insults I write help pay their toll and speed their trip to the Lake of Fire.

Oh, I should tell you—the man on the train who used my insult to chase the drunk wasn’t just a man on the train! He was one of Old Nick’s talent scouts. Before he got off the train, he reached inside me and grabbed my soul, and channelled its river of insults, helping it to cultivate strife and fulfill my destiny as a divider of people.

Remember, while sticks and stones may break your bones, insults may totally destroy you.

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

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Scesis Onomaton

Posted on October 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Scesis Onomaton (ske’-sis-o-no’-ma-ton): 1. A sentence constructed only of nouns and adjectives (typically in a regular pattern). 2. A series of successive, synonymous expressions.

Footballs. Bowling balls. Basketballs. Soccer Balls. Tennis balls. Golf balls. Soft balls. Croquet balls. Handballs. Paintballs. The world of sports is a world of balls. In fact, balls are probably the most prevalent pieces of equipment in the sporting world. Without balls, we’d be down to darts, and archery, and horseshoes, and curling, and badminton, and skiing, and skeet shooting, and chess. But that’s beside the point when you consider the tiny country of Vestigial.

A favorite competitive sport in Vestigial is called “Pine Pulling.” The game takes place on a Christmas Tree Farm near the sea. “Pullers” are ranked in accord with how long it takes them to uproot a tree. “Pine Pulling” harkens back to a time when Vestigial was a poor nation and it’s citizens couldn’t afford saws or axes, so they tore 6-8 foot tall spruce trees out of the forest earth, ripped off their branches, and used them for firewood—for warmth and cooking. The pine wood is rich in pitch so it was easily lit. Since they had no saws or axes, they shoved their wood straight into the fireplace—perpendicular to its walls. In addition, as a sideline, they made toothbrushes out of the branches and sold them to neighboring Norwegians, until they were invaded and annexed by the Norwegians in 1602. Nevertheless, the persistence of “Pine Pulling” as a sport is testimony to the resilience of Vestigial culture.

Then, in Stuckland, a microscopic state in South Africa that hardly anybody realizes exists, there is “Ant Whispering.” Stuckland has formidable ant reserves. In fact, there are easily more ants than human in Stuckland. The region is dotted with gigantic ant mounds, some of which are over 100 feet high. The annual games take place on the ant preserve in central Stuckland called Devil Ants Den and use the “Ant Tower” as the staging ground for the competition. Called “Vuur Mier” in the local dialect, the ants are almost identical to the Fire Ants introduced into the US from South America. “Ant Whispering” is played by single players scaling Ant Tower, sticking their face in the hole at the top, and yelling “Stay down!” for 15 seconds. The competitor with the fewest blisters on their face wins the competition, and the first prize: a free visit to the emergency room of the nearby hospital. Of course, the competition is undertaken to prove the hardiness, bravery, and resilience of the Stucklanders.

Competition. Sticking it out. Pride. Practice. Perseverance. Every culture has its games that exemplify its character and commitments, but there is a common thread: Winning and Losing. Inevitably there are more losers than winners. There are far more frustrated and angry competitors who lost than happy, smiling winners. Losers may be beaten up by their backers when they get home, lose their wives and husbands to winners, or become despondent drug users. Nobody likes a loser. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

I abstain from playing sports. Abstinence is a higher virtue than playing because it colors over winning and losing with “neither.” You put yourself out of play and no longer endure the ups and down. However, there is still a place for winning and losing in my life. I have become a “lottotarian” specializing in $1.00 scratch-off lotto tickets. Since there is no skill involved in scratch-off lotto, winning and losing are not attributed to me and do not involve me in a tangle of egotistic back-slapping or guilt-laced self-recrimination.

New York’s lotto motto says it all: “Hey, you never know.” This is a life-lesson that’s worth spending one dollar on.

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

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Sententia

Posted on October 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

Sententia (sen-ten’-ti-a): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegem, gnome, maxim, paroemia, and proverb.

Consider the booger. It isn’t a lobster. It isn’t Yorick’s moldy skull. But in a way the lowly booger has high standing in the universe of the nostril: “Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.” Substitute “boogers” for “stars” and you’ll see there is a universe of unseeable celestial promise stuck in your life-giving airway, tidying it up by a hearty sneeze or a carefully wielded pinky scooping out the booger and wiping it on your pant leg or skirt or sock. Or, you may be primly equipped with what is called a “hankie” made from soft cloth, and possibly, embroidered with your three initials. If you’re a man, you may have in your back pocket a large hankerchief, “chief” emphasizing the cloth’s masculinity and superiority to the “girlie” little hankie. In fact, in order to emphasize its manliness, you might call your handkerchief a “snot rag” even though you may use it to go booger hunting up your nose. Or, you may have a tissue up your sleeve if you are bereft of pockets.

Booger flicking is a sport in some parts of the world, especially in poorer countries that may only have boogers to play with. There may even be regional tournaments and passionate rivalries with “Booger Kings” and “Booger Queens” revered as regional and national champions. The boogers are specially cultivated in the competitors’ nostrils, aging like fine wine, and taking on their cherished aerodynamic form inside the nostril through a process of tantric sniffing and, outside the nose, by rolling the booger between the thumb and forefinger, and very lightly moisturizing it with canola oil. The booger is flicked by placing it on the tip of the index finger and forcefully dragging the thumb toward it to strike it and propel it away from the hand. According to the rules, each booger must be kept in the competitor’s nostril until five minutes before the “Flick Off.” Competitors sit in a circle around a five-foot diameter pit marked in rings like a bullseye. The highest scoring booger wins the round. Ties are resolved by a “Booger Flick-Off,” and boogers that land on other boogers void their participation in the “Flick Off.” In the US, the last known “Flick Off” was held in 1980 and was “won” by the professional sniveler Donald Sump from NYC, who was accused of cheating by sniveling on his booger, increasing its velocity, and knocking what would’ve been the winning booger off the board. His title was taken away after a 10-minute hearing.

Now we come to the dark side of boogers. There are the near-perverts who eat their boogers. First, there are the covert booger eaters— they may pretend they’re wiping their mouths with their backs of their hands or handkerchiefs, when in fact, they’re unloading dried boogers into their mouths. They may chew them quietly and surreptitiously, but if you are vigilant, you can observe movement in their throats when they swallow their nasal confections.

But the absolute worst is the public booger miner. They may sit in a bus station digging for booger treasure. Their pinky is their tool, with enough of a nail to act as a shovel. They shove their pinky into their nostril, twist it around, fill it up and pull it out. Now, the public booger eater holds up his pinky and looks at his find from many angles, until he can’t stand any more. He shoves his loaded pinky between his lips and into his mouth, where he may chew on his prize for a couple of seconds before he swallows it.

Erasmus said “Nothing human is alien to me.” Boogers are human, and they bind us together. Their presence is ubiquitous. When we look at each others’ noses we can see mirrored there citadels of common experience that house boogers that we can’t see, but can believe in due to a booger’s presence in our own nostrils.

So, as we began, consider the booger: a building block of our humanity, so disgustingly beautiful and picked for infinite reasons, spanning the hierarchies of value that give life to meaning, and meaning to life.

If your nose could speak, it might say: “I can’t pick myself.”

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

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Simile

Posted on October 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Simile (si’-mi-lee): An explicit comparison, often (but not necessarily) employing “like” or “as.”

She’s like a bicycle with one wheel missing, scraping a groove in my heart. It hurts like the time she sanded my left butt cheek with #80 garnet grit sandpaper. She crumbled my butt’s smooth skin like a piece of cheddar on a cheese grater. It hurt. I think I need to get away from her before I end up in a frying pan with a couple of eggs.

But for some reason, stemming from some kind of mild mental illness, I am unable to leave her. I want to think that her propensity for inflicting pain is a passing thing. But then, I realize we’ve been together for five years and she’s been marking me up the whole time—that’s more than “passing,” it’s become officially “chronic.” Now, she wants to amputate my little toe, cure it with some kind of chemical concoction, put a hole through it, mount a jump-ring on it, thread it with a piece of rawhide, and wear it around her neck, making a fashion statement on love’s commitment. The only objection I had was that she wanted to paint my toenail “Essie—Easily Red.” I thought that shade of red was too festive. I thought “Shades of Red—Rust” was more appropriate for an amputated toe. It had a somber tone to it. After a brief argument, we settled on Rust.

The time came to amputate my toe. We decided that since I was right-handed I would miss my right toe more than my left toe, so we went with the left toe. I was wearing shorts and removed my Birkenstock from my left foot. Everything for the “operation” was laid out on the TV tray table: a zip-loc bag, a roll of surgical bandage, adhesive tape, scissors, a washcloth, and hedge clippers. Everything was fine until I saw the hedge clippers. They reminded me of the hell my father put me through clipping our twelve-foot high hedge when I was a kid. I was 14 and I would fall off the ladder, once enduring a mild concussion that set me back learning arithmetic—a setback I never quite recovered from. I would get blisters on my hands from the clippers, and knock birds’ nests to the ground at my father’s prompting. It was truly devilish work. Now, my toe was to be amputated with hedge clippers! “No!” I yelled and ran out the door and down the stairs wearing only my right Birkenstock. Halfway down, I tripped and fell and rolled onto the lawn.

I think my girlfriend had given me some kind of sedative in my Matcha to prepare me for surgery. I was having trouble moving, and through my double vision, I saw Mr. Rainy, the maintenance man, headed straight at me on his zero-turn lawnmower! He was hoisting a bottle of beer to his lips and wasn’t watching where he was going. I yelled as loud as I could, but between the engine noise and his noise-cancelling earmuffs, Mr. Rainy couldn’t hear me.

I caught a glimpse of my girlfriend standing on the stairs, doing nothing. Mr. Rainy saw me at the last second and whipped off to the left and shut the mower down. He helped me up and called a cab. I was going to stay with my friend Jessica. She was a geek—not the nerdy type, but the circus sideshow type. She raised hamsters for her act and was notorious for her performance reprising “Nightmare Alley.” We got along well. One day, I looked out the window and there was my old girlfriend down in the street slowly making a cutting motion with a a pair of hedge clippers. She did this every day for a week. Then, she disappeared forever. Luckily, I had gotten my stuff out of the apartment one day when she was at work at the tattoo parlor.

I never saw her again after what turned out to be her last hedge clipper performance. I had my life back. When I talked about her to people who asked I would say “I severed my relationship with her. I cut off all ties. It wasn’t brain surgery.” Nobody got the jokes. I didn’t care. Living with Jessica was wonderful. Her biting sense of humor headed off all my gloom.

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. There is also a Kindle edition available.

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