Antisthecon


Antisthecon (an-tis’-the-con): Substitution of one sound, syllable, or letter for another within a word. A kind of metaplasm: the general term for changes to word spelling.


I had a “cheeseborer” for lunch. I called it that because it bored right through me. It was like a cheese and beef flash flood. When I ate one, I made sure to sit by the restroom door.

Despite the trouble they gave me, I ate them anyway. Their taste was irresistible. People who ate at Stamper’s would fight over the tables by the restroom door, knowing they were going to have a torrential emergency soon after finishing their BM Burger (what I called the Cheeseborer). I started thinking about other foods where taste, not a quick poop, was the incentive for eating it, regardless of corollary consequences. The only thing I could think of was confections. Committing tubby-cide by sitting on the couch eating Little Debbie cakes all day, every day. There are probably hundreds of other examples, but what is so compelling about the BM Burger, given the risk involved—the risk of crapping all over yourself in a public place?

Most people lead a pretty hum-drum existence. Seizing on the BM-Burger’s excellent flavor as an excuse, they eat one, knowing they will experience the thrill of running to the restroom—with preliminary gas leaking from their butt, and pulling down their pants in a primal struggle, with the image of not making it pressing on every part of their body, weighing it down with terror, terror that is an incentive to pump the legs and cry out with animal sounds upon reaching the toilet intact. In one melodious whoosh, it’s over. It’s like scoring a goal or throwing everything you’ve got in a wishing well. You have to flush three times to make it all go away and prepare the toilet for the next person.

Stamper’s is at the leading edge of the emergent sport of Toilet Dashing. It is mainly a man’s sport, but some women are involved too. I think it’s just another fad like Rubic’s Cube or bell bottom pants. On the other hand, it could be a matter of mass psychosis like the dancing mania that swept across Europe from the 14th to the 17th centuries. If it takes on the scale of dancing mania, Toilet Dashing could spell the end of civilization as we know it with towns and cities awash in excrement and people hobbling around with their pant half down.


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

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