Monthly Archives: November 2023

Apothegm

Posted on November 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apothegm (a’-po-th-e-gem): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, gnome, maxim, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

“If you can’t cut the mustard, put the baloney away.” Anon

This is one of my favorite sayings. It originated in Germany where mustard and baloney have deep cultural significance. Although “put the baloney away” can have a bawdy meaning for a German, it is usually read as social commentary on bragging, along the lines of the English saying “Put up or shut up.” Or, “Money talks, bullshit walks.”

Sayings, of course, have cultural roots. Like the Japanese: “Wake up and smell the sushi.” Or the French: “Don’t stack your Macaroons.” Or the English: “If the bloody tea’s hot, sip it.” Or Russia: “Don’t marry a nesting doll.” Or Iceland: “If it looks like Northern Lights, it is.” Or the Dutch: “You tolerate it, it tolerates you.”

In most cases, sayings are freighted with deep, metaphoric meaning. Let’s have a look at one of the most vexing and important sayings in Western thought: “A stitch in time saves nine.” At some point in history, the various nuances of “stitch” were more readily discerned. Probably, the primary referent for “stitch” when the saying was coined was sewing. In contemporary discourse, it can refer to the pain you get in your side from jogging, or it can mean being under the spell of humor, as “I was in stitches,”

So, we have established that “stitch” refers to sewing. But at this point we fall into a hermeneutic abyss with the introduction of “time.” What is a “stitch in time?” The answer may stretch from Einstein to “Back to the Future.” But we see by what follows—the stitch in time “saves nine [stitches]”. So, the “stitch in time” may refer to slowing sewing so you make fewer errors that you have to go back and redo—the “nine” saved from haste. Now we see the intertextuality of cultural truths: “Haste makes waste” is a Canadian version of “stitch in nine.” It can be recognized as the Canadian version because it has a polite, yet blunt, tenor.

So, as I.A. Richards, the mountain climbing philosopher of language said: “Say it don’t spray it!” Or Nietzsche: “In the valley of the used cars, low mileage is king.” Sayings are grist for our learning mill. Whenever we use a saying, we punctuate the moment with something that makes us look smarter than we will ever be.

We stand on the shoulders of NBA Centers..

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

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Appositio

Posted on November 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

Appositio (ap-po-sit’-i-o): Addition of an adjacent, coordinate, explanatory or descriptive element.

This was going to be the best day I ever had—the stars were aligned like they had never been aligned before. The most powerful sign was astrological. My sign is Capricorn, the goat. Once in 1million years Polaris would be in the sky directly over my goat barn. This is a monumental event.

I was sitting in my goat barn waiting for something to happen. After three hours with no cosmic event. I was about to give up when I noticed my goats were gathering in their outside pen. Surely, this had some significance. Like all goats they liked to climb up on things and stand there going “Meh,” but tonight they climbed up on each other and made a pyramid like Chinese acrobats. I walked inside the pyramid. I was spun around in circles turning red and blue. I could feel my body changing. My arms turned into legs, I grew a goatee and a nice set of horns. I could only speak in Meh. The goats disassembled the pyramid and I was left standing there. One of the goats said to me in meh, “This used to be my farm. One night, I got sucked into the pyramid thing just like you. I tried everything to get back to my human form—wearing pants, taking baths in the water trough, going for rides with you on the tractor.” “What now?” I asked.

“There is a wizard in the Dell who actually owns the farm and turns his tenants into goats so he can rent the farm to a new tenant at a higher price and make more money. It sounds like a pretty stupid idea, but Dell wizards are not known for their intelligence.” my new friend said. “We must visit him,” I said.

We did not know what a Dell looked like, so it took awhile to find the Wizard. He lived in a hovel—if you leaned on it it could fall down. He aimed a pitchfork at us and asked in Meh, “What do you want with me?” I said, “We want to be made human again.” He said, “I thought you’d never ask” and rainbow flames shot out of his pitchfork. The pitchfork malfunctioned. We were turned into fauns. At least we were Hal human! The wizard apologized.

We were feeling lustful. We headed into town to see if we could live up to our ready-made reputations. Our first stop was Betty Boom Boom’s Brothel. Just imagine! The next morning, when I awoke, Betty herself was snuggled up next to me. She asked me if I wanted to be Manager-in-chief of her brothel. I said “Yes, as long as I can have one large fresh carrot per day and you’ll dispose of my annoying fellow traveler.” Betty said, “Done and done.” Later that day, there was a frightful squealing sound out in the yard.

I couldn’t bring my self to look. I was a faun. I was running a brothel. What could be better?

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.

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Ara

Posted on November 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Ara (a’-ra): Cursing or expressing detest towards a person or thing for the evils they bring, or for inherent evil.

Mothers. Who died, and put them in charge? Nag, nag, nag to no avail except a feeling of worthlessness and anxiety. Do my socks smell? What about my armpits? Do they smell? Do I smell? Why should it matter? Because Mother makes it matter by bringing it up all the time: “Son, you have B.O. you better go soak in some laundry detergent. Then, you’ll smell as fresh as a sunny May day—72 degrees with a mild breeze and Crocus coming up in everybody’s front yard.” She made being clean like a peak experience in life—like watching your child being born or hiking the Appalachian trail from beginning to end, or finding a coin worth thousands of dollars of dollars in your change at the grocery store.

I guess what I hate is the prodding it takes to be normal, always needing somebody else to frame it for you, because you do not know what it is. My mother would ask me: “You are on your way to school and see a house in flames. What should you do?” I wanted to get it right, and my mother was going to determine that from my answer. The words “normal” and “right” had no meaning for me—they just were said to see their effect on others, which would determine their meaning for the time being. So, I ventured an answer to Mother’s question: “I would keep on way to school. The people in the house will die no matter what I do. There’s not even a garden hose to put out the fire as far as I know. But learning is more important. I don’t want to be late to school. I might miss something.” No matter what I answered Mother would slap me across the face and yell “Moron!” So, given the repetition of question/answer/slapping sequence I can think of myself as a Moron. It was a comfortable feeling, knowing I would never amount to anything, and striving was unnecessary for me to achieve my potential, because it was nonexistent. I was on a cruise—no corporate ladders to climb, no worrying about body odor except when my mother came visit. She reaffirmed my moronhood, and the leisurely lifestyle it affords me. But, I still hate her because she didn’t ask me more questions I couldn’t answer correctly, deepening my moronic self concept.

When you’re wrong all the time, nobody expects you to be right. This is a wonderful feeling: nobody expects anything from you. You are free! This is the moron’s credo.

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

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Articulus

Posted on November 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Articulus (ar-tic’-u-lus): Roughly equivalent to “phrase” in English, except that the emphasis is on joining several phrases (or words) successively without any conjunctions (in which case articulus is simply synonymous with the Greek term asyndeton). See also brachylogia.

“Stand up, sit down, roll over, beg, speak.” My father thought it was funny to treat me like a dog. He nicknamed me “Hardy” after the neighbor’s dog. Whenever our neighbor called their dog, I would come running. Everybody thought it was hilarious, including me. I was only 12, so if my dad thought it was funny, so did I. When I got older, my neighbor’s wife started calling me Hardy. Of course, I’d come running. When I got to her front door, I made a little whining sound I had developed to enhance the realism of my dog-hood. She would open the door with her bathrobe open and I would “chase my tail” on the porch and make happy dog yipping sounds.

She’d hold out a cupcake and ask me if I wanted “a treat, boy.” 0f course I said “Yes” and sat with my “paws” up by my chin. She hand-fed me the cupcake and asked me if I wanted to come in and play ride the pony. I loved ride the pony. She made whinnying sounds and bucked.

We were in the middle of our ride when the police burst in and put handcuffs on her. I barked and growled at them and they just shook their heads and told me to go home. When I got home, my dad told me that now I was 18 and “you are longer Hardy.” He told me I had turned 18 the previous week, but he had forgotten to tell me. He gave me a new set of knee pads even though he told me my dog days were over.

I went to the police station, told them I was 18 and showed my birth certificate as proof. They shook their heads and looked at me with pity in their eyes: “your neighbor was arrested for shoplifting a 20 foot extension ladder from Ace Hardware,” one of them said. I was allowed to visit her in her cell. I got on her lap, whined, and licked her face. She scratched me behind the ear and said, “Good boy.” She told Mr she stole the ladder so we could elope—so we wouldn’t be killed by her husband. With that, I was so overcome with emotion, I started humping her leg. She yelled “No! Sit!” and pushed me away. I calmed down and just sat there looking at her. Suddenly, she said, “It’s over.” I sat up and begged, but it did not work. She was having none of it.

One of the conditions of her release was to stay away from me and undergo psychological counseling. I looked for a new master but had no luck. Evidently, ours was a rare condition. I blamed it all on my father—if he hadn’t nicknamed me Hardy, none of this would’ve happened. At night, when I howl over my lost love, he yells “Shut up or I’ll lock you in the garage!”

I’ve entered counseling with Dr. Mastiff at the Fern Frond Clinic. We play fetch for one hour per week. Sometimes, we bark at each other.

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.

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Aschematiston

Posted on November 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Aschematiston: The use of plain, unadorned or unornamented language. Or, the unskilled use of figurative language. A vice. [Outside of any particular context of use or sense of its motive, it may be difficult to determine what’s “plain, unadorned or unornamented language.” The same is true of the “unskilled use of figurative language.”]

“The bouncing corn dog hit me in the ankle—it’s stick stabbed me in the ankle like an angry knitting needle steeped in revenge on the edge of unfathomable cryptic incidences without valor or heroism—just a random wound on life’s fabric—the vulnerable skin—the bag of life.”

This is fictional, although it is hard to identify it as such. I am a writer looking for a break among the rubble of hope, meeting out failure and displaying it in front of so many eyes. It used to be anybody with a stylus could bang out stories in cuneiform on clay tablets. It took so much effort just to write, only the gifted could afford to put in the time and effort it took to write something. The very first story ever written was about a Turkish shoe salesman who is beheaded for selling uncomfortable shoes to the Caliph. The Caliph’s Minister of Footwear purposely gave the wrong size to the shoe salesman because he had seduced his wife with a pair of golden, jewel encrusted, running shoes. When she put on the shoes, they made her run to the shoe salesman’s house every night at 8:00pm. On her way one night, she was run over by a chariot. The chariot cut her in half, but a Genie took pity on her for her foolishness and put her back together and restored her life. But there was a problem: the Genie put her together backwards. Her butt faced frontward, so her feet faced backward. She wore a rear-view mirror on her shoulder so she could see where she was going. It is said that this is where the saying “ass backwards” originated.

Now, everybody has a computer. Everybody can become a writer. Every day, every publishing house receives an avalanche of email, proffering poems, short stories and books that nobody reads and that are responded to with short stock phrases: “Your work shows promise, but send it somewhere else,” “Your work made my eyes water, not with tears, but trying to make sense of it,” “Thank you for your submission. Please make this your last.” Their rule thumb is to randomly choose one manuscript out of every 25,000 manuscripts. This is why there’s so much crap being published. The only place that actually reviews manuscripts is China where there is a surplus of cheap labor. “Big Mao Press” is my favorite. They publish everything I submit, but they don’t pay royalties. They send me a framed picture of Mao and a copy of his “Little Red Book.”

Don’t let me discourage you with the truth of the futility of your hope to be a writer. If you aspire to be a writer, you will fail, unless you give “Big Mao Press” a spin. There’s no shame in being a Commie dupe. You won’t be the first or the last. Melania Trump’s book “Living With a Piece of Shit,” was published by “Big Mao Press” and she can’t even write!

Anyway, I am going to sort of give up on writing. Once, I wanted to write the great novel, like “Atlas Shrugged,” or Herbert Hoover’s “American Individualism.” But alas, it isn’t meant to be. I have completed one book: “The Talking Fire Hydrant.” I intend to submit it every day to a different publisher. Once I’ve exhausted them all, I’ll submit it to “Big Mao Press.” In the meantime, “Big Mao Press” has sent me a mail-order editor all the way from China—she and I travel in the vintage Chevy generously provided by the Chinese government. We drive to military installations, and take pictures in preparation for writing a travel guide together tentatively titled “Goodbye American Pies.”

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.

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