Cacozelia (ka-ko-zeel’-i-a): 1. A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned. 2. Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.
He is a pickled booger —relish for his secretion sandwich. Look at the mucus dripping from his lips. Of course, this isn’t literally true, it is the beginning of an allegory of the person he really is. Dog vomit. Cow flops. Puss. Blood. Gangrene. Amputated fingers. Ingrown toenail. Gout. Sweat. Rainbows.
Yes, rainbows. The light of hope beaming down on Noah’s yacht, ready to capsize with the weight of his living cargo—endangered species destined laboratories and museums up and down the east coast of North America. This is why I call him a pickled booger, and all the other disparagful cognomens. I don’t how or why he merits he rainbow. Perhaps God has made a mistake. Can it be? Who am I to say—a Papa John’s Pizza franchise owner. I must confess, the idea of pickled boogers intrigues. As a garnish, they would bring my franchise to the top of the mark. Pickled boogers are not produced everywhere. There is only one place in the world. I won’t reveal it. They are worth their weight in gold among aficionados. For example, Steve Banon consumes $1,000,000 worth per year. He has tiny toothpicks to spear them for “Boogartinis.” He sits by his pool sipping Boogartins and making up lies for his boss.
It just goes to show you that one person’s Boogatini is another person’s vile concoction. Which is it? Both. That’s how taste operates through our feeble understanding of its origin, say, in the tongue, with some tastes being excellent and others being vomit inducing. But one person can love what another person hates—we’ve already established that. So, it’s the person not the taste. Jello can tastes good and it can taste like crap (to somebody). Sweetness is the equivalent of truth to the tongue. it is certainly used as a metaphor for goodness—not quite truth—but sweet enough.
But, getting back to Captain Noah. His yacht “Bedlam” is looking for a place to dock. Given his cargo, his quest for a North American dock is doomed. We hear he is disguising the animal cargo to evade detection. They are being disguised as so many Rin-Tin-Tins. Rin-Tin-Tin was a German Shepard mercenary working for the US Army in the far western US. His major role was to bark vigorously in support of Army maneuvers. So, the animals on Noah’s yacht are being taught to bark—even the only existing Samoan Weasel Constrictor. That, I’d love to see. By the way, Noah is disguising his cargo of pickled boogers as peppercorns.
We live in strange times. “The lie, the disgusting, the ugly” have replaced “The true, the good, and the beautiful” as aspirational horizons of the human adventure. We are nearing the end. Don’t despair. Have a handful of pickled booger and make up some lies.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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