Monthly Archives: July 2023

Optatio

Posted on July 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Optatio (op-ta’-ti-o): Expressing a wish, often ardently.

I wished upon a star. Totally futile. No avail. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Have you seen beggar ride by on a horse lately? No. No way. “Your wishes will come true, it will happen to you if you’re young at heart.” Ha ha. More bullshit. “Watch out what you wish for,” I never quite understood this. Does it mean if you wish for a car, you’ll get run over? I have no idea.

Even though I never got anything I wished for in my whole life, I still made wishes. I know, pretty stupid. Actually, I’m more than stupid: my wishing was self-destructive. Why? Even though I didn’t believe in wishes, I was an ardent wisher. I lived in a sort of tension between disbelief and belief—in a contradicting twilight zone between a pair of contradictory terms. Our textbooks tell us that contraries can’t occupy the same conceptual space, at the same time, under the circumstances. That may be true of the physical world, but not my mental world.

In order to cope, I tried to stop wishing, but for each wish I wanted to stop wishing, I wished I could stop. This was a conundrum that went on forever: I wish to stop wishing, I wish I would stop wishing I would stop wishing, blah, blah, blah. At one point, I just said the hell with it, and decided to keep on wishing, even if none of the wishes ever came true. This was self destructive: it made my wishes insincere. It made made into a sham.

I told myself that now I was a big fake, I could make fake wishes that were beyond the pale. I could wish for made up junk—anything I could imagine. I even made up a “Wish Fairy” that I could petition with my bogus wishes. After I made up my mind, I made my wish:

“Dear wish Fairy, I speak from the bottom of my heart and depths of my soul, from the pinnacle of my desire, please, I wish for a duck with four wings.” There was a whoosh at my bedroom window. An elderly woman in a golden wheelchair flew in my window and landed softly on the floor by my bed. She was wearing a beautiful purple dress and a Diamond encrusted tiara. Her magic wand looked like a lead pipe with a star on the end of it. I was terrified. She said, “My name is Glenda. You may have seen me in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I am now working as a Wish Fulfillment Specialist for The Powers That Be. Here’s your duck. Feed it mash once a day.” Her wheel chair lifted off, turned around and flew out my window with Glenda at the helm. “Good luck,” she yelled as she waved her wand.

Not only did the duck have four wings, it could dance. We worked up a repertoire and tried our act out at our town gazebo in the park. I named the duck King Kong and away we went: I sang the “Chiquita Banana” song on a karaoke machine while Kong flapped his wings and danced. Then, I would tell some duck jokes I got off the internet:

What time do ducks get up? The quack of dawn.

Why did the duck get detention? He couldn’t stop quackin’ jokes in class.

What’s a duck’s favorite taco topping? Quackamole!

The townspeople loved us, except for Marge Cramwell. She yelled “Witchcraft” and the applause abruptly stopped. Marge was a smelly old former teacher who had been fired from the local school for performing exorcisms on eight-year-olds. She was bitter because she had been fired for believing in fairies, imps, genies, and evil spirits and teaching her beliefs to children, and making them into her minions. Given my experience, I knew what she was saying was true, but I would never rat out Glenda: she had transformed my life, for free! So, I yelled “You’re stark raving mad!” The applause resumed and all was well.

The years flew by. King had I had a permanent gig at Caesar’s in Las Vegas. King’s getting old. I’m thinking of wishing for another duck. King could teach him the act, and then retire to a duck pond in a warm climate where he could spend his twilight years eating bread crusts floating on the water, tossed by kids and kind people. So, I decided to conjure another four-winged duck with a wish to Glenda.

The glass in my hotel bedroom window smashed. It was Marge Cramwell sticking her head through the hole in the glass wearing rock clmbing gear and yelling, “I’ve been watching you Devil Wisher!” I pushed her back out the window and she fell to her death on the pavement below. Back home, in the local newspaper it was called a “tragic accident” and possibly an “attempted burglary.”

Two days later, Glenda delivered my new duck. I named him “Goose.” King retired to very nice duck pond outside of Sarasota, Florida.

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

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Orcos

Posted on July 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Orcos (or’-kos): Swearing that a statement is true.

I always wondered what the connection might be between swearing something is true, and just plain swearing, as in “dammit.” How about a double swear: “I swear it’s true, dammit.!” But, like all things we say, we’ve got to be careful who we say it to. For example, my mother accused me of stealing my sister’s Mickey Mouse pencil. I responded “I swear I didn’t steal it, dammit.”

I had just learned how swear, so I wasn’t sure when and where to deploy it. I had learned how to swear at my friend Bruce’s house. He was rich and lived at the top of the hill. When we played there, his parents let us swear all we wanted. We sweared about everything: at lunch “Pass the fu*kin salt” or “Let’s watch some shit on TV” or “Where the hell’s the bathroom?” The only downside was Bruce’s sister. She kept trying to get me to come up to her room to see her horse pictures. The first time she asked I complied. We sat on her bed and looked at her pictures. When we were done, she got down on her hands and knees and made me ride her around her bedroom. She made a horse noise and reared up on her “hind” legs. I fell off and ran downstairs.

I found Bruce in the kitchen holding a steak knife. He was licking his lips and rocking the blade back and forth, making it flash under the kitchen lights. There was an open bottle of whiskey on the counter next to where he was standing. There were also two empty glasses sitting there. He said, “Let’s have a shot, or two, or three.” We were only 12 and I had never had alcohol. Then his sister came into the kitchen and slammed down tree shots in quick succession. She said, “My name is July and I’m an alcoholic.” She was 18, so I guessed it was legal for her to drink. But an alcoholic? Wow, she hadn’t wasted any time. She wanted to play horses agin, but I said “No.” She threw a box of Cheerios at me and stalked outside to the garden. She lit a hand-rolled cigarette and stared singing the Neil Diamond song about cracking roses.

I took a shot of whiskey and gulped it down. The world seemed to be a better place, so I drank another shot. I think I was a little drunk. So, I said “I’m goin’ the fu*k home.” Bruce said, “I don’t give a fu*k, go ahead.” I was glad to get out of there and back to my normal family—mom and dad, my older sister Molly and my baby brother, Nestor.

Getting back to the missing Mickey Mouse pencil episode:

For weeks, I had been taking the pencil and hiding it around the house and “helping” my sister find it. For me, it was a game, for my sister it was a total pain in the ass. At some point she told mom about the pencil game, saying I stole her pencil. That’s when my mother interrogated me and I gave the solemn oath including a swear word. My mother went crazy: “Not only are you lying, but you’re swearing too! I’m telling your father.” “Oh shit,” I thought, My father’s a gun nut and he’s been drawing his gun in the living room and aiming it at Nestor’s bassinet, yelling “Come out with yours hands up you little piggy!” Then, he would throw Nestor’s velour fuzzy rabbit at the bassinet.

My mom told my dad I was a liar and a swearer. He said, “Don’t worry I’ll get that little piggy! We’ll be eatin’ him for dinner tonight.” At that point my mom realized that dad had landed in cloud cuckoo land. Mom called 911 and they came and took dad away after he shot up the TV. After he’d been hauled off, I said to mom: “That was fu*ckin’ brilliant calling 911. You saved our lives.” Mom said, “Fu*kin’ A. He was out of his goddam mind.”

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

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Oxymoron

Posted on July 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

Oxymoron (ox-y-mo’-ron): Placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to one another. A compressed paradox.

It was dreadfully fun. We made up a game where we used our whole town to play hide and seek. Those little walkie-talkie things had just been invented. They helped the seekers to coordinate their search and help keep hiders coordinated on their locations. It was great fun—we would hide in parked cars, the train station, the Catholic Church (open 24/7), the rest rooms at Friendly’s, trash cans, the park, the cemetery, and more. There was only one rule: once you hid, you had to stay where you hid: no moving around. The game would go on until 1 or 2 a.m.

I was hiding in the Catholic Church’s confessional one night—on the priest’s side of the curtain. Some guy with booze on his breath came into the confessional, sat down, and started to confess. He said “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned, and these are my sins.” “Ha ha. As a good Catholic boy, I knew the drill. I did not reveal myself as a kid playing hide and go seek. The penitent said: “I farted silently on the bus and didn’t excuse myself, I had impure thoughts about the girl who works at CVS Pharmacy, I murdered my wife and burned her corpse in my backyard, the check-out boy at Bounty Bag Supermarket gave me too much change and I kept it.

My heart was racing. I never expected to hear what I heard. But, I was playing a Priest, so I had to see it through. I told him to do 10 Hail Marys, 2 Our Fathers, and say The Rosary 200 times. He didn’t complain. Father Thorns couldn’t have done a better job. As a “Priest” I couldn’t turn the guy in to the police: it was the sanctity of the confessional. But, I wasn’t a “Priest.” I was Johnny Coogan: juvenile delinquent, troublemaker, handsome, and nearly every girl at Harmon Cardin High School had a crush on me.

I saw the man who confessed droning away at the altar as I left the church—it was my friend Morton’s father. I decided to tell Morton about his father’s murder of his mother. I violated the ONE RULE and went to find Morton. I found him hiding in a garbage can. I told him his father had killed his mother. Morton laughed. “I helped my dad. Ha Ha, just kidding. My dad is such a loser. He sits around all day drinking gin, smoking and watching TV. Mom caters to him like he’s a Prince: Prince Bill. He would never hurt my mom. She’s too nice to him. She makes his bed, feeds him, washes his clothes, etc. I mow the lawn and pick up the dog crap in the yard, little presents from our Poodle Prancer..” I asked Morton what his dad was doing at church. Morton said, “Two years ago after getting a prank phone call about his refrigerator running, he got the idea for prank confessions. He goes to Confession every Wednesday night and confesses to things he didn’t do. Two weeks ago he confessed to Father Thorn that he had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Father Thorn told him to say the Rosary 140,000 times. My father thought that was hilarious. Wednesdays are the highlight of Dad’s week. His fake confessions keep him going.

POSCRIPT

Father Thorn went to the weekly poker game where he joined his fellow priests from around the Diocese. They loved to share their parishioners’ confessions—from being disrespectful to their parents to sniffing their shoes. Then, Father Thorn told them about the “bombing of Hiroshima” and the penance of saying the Rosary 140,000 times. The laughter went on for a full ten minutes. Meanwhile, after two days Morton’s father had said the Rosary 112 times. He thought it was funny to do the penance.

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

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Paenismus

Posted on July 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paenismus (pai-nis’-mus): Expressing joy for blessings obtained or an evil avoided.

I was in the 7th grade and there was a girl following me around. She would hide behind a tree along the sidewalk and say “Hi Johnny” from behind the tree when I walked by. She would crawl under my front porch and say “Hi Johnny” from under the porch when I got home. One night she was under my bed! I told my parents and her parents came and picked her up and took her home.

I got my driver’s license immediately after I turned 17. The open road beckoned. I got permission from my parents to drive to Delaware Water Gap, about 100 miles from where I lived in New Jersey. I was halfway there when I heard “Hi Johnny” from the back seat. It was like she was some kind of evil spirit haunting the car. She said, “You kidnapped me and I am going to tell my parents.” I pulled over to the side of the road. I was going to kick her out of the car and let her fend for herself. She started crying when I told her to get out of the car. I folded. “We might as well go see Delaware Water Gap and then drive back home.”

We pulled into a roadside rest by the Delaware River. It had a pay phone and she called her parents so they wouldn’t worry. Then, I heard her say, “He kidnapped me Mommy and wants $300 ransom left in a paper bag outside Charlie’s Soda Fountain. Don’t call the police.” I tried to call her parents to tell them she was full of shit, but she wouldn’t give me her phone number. Any story I might have to share with the police would be laughed at, and I might be shot. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I had gone crazy. She said, “I love you Johnny. We can run away together.” God! That’s all I needed to hear—run away together. I snapped and told her to lay down on the back seat while I drove us home. She complied.

We got back to our little town and pulled up in front of Charlie’s Soda Fountain. There was a small brown bag on the sidewalk. I hopped out of the car and picked up, expecting to be arrested, but I wasn’t! I looked in the bag and there were three $100 bills inside. I didn’t know what to do. I drove the girl home, gave her the bag of money and told her to give it back to her mother. I rang the doorbell and her mother answered: “Hi Johnny,” she said “my daughter’s mentally disturbed and so am I. We do nutty things for laughs. Keep the money—I think we got our money’s worth.” That did it!

I ran to the car to get a tire iron to beat the two of them into oblivion. I got halfway there and calmed down, I went back to the house and told them if they didn’t give me $5,000 cash, I would have them arrested. The mother gave me the money the next day and I took off with her daughter. She was waiting in the car. She said “Hi Johnny” and I told her to get into the front seat. I got her the medication she needed and we got married in Idaho. Everything worked out beautifully.

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

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Palilogia

Posted on July 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Palilogia: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for epizeuxis.

“Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho” Santa had gone mad. Usually he limited his “Ho ho’s” to three per session,. The kids in line were getting restless. Santa was sitting in his throne and he couldn’t stop going ho ho. He was up to 45 Ho ho’s and was sweating and out of breath. He looked terrible. We called 911. As the EMT people took Santa away, the kids who had stood waiting for a half-hour to reveal their Christmas wishes, became uncontrollable and went berserk.

They looted the baskets of candy canes, smashed Christmas tree ornaments on the floor, tipped over the fake reindeer, tore open the fake presents. Then Billy Whaley, whose nickname was Zippo, who loved playing with matches, piled crumpled paper from the torn up presents in the middle of the floor. He said “Bye bye bullshit Santa’s workshop” and pulled out a pack of stick matches, lit one, and threw it on the paper. Everybody made it out the door. The kids watched the smoke, and then the flames coming through the roof. Billy was yelling “Oh baby, oh baby. Do it for me baby.”

By the time the firemen got there, Santa’s Workshop was a pile of smoking charred embers. Shoving what looked like a poker hand back into his boot, one of the firemen said, “I had a goddamn Full House. What am I supposed to do? Fold? Santa’s Workshop is fake anyway, just like Santa and all the rest of the shit with Christmas. You’ve lost the Christmas spirit boys and girls—peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” One of the kids yelled “How are we going to get what we actually want for Christmas; piles of presents, and some money too? Why don’t you go back to the firehouse and resume your poker game, you big fat hypocrite. Kiss my ass.”

The firemen left and the kids and their parents left. The sun was setting and Santa’s Workshop was just a pile of charred wood with remnants of red paint here and there. Santa got out of the hospital and was dropped off by a cab in front of the rubble. His fake beard had been pulled off at some point. He noticed Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer laying on his back with his front legs burned off. Santa started to cry. Immediately his chronic persistent “Ho Ho–ing” stopped, but he couldn’t go “Ho-Ho” anymore. His psychologist told him he couldn’t “Ho-Ho” due to the traumatic experiences he had with “Ho-Ho,” the core of his his being’s signature. Now, in order to “Ho-Ho” again, the psychologist told him he had to build positive associations with “Ho.” The psychologist said, “Prostitutes are frequently called Ho’s.” When you say “Ho” think of an attractive and willing prostitute.” Santa did just that, and was cured. He got his “Ho ho’s” back and went on to serve as a Santa Surrogate for five more fruitful years. He also came to enjoy the company of Ho’s and frequented their lodgings during the holiday seasons, where they watched “The Bob Newhart Show” reruns on Tv and laughed together at the jokes. Out of respect for the ho’s, Santa laughed “ha, ha, ha.”

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

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Parabola

Posted on July 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Parabola (par-ab’-o-la): The explicit drawing of a parallel between two essentially dissimilar things, especially with a moral or didactic purpose. A parable.

Life and death are two sides of the same coin: The coin of Being. Life and death are different states of existence, but being nonetheless.

I am an amateur philosopher. I read lots of philosophy books like Descartes’ “On The Method,” Aristotle’s “Analytics,” and Canard’s “Candy Man.” You have probably never heard of Canard. He taught at an obscure university in Hungary in the 17th century. The university’s name was Tréfa Egyetemi (Joke University). It’s mission was to produce Europe’s best, most accomplished, stand up comics. Given Hungary’s belligerence as a nation, and aggressiveness to go to war with its neighbors, many of the jokes made fun of the cultural norms, intelligence, and the morality of their neighbors. For example, “How many Russians does it take to put a candle in a candlestick holder? Two: One to hold the candlestick holder. One to pull the candle out of his butt and stick it in the candlestick holder.” The comedian who first told this joke was burned alive by a company of Cossacks who crossed the border to do away with the unfortunate man, who by all accounts was a nice man with a wife and child who were getting ready to move into their own hovel, down by the river. Of course, the wife and child were left destitute, but not for long. Dorottya sold her child and moved to Krakow where, after demeaning herself in 100s of ways, she saved enough money to open a comedy club named “Bolond” (Bonkers).

At the time, Krakow was the most liberal city in Europe. Everything was legal except robbery, murder, and the transmission of venereal diseases. Dorottya took to it like a duck to water. Bolond (Bonkers) did not allow jokes that demeaned people because of their national origins. This made Bolond a gathering place for people of all backgrounds who started discussing politics during breaks between the comedy sets and during the one-hour break at 9:00 pm.

An evil English Duke, touring Europe and making trouble, went straight to the king and told him what was going on Bolond. The king was alarmed. Without war he would have nothing to do and would be made redundant, and would have to go into exile in some place like Finland or Denmark—two countries he had not gone to war with, planning ahead, saving them for his exile. So, Roland was raided by the king’s men. Dorottya was detained and turned lose under the condition that she went back to Hungary and shut up. But Dorottya couldn’t shut up. After being admonished many times for allowing royalty jokes to be told at her new comedy club, Nevető Oszvér (Laughing Mule), she was arrested for being disrespectful toward “her betters,” tried, convicted and sentenced to 500 years in the Hungarian National Repentance Colony. There was such a public outcry that Dorottya was released. But she was not allowed to say words like “justice” or “freedom” or she would be executed on the spot. She didn’t last a week. She went unburied and has been blotted out of history’s records. Until now.

She is my great, great, great, great, great grandmother. She sold my great, great, great, great grandmother to a stall mucker. She was named Eszter. There was a Catholic Priest named Father Brown who taught her to read and write. After searching for years, I found Eszter’s memoirs at Tréfa Egyetemi in a secret room with an antique bed and erotic woodcuts from the 17th-century. It hadn’t been opened for 100s of years. The dust was thick. The memoirs were hidden under the mattress and were written in pen on single sheets of vellum. Eszter hated her mother for selling her, but she understood why she needed to do it. Now that the memoirs have seen the light of day, Dorottya and Eszter have become heroes.

I have been offered, and accepted, a tenured “Chair of Studies” at Tréfa Egyetemi. I think it is some kind of joke in keeping with the university’s mission. I will ask my uncle who is Rector.

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

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