Monthly Archives: October 2023

Congeries

Congeries (con’ger-eez): Piling up words of differing meaning but for a similar emotional effect [(akin to climax)].


“The best, Yeah, yeah, yeah! All of it! Let’s roll all night long!“ That’s what I saw when I looked in the mirror, I exercise, I plasticize—I had an Airedale Terrier hair transplant, and soon I will have the eyes of a tiger—ha ha, just kidding. Actually I’m going for eagle eyes. Ha ha, just kidding again.

I’m 33, but I don’t look a day over 25. This is what life is about—how you appear; how you look. If you look 25, you are 25. With scalpels, stitches, and silicone your nose loses its hook and bump, and your boobie’s go bouncy jouncy, and your butt becomes Mt. Olympus—home of the gods and goddesses. And with capped teeth, you can smile your way into the guys’ hearts and wallets, blinding them to your nefarious intentions.

So, I found a man who’s 55, loaded with cash and in love with the 25-year-old version of me. We’ve been married 14 years and have a 14-year old daughter who doesn’t look like either of us. She looks a bit like Vince, the friendly guy who works behind the counter at Cliffs. Thank god my husband never goes there—he’d surely suspect something. But my daughter almost looks exactly like me—the actual me, the “pre-renovation” me. She has a hook and bump nose, flat chest, no butt, and snaggly teeth. Just like the actual me, she is ugly as sin.

I never told my husband about my “renovation.” He’s never bothered to check out my age. Then he ran across a picture of me with my mother when I was around 15. I should’ve burned it before he saw it. But I didn’t.. He asked me who the girl was in the picture and remarked on how ugly she was and how much she looked like our daughter. I told him it was me—that he had married a good-looking female Frankenstein. I thought he would go berserk, but he didn’t. He just said “Oh” and sat down behind his computer and started tapping. Later, he said he had booked us three tickets to Geneva, Switzerland where we would see the famous plastic surgeon Dr. Tightskinitski.

When we arrived at the DiMilo Clinic, I was separated from my husband and daughter. I was put in a room that looked like a hospital room. I was frightened and asked to see my husband. They told me I could see him “after the procedure.” I asked “What procedure?” and the two nurses laughed and asked if I wanted a Swiss chocolate bar.

I was groggy when I woke up, and I felt numb all over. I felt like I had been drained and refilled. My husband and daughter came in the room. My husband sad “Now you are who you are.” They laughed and left me alone.

The bandages were removed in a week. I looked in the hand mirror the nurse had given me. Dr. Tightskininski had undone my plastic surgery and orthodontia. I look at least 50. And I am uglier than our daughter. I asked my husband why he did this to me. He said “Because you deserved it you deceptive piece of crap. It would be different if you were fun to be with, treated me well, or cared about something more that my bank account and your disgusting affair with Vince. But even though she’s not my daughter, and even though she’s ugly, I’ll take care of her and love her like she’s my own flesh and blood.”

I was devastated. I was ashamed. I looked like shit.

POSTSCRIPT

After the dust settled she decided to get “restored” again. She went to Mexico, where plastic surgery is cheaper. The surgery was botched. Her nose was accidentally cut off and she bled to death on the operating table. Her former husband travelled to Mexico to retrieve her remains. He took only her nose back to New Jersey where he disposed of it in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Her husband threw it in a pond while cursing her. A beaver swimming by grabbed her nose and used it to plug a hole in its dam.


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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Consonance

Consonance: The repetition of consonants in words stressed in the same place (but whose vowels differ). Also, a kind of inverted alliteration, in which final consonants, rather than initial or medial ones, repeat in nearby words. Consonance is more properly a term associated with modern poetics than with historical rhetorical terminology.


I had found out that Descartes was a vet when I read Cosmopolis. I was a vet too. I was attached to CIA in Saigon. I was part of a special Army detachment assembled after a series of intelligence leaks that led to the closing of a clandestine Agency-supported gambling casino—Dough Boy—on Pasteur Street. It was raided by the Vietnamese Army to the great chagrin of American personnel stationed in Saigon who had made the casino into their second home. Their morale plummeted, Things were coming to a head.

It was determined that it was prostitutes who were orchestrating the leaks, prompted by threats from VC operatives who were ubiquitous in the city. I was assigned the task of “meeting” with prostitutes and surreptitiously interrogating them. To maintain my cover, I did this while “getting what I paid for.” My quota was three “interrogations” per day. It was exhausting work, but I was glad to be of service to my country. However, I had miscalculated the danger.

One night I was “interrogating” a prostitute when pistol fire broke out in the hallway. As I was pulling on my jungle fatigues, a bullet came through the door. It whizzed through the room and exited through the window. The prostitute thought the bullet had been destined for her because she refused to collaborate with the VC. I instantly thought: I can pay her to identify VC operatives. I’ll be a hero back at headquarters!

They bought my idea and she became a double agent. Then, I found out I had contracted the clap from her. It wasn’t unusual—what you’d call an occupational hazard, especially if you were stupid enough to forego “protection.” I had been trained to deploy a condom, but I routinely failed to do so. Anyway, I had an R&R coming up and elected to go to Australia to rest, and relax, and recuperate from the clap. While I was in Australia, I got involved with some ant-war activists. When I told them what I was doing in Vietnam, they went crazy. They thought it was morally depraved to assign me, a 19-year old, to “interrogate” prostitutes. They kidnapped me and wouldn’t let me go back to Vietnam. I became an Army deserter, and I liked it. After 6 months they let me go, and I got a job at a kangaroo rehab center, mostly for retired professional boxing kangaroos, but also for injured and unruly kangaroos. I got married to one of my former captors, Matilda. We have five children, and now that the statute of limitations has run out on the desertion charge, I travel freely, and I am the owner of a chain of kangaroo rehab centers called “Marsupial Menders.” I’m still waltzin’ Matilda under the under the stars. The song never gets old, especially after a few Victoria Bitters.


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

Correctio

Correctio (cor-rec’-ti-o): The amending of a term or phrase just employed; or, a further specifying of meaning, especially by indicating what something is not (which may occur either before or after the term or phrase used). A kind of redefinition, often employed as a parenthesis (an interruption) or as a climax.


I was looking out the window at the spice bush when I realized I was crazy (well, not exactly “crazy” per se, but deeply unhinged). The spice bush was trying to get my attention, and I realized that seeing a gesturing spice bush secured my candidacy for another stay at “Yodel Hills,” a weirdly named insane asylum, supposedly named for 19th-century yodelers who went crazy yodeling—being unable to stop for weeks at a time, becoming so emaciated their cowboy hats would slip down over their ears, casting a menacing shadow. They called the malady “Yodelitis” and began a program of research to eradicate it. One of the first things they discovered was not wearing cowboy boots and wearing Florsheim imperial Wingtips instead, would significantly reduce, if not cure, instances of Yodelitis. And also, closing down the yodel camps where children were taught to yodel, almost eliminated Yodelitis. Dr. Littleoldlaydyhoo is credited with the final breakthrough: a drug that softened the larynx and prevented yodeling altogether: “Yode-Away.”

I knew if I told anybody about the spice bush, I’d be “taking a ride.” So, I decided to keep my mouth shut. As the days went by, the spice bush became more and more aggressive. Whipping back and forth, one day it tore a hole in the screen porch’s screen. I feared that it would become violent and hurt somebody. So, I decided to trim it back. It was pretty big, so I bought an electric hedge trimmer on Amazon. It came, and I charged the battery. I was ready to go.

I walked around the swimming pool toward the spice bush, carrying the trimmer. As I approached, it started shaking and wiggling. A branch shot out, whipped me in the face, and grabbed the hedge trimmer. It shook it at me as it fumbled to pull the trigger that would turn it on. I ran into the garage and grabbed my pole pruner. When I got back to the spice bush it had figured out how to start the trimmer. As I came toward it, it thrust the trimmer toward me in an attempt to keep me at bay. But that didn’t matter. I could attack from 10 feet away with my pole pruner if I had to.

The pruner had a curved saw blade and a lopper that operated by pulling a rope attached to it. My plan was to shove the pole pruner into the spice bush, hook the branch holding the trimmer and pull the rope, lopping off the branch. When I pulled the lopper, the spice bush let out a blood curdling scream and burst into flames. The screen porch was on fire!

The police said I had a shotgun in one hand and a can of gasoline in the other when they arrived. I couldn’t account for that, but I knew I was crazy as I got in the van for my “complimentary” ride to Yodel Hills. As we came up to the entrance, I noticed there were two large spice bushes growing on either side of the door. I could tell they wanted to kill me. I begged to use a side entrance and everybody laughed as they dragged me toward the door and the waiting spice bushes.


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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Deesis

Deesis (de’-e-sis): An adjuration (solemn oath) or calling to witness; or, the vehement expression of desire put in terms of “for someone’s sake” or “for God’s sake.”


Lulu: I swear to God, if you do something like that again, I will duct tape you to a chair in the backyard, slap you around with a piece of hose, smash your fingers with a hammer, and stab you to death with one of our hibachi skewers.

Stew: It sounds like you’ve given my murder a lot of thought. That’s a good sign, given your struggles with impulse control. But I consider what you’re saying to be a real threat, especially because I don’t know what the horrible thing is that I did. Was it waking you up when I came home late last night? As you know honey, I’m an actuary and working late compiling statistics goes with the job.

Lulu: That’s not what I’m talking about you yodel head! You know damn well what I’m talking about. You just don’t listen. You don’t care. I should’ve known. I should’ve listened to my mother, God rest her soul. And what you’re doing to our little Timmy’s moral compass is an absolute disgrace!

If you play catch ever again with Timmy with my mother’s ashes, you’re headed to the morgue Stewy. What if Timmy dropped Mother’s urn and her ashes spilled all over the living room carpet? What then? Do we just vacuum her up and forget about it? Do we empty the vacuum bag back into her urn and just put her back up on the mantle? What are you thinking? You make “shit for brains” sound like a compliment!

Stew: Well! That’s a surprise! Your mother loved baseball, I thought she’d enjoy having her ashes tossed back and forth between Timmy and me, especially in preparation to get him involved in Little League. There’s no harm in that! It’s a tribute to your mother. Plus, the urn is made of brass—nice and heavy. It’ll build up Timmy’s muscles.

I’m getting Timmy a baseball glove this weekend. Tryouts are in two weeks. He’s going to be a champ—after throwing his Grammy back and forth, he’s got the eye, and I think he’s developed a respect for the game that doesn’t come from playing catch with a ball. At least we didn’t use your mother’s urn for batting practice. Ha ha!

Lulu: I’m headed to Ace Hardware to get a roll of duct tape. I’m going to put it on the mantle alongside my mother’s ashes. I hope you’ll be reminded of what’s in store for you if you ever touch my mother’s ashes ever again, no matter what insane reason you may have.

Stew: Uh oh. I should’ve told you. We decided to play Grammy catch in the back yard a couple of hours ago. Timmy dropped Grammy and her ashes spilled out. Right then, the lawn sprinklers came on and washed her away. There’s about a teaspoon of Grammy left in the bottom of her urn. I hope that’s ok.

Lulu took the urn down from the mantel and looked inside. There was a tiny bit of her mother stuck inside the bottom of it. She bashed Stew over the head with the urn and called 911 when he fell to the floor. Stew moaned. She bashed him again. She was glad the urn was made of brass.

She could hear the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles. Lulu hoped they wouldn’t get there in time as she gave Stew another bash on the head.


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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Dehortatio

Dehortatio (de-hor-ta’-ti-o): Dissuasion.


Her: This is the most ridiculous afternoon I’ve ever spent. I never even thought about “spending afternoons” until today wandering around in the woods with headphones on and carrying this stupid metal detector, looking for buried treasure. My arm is tired from sweeping the ground, and I’m getting cold. I want to go home! Now!

Him: Now now honey. I can almost smell the gold. Like I said, they say pirates buried treasure in these woods. Nobody believes the story, so the gold is here for the taking!

Her: You will believe anything! Guess where the nearest ocean is. 1,000 miles! Do you think the pirates put wheels on their ships and drove them here, to Kansas? Why didn’t they bury their treasure somewhere along the Jersey shore, like Cape May? Come on. Let’s go home and return to sanity. I’ll make your favorite lettuce, anchovy, apple and American cheese pizza and we can sit by the pool and forget about this treasure nonsense. Come on! Shut off your metal detector.

Him: Ha ha! You’re so funny. I’m not buying it. If I gave up on everything you wanted me to give up on, we’d still be living in the pup tent in Buffalo Roam State Park. If it hadn’t been for me, we’d still be there, rummaging trash cans in the picnic area and stealing food from other campers. If it wasn’t for winter’s onset and the prospect of freezing to death, we never would’ve left and I never would’ve bought that winning lotto ticket with our only dollar, and we wouldn’t be multi-millionaires now. So, shut up and keep sweeping.

Just then, his metal detector went wild. It sounded like an ambulance on its way to a 911 call. He pulled out his spade and started digging, while she continued nagging him to go home. He hit wood with his spade and dug around it. It looked like a plank. It was their property, so they called in an excavator to dig up whatever it was.

As the dirt cleared, what looked like a wooden ship started to emerge! It was remarkably well-preserved, and it had wheels. He climbed onto the deck and ripped open the hatch cover. Looking down into the hold, he saw the dull yellow glint of gold—bars of gold. Hundreds of bars of gold. He heard a voice: “Hey matey! I been waitin’ for you. It seems just yesterday I set off in my wheel ship to make the trek overland with my crew and my treasure, headed where nobody would look for it. We had a 20-mule team pullin’ her. This spot is where the mules gave out. We dug a ship-size hole, and rolled her in. Then, I invited my crew one by one to join me in the ship’s hold for a glass of rum. As they climbed down the ladder, I ran each one of them through. After I killed them all, I went back on deck to figure how to finish covering up the ship.

A garden gnome walked out of the woods. They were sort of like wardens watching over the woods. The gnome asked me what I was up to and I told him ‘Non of your business pee wee.’ As soon as the ‘wee’ came out of my mouth, I knew I was in trouble. His little red pointy hat started spinning around on his head and smoke was coming out of his ears. Needless to say, he put a powerful gnome-curse on me: to stay in the ship’s hold until somebody found me. I climbed back down into the hold and a gang of gnomes filled the dirt on top of it, leaving no trace that anything was buried there. But, here you are! I’m free! I’d be happy to take that naggin’ wife offa your hands—I could hear her all the way down here. I been down here alone for a hundred years or more and I’m desperate for the company of a woman, even if she’s a pain the the stern.”

He stood there in shock. He helped the pirate out of the ship’s hold. His wife was standing waiting.

Pirate: Argh! Shiver me timbers! Blow me down! Avast! It’s me old lady, Moanin’ Mary. I thought I put a bullet between your eyes on our wedding night, just for sport.

Her: Captain Billy Nail! It can’t be you! I still love you! I still need you! You were always reckless and did weird things for fun. I’ve been living here as a “Ghost First Class” ever since you shot me in our bed at the “Crimson Nose.” This piece of crap standing here is my 12th husband. Take me away from this poor excuse for a man. Take me back to the wind, and the spindrift, the raids, and the smell of hot blood staining the decks!

He was stunned and scared out of his wits. He’d been married to a ghost pirate woman all these years. She didn’t smell. He couldn’t see through her. She didn’t cackle. She just nagged the hell out of him. And now he knew that the round scar between her eyes wasn’t from Chicken Pox. He ran home faster than he ever had run in his entire life, leaving the two of them behind. What should he do? Call 911 and tell them there was a pirate ghost that his ghost wife knew from a prior life, and they were getting ready to run away together! This was insane! He’d just have to let them run off together and rekindle their blood-sloshed romance. He would save big-time on attorney fees and alimony. He felt pretty good about that.

First thing in the morning he went back to the ship to figure out how to get the gold out of it. When he got there, the ship was gone, along with his wife and Captan Nail. There were wagon wheel tracks that ran about 100 feet from the now-empty hole, and then, disappeared.

As he headed back home empty-handed, he felt better than he had in 20 years—that was when he had met “Mary” standing in line at Long John Silver’s.


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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Dendographia

Dendrographia (den-dro-graf’-ia): Creating an illusion of reality through vivid description of a tree.


I was a loner as a kid, and my best friends were my little plastic cowboys and Army men. They were about one inch tall and were molded in different poses—cowboys spinning lariats and aiming .45s, and Army men marching, or aiming their rifles.


I used to play “little men” at the base of the oak tree during the summer when I was on school vacation. The oak tree towered above me. Even though it wasn’t autumn, every once in awhile an acorn would fall—sometimes hitting me on the head as I played. I would pick the acorns up and hold them up and look at them—smooth shiny green skin with a brown cap—round, with a surface almost like sandpaper. If I tossed an acorn it would bounce along the sidewalk, flip flopping in different directions.

The sidewalk had cracked around the base of the tree where its roots had stretched out, some over six inches wide. They formed tunnels between them, turning into little caves where they grew from the tree. This summer, carpenter ants had taken up residence in the tree. There was sawdust accumutating at the mouths of the cave openings.

For the heck of it, I put my favorite cowboy Joe at a cave’s opening. Joe said, “Git outta here you varmints or I’ll call in the soldiers and have you run outta here!” I heard a tiny female voice say, “Oh thank-you noble cowboy! But, it is hopeless. Once they take over, it’s all over. I will need to find a new home. But where?” I stuck my face in front of the opening. The tree fairy inside made Barbie look like a frump. The tree fairy saw me and asked me who I was. I said, “My name is Johnny. I can help you find a new home. There are woods at the bottom of my street where there are two or three really big oak trees. Come with me and you’ll be saved.” She said, “Yes. I will stay with you tonight and we can find me a new home tomorrow.” I agreed. She came out of the tree and climbed into my shirt pocket. We sneaked into my house, past my mom and up to my room.

“This where I sleep. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” After dinner and after watching the “Honeymooners” with my mom, dad and sister, I went up to my room. The little tree fairy was already asleep on my pillow. I put her and the pillow on the floor and climbed into bed. In the morning, we were awakened by the sound of chainsaws. They were cutting down the oak tree! The tree fairy started crying. She was tiny, but her crying was deafening. The chainsaws stopped. She said she had to say goodbye to her beloved tree, and then we’d be on our way. I put her in my shirt pocket and we headed downstairs. When we got to the tree, the workers were distracted, arguing about why their chainsaws had quit.

The tree fairy said to the oak tree: “You were my home for 112 years. You fed me. You kept me warm and dry. I tended you as best as I could, but there comes a time when a tree must die. You are dying. Goodbye my beloved oak tree.” She asked me to gather a handful of acorns for her to store and have to eat when she got to her new home. As I turned and we started for the woods again, the chainsaws started up and the workers went back to cutting down the tree.

We found a beautiful new home for her—a giant oak with a squirrel living in a nest in its branches. I put the acorns on the ground and lifted the tree fairy out of my pocket. She said “Hold my face to your forehead.” I did, and she gave me a kiss. I put her down and she scurried into an opening at the bottom of the tree.

I went back early the next morning. She and the acorns were gone.

When I went to school that day, I noticed there was a new girl in my class. She wore a necklace made of acorns. She looked at me like she knew me. Could it be?


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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.