Diasyrmus

Diasyrmus (di’-a-syrm-os): Rejecting an argument through ridiculous comparison.

“Your argument is like a squirming dog with no legs. Your argument is like an oath of allegiance to an onion. Your argument is like a carrot up an acrobat’s ass.“ This is what I live for, tearing 19 year-olds to pieces with sarcastic, and possibly sociopathic, opinions of their stillborn reasoning abilities.

This was my fist meeting of the semester with my class—all first-years with starry eyes and great expectations. They were taking PHL 107 from me. They’re aspiring philosophers eager to drag people out of their Plato-caves with 285 horsepower tow trucks pulling them toward Truth with all wheel drive logic. I titled the course “Argumentation for First-Year Twerps.” I would say crazy shit and they wrote it down—I allowed no electronic devices in my classroom, except for my vape pen. It was loaded with “Star Trek Drizzle,” advertised as “Warping you to where no man has been before.” Their tagline is sexist and I had written several emails complaining. All the replies I got were written in Klingon, That scared me so I backed off—I didn’t my mind melted by one of those ugly smart-ass weirdos.

So, the three students I was picking on today started quietly crying, like they had just seen a girlie movie about orphaned bunnies looking for their grandma in a field full of wolf traps. I yelled, “Do you need a tissue? I only have one. You’ll have to share.” They bowed their heads. I shouted “Stand up!” And they stood up, passing the tissue to each other. It was disgusting, but I was glad I’d told them at the start of class to sit alongside each other. I yelled, “Which one of you knows how to yodel?” None of them knew how to yodel. I said calmly, “Sit the hell down. Haven’t you caused enough harm already? That was a rhetorical question.” I took a long pull on my vape.

Then I spotted a goddamn garden gnome in the third row. When we made eye contact, he started laughing really hard. I yelled, “What the hell are you laughing at, you piece of shit excuse for an imp!” The students looked around like they were confused. The gnome told me that he was invisible. Then, he said, “You’re a piece of shit” and tipped his little red gnome hat. As he tipped his hat, I turned into a six-foot two- inch tall piece of shit. I could see my shithood, but I looked like normal me to the students. I knew this because they didn’t scream,or panic in any way when I went to shit.

To me, I see a permanent piece of shit. I look normal to everybody else. I was suspended from my teaching duties at the University for “Failing to secure permission in writing from your Department Chair before talking out loud to yourself in class.” Why the hell did I need the Chair’s permission for something half the faculty did all the time anyway? The Faculty Club was filled with professors talking to themselves everyday. To be fair, they thought they were talking to somebody, but the “somebody” wasn’t listening. The self-absorption rate among faculty is close to 100%. Nobody listens. They just want to “blah, blah, blah” about abstract bullshit with no application to everyday life.

I am filing a lawsuit so I can get back in the classroom. In the meantime, I am serving as interim VP for Academic Affairs and learning how to shave without a mirror.

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

There is a print edition of the Daily Trope available on Amazon for $9.99. There is also a Kindle edition available for $5.99.