Diasyrmus (di’-a-syrm-os): Rejecting an argument through ridiculous comparison.
This “case” is a basket Cael. I’m not sure what that is, but I know it’s bad. Maybe it’s like a glass that’s half paper instead of half full. But maybe it is like a broken toilet or stapler that won’t staple. Or better yet—that smells like fresh roadkill—a raccoon perhaps?
My name is Professor Dirtwedge. My nickname among my students is Dr. Prick. I am cruel. I have never given a grade above C. I humiliate my students by belittling their intelligence in class. Nobody volunteers to speak. I have call on them to thwart their fear of participation. I am a philosophy professor and teach an introductory course titled “You are stupid: Admit it.” The course is centered round the works of the renowned hippie philosopher Californicus. His work was based on the Rolling Stones’ “you can’t always get what you want, but at least you don’t get what you don’t want, and if you do, you have to act like you need it.” Mr. Jimmy’s utterance (dead) frames the text’s intention of celebrating our shared fate: dead. It elaborates on the different ways you can become dead: disease, accident, suicide, murder. Californicus elaborates the received list with less conspicuous ways that the end comes. For example, laughing, foot stomping, dancing to frenetic jazz music.
I study the games insects play and their ethical dimensions. I have discovered that all ants cheat at everything they play. To be a consummate cheater is an aspiration of all ants. As they plod along building their mounds, protecting each other and gathering food, they would rather be playing ant checkers and cheating. I have been able to interview ants by using pheromones smeared on sweet-smelling candy wrappers. Their poetry and short fiction are mesmerizing. A scrap of a poem by a carpenter ant: “I make sawdust, oh I must. I chew for you. Some day this old house will fall, and become a shopping mall.”
This is a remarkable meditation on the passage of time and the fools it makes of us all. It’s like the Bible or a sticky note stuck on a car’s speedometer or a wheel of fortune that never stops turning, and if it does, it goes the opposite direction afterwards.
So, how did I become a tenured professor here at “The Meter’s Running University”? My mother died during my oral defense of my dissertation. I started crying when I was informed, so my committee took pity and passed me. I received tenure when the President found out I had “a story to tell.” He overrode the tenure committee after he heard my story. His wife had gone missing and my ants had told me where she was buried. When I showed him the map they had drawn, he knew he was had.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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