Monthly Archives: March 2024

Kategoria

Posted on March 6, 2024 | Leave a comment

Kategoria (ka-te-go’-ri-a): Opening the secret wickedness of one’s adversary before his [or her] face.

I guess there’s a legitimate place for secrets. Like in the CIA where everything’s secret, even secrets. Or, maybe when you’re working on an invention., like a better mouse trap. But there are mostly bad things kept secret, to enable getting away with bad deeds, like you. All it took was one squealer to bring your house of lies tumbling down.

Do you know who squealed? It was Rev. Bawkward. He told me that after five, you refused to play his organ any more. Since you have no musical talent, we know what organ he was talking about. He said your organ playing had kept him going when he was getting a divorce. I asked him why he was telling me this because he hoped I would kill you or beat you up. Clearly, I’ve done neither. I really don’t care if you play his organ as long as you take some music lessons. If it brings Rev. Bawkward comfort and joy, it’s a good thing. Just don’t keep it secret.

Rev. Bawkward told me about Big Ed Rose at the grocery store. He’s seen Big Ed carrying your groceries to your car which is parked in the bushes at the farthest end of the parking lot. I guess it’s not a secret that he helps, but what was a secret was what you were doing to make the car rock back and forth. I’m not going to accuse you to your face, but you shouldn’t let Big Ed carry your groceries. Maybe you should drive up in front of the grocery store and pick up your groceries.

Last, the stuff you’re buying on Amazon isn’t a secret, although you think it is. I see that you’re buying stuff on Amazon and reselling it on E-Bay. It was the chainsaw that initially got my attention. Today, I saw the set of cold chisels. You say you’re making money for our vacation. That’s a lie. We’ve never gone on vacation, except on our honeymoon.

So, this is no secret: I’m filing for a divorce. You’ve never heard of her, but Candy and I will be getting married as soon as our divorce is finalized. If you’re going to have secrets you should be able to keep them. Rev. Gawker called this morning and he wants you to play his organ. I hope Big Ed doesn’t find out.

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

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Litotes

Posted on March 5, 2024 | Leave a comment

Litotes (li-to’-tees): Deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite. The Ad Herennium author suggests litotes as a means of expressing modesty (downplaying one’s accomplishments) in order to gain the audience’s favor (establishing ethos).

Jumping 300 feet into the ocean to save a drowning hamster was not that great an accomplishment. The weather was warm, the water was calm, and the hamster swam to me and perched on my head as I swam to shore and climbed back up the 300 foot cliff. I scolded the little boy who had thrown her off the cliff. I told him “Hamsters can’t fly son. You learned a lesson today.” The kid grabbed the hamster and ran away. To my dismay, two days later I found the hamster gasping for breath on the beach in front of my home. I shook her up and down like a bottle of ketchup. She squirted a small amount of seawater and regained consciousness. So, I have saved the little girl twice and I’m glad I could do it. I have adopted her and named her Hammy.

So, thank-you for the Appleton Person of the Year Award. I’m not sure I qualify, but I trust your judgment. I am going to use the prize money to hire a private investigator (PI). I will give him the task of finding the boy who threw Hammy off the cliff, failed to kill her, and then almost succeed at drowning her at a second try.

“Mel Windwood is my name and I’m here to find that rascal” the PI said with a grim look on his face. He was the owner of “Snoops.” He was recommended by Eloise Pompo who had just completed a successful divorce with Mr. Windwood as PI. So, we got started. We started with the pet shop. The proprietor told us there was a very creepy boy who had purchased 25 hamsters over the past two weeks. He had paid with his father’s credit card. His father was Rev. Skepter. We looked at each other and nodded. We were both atheists so we had no problem playing rough.

We found the boy in the rectory. Windwood tied his hands, blindfolded him, and threw him in the trunk of his Chevy Impala. We met at Ocean Cliff where the boy had tried to throw the hamster—little Hammy—to her death. I held Hammy up to his face. Hammy was growling. I said, “Hear that? That’s the hamster you tried to murder! She’s not a happy hamster.” The boy was visibly upset. Then, out of nowhere, he got his hands free, pulled off the blindfold, and pulled a switchblade knife out of his pocket. Windwood knocked the knife out of his hand and pushed him off the cliff. Windwood said “Well that’s that. Let’s get the hell out of here.” I was shocked. I yelled “Asshole!” over my shoulder as I jumped off the cliff to save the boy. I got to him just as he was about to drown. He started laughing uncontrollably and saying “You’re screwed Mr. Good Guy.”

And indeed I was. Attempted murder. Kidnapping. Tarnishing the Appleton person of the year award. But that’s not the worst of it. Rev. Skepter’s son, aka “the boy” became Ohio’s most notorious serial killer. He would place a drowned hamster on each victim’s face. He was caught drowning a batch of hamsters in the fountain in Appleton’s city park. He was arrested and the rest is history. He’s scheduled for a lethal injection in a couple of weeks.

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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Martyria

Posted on March 4, 2024 | Leave a comment

Martyria (mar-tir’-i-a): Confirming something by referring to one’s own experience.

What gave me my ideas? My experience! Where else could they come from? We can’t be born with them or we’d all think alike. We’d all like Elvis. We’d all like ice cream. But, we don’t, and we may be considered crazy as a consequence. What is experience? It is anything you’re conscious of, and then, think about, which is a kind of experience too. So, you can’t be wrong just because your experience isn’t the same as somebody else’s: I look at the sunset and have a fit and start running around in circles. You look at the so-called same sunset and you take a picture and write a bullshit poem. Same sunset, different experiences. This is a problem with eyewitnesses, but it is too complicated to discuss here.

I used to spend a lot of time crushing insects with my hammer. I carried my hammer in my backpack. When I saw an insect, say an ant, I would stop and pull out my hammer and slam slam the ant. It’s crushed and gooey carcass made me happy, like a hug from my mother or a piece of chocolate cake. I would carefully clean off my hammer, preparing it for its next slam. It didn’t take much courage to kill insects, just viciousness and a lack of remorse.

But, it did take courage to kill the black widow in the wood pile. The surface was uneven and the Black Widow was suspended in a web with about 2” between it and woodpile. If my blow landed unevenly, there was a chance that the spider would fall on my naked leg (I was wearing shorts) and get me. As I swung my hammer, the spider jumped and landed on my wrist. I brushed it off before it could bite me. I stomped it under my Birkenstock, put my hammer away and ran home.

I still felt the Black Widow on my wrist. I opened my bedroom door and my bedroom was filled with spiders. They formed into a phalanx and came toward me. I ran outside screaming and locked myself in the family car. My mother unlocked it. I was slapping myself and yelling gibberish. An ambulance was summoned to take me to “Crystal Ribbon Sanatorium” for one week’s “observation.” After a week of being hosed down, taking hot baths, electric shocks, and wearing pajamas 24/7, I was released. I couldn’t remember anything and I drooled a lot and drew pictures of crushed insects. I asked for my hammer and my mother gave me a rubber one from a child’s toy tool set.

It’s been ten years since the black widow incident. I still hardly remember it, but I got a big black widow tattooed on the back of my neck. I still enjoy crushing insects and discover that the rubber hammer my mother gave me works quite well. It doesn’t mar surfaces. When I smash an insect and hear its exoskeleton crunch, I feel free. Sometimes I say the “Pledge of Allegiance” after a kill, with my hand over my heart.

This is but one example of how “experiences” have structured my life. Some other time we can discuss my performance art—shooting myself in the arm with a .22 caliber pistol, or windshield diving—colliding with trees not wearing a seatbelt. I also might talk about cockroach ranching. My apartment is my lone prarie.

Currently, I’m full time at “Crystal Ribbon.” I’m in the criminally insane wing. I became known as “Hammer Man” before I turned myself in. I didn’t kill anybody, but I tried. The rubber jammer didn’t do the job. It just left lumps and bruises.

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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Maxim

Posted on March 3, 2024 | Leave a comment

Maxim (max’-im): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others einclude adage, apothegm, gnome, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

“A wise man is not a wise guy.” I live by this basic ancient truth. It is noted, that Neanderthals lived by the maxim too. There is a Neanderthal painting on a cave wall in France of a man in a playful pose being beaten over the head with a jawbone. It would seem that wisdom was not valued—that wise guys ran the caves and routinely murdered smart people by beating them on the head with jawbones. Some people claim the Biblical story of Samson is derived from Neanderthal cave paintings. But this can’t be true. The Bible is a much more reliable source of holy stories with powerful symbolism that is true because holy people say so to give you a chance to exercise your faith, which enables belief in otherwise unbelievable things, like Samson slewing 1,000 Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone. I don’t believe it, So it must be true. At least, that’s what I think.

As a boy, I lived on a quiet street in New Jersey. Beautiful maple trees, and flower gardens and close cropped lawns. There was a Philistine family that lived up the street from us. I delivered the newspaper to them and collected on Mondays. I had little envelopes to put the collection in and put under the doormat. Mr. Mitini would put troubling notes in my collection envelopes along with the money, like, “There’s blood on your hands.” I told my Dad and he told me not to worry, as long as I got paid. Then, one Monday, Mr. Mitini came to the door when I was dropping off the collection envelope. He had on a striped bathrobe and had a jawbone in his hand. He asked, “What did we do wrong?” I ran away and stopped delivering the paper to the Mitinis for two weeks. When I resumed delivery, Mr. Mitini apologized and looked normal. Everything was fine after that.

This experience motivated me to become an archeologist, studying the Philistines. Theirs is a tangled history, just like all the other cultures I study in the period I study. For a pretty exhaustive introductory account of the Philistines, see: https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/what-we-know-about-the-philistines/

I haven’t read all of it yet. As a scholar, I’m pretty lazy, but I managed to get tenure here at Roy Orbison University. Our school song is “Crying.” It fits because we’re chronically short of funding. Talking about funding, I ‘m trying to get funding for a research project in Las Vegas. Most people would agree that visitors to Las Vegas are Philistines. I am interested in determining the accuracy of the appellation in light of the overarching truth of my other studies. I need $500,000. I am certain I will double it and pay every penny back to Roy Orbison U. I’m meeting with the grants committee tomorrow. I think if I offer each member $1,000 if they finance me, I’ll get the grant.

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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Meiosis

Posted on March 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

Meiosis (mei-o’-sis): Reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes). This term is equivalent to tapinosis.

They called me “Shorty.” I was 6’ 8” tall. I think it was my father who gave me the nickname when I was a baby and wouldn’t fit in the basinet. My feet hung over the end and made my ankles sore. So, my dad hung out at the grocery store until they threw away a box I could fit in. My dad glued the box to two saw horses, and that was it. I had grown so much by the time I was four, I started wearing adult clothing. I loved my blue suede shoes with gold buckles, and red sharkskin bell-bottoms. It couldn’t last forever. As I aged, my clothing became more age appropriate. Now, I have to wear long and tall pants and shirts. I have to go all the way to New York to find them.

I wanted to be a railroad engineer, but that wasn’t meant to be, even though I had had a summer internship with the Erie Lackawanna line. I sat on my seat with my arm hanging out the window as the wind blew through my hair. I loved blowing the horn as we’d pass kids pumping their arms up and down. But, given my height, I was being pressured to play basketball. The first time I picked up a basketball, I dropped it. I started wearing basketball clothes. I lived in Chicago now, so I wore Chicago Bulls garb. I looked the role, but I couldn’t play it.

There was a Bulls coach who I met on the Chicago L, he encouraged me to come to a practice, given my height. I told him I had no athletic ability. He said, “Let me be the judge of that.”

I showed up for practice. After about ten minutes he told me I was right—I had no athletic ability and to quit wasting his time. He gave me cab fare. I cried all the way home. I told my dad and he clenched his fists. My Dad was “Notorious Nick.” He is deceased now, but then he was a Capo commanding an extortion crew. Dad said, “Don’t worry son, I’ll take care of that slime.”

Two days later they found him hanging from a basketball basket with his pants pulled down, and “Slime” written on his forehead in red lipstick. He didn’t die, but he became nicer. My dad asked me: “You want to play basketball?” I said no, “I want to be a railroad engineer,” Two days later, I was a railroad engineer. I had a few mishaps, but I learned. The worst was the woman duct-taped to the tracks. I stopped before I squished her, but I found out it was a college fraternity prank. I told Dad and, in lieu of arresting them, he had them all drafted, assigned to the infantry, and sent to Vietnam. They’re all complained to their congressional representatives. They were all ignored.

So, guess what? I fell in love with the girl duct taped to the tracks and she fell in love with me. She was studying pipe fitting at BOCES. We have a two-year old daughter. We couldn’t decide whether to name her “Choo-Choo” or “Wah Wah” so we named her “Piper” or “Pipe” for short.

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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Mempsis

Posted on March 1, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mempsis (memp’-sis): Expressing complaint and seeking help.

“What’s the matter with you?” My wife asked.

I yelled, “I’m stuck under the bed. Pick up the bed and pull me out! I found my slipper, but my butt’s wedged under the box spring. Come on, where are you?” My wife came back in the bedroom. She said, “I’m putting you on an under bed diet, honey. My slippers trap worked perfectly. Your fat ass is captured.” I squirmed around, I tried to lift the bed, I sucked in my stomach, nothing worked. She said, “It’s going to get a little smelly under there, but I’ll clean you up as best I can. I have this rubber tube for you to eat your special diet through. According to the web, you’ll lose 20 lbs in a week.”

If I had my cellphone, I would’ve called the police. My wife had clearly gone around the bend. On the other hand, I was fat and she had been pestering me for at least five years to lose weight. The worst consequence of my obesity was our daughter. She was only 6 and she weighed 165 lbs. She was on the Elementary School wrestling team. Our mantle was loaded with her trophies. This was great in one sense, but her weight was clearly an unhealthy price to pay. She would tell me she wanted to be fat like me and beat everybody up.

I’d been under the bed for a week when my wife left the door open. I saw my daughter’s feet go by and called out to her. She came in the room and said: “God it stinks in here! Why are you under the bed?” “Never mind that, just get me out of here!” I yelled. “Lift the bed!” She lifted the bed and I skittered out from under it.

I was on the warpath. I asked my daughter where her mother was. She told me was at “Hair-Snips” her friend Barbara’s hair salon, getting a makeover. I took a shower and put on clean clothes.

The only weapon I could find was my claw hammer. I was going to do a citizen’s arrest for false imprisionment, and I thought I would need a weapon to render her compliant. I walked into “Hair-Snips” and all the women turned a looked at me and started making cat calls: “Woo baby, what’s your number?, What’re you doing tonight?, Nice buns, I want a piece of what you’re packin’ honey,” and more. I had lost 20lbs under the bed. I was a stud again! I looked with an air of detachment at the fawning women and strutted to my wife’s chair, and gave her a long hug, and stuck my tongue in her ear. I felt like a rock star. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight baby.” So, the three of us went out to dinner. Our daughter ate a donut in the car on the way to the restaurant. My wife looked knowingly at me.

We discussed it and decided the under bed diet was too cruel for our dear daughter. So, we decided instead to handcuff her hands behind her back between meals.

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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