Monthly Archives: October 2024

Homoioteleuton

Posted on October 31, 2024 | Leave a comment

Homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-te-loot’-on): Similarity of endings of adjacent or parallel words.

“The itty, bitty, witty kitty made a sound like a diesel truck stuck in muck: Oh bad luck!” After I said this, I felt good, but my friends were looking at me with their mouths hanging open, puzzled and weirded out by what I had just said. These nonsense utterances were starting to fly out of my mouth, randomly, of their own accord. I needed help. I made an appointment with my psychologist.

“You’ve flipped your lid. You’re playing with a half a deck. You’ve lost your marbles. You’re going bananas. You’ve gone off the deep end.” These are the phrases my psychologist used to describe my state of mind. Then he said, “Just kidding. I like to do that every once in awhile to see how my clients react.” I stood up. I was going to punch him out for for messing me. My sanity was at stake and he was fu*king with me. He said “Sit down Herbert!” He was German. He sounded like a Nazi giving orders. I sat down.

He told me that I was suffering from one of the rarest psychological maladies in the world. He told me I was suffering from “Itty’s Compulsive Recollective Syndrome” (ICRS). It is a tendency to pile words together ending in “itty.” Its origin is completely bizarre—more than bizarre. It comes from not being breastfed as an infant, and becoming obsessed with the word “titty,” uttering its truncated cognates as symbolic of “titty’s” absence from your life. The “itty” words trigger thoughts of “titty” often plunging you into depression while at the same time giving you hope you may meet the “whole” titty and partake of your mother’s milk.

I thought he was joking, but he showed me the medical journal documenting ICRS. He told me the Japanese had developed a milk-giving mother sex doll for perverts. He recommended I get one and use it therapeutically to overcome my ICRS. It cost $4,000, a small price to pay to be cured.

My “mother” doll came in two weeks. I plugged in her charger and filled her milk tank with whole milk. The next morning I suckled her for breakfast. Her milk was warm and I drank my fill, had a cup of coffee and went to work. I had no “itty” episodes. I thought I was cured. I put “mother” away in the spare bedroom. Then, three days later I had another itty episode. I was dismayed. I plugged “Mother” back in and filled her milk tank, and had a good breakfast with her the next morning. I had no itty episodes at work.

This has been going on for five years. I don’t think I’ll ever stop needing the rubber mother titty. In a way it is like methadone.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in homoioteleuton

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Horismus

Posted on October 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

Horismus (hor-is’-mus): Providing a clear, brief definition, especially by explaining differences between associated terms.

“Love is not liking. Love is not doing it with another person. Love is not wanting. Love is not giving or receiving gifts. Love is not promising to be faithful. Love is not anything at all. If it is anything, it is a fool’s trap. A major con job. A joke that causes despair, and suffering, and pain.” This was Miss Eve Macintosh teaching our fifth grade health class. This week’s topic was “Love Stinks.”

Miss Macintosh’s boyfriend, Chip Wild, had been gruesomely murdered. He had been clubbed, stabbed, shot and run over. The police said the person who did it was deranged and filled hatred for Mr. Wild. He had a note pinned to his blood-soaked shirt that said: “You prick.” it was made out of letters cut from a magazine, like a ransom note. It was the worse thing that ever happened in our little town—Coal Town was aghast. People came from all over to see the blood stains on the sidewalk in front of Miss Macintosh’s house. People pitied Miss Macintosh, having her boy friend killed right in front of her house. They found the murder weapons in her kitchen where she put them for safekeeping until the police arrived. Chief Pesto expressed his gratitude for her community spirit and bravery.

Miss Macintosh didn’t go to Chip’s funeral. We understood how sad she was and how she couldn’t handle the pain. There were a half-dozen young women at the funeral who cried enough to make up for her not being there. Everybody was grateful.

They caught Lewis Other later that week. He was lurking around the crime scene with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing his liberal Blundstones, and his expensive Cartier wrist watch with a crocodile skin band. He was drinking a “Pink Lady Apple” Kombucha. Everybody knew he was a liberal, and the liberals were all murderous psychopaths who would lash out at right wing conservatives, unprovoked. They wanted to burn down churches, and “save” the environment, and tear down shopping malls and turn the parking lots into gardens of rare and endangered weeds. Chip Wild was Lewis Other’s opposite. Chip wanted to legalize hunting illegal immigrants, drill for oil in everybody’s back yard, require watching 2hrs of Fox News every day, beat up homeless people, place Bibles in all public restrooms, and build a meth lab in the high school’s chemistry classroom, and more. In short, Chip was one of us, Lewis was one of them.

Lewis was arrested at the crime scene. He was chained with a dog collar around his neck and paraded to the police station with cheering crowds lining the street. He was booked and thrown into a cell with the local nutcase, Pluto LaForge. One of the arresting officers had super glued a sign to Lewis’s back saying “Kick Me, I Murdered Chip.”

Coal Town had sold its courthouse in a bankruptcy settlement. Lewis’s trial was held on the High School football field. He couldn’t afford a lawyer, and bankrupt Coal Town did’t have the money to provide him with one. The remaining funds had been used to lease the mayor a new Cadillac.

Lewis Other was convicted of murder by a jury of Chip’s best friends and sentenced to be hanged. He was hanged later that day from a big oak tree in the town square. He climbed up on a bar stool with the rope around his neck. Miss Macintosh kicked the stool out from under him. He was wearing no bag over his head so you could see his stretch and hear it go “Pop.” It was gross, but justice had been served.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in horismus

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Hypallage

Posted on October 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Hypallage (hy-pal’-la-ge): Shifting the application of words. Mixing the order of which words should correspond with which others. Also, sometimes, a synonym for metonymy (see Quintilian).

“By the bed, a bucket, spilling bitter herbs.” I did it again. I blurted out a dreadful poetic burst. I was in the library working on my dissertation. I was shushed by at least ten people as I sunk into my seat, trying to disappear. I was so embarrassed I wanted to cry, or bang my head on my desk. I couldn’t do that or I would damage my laptop, and maybe, lose my dissertation, which had a personal twist: “The Blurt: The Cultural and Social Significance of Thoughtless Speech.”

It was a difficult area and blurts are rarely recorded because blurts are ephemeral. However, there was a dissolute nobleman, Sir Crowley Trapbait, who spent most of his time in bed blurting. He might yell, “I’m a nincompoop!” in the middle of the night. The servants would go on full alert, bracing for a night of blurts, some of which might require attention. The butler, Milo Petleash, kept an extensive diary of Sir Trapbait’s blurt’s. Sadly, he misplaced the diary someplace in the castle, over 300 years ago. As soon as I’ve spell-checked what I’ve written so far, and turned it in to my advisor, I’m off to Northern England to ransack New Castle Castle, located on the Exmoor Moor.

So far, I had written nine pages. It was slow going with one finger, and my nearly continuous blurting. When I turned my pages in I had blurted out “That suit looks like shit.” My dissertation advisor was used to it, so he just said “Oh?” As usual I regretted what I had said, and tried to apologize. I said “ Your office smells like a Goddamn cow barn” and left to buy my train ticket. I was traveling from Paddington to Exmoor.

Waiting in line to purchase my ticket, I struck up a conversation with an attractive woman in front of me. We were talking about the weather and politics when I blurted out, “I want to kiss you.” Her eyes went wide and she said, “I wanted to say that to you, but I didn’t have the courage.” This was the first time one of my blurts had been honored. This was special. We kissed. She gave me tongue and I reciprocated. People standing nearby kept saying “Ahem,” so we cut it out. We texted contact info, bought our tickets, and went our separate ways. She was going all the way to Inverness to do a review of the local scotch and distilleries.

My train ride was uneventful, with the exception of two blurts. I told the ticket taker he needed to have his uniform laundered and I told a little kid running up and down the aisle, that I was going to kill his mother if he didn’t sit down. That one got me in a little trouble. I denied I said it and my fellow passengers backed me up.

So, I arrived at the castle and the butler greeted me at the: “Come in. You look like shit.” For a week, I ransacked the castle looking for the diary., and blurting with residents. There was a sort of thoughtless honesty operative at New Castle Castle. That’s when I started to believe there is a genetic basis for excessive blurting. Everybody who lived in Newcastle Castle was related in some way. They were like royal hillbillies. Eventually, I found the diary in a sock nailed to the inside of Sir Reggie Nestor’s closet door. He refused to part with it. I was disappointed and told him in a sudden blurt he was “A regular rat’s ass.” He blurted back that my breath smelled like rotted pig kidneys. Then, he gave me a ride to the train station and I went back to London.

The only thing I learned at New Castle Castle is that blurting probably has a genetic component that accounts for its transmission as a malady. But as far as my dissertation topic went, I hadn’t learned anything, except from the girl in the train station who said it was a sort of social cowardice that kept her from blurting. Clearly, it was a source of regret. As a serial blurter, I am not constrained—I am more socially free, but I alienate a lot of people. Oh, fu*k it.

My dissertation advisor told me that 9 pages in 18 point font was not actually 9 pages. He told me he was concerned. I said, “About what, dickhead?” He yelled “Get out, and don’t come back until you’ve actually written something.”

I changed my dissertation’s tack. I did further study and reading and meeting with blurters. I discovered that blurting is a kind of Tourette’s Syndrome, that consists only of unreflective speech that is coherent but inappropriate. I named it Sir Trapbait’s Syndrome.

My dissertation committee gave me a standing ovation at my oral defense. A wealthy blurter has endowed a chair named after me. I texted Lu Lu Belle, the girl I met in line at Paddington. I wrote: “I’ll be seeing your underpants soon.” She replied, “And I’ll be seeing yours.” I bought some new underpants and I’m headed to Inverness.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in hypallage

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Hyperbaton

Posted on October 28, 2024 | Leave a comment

Hyperbaton (hy-per’-ba-ton): 1. An inversion of normal word order. A generic term for a variety of figures involving transposition, it is sometimes synonymous with anastrophe. 2. Adding a word or thought to a sentence that is already semantically complete, thus drawing emphasis to the addition.

I was flying first-class to Newark, New Jersey from Kazakstan, a weird place. I was working in a diamond mine, handling millions of dollars worth of raw diamonds, every hour of every day I worked. I had a bodyguard named MELS—Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin. He had it tattooed to the fingers of his left hand. He chain smoked, carried an AK-47 and drank two shots of vodka for lunch every day. He was there to shoot me, or anybody else, who tried to steal diamonds. On average, he shot two desperate people per week. The bodies were run through a chipper and fed to the Kazakh Tazys—a breed of dog used for hunting and eating ground-up people. They hunt wolves, wild boars, foxes, badgers and people.

MELS owned three Tazys. Among other things, he used them to hunt thieves. When a thief was caught his Tazys would,p kill him, tearing him to shreds and preparing him for the chipper. One Tazy was named “Santa Claus” and the other was named “Ripper.” I could never get MELS To tell me why he named one of the dogs “Santa Claus.” When I asked him, he would say “Ho, Ho, Ho.” The third dog was named “Anonymous.” Except for “Ripper,” I think the other two dog’s names were jokes. but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want pressure MELS to tell me.

My job was a sort of quality control. As the diamonds went by on a conveyer belt, I would randomly pick one every ten minutes. I would check it for quality and infer the quality of the rest of the run from it. It was a pretty stupid way of doing quality control, but it was a very well-paying job with incredible perks. I had a free 3,000 square foot furnished condo, a two day work week, a BMW motorcycle, 12 “wives” imported from Sweden and Denmark, and a chauffeured limousine. Still, I was unhappy.

I had graduated with honors from The Gemological Institute of America. I wanted to work in New York’s “Diamond District.” Despite my education, I couldn’t get a job. I had a police record. I had been convicted of fraud for selling rhinestone jewelry to idiots. I had the pieces dangling inside my coat. I’d open my coat and say “Real diamonds cheap.” I made a good living off the rubes in Times Square. MELS showed up at the courthouse after my trial and after I’d paid the $200.00 fine. I don’t know why the court had been on lenient, but I wasn’t going to ask. MELS showed up at the courthouse after my trip and after I’d paid One of them was MELS. He pulled a pistol pointed at me and said “We go Kazakstan. Shut up and get in limo.” I had no luggage. We boarded an Aeroflot flight to Astana City. I fell in love with the place.

So, now, I was flying into Newark for my annual two-month vacation from the diamond mines. I had so much money I didn’t know what do do with it. So, I bought a house in New Jersey every time I came home for vacation. I owned 10 houses across North Jersey. They were vacant and it was fun to see what had happened to them since the last time I was there. When I got to house number three in Green Lakes, it looked like somebody was living in it—the lawn was mowed and it was freshly painted. I rang the bell and a beautiful woman answered the door. I said, “This is my house.” She laughed and said, “No it isn’t. I bought it from Edward Vanderblit three months ago.” It was my goddamn cousin Eddy-ba-diddy—a con artist extraordinaire. Poor woman, I thought, and decided to let it go.

I would take Eddy on a “vacation” to Kazakstan. He and MELS would go hiking, and Eddy would get lost, and the world would be a better place.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in hyperbaton

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric

Hypozeuxis

Posted on October 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

Hypozeuxis (hyp-o-zook’-sis): Opposite of zeugma. Every clause has its own verb.

I flew to the rooftop, landed softly, and screeched like a duck being strangled. It was a rather unpleasant sound, but it alerted the babes that I was back in town. I had migrated in from Florida and was looking forward to a good time in Central New York, just north of Utica.

The babes called back to me in a chorus of wantonness, like 500 Eves calling to Adam in the Garden of Eden. I went to my lair-nest and and transformed into a human self. I had 100s of human templates I could employ. I always chose Richard Nixon on my first night out. North of Utica is staunchly Republican and Nixon was considered bold and sexy with a wry sense humor. I was a 27-year-old Nixon—he could have all the action he wanted, as often as he wanted it.

I was one of three transformer birds left in the world. Although were were 99.9% immortal, we could be killed by a pencil stuck in our right ear. The other two transformer bids lived far away—one in Peru and one in Australia. They did well and weren’t under threat. In Peru and Australia, men enjoyed sharing their wives and girlfriends and didn’t mind the transformer bird’s intrusion into their lives. Not so in Central New York. I knew the men had heard my call, and the fevered response, and would be hunting for me. As young Richard Nixon, the men wouldn’t recognize me anyway. There were about 100 babes lined up at my nest. I had the power to make my nest disappear, along with me, by clapping my hand twice. It was 7.00 am when I came to the last babe in line. She had told me she had voted Republican since she was 18 and she had been “screwed every time, and was disappointed.” I nodded. She said, “But this time I know I won’t be disappointed! Take me up to your nest Dick!” I couldn’t’t ask for a better way to end the night. I was back in Central New York doing what I was born to do! The best thing was that the babes forgot what they had done about fifteen minutes after they did it! So, they came back night after night until I flew back to Florida in October.

This week I was going out as a young Mick Jagger. He is the human most like a transformer bird. After that, I was Benny Hill. I kept going until October 15th and then headed for Key West, and became a young Ernest Hemingway. Nobody Recognized me and I spent my winter in peace, resting up with a of couple cats.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in hypozeuxis

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Hysterologia

Posted on October 26, 2024 | Leave a comment

Hysterologia (his-ter-o-lo’-gi-a): A form of hyperbaton or parenthesis in which one interposes a phrase between a preposition and its object. Also, a synonym for hysteron proteron.

There’s only one way to San Jose. I was stubborn. I wouldn’t admit there was more than one way to San Jose. Maybe “stubborn” is too kind a word. “Adamant” was too kind too. I think, basically, I was nutso. My pathological commitment to error constantly put me in jeopardy. When things were clearly up—as clear as Poland Springs—down I’d go into the abyss of error embracing it like the holy grail, or the latest iteration of the iPad, or Taylor Swift.

I was in despair. Everybody laughed at me, yet I couldn’t change my mind. It was frozen in error. It was like my brain was a slab of granite graven with idiocy that couldn’t be revised or erased.

I went to see a psychiatrist and she gave me medication designed to soften my mind. It would become pliable and I might be able to shake off my chronic commitment to error. If I could snap my mind like a bedsheet, I might be able to flatten it and prepare it for a fresh text. The medication was called “Mollis Cerebrum” (brain softener). The way I understood it, it was like stool softener for the mind. I wanted to hurry things up, so I took five Brain Softeners instead of one every two days as written on the bottle. Almost immediately, I felt my bogus beliefs melting away. By midnight, I had no beliefs, except the belief I had no beliefs. Suddenly, I felt my brain running out my nose. My overdose had liquified my brain! I stuck a pencil in each nostril to stem the flow of my brain. Then, I went to the meat packing plant where I worked. I hid in a walk-in freezer. I believed if I kept my brain near freezing, as slush it would stop running out my nose. I had on my warmest coat and had vowed to stay in the freezer until the drug wore off, and my brain returned to normalcy. I believed my brain was the medium of my mind, like I had learned from Marshall McLuhan at the University of Toronto a few years before—“The medium is the message” was chanted by the student body at football games and was on billboards all over Canada. In fact, my psychiatrist was a graduate of the U. of Toronto. She had taken classes from McLuhan!

Anyway, I was freezing my ass off.

They found me on Monday when the plant reopened. I was curled in a fetal position. My hair was covered in frost. The pencils in my nostrils had stopped the flow of my brain out of my nose, and the freezing temperate was pretty much icing on the cake. My butt cheeks had frozen to the freezer’s floor and had to be amputated.

I am fully recovered from my overdose ordeal. My brain is like a slab of cement again. My first impressions are still etched as true and can’t be revised by any means. There’s a new brain softener discovered in Spain called “Puré de Papas” (mashed potatoes) that my psychiatrist has recommended. I think I’m going to try it. I don’t know why.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in hysterologia

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Hysteron Proteron

Posted on October 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

Hysteron Proteron (his’-ter-on pro’-ter-on): Disorder of time. (What should be first, isn’t.).

I was going down to the river to shoot my baby. She had made a mess of my life. After all was said and done, I hadn’t even gotten started. It was confusing, but not impossible. I went to Dick’s and bought at .410 shotgun—the kind you give to your kid when he turns 8. I went to Agway and bought some rope—it came packaged in cellophane and was way more than I needed to tie up my baby—“Maybe I could tie her to a tree” I thought as I whipped out my credit card and slid it through the card reader. I bought some silver-colored duct tape too. I was going to wind it around her head, leaving only little slits for her eyes, so she could see me point the .410 at her face. Loaded with #6 birdshot, it would blow off her face. I was ruthless.

What the hell did she do to deserve such a fate—yes, fate! I don’t know if she deserved what I had in store for her, but it was coming her way anyway: 1. She was way smarter than me. I’m a man. She’s a woman. Enough said. She took over paying my bills when I paid my mortgage payment three times. 2. She has a beautiful singing voice and gets standing ovations at the karaoke club when she sings “Are You Lonely Tonight?” When I sing “Stairway to Heaven” people leave and some people boo. 3. She had a boyfriend. That is, she cheated on me. She was dating my father. What did they think I’d think when I saw them snuggled on our couch, or they went up stairs to “read together” in bed. My mom was long gone, there was no impediment to Dad’s philandering. After they read, she and I would go out to dinner, check into a motel after dinner, and do some “reading” of our own. It was creepy, weird, unnatural, and immoral, but she was the only girl who wanted anything to with me. I am blind in one eye and lost my right foot in a farming accident—it got caught in a hay baler. I have a screw-on rubber prosthetic foot that does not have any toes. When I go to the beach it becomes a topic of conversation. Sometimes I take it off and we play catch in the sand. Without my foot, I can’t play or even stand up, but I like to watch my foot making people happy.

I want to kill her so bad. I have a killer hunger like I’m starving to blow her head off. I am really mad. It is amazing how a person can put you in a homicidal rage without knowing it. I picked her up at five to go down by the river and “take a little walk.” I loaded up my “tools of death” and put them behind my truck’s seat. I was so excited! Boom! All my problems solved. I couldn’t wait.

When we got to the river, I told her we were going to try something new, and I tied her to a tree just like I planned. I made her head into a duct tape mummy head. I let her squirm around and whine for around 20 minutes while ate the baloney sandwich I had brought along and drank the box of apple juice too. After I finished my sandwich and drink, I picked up the .410, aimed it at her head, and pulled the trigger. The .410 went “click” and nothing happened. I had forgotten to load the gun and the box of shells was sitting on my workbench in my garage. I was really mad. I decided to stab her with my Buck knife. I had left that home too. But, I did have the box cutter I had used on the rope when I tied her up! I decided to slit he throat with the box cutter and sit on a log and watch her bleed to death. Maybe that was better than the .410!

The razor blade in the box cutter was too dull to do the job on her windpipe. Luckily, I had my pruning saw. I had been pruning my apple trees that morning and had left the saw in my truck. So, I killed her—the newspaper called it “A Brutal Slaying Down by the River.” Given the circumstances, I don’t consider the murder “brutal.” My only regret is that I couldn’t shoot her.

I’m in the “Hogarth Prison for the Criminally Insane.” During the day, I make multi-colored pot holders. At night, I sleep and dream of murdering my baby down by the river.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in hysteron proteron

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Inopinatum

Posted on October 24, 2024 | Leave a comment

Inopinatum (in-o-pi-na’-tum): The expression of one’s inability to believe or conceive of something; a type of faux wondering. As such, this kind of paradox is much like aporia and functions much like a rhetorical question or erotema. [A paradox is] a statement that is self-contradictory on the surface, yet seems to evoke a truth nonetheless [can include oxymoron].

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it! You got a C+ on your biology assignment!” Anything I did that wasn’t a disgrace or a sign of my “feeble” intellect was met with my father’s expression of disbelief. It was his way of registering his judgment of my abilities—he believed it, but he said he didn’t.

I thought my biology teacher was a really hard grader. My biology project created a new life form—a new species of hamster. I called it “Giant Hamster,” I had bred a Dwarf Wallaby and my hamster Barbara. The Giant Hamster weighed about 4 kilos and could jump 15 feet. He had huge beaver-like teeth and ate two bowls of hamster pellets every day. I made a five- foot hamster wheel for him in metal shop at school. He loved to play on it. I named the Giant Hamster “Gorgo” after my favorite movie reptile monster. His fur was a beautiful shiny brown color. I had taught him three tricks: fetch, roll over, and play dead. He taught himself to balance a roll of toilet paper on his nose. He had two troublesome characteristics: farting loudly, and humping peoples’ legs. His farts sounded like gunshots and would send people diving for cover. He sounded like a semi-automatic rifle. I would warn people when we visited them, but it didn’t help. The worst was when he blew a burst on the subway. Compared to his rifle-fire farts, his leg humping was minor. I knew if I had his balls cut off that the humping would cease, but he wouldn’t be the same Gorgo. I made him a humping restraint from a bungee chord that kept him from mounting peoples’ legs in public. I bought him a mannequin and put it in my room. He would mount one of its legs two or three times per day. He favored the left leg.

My “Biology Project Show and Tell” was a disaster, but it earned me a C+, the highest grade I had ever gotten, but still, I thought I deserved a higher grade. I started out with Gorgo doing his tricks. He finished doing his tricks and I lifted the roll of toilet paper off his nose. The class started applauding. Then, he scurried under Miss Trumble’s desk. She yelled “Oh my God, get it off my leg.” I told her to just back up her chair and I would pull him off of her leg. The second she moved Gorgo started firing farts that sounded like a semi-automatic rifle.

It was total chaos. Then, the classroom door burst open. The leader of our school’s SWAT team told everybody to “Stay where you are and shut up.” As soon as the room went silent, Gorgo jumped up on Miss Trumble’s desk. All five members of the “Borly High School SWAT Team” aimed their weapons at Gorgo. I jumped between Gorgo and the SWAT team. “My Giant Hamster’s farts sound like gun fire, aside from leg humping, he’s harmless” I yelled. They lowered their guns. Peace was restored.

I admonished myself for forgetting to put Gorgo’s anti-humping restraint on him when I took him to school. I took the blame for everything that had happened. I didn’t tell my dad. Even with the catastrophe, I thought I deserved at least a B+.

Two nights later, Gorgo got out of his cage, ate a three-foot hole in my bedroom wall, and escaped. I think he went feral and stays away from people. I don’t miss him.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in inopinatum

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Inter se pugnantia

Posted on October 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

Inter se pugnantia (in’-ter-say-pug-nan’-ti-a): Using direct address to reprove someone before an audience, pointing out the contradictions in that person’s character, often between what a person does and says.

I was going crazy trying to figure out what to say at the debate tonight. I was novice at politics but I believed with all my heart and soul that the Mayor of Jollyville, New York should be a dictator with unlimited power to act any way he chose to act without requiring the consent of a city council or the people of Jollyville. The city council would do what I told it to do, and the citizens would suck it up. I had read “Atlas Shrugged” ten times and knew that Commies were lurking everywhere and we needed a strong leader to drive them back where they can came from. One of my first priorities would be to clear the town library, burn the books, and replace them with 10 copies of “Atlas Shrugged” and make the rest of the library into a B&B. Next on the list is to invade Shady Glen and annex it. Our goal will be to to make Jollyville into a jumbo town taking up all of Central New York, making it a major player in Albany, New York’s capitol.

I shouldn’t be saying this, but North Korea has offered to provide us with arms to accomplish our goals. The Jollyville Fish and Game Club is looking forward to sending members to North Korea to learn how to fire missiles. North Korea also offered to provide Korean cookbooks so we can develop a better understanding of their culture. Everybody’s renewing their hunting licenses so they can walk around in the woods with loaded weapons, getting used to the future when they’ll be walking around Jollyville on my behalf. All this may seem absurd and/or frightening. It isn’t. It is all about change and returning to the America we all knew when we were a British Colony. The “Uber Mayor Party” will develop Jollyville into a model of order where the trains run on time, there are no homeless people or foreigners, and we are known for the absolute obedience of our citizens.

I think I’m ready for the debate.

Me: “To my unworthy opponent sitting there on his fat ass while Jollyville becomes a weak and listless town: contrary to your assertions regarding your toughness, I have personally seen you help an old woman stand up after her walker malfunctioned. You showed your weakness and failure to heed the dictum of survival of the fittest and leave her begging for help, lying on the ground. You have the soul of a wet noodle, unlike mine which is solid steel. What do you have to say for yourself King Wimp?”

Opponent: “You are one sick bastard. Kindness is a virtue that can elevate us all, to make our community brightly lit by charity’s heartfelt flame. Your ethic will turn our beloved Jollyville into a dog eat dog battlefield—littered with the bodies of the sick, and elderly and those in need—men, women, and children. You, sir, are mentally ill—a psychopath with no redeeming attributes. Having you as Mayor will open the door to tyranny and viscous injustice. I reject you and all you stand for.”

POSTSCRIPT

I won the election by a landslide—it wasn’t even close. My opponent has been arrested and I’m looking forward to my trip to Belarus to meet with the North Korean ambassador.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in inter se pugnantia

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Intimation

Posted on October 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

Intimation: Hinting at a meaning but not stating it explicitly.

“I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going. My bowling ball is green. Do you get it?” She cocked her head and barked twice. “You’re so smart,” I told her. “Smarter than the goddamn idiot I trust my money with.” I was losing faith in my financial planner. He takes a shitload of money from me every month and invests in his latest “picks.” He says I’m young so the time is right to build a high risk portfolio. I’m 64 years old. I guess with the high life expectancy afforded by the 21st century, I could be considered young. Last month, he invested my money in a company called “Angel Soles” that makes “rechargeable” shoes. He did inadequate research into the company. I Googled it and found out that “rechargeable shoes” are shoes made of leather that can be shined when they lose their luster. Not much innovation going on here—just a new name for the same old thing. That’s unacceptable. Two months ago, he invested in a company that makes “environmentally sustainable paper mache household goods.” The company’s named “Paper Trails” and they offer to do an audit and replace everything in your home with paper mache “equivalents.” The paper mache blender caught my eye. I ordered one. It came in a box with a note explaining that it was intended as a decorative kitchen ornament to “make your kitchen a quieter more gentle place, without the annoying whirring of a conventional blender.” “Paper Trails” holds the record for quickest bankruptcy in the history of capitalism.

I’ve got to do something about the herraging of my retirement money. “Wiggly” Johnson, my financial planner, has been handling my family’s finances for as long as I can remember, starting with my grandfather, who died in penury, but swore by Wiggly, nevertheless. Wiggly is 91 years old and lives in a nursing home, where his office is located. He uses “Golden Glades” phone to do business. He uses offenders assigned on work release to Golden Glades as his “staff.” Most recently, his “Secretary” was a jaywalker who taunted motorists to “come and get her” after she stepped in front of their cars or trucks.

I set up a meeting with Whirly. I was going to tell him it was all over. He was sitting by a window holding his signature unlit cigar. He pointed it at me and said, “Cohiba.” I told him, “You’ve been the family’s financial planner for many, many years. You have invested millions on our behalf. In life, we say hello, and we say goodbye. We wave or shake hands and walk away. It’s normal. It’s expected. It’s life. I think . . .” Wiggly interrupted and said, “I know where you’re going you little shitbird. Just get the hell out of here and never come back. Fu*ck you.”

I stood up and said “Fu*k you too,” and left. I was relieved. Finally, I had gotten out from under the losing proposition. Wiggly was history. I called my new financial planner, “Red Pylon,” a 35 year-old financial wizard—so it said on his web page. I told him my finances were all his. He took me literally and liquidated all my accounts and took off with all my assets. Now, I was really screwed. I worked out the numbers and determined that I can’t retire until I’m 112. In anticipation of my future, I dress up like a homeless man and hold out a styrofoam cup on Main Street. In my despair, I call this financial planning.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in intimation

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Isocolon

Posted on October 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

Isocolon (i-so-co’-lon): A series of similarly structured elements having the same length. A kind of parallelism.

I came. I saw. I ran. I didn’t conquer. I kept running until I couldn’t run any more. I had seen the Monster of Morristown. I ran to Convent Station and hid in my uncle’s back yard, in the pine trees. I felt something under my butt when I sat down. It was a bottle of Canadian Club whisky that my uncle had buried in the yard. He had bottles buried all over the place because my aunt would not permit him to drink. He had a map of where the bottles were hidden. It worked well for him, except in the winter when he left tracks in the snow and the ground was frozen. When snow was forecast deep enough to cover his tracks, he would take his BernzOmatic torch and a garden spade out to one of his buried bottles, and, using the torch to thaw the ground, he’d dig up the bottle. He was my hero.

I’d never had a drink before. I was 15. I cracked open the bottle and took a drink and another drink, and two or three more drinks. I felt great. I hoisted the bottle and sang “Wheels on Bus” and burped really loud. That was a mistake. A loud burp is the love call of female attracted to the Monster. When I heard a return burp, I knew I was dead meat. When he found me and saw that I was not a potential mate, he would eat me. At least, that was what I was led to believe by my big brother.

“Morristown Monster” was the nickname of the greatest bully on earth who played tackle on my high school football team. His family had emigrated from Belarus. His name was Rimsky Trollinski. He weighed 300 pounds and was 6’4” tall. He smelled like a dead animal. The weirdest thing was the tattoo on his forehead that he received at birth. It said “медленный” which is Russian for “slow.” He received the tattoo because he scored lower than 30 out of a possible 100 points on the National Infant Intelligence Test administered to newborns, by the Belarusian government. It is very sad because it visibly marks him for life as dull witted depriving him of a college education and a good job. He told people the tattoo meant “gifted” but he was going to have it removed when he turned 18.

Rimsky was chasing me because I knew what his tattoo really said in English. Suddenly, Rosemarie Pinzy stuck her head into the pines where I was hiding. She was a cheerleader. She told me she had followed me hoping that, together, we could “lure Rimsky in.” You see, sho loved Rimsky and wanted badly to hang out with him outside of school, and maybe, have a romantic experience. She asked me to belch again. I was pretty drunk, so I complied. Rimsky answered with a return belch from about ten feet away. I tried to get up and run but Rosemarie sat on me. “Make another belch,” she whispered fixing her hair. After I belched, she got off me and I started crawling for my life. I heard Rimsky ask her “What you want?” Rosemarie said, “Take a look at this big boy.” Rimsky started making intense grunting sounds as I crawled out of earshot.

I was saved. I slept it off in my uncle’s gardening shed and the Morristown Monster never bothered me again. Rosemarie had tamed him with love and understanding, and something that made him grunt. Rimsky had his tattoo removed in his senior year and stopped farting loudly in the lunch room. Morristown High had become a better place.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in isocolon

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Kategoria

Posted on October 20, 2024 | Leave a comment

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

It was a normal day, you know, I got out of bed, went downstairs, had breakfast and took the bus to work. I was a dough twister at “Tu-Tu’s Handcraft Bakery.” Most of we twisters had been replaced by machines, but Mr. Hand, the owner, thought the art was worth preserving. I was grateful. I came from a long line of pastry twisters. In fact, my great-grandfather was known as “Twister Tagalini.” Just like sailors have their knots, Twister had his twists. His different twists sent message. Of course, there were the love twists that lovers ate together. There was the mourning twist that people ate at funerals. There was the birthday twist that played a central role in birthday celebrations. The worst was the “hit” twist. Arriving in a black box tied with a piece of black ribbon, it informed the recipient that they were targeted for death. Twister had hundreds more message twists. He had a notebook with all of them drawn and labeled. He was amazing.

I was probably the last of our twister line. My son wanted to be a landscaper and my wife thought what I did for a living was a stupid waste of time. I felt oppressed, but when I got my fingers in the dough, my worries melted away. But things got bad again when I got home. It was my wife. She was going to “Jenny’s Nails” every-other day for a pedicure and a paint job. At $60 a visit, it was beyond our means. I got the hint something was wrong when Jenny called to tell me my wife had demanded she paint her nails a new color before they were even dry from the first painting. She had gotten angry when Jenny refused, and she splashed water from to foot soaking basin all over the floor. Then, she poured a bottle of nail polish on the cash register and left without paying. That should’ve done it, but I noticed my wife never took off her shoes in front of me—even n bed. I looked up what my wife was doing on the internet—on Google. I found that my wife was suffering from a mental problem called “Peditoemania.” It is an irresistible compulsion to have non-stop pedicures, and nail paintings.

I confronted my wife and told her to her face that I knew what she was up to. Initially she denied it, then she admitted it and cried, and we hugged. She’s in therapy now and making rapid progress. During her therapy, she’s not allowed within 50 yards of a nail salon, and she is required to wear sandals showing that her nails are free of paint. She is also expected to attend weekly meetings of “Peditoe Maniacs Anonymous.”

I replaced Jenny’s cash register and paid my wife’s tab. All’s well.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in kategoria

Tagged elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Litotes

Posted on October 19, 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).

Saving lives is like saving coupons to me, but I don’t expect a discount for doing so. Noble deeds are not so noble. When I saved that baby from being eaten by a lion at the zoo, I was thinking about the last episode of “The Old Man” on HULU—not for inspiration, but because my wife and I were watching the series and were speculating about the focus of the return episode. “The Old Man” is fairly complicated and filled with beautifully gross violence—close to the real things I experienced when I was a mercenary in South Africa many years ago.

The smell of the lion’s breath snapped me out of my revery. I scooped up the little baby and gave the old broken down lion a boot in the nose. He started mewing like an alley cat a laid down on his side. I felt so sorry for him that I almost fed him the baby. Instead, I scratched him behind the ears until he started purring. Then, the baby and I made our getaway. I put the baby under my arm and climbed the 30-foot fence. I couldn’t figure out how the baby got into the enclosure. Then, I saw a little opening in the bottom of the fence. It had a little shred blue terrycloth stuck on it that matched the onesie the baby was wearing. The mother said, “Thanks a lot” in an exceedingly sarcastic tone. It was clear that she tried to feed her baby to the lion. But I didn’t care. She had given me an opportunity to conduct a rescue, however minor and inconsequential. One of the other zoo-goers had ratted her out and called the police. They took her away in handcuffs. She would probably be nailed with attempted first-degree murder. Lucky for her, I had brought the crime-count down from murder- one to attempted murder by rescuing her kid. Although, I don’t think the lion was up to eating the kid. He died of natural causes two days after the incident.

So, thank-you so much for the “Hero of the Year Award.” As a bipolar man stuck on the manic side of the coin, I have always thought highly of “Kicks LLC.” It is like a door opening to the place where I want to live—a place of danger, crisis and chaos—nonstop excitement, death defying feats, and not caring about my fate. In this place, to get to the kitchen, I have to jump through a ring of fire. To get upstairs to go the bed at night, I have to be shot out of a canon to the second floor. I don’t wear a helmet or a flame retardant suit. In sum, I had heeded “Blue Oyster Cult.” I don’t fear the Reaper. I keep him nearby. I like him.

“Kicks LLC” was founded on the belief that we’re only sojourners here on earth—temporary visitors with visions of immortality. But our lives are but a drop of motor oil staining the concrete floor of time. So, we may as well make the stain a beautiful stain. Today, in addition to my award let’s remember the giant stain, the colossal stain, left by “Exploding” Mickey Nitz. As we know, he swallowed a little stick of dynamite. It got stuck in his throat, but it exploded nevertheless. The pattern he left on the parking garage wall behind him is the pattern on our club’s flag, with our motto “He Had A Lot Of Guts” in Latin. The lit dynamite stick was thrown at Mickey from a passing car. The car was followed by a bus-load of middle-aged men on their way to a DYI exposition at the convention canter adjacent to the garage. The bus stalled in front of Mickey. Without thinking twice, Mickey shoved the lit stick of dynamite down his throat, blowing off his head and reducing the dynamite’s blast radius, and saving the bus’s passengers from certain death.

So, it is with deep heartfelt gratitude, that I must go—go to the edge—the edge of human comprehension, where I’ll find a catastrophe to embrace like a lover, spinning into chaos toward Soteria—the Roman Goddess of safety, which is always temporary. Thank-you.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in litotes

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Martyria

Posted on October 18, 2024 | Leave a comment

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

I know that war is hell. When I was in Vietnam, I got clap four times from the same whore! As a nineteen year old maniac I made a lot of mistakes. My job was guarding the docks at Cam Ranh Bay. I stood watch every night. She came by every night around 3:00 am and we did it on the ground on my poncho behind a cargo container. She was beautiful. Her name was “Beaucoup Bang Bang”. In addition to paying her $10.00 per ride, I bought her cartons of cigarettes, bottles. of cognac, and jewelry from the PX. I even bought her a Yashica camera, an eight-track tape deck, and a set of Noritake dinnerware. When the camera was found on a VC captured at Phantom Rang, it was tracked back to the PX, and then, to me.

Colonel TZ ( “Twilight Zone”) Cambell had me hauled in by the MPs for questioning about collaborating and giving comfort and aid to the enemy. I told him I had purchased the camera for a very nice whore I had met when she had lost her dog outside the church I attend. He said, “Bullshit soldier! The medics have told me about your pecker problems. Beaucoup Bang Bang is known for infecting you troopers with clap. Have you ever heard of a condom boy? Don’t you realize that she’s a VC agent?” I’d been in Vietnam for 2 months and didn’t even know the VC had agents, and I wasn’t sure what a VC was either. “Sir” I said, “What is a condom, Sir?” I figured if I played dumb, I’d somehow get off the hook. Colonel TZ pulled out his penis —he was wearing a condom. He said, “See this? I wear one of these all the time, except when I’m takin’ a leak. You will too. Do you hear me soldier?” I yelled “Yes sir! Wilco!”

Now, I was being shadowed by a CIA operator. I was suspected of being a VC agent. After my meeting with Col. TZ a VC bunker had been discovered with a Noritake formal dinnerware service for twelve laid out on a rustic table, an 8-track cassette tape player on a shelf dug out of the dirt, alongside five cartons of Luckies, and a bottle of cognac. The tape player had a serial number that was traced to me.

The CIA operator’s name was Nadir—surely a fake name. He wore black pajamas and carried a .45 on each hip. He had a really soft voice and a skull ring on his left hand. He literally followed 3 feet behind me everywhere I went. I missed Boom Boom so much I considered killing Nadit so I could visit her at the “Reindeer Chicken” where she was a “Saigon Tea” girl during the day.

Then it happened. From wearing a condom all the time, my penis started to smell and developed pustules. It was worse than the clap. I went to the hospital. When the doctor saw my penis, he said “Wo! We had a case just like yours 2 months ago. We had to amputate the Colonel’s member.” As soon as he said “Colonel” I knew who it was. “We had to emergency medivac him to Manila where they lopped it off and gave him a fake weiner bigger than the old one.”I was ready to burst into tears when the doctor told me, “But you’re in better shape than the Colonel. With the proper antibiotics and rigorous hygiene, you’ll be back on duty in 3 weeks. In the meantime, we’re sending you to Hawaii for R&R. See you in a month!” I was given a government provided condo on the island of Kauai in Kilauea overlooking Kauai Bay. I underwent penis therapy every day. The nurse would knock on my door and yell “It’s me! I’m here to give you a hand!” Her name was Lithium, “Lith” for short. She made me laugh, and I forgot about Boom Boom.

I went back to Vietnam and was reassigned to the base mail room. I wrote to Lith nearly every day and she wrote back to me. I was totally rehabilitated and made a pact with myself to stay away from the hookers. There was a place on base called “Handy House” where I could get what I wanted without worrying about contracting an STD. When my tour was up in Vietnam, I went to Hawaii and Lith and I got married. After a year of total bliss, and the beginning of Lith’s pregnancy, a new nail salon opened called “Boom Boom Nails.” I was walking past it, and guess what? Yup, you got it. I looked in the window, and It was her. She motioned me in. She told me she got married, but did not have any children. She showed me a photo of her husband. It was Colonel XT! I was shocked, but that’s life. I had a pretty good idea why Boom Boom didn’t have any children, but she seemed happy. Life is complex. You never know what’s going to happen next.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in martyria

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Maxim

Posted on October 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

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

“A wise dog keeps its nose to the ground.” This proverb was passed down through our family. Its meaning was lost sometime around the beginning of the 20th century. By the time I first heard it nobody knew whether it originated on my mother’s or my father’s side of the family. My mother was German-English. My father was Viking—that’s all he would tell us. His name was Ragnar and he was bipolar and often ran amok. When he was amok, he would break things and got into fights at the corner bar, “Lefty’s.” Lefty had lost his right hand in WWII when it was run over by a tank on D-Day. He was able to use his veterans’ benefits to open “Lefty’s” and make a good living. Dad’s brawls would always get him banned from “Lefty’s” for a week. During his exile, Dad would stand outside “Lefty’s” giving everybody the finger as they went in. My father’s ancestors were lost in time. His mother and father abandoned him when he was an infant. He was raised in an orphanage—nobody wanted him because he was unruly and would spit at possible adoptive parents when they came to meet him. He worked assembling spiral notebooks until he was 16 and put out on his own. He wanted to be a professional boxer, but he hated getting hit. So, he went to work for the telephone company. He fought in WWII and lost most of his hearing.

I never quite figured out how my mother expressed her ethnicity. She had OCD. I figured that was from the German side of her family. We traced her German lineage back to Bavaria. Her great-great, great grandfather was known as Herman Barnshovel. On her mother’s side, we traced her great, great, great, grandmother back to Dublin, where she was a spy for the British. Her name was Mary O’Stale. Evidently, she was awarded a medal by the Crown, and sent to Bavaria for her own safety, where she met Herman. She got a job in a strudel factory, at the behest of the British Crown. Mary and Herman settled in Munich and had 11 children.

I took up an interest in genealogy after I graduated from college with a degree in anthropology. I would spend the post-graduation summer seeing what I could find out about the origins of the family proverb. I couldn’t find out anything about the family proverb by researching my father’s ancestors—they were forever gone. But, Dublin and Munich could be starting points.

Mary O’Stale was impossible to track down given her secret life and the alias she lived under as a spy. It was off to Munich. “Barnshovel” is a rare name, so Herman was pretty easy to find. This I didn’t know: He was seriously wounded in a taxi-horse stable when rustlers attacked and stole the horses while he was shoveling shit. He had irritated the rustlers when he shook his shovel at them and called them “dummkopfs“. He was wounded in the upper arm. Weirdly, there was a picture of him in the newspaper captioned “Shitshoveller Wounded” (Shitshovellr Verwundetsitting). He was sitting in a hospital bed wearing a t-shirt. The family proverb was tattooed in German on his forearm; “Ein kluger Hund hält seine Nase am Boden.” Eureka! I needed to do more research to see if I could find the origins of the proverb. I found that Herman had a Beagle named Beethoven that he trained to chase rabbits and run field trials. Of course keeping “their nose to the ground” is necessary for the hound’s success in sniffing out rabbits. As a metaphor it is similar to keeping your nose to the “grindstone.”

When I got back to the States, I bought a Beagle and got a tattoo on my forearm of the family proverb in the original German: “Ein kluger Hund hält seine Nase am Boden.” I’m having a family crest made, and my sister is considering getting tattooed too.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in maxim

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Medela

Posted on October 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

Medela (me-de’-la): When you can’t deny or defend friends’ faults and seek to heal them with good words.

When Joey chewed it sounded like scotch tape being pulled off of cardboard, but it has a 1-2 beat. He never used silverware. He would drink his soup from the bowl and shoved his food off his plate into his mouth, using his hand like a plow. When I asked him why he ate that way he told me he was in a hurry. He was really good with finger food, so whenever we went out to eat together, I made sure beforehand that there was nothing on the menu requiring a knife, fork, or spoon.

Today, we were at “Gill’s Burger Bunker.” Gill was a bi-polar former CIA Agent. He had spent 10 years in Saigon. After the war, he was stationed “somewhere” in South America in infiltrating Communist cells and radioing encoded reports back to Langley, where they were routinely ignored or misplaced. Gill didn’t care. He was having a great time. He learned how to tango, make ceviche, how to barbecue a guinea pig, how to ride a horse and braid whips. There’s more, but suffice it to say, Gill’s CIA stint in South America was a lot of fun. He married a Peruvian woman. They were married on the beach in Lima and have 9 children. Five of the children help out at the “Bunker.” The other five are in “government service.” That’s all Gill will say.

So anyway, we ordered lunch. I ordered fried scallops and a draft beer. Joey ordered batter-dipped shrimp and the “Aztec Whacker.” It was called the AW and it was advertised as the world’s largest coke. If you could finish it without peeing before you finished it, it was free. It came in a stone jug and cost $25.00. Gill had gotten the idea from touring Aztec ruins when he was stationed in South America. The jugs factored into the Aztec’s sacrificial rituals. The person being sacrificed drank from the jug which was filled with pulque (made from the sap of the agave plant) and peyote.

Joey had been trying to “beat the jug” ever since I knew him. He was never able to do it. Joey went to work on the Aztec Whacker. It sounded like I was sitting across the table from a hog trough. I said to Joey “Eating with you is like witnessing an atrocity, but your persistence with the ‘Aztec Whacker’ is commendable. By my count, you’re in it for $600. It’s like you’re trying to climb Mt. Everest. You know you haven’t got a chance, but you keep on trying anyway.” Joey put down the jug and smiled. He said, “Thanks Sal. You’re a true friend.”

I thought, if I was a true friend, I’d encourage him to get help and start eating like a normal person. But, I was working on a documentary about Joey. It was called “American Slob.” I had been using my cellphone to video Joey eating. The best video so far is Joey shoving a post Thanksgiving turkey croquet into his mouth with one hand while he pours gravy in his mouth at the same time.with the other hand. He chokes on the gravy and half-chewed turkey croquet is expelled, hitting his grandmother in the forehead. Joey is scolded by his mother and they résumé eating.

At some point I’ll tell Joey what I’m up to, but not yet.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in medela

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Meiosis

Posted on October 15, 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.

“He may be tall, but he’s small. That’s why we call him ‘Little Man’—a man with a shrunken soul.” That was an insult I had to endure because it was true. I was a tall bastard, a son-of-a-bitch, and a dickhead all rolled into one. I was proud of it. When I walked down the street, I hoped a homeless person would come up to me ask for money so I could push them down into the gutter where they belonged. I kept a record of my “push downs” on my cellphone. In the six months since I started keeping track, I’ve got 18. I go to the places where homeless people hang out so I can build my numbers. When a victim hits the gutter, I take a picture and post it to “Scrooge’s Circle” a social club with an ant-social agenda—Ha! Ha!

“Scrooge’s Circle” was founded in the 19th century soon after Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was published—a smarmy, ham-fisted story of Scrooge’s redemption. A perfect capitalist, he goes through a series of bullshit fairytale visitations from sniveling Christmas spirits, ending with the grim reaper scaring the shit out of him and making him into a compassionate human being—the opposite of what he was before. He’s been castrated by Christmas and converted by his own hallucinations.

When I saw “A Christmas Carol” for the first time, as a child, I LOVED the early unrepentant Scrooge. He didn’t give a damn about cripples and orphans—or crippled orphans: blind orphans or orphans with one foot or no hands. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if his employees froze to death at their desks as long as he could save money on coal to heat their workplace. He loved to evict his tenants during the holiday season to compound their grief. He also enjoyed watching penniless starving widows walk up and down the street looking for “dates” with cheating husbands so they can feed the family their husband left behind by dying or running off.

Then, the Christmas Eve disaster happened and he was transformed. He bought a giant goose for his office manager Bob Cratchet and paid off the mortgage on Bob’s hovel. He made a huge donation to the widows and orphans fund. He bought seeing eye dogs for all the blind orphans and found decent jobs for all the widows. He agitated for women suffrage and the abolition of slavery. He worked tirelessly to bring an end to child labor. What a loser!

I really felt betrayed by the changed Scrooge. He went from my idea of “The Perfect Man” to a back-stabbing ninny-nanny nambi-pambi bleeding heart weakling. He became shamelessly kind and charitable, anathema to the Capitalist ethos of British social order. Selfishness is the primal virtue along with survival of the fittest. I am not a nursemaid to the weak and feckless! I am a general, calling on my troops to beat the competition into the ground, to trample the weak and chide the helpless—to tell them to shut up if they’re whining, and to “put a stopper in it” if they’re crying. There are only winners and loser in this world. Let the losers lose!

“Scrooge’s Circle” meets once a year on Christmas Eve. We watch the first part of “A Christmas Carol” before Scrooge is wimpified. We turn off the TV and share our favorite “early Scrooge” things we’ve done over the course of the preceding year. For me, it was stealing a homeless man’s shoes. He had foolishly left them outside his cardboard box while he slept. They had a note leaning against them saying: “Put donations in shoes.” One shoe had $2.00 in it. I took the $2.00 and put it in my wallet, and then, threw both of the shoes in the Hudson River. Also, I bribed an OSHA inspector, and then, blackmailed him for taking the bribe. I got this idea from an episode of “Columbo.” I was toasted by my fellow “Circle” members. I felt good about being a greedy, uncaring, lying, cheating, morally bankrupt wildly successful businessman. Go ahead and call me “Little Man.” Maybe I’ll have you evicted—it’s almost Christmas.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in meiosis

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Mempsis

Posted on October 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

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

“I think I’m dying. My feet are swollen. Help me get my pants off!” I yelled. I called it “the old one, two, three.” The “dying” was done to raise alarm and a desire to help. The swollen feet were still pretty bad, but not life threatening, slowing the panic, but maintaining the urgency. Taking off my pants seemed right in light of the feet—to relieve the pressure on my ankles before it was too late. There I was stretched out in my underpants on the couch. What happened next was always a gamble, but it was worth it. It made me realize how providing steps could take people where you wanted them to go.

I learned this from Kenneth Burke. He told me about the appeal of form—how it created an appetite for its completion. That’s how my “steps” worked to keep people involved and get them where I wanted them to go. 1, 2, 3 worked well. It set anticipation into motion, increasing the appetite for the conclusion, and satisfaction, by playing out step 3. Step by step, I got my way through high school, until a few years later I robbed a lunch stand in Wiscasset, ME.

It was called “Blondie’s Eats.” It was at the bottom of the hill, right on the Sheepscott River. Before it was Blondie’s, it was called “Dive! Ice Cream.” The proprietor had served on a submarine in WWII.

I had read an article in the “Boothbay Register” about “Blondie’s Eats.” Blondie came to Maine from Prince Rupert Island, up in Canada. She was 23, unmarried, and filthy rich. Her great-great-great-great grandfather had invented the keyed sardine can. You could put a can of sardines in one pocket and a fork wrapped in a napkin in your other pocket and you were all set for lunch at work. It was revolutionary! No more can opener. There was something about the story rang a weak tinkling bell—something was there, but I couldn’t my mind around it.

I had gone into the Army right out of high school and had just completed my three-year enlistment. I had just gotten back from Viet Nam. When people found out I was a Vietnam vet, they wouldn’t hire me. There were probably wise not to do so. I had suffered a few concussions, one jumping out of a C-130, and the others in Vietnam. I was plagued by headaches, chronic double vision and diminished interpersonal skills. I got angry at nothing and slept with an unsheathed dagger under my pillow. I spent money I didn’t have and drank too much. I was going to “turn myself in” at the VA hospital in Portland.

I was broke and hungry and too proud to ask for a handout. What brought me to Blondie’s was her cash only policy. It would be easy. I parked my BSA about five feet from the stand, got off and went up to the counter. Using the old one, two, three I robbed “Blondie’s Eats.”

(1. This is a stickup. 2. Give me all your money. 3. Close your eyes and count to 100.)

I stuffed the money in my Hannaford’s shopping bag, jumped on my motorcycle and headed for East Boothbay. As I started across the Sheepscott River bridge I felt a burning in my right leg. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw Blondie shooting at me from the middle of the road. I was wounded, but I wouldn’t know how bad until I got to the base of the collapsed fire tower over Boothbay I was it calling home. Most days, I leaned against the concrete blocks and thought bad thoughts.

Blondie pulled up in a Jeep Wrangler. She had followed me!

She hopped out of the Jeep with a gun in one hand, and a bullhorn in the other. She spoke into the bullhorn: “I know who you are shithead. We spent our summers here. Fishing for flounder in Little River, hunting for beach glass, picking raspberries, climbing on the rocks, looking for crabs under the seaweed, going into the Harbor for ice cream and candy T Orne’s and a million more things. I didn’t mean to shoot you. I’ve missed you all these years. What the hell happened to you? Let’s go to the hospital and get you fixed up. Come on Johnny.”

“Holy shit!” was all I could say as she helped me into the jeep. She was my first love. I remembered her as Janie. She had disappeared from my memory, pushed out by the hell I had been through. My hell was vivid, and seemed more real than what was right in front of me. But, as I sat there slumped in my seat I saw for the first time since I had gotten home a beautiful shining ray of hope. I rested my head on her shoulder and fell asleep as we drove to the hospital. I had a dream about a bird that had forgotten how to land.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in mempsis

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Merismus

Posted on October 13, 2024 | Leave a comment

Merismus (mer-is’-mus): The dividing of a whole into its parts.

My decision making has five possible outcomes : yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, and N/A (not applicable). this list is probably not exhaustive, but it helps me decide what to next, which is life’s greatest challenge. When I was young “Yes” and “no” were my go to outcomes—it was a yes/no, either/or world. I was a man of action. I was a Kierkegaardian Guardian—a knight in shining ethics engraved with moral maxims, like “Curiosity killed the day,” “You are what you eat.” I fought for the rights of turtles, pigs and donkeys. I drove 55 MPH, I made macrame peace sign plant hangers, I made my own wine and picket signs. I sold the signs at demonstrations.

Then, one beautiful spring day, I saw a baby buggy rolling down a hill unattended. The baby was holding a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse. I stood there, frozen. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t. I was just starting to get an idea of what to do when the baby blew up, and also took a couple of pedestrians with him. The horror was complete. It ate at my soul. It burrowed a hole in my conscience. Even after I found out the baby was a rubber replica of a real baby, I could not settle my mind.

The incident was part of a successful assassination plot. The two pedestrians who were killed were part of a royalist cabal who wanted to restore royal rule in Germany, and “Make Germany great again.” Their goal begged the question. But, they were real people who really died, and I stood there like I had a whole body cramp.

I was drowning in guilt, strangled by remorse, bludgeoned by indecision—or more accurately, no decision. In my plight, I wondered if not deciding is deciding nevertheless. I couldn’t escape the remorse eating at me—gnawing on my innards, inducing a sort of moral seasickness making me vomit and bringing on a bout of severe dehydration accompanied by explosive flatulence that had wounded my ass.

One night, in the middle of a recurring nightmare where I was a peanut being shelled over and over, I woke up. I yelled “I Don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know, N/A, N/A.” It was a eureka moment. I realized it was unreasonable to expect humans to know what’s going on, and go solely with yes and no, and on bad days, maybe. “I don’t know” removes the shackles of accountability, calming your conscience and restoring your soul. It is as simple as that. If you accompany this with a draught of vodka or tequila, as you feel the alcohol warming your veins, the distance between you and your unfounded self-recriminations will widen even further. You may lose your job and alienate your family, but you will be free.

POSTSCRIPT

The author was found unconscious in a fetal position in a baby carriage in the basement of an abandoned building. He was taken to the hospital where he died repeating “N/A” over and over in what was characterized as “tones so sweet and low.”

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in merismus

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Mesarchia

Posted on October 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mesarchia (mes-ar’-chi-a): The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning and middle of successive sentences.

“No way, no time of the day. No way, no time of the night. No way. No time. Never.” I was a dedicated vegetarian. I abstained from meat of all kinds—even fish, including escargot. I hadn’t eaten, or even touched neat, for just over 2 weeks. Already, I could feel a change in my demeanor. I was kinder and more charitable. I had stopped cutting into line at the movies and I no longer told women on the subway with crying babies to shut the little bastards up.

I had read “Off Meat” by Swami Knishmop. It changed my life. The “book” consisted of vivid high definition color photographs of mutilated animals in the process of being slaughtered: before, during, and after. They were triptychs from hell. Following a fluffy bunny from beginning to end turned me around. I cried. I pounded my chest. I almost killed myself from the guilt I felt for the fate of the little bunny. At the end of Swami Knishmop’s book is an oath to repeat confirming your conversion to vegetarianism. The last word of the oath is missing. If you send $20 to the Swami, he will email it to you, but you must swear to keep it secret, or die. I thought that was pretty radical, but I wanted to say “The Vegetarian’s Oath” to cement my status as a vegetarian.

Week Three

I was getting tired of bean sprout, tofu, and mustard sandwiches on gluten-free bread. I didn’t even know what gluten was. But again, after seeing Swami’s pictures, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to eat meat. it was evil. So, I started eating faux meat soy products: Glamburgers, Fried Cheeky. Roasted Furkey. Broiled Founder. Peat Loaf. The list is endless.

The faux meat products were really expensive, but that’s not the main reason I gave them up. The main reason was that they tasted awful, and ironically, they all tasted and smelled the same. The only difference between them was their names. I went back to goat cheese and clove sandwiches, brown rice and jalapeños, mashed potatoes and toast, hummus topped with chocolate sauce, hollowed-out baked yams stuffed with avocado chunks and mint leaves. Not bad, but not meat.

Week Five

Two nights ago I took a bite out of a lamb roast at the grocery store. My desire for meat had become so strong that it blotted Swami’s triptychs from hell out of my memory. The raw lamb was tender and juicy. It assuaged my desire. I put the lamb in my cart and continued shopping for groceries. My vegetarian days were over. I bumped into one of the vegetarian friends I had made when I went meatless. His name was Cickpea (obviously a nickname), and he was a devoted follower of the Swami. I saw that he had a package of hamburger meat in his cart. When he saw me eying it, he shoved a box of “Grains & Nuts” over it and smiled nervously. Then, he saw my lamb roast. He said “Nobody’s perfect,” spun his cart around and walked away. I thought to myself “Yeah, exactly. Nobody’s perfect.”

I will never go back to being a vegetarian.

Nobody’s perfect.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in mesarchia

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Mesodiplosis

Posted on October 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mesodiplosis (mes-o-dip-lo’-sis): Repetition of the same word or words in the middle of successive sentences.

The cheap rope was starting to fray. My life was cheap—cheap as a chipped coffee mug at a Salvation Army thrift store. I was sure to have a cheap funeral—cremated in our wood stove, my ashes shoveled into a cardboard box, and deposited in the dumpster behind Cliff’s.

I was such an idiot to let price instead, of quality and reputation, determine the equipment I bought, especially if my life depended on it, Rock climbing was all about the rope. Rope snaps: life over. I had purchased my rope at Agway. Their rope was 1/8 the price of Dick’s rope—which was quite attractive, consisting of multi-colored strands woven together. The Agway rope was shining white in a cellophane wrapper. Not as attractive as Dick’s, but way, way cheaper. It was called “Clothesline Rope.” I guessed it was called that because it was shiny white and looked really clean, and you could hang clothes on it. I bought a 100 foot package of clothesline rope. If you could hangs wet clothes on it, you could probably hang on it too, at 1/8 the price.

I had gotten my boots used on Etsy, and my helmet too. The boots were made in Italy. They had mildew on them as well as tiny specks of blood. They didn’t come with any backstory about the blood. So, I just let it go. The mildew was a little more concerning. I soaked the boots in my bathtub in a mixture of Clorox, ammonia, and gasoline. It didn’t help remove the mildew, but it made them smell better. The helmet was all nicked up and had been glued back together after what must have been a severe blow. It was advertised on Etsy as a piece of an estate being settled for Mr. Amil Canyon, deceased.

All I needed next were carabiners, crucial in making rapid connections and holding climbing ropes in position, especially in rappelling. For example, riding a rope down the face of a cliff. I had shopped around and found carabiners to be crazy expensive—$20 or more. I was on my way home from my futile search when I stopped at Cliff’s for a slice of pizza. I noticed a display that said “Key Rings.” They were carabiners and they only cost $5.00! I bought ten—now I was ready to go!

The next day I drove out to “Satan’s Face.” It was a sheer drop of 200 feet. I looked over the edge and saw two ambulances standing by at the cliff’s bottom. There were representatives from every religious domination at the top of the cliff, ready to say a prayer for you for $10.00, cash only, before you started your descent. I am an atheist, so I didn’t know what to do, but I suited up anyway. Then, I heard a scream, and a loud thud followed by sirens. That did it! I tore off my gear, got in my car, and drove home, but for reasons I’ll never understand, I still wanted to defy gravity.

I had a tree in my back yard with a bare limb about 20 feet off the ground. I could rappel from my tree and experience some of the thrill of descending from a cliff, and probably survive. I leaned my trusty aluminum ladder against the limb, donned my harness, and climbed up to affix my rope to the tree limb. I rigged up and launched off from the tree limb, ready to slide gently to Mother Earth. Everything went wrong. I was hanging upside down. My key ring carabiner had bent, and popped open. Its sharp edge frayed my clothesline rope which wrapped around my leg, flipping me over. Soon the rope would break and I would soar head first into the ground. I was going to die! There was no ambulance waiting under my tree. Then I remembered. My cellphone! I called 911.

The emergency people showed up in about five minutes and safely cut me down. Before they cut me down, they all started laughing—one actually rolling around on the ground. One asked me, with tears running down his cheeks, “What the hell are you trying to do?” I remained silent, coiling up my clothesline rope like an expert, still wearing my helmet.

Later, I told my wife what had happened and she laughed and asked “Are you going to stop taking testosterone now, like you promised?”

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in mesodiplosis

Tagged definitions, elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Mesozeugma

Posted on October 10, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mesozeugma (me’-so-zyoog’-ma): A zeugma in which one places a common verb for many subjects in the middle of a construction.

“Cows, wagons, worms and earthquakes move up, down, over across, and under my breakfast toast.” Marlon Sweezy.

Sweezy was a 17th-century poet known as “Who?” His works were burned with the exception of the fragment quoted above. Literary scholars have come to the conclusion that the fragment is part of the longest poem ever written “Brick Carriage.” “Brick Carriage” is cited by Lady Rich who was Sweezy’s Tarot Card reader who attributed the quote above to him. She gives us little insight into why his works were burned, aside from her cryptic reference to them as “a plague that I survived.”

She said whenever she read his cards, there was a brawl. Inevitably the cards would predict dire futures for Sweezy. He would be poisoned, stabbed, strangled, drawn and quartered, or worse. Sweezy would jump from his chair and throw it at Lady Rich who allowed it because Sweezy paid handsomely to have his cards read, plus, she had two attendants who would throw Sweezy out on the street and kick him a couple of times.

Sweezy was reportedly “the most handsome man who ever walked the face of the earth.” He was charming and witty and knowledgeable on many subjects. He knew why the earth was flat. He knew where the wild geese go. It was rumored that he was an alchemist adept at transforming peas into little golden nuggets. He had so many trysts that “trysts” was almost renamed “Sweezys.” “Sweezys” failed to catch on due to the animosity he had engendered among the fathers of the daughters he had seduced, made promises to, and then, left standing in tears alone at altars throughout Europe. Instead, “Sweezy” replaced “blighter” as a term of contempt. Being called a “Sweezy” was worse than “piece of shit” or “scum bag.” Sweezy wrote it off as jealousy or the over-protective nature of most fathers. But “Sweezy” becoming an insult was not why his poems were hunted down and destroyed.

Lady Rich tells us in her memoirs that there was a terrifying property the texts possessed and this was the reason Sweezy’s works were routed out and destroyed—torn asunder, run over by large delivery carriages, and set afire.

Reading Sweezy’s poetry made people deathly ill and even killed them. They would suffer from stomach cramps, leg tremors, flatulence, sore throat, fever, ringing ears, double vision, heart palpitations, and diarrhea. Men had the added affect of impotence. The list of symptoms is long, harsh, and terrible. Older people (35+) risked an agonizing death, in a fetal position on a hard wood-slatted hospital bed, spending their last hours scratching their rectums and howling. Some depressed people read Sweezy’s poems hoping to die. They were called “poemacides” or “Sweezacides.”

We have no record of how reading Sweezy’s poetry would cause one to contract the disease. Sweezy died from “Organ Expulsion Syndrome”—the evacuation of one’s organs in a fatal bowel movement lasting one week. He was delirious during his hellish descent into death and could not be questioned. His is the only documented case of “Organ Expulsion Syndrome.”

Thank God the poetry-borne disease is not communicable. Thank God all of Sweezy’s works were burned. During his lifetime Sweezy refused to comment on the debilitating effect his poetry had on readers. When questioned, he would smile slyly and pretend to cough, perpetuating the greatest mystery in literary history and raising the question: How many have been killed by poetry?

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in mesozeugma

Tagged elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Metalepsis

Posted on October 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metalepsis (me-ta-lep’-sis): Reference to something by means of another thing that is remotely related to it, either through a farfetched causal relationship, or through an implied intermediate substitution of terms. Often used for comic effect through its preposterous exaggeration. A metonymical substitution of one word for another which is itself figurative.

“You look like a dido with arms and legs.“ I had done it again. Ever since I had studied the Stoics, “I told it like it is.” My arrogant rejection of euphemism and flattery had destroyed my social life, but it had cultivated my moral life (so I thought).

When I called my wife a dildo, she hit me over the head with a wine carafe. Then, she wrapped a towel around my bleeding head and drove me to the hospital. I had to get 96 stitches across my forehead.

My wife still looked like a dildo.

Why did she look like a dildo? When I asked myself that question, I realized that the source of my comparison was not honesty and forthrightness—it was error. It was my addiction to pornography. Lately, I had been watching videos that “starred” dildos. I was becoming a dildophile and, maybe, I would start a collection of dildos from around the world. I even had a lewd fantasy of giving one to my wife and asking to watch her use it. I was lost in porno hell. I tried to quit, to wean myself from the filth. I watched “Partridge Family” and “Brady Bunch” and “Andy Griffith Show” reruns, trying to realign my moral compass. But sadly, my moral compass unerringly pointed to dildo. It was like every road led to dildo. Uh ad to shake—I had a dildo on my back.

So, I pretty much failed to cure myself of my dildo fever. None of the remedial videos worked. I even had a dream about Barny chasing Aunt Bee around the kitchen waving a purple dildo. I dreamed about the Partridges singing into dido microphones and drumming with dildos, backing up the bass dildo and the rhythm dildo. My “Brady Bunch” dreams were so terrifying that I am unable to recount them without suffering PTSD.

So, I capitulated to my dildophilia and developed a nightclub act where I told off-color jokes about dildos and juggled up to 5 dildos at the same time. I would come on stage when the pole dancers took a break. I would lay my didos on my folding table, pick one up and fondle it, then pick up a second dildo, rub them together, and begin juggling, and engaging my dildo-joke patter. For example: while juggling my dildos, I’d say “Dildos are great meat substitutes.” I stole most of my jokes from the internet.

My act was gaining in popularity, and I started to accept my addiction. They started calling me “Dildo King.” A Chinese dildo company “Lucky Stroke” offered me $500,000 to endorse their newest product “Substitute Teacher.” They advertise their dildos as “tools of love” and provide instruction manuals and a “choice of colors” tool boxes. I took the offer.

I am featured on porno sites all over the world. I love the way I sound in German dubbed in over my actual voice. Next month, I am going to Copenhagen for the annual “Porno Pioneers” gala. The oldest living porn star will be in attendance—Tawny Humper. She is 97 years old and inspired Elvis’s “Love Me Tender.” She will be receiving the “Porno Pioneers Life Achievement Award” commemorating her arrest and jailing in New York for “acting in a blue film.” The title of the film was “Rear Ended!” and it was about a woman who was struck from behind while she was driving to work, when she stopped at a stop sign. After being offered a meager payout, she seduced the car insurance adjuster for a higher payout for the damage to her car, and then, blackmailed him.

Anyway, I gave up the Stoicism and have considerably widened my circle of friends. However, there’s one Stoic precept I still entertan: “You have control over your own thoughts and actions, but not over the thoughts and actions of others.” Marcus Aurelius. This guy knew what he was talking about. If you take this to heart, a huge swath of futility will be cut from your life.

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in metalepsis

Tagged example, figures of speech, rhetoric, schemes

Metallage

Posted on October 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metallage (me-tal’-la-gee): When a word or phrase is treated as an object within another expression.

Your “shoe business” sounds like “show business.” All these years I thought you were a performer of some kind. When you talked about the shoes you sell, I thought you were talking about shows you were appearing in: “Loafers,” “Heels,” “Dockers,” “Mules,” etc.

I imagined that “Loafers” was a play about a group of wealthy people who had a club called “Loafers” where the loafed around and thought of “lazy” things to do. One of my favorite fantasies about “Loafers” was the time they paid the wages of everybody at “Eat it!” a small sandwich shop on the town green. The show followed each employee on their gifted day off. Sadly, when they started loafing, all the employees suffered from PTSD from various traumatic experiences they had in life. When they were busy at work they didn’t have time to think about their life’s horrors. The owner, Stewart Smackadakolus, in violation of a number of laws, had his employees work seven days per week, so they all seemed tired, but otherwise ok. But, ironically, Mr. Smackadakolus was probably affected the worst by the day off. When he was nine years old he had killed or wounded everybody in his neighborhood. His father had left a locked and loaded Thompson sub-machine gun in Stewart’s toy box. This is hard to comprehend, but it happened. He said he put it there because nobody would look for a machine-gun in a toy box. Stewart found the gun when he was looking for his Tonka truck in the toy box. He yelled “Banzai!” and ran out the front door into the street. He pulled the trigger and “hosed” the neighborhood down with hot lead. When he ran out of ammunition, he dropped the gun and burst into tears.

Stewart’s father was jailed for 25 years for 12 counts of second degree murder, an amazingly lenient sentence. It was determined that Stewart was too young to know what he was doing and he was released and was never criminally charged. Eventually, he went through state sponsored, post high school, sandwich-making training. He opened “Eat it!” and used his sandwich-making training and the business acumen gained from his paper route and selling Christmas cards to handle the financial end of the business. He had been an avid pet owner, so he was good at managing his employees. In short, his small sandwich shop was a success, but he was haunted by his past.

The Loafers felt sorry for him and bought his sandwich shop for 10-times what it was worth, and then, gave him the paid-off mortgage to the property. Stewart was so grateful, he gave The Loafers, free sandwiches for life. Stewart is seeing a psychologist and slowly digging himself out of his trauma.

POSTSCRIPT

So, I spent all this time making up stories that would fit the imagined titles, based on shoes, not shows. Now I see how stupid I was. I guess my hope that you were in show business motivated my whacky behavior, but you’re a shoe salesman. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Now, here’s the really crazy part: my “Shoe Business Stories” have been bought by Hulu. A movie based on “The Loafers” will start streaming in mid-December.

We should be amazed!

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in metallage

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Metaphor

Posted on October 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metaphor (met’-a-phor): A comparison made by referring to one thing as another.

My face is a bowl of Crisco—round and pale with a slightly greasy sheen. I cleanse it four times a day with a special soap designed to clean away the vegetable-shortening look. It’s primarily for people like me. I’ve been locked up in Mount Rockefeller State Prison for 45 years. I have another 300 hundred years to go. Obviously, I’ll never be free again—free to murder some more people—maybe 6 or 7—kidnap children, and literally burn bridges.

When I was running wild, I almost succeeded in burning down the Bayonne Bridge! At the time, it was the longest bridge in the world. I wasn’t fooling around. The plan was to drive a tanker truck loaded with gasoline over the bridge, stop in the middle of the bridge, and light the truck on fire, but I forgot my lighter. I tried to flag people down to ask for a light. One of hose people was Detective Stromboli “on his way home from work.” He arrested me.

We found out during my trial for “attempted wanton destruction of public property” that he was actually on his way home from his girlfriend’s in Jersey. That was the highlight of my trial! The destruction of Stromboli’s marriage was more than I could hope for. Both his wife and his girlfriend were in the courtroom. The girlfriend’s name was Victoria Comer and the wife’s name was Shirley—Shirley Stromboli. Officer Stromboli’s testimony was an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane all rolled into one.

When, under questioning, Officer Stromboli revealed his affair, Shirley Stromboli went berserk. She started pulling things out of her purse and throwing them at him, yelling “Motherf*ker” with every item she threw—she hit him in the face with a set of car keys, the rest of the stuff sailed past him, leaving him unscathed. The bailiff wrested Mrs. Stromboli’s purse from her and escorted her from the courtroom. In the meantime, in true Jersey-girl style, Victoria hurled insults at Shirley: “You dried up banana peel!” “You pickle-brained pig slop.” “Scumbag.” “Your mother’s a chicken’s ass.” Victoria was escorted out of the courtroom yelling all the way.

The two women met in the hallway and started throwing punches and kicking each other. Victoria clocked Shirley with right cross and knocked her out cold. Her head hit a radiator as she went down. An ambulance was called. Victoria laughed and gave Shirley the finger as she was wheeled to the waiting ambulance. As a consequence of the blow to her head, Shirley suffered permanent memory loss. Her entire life, until she woke up in the hospital, was erased. That included marrying Detective Stromboli. There were photographs and papers documenting their marriage that Stromboli found and destroyed.

Stromboli and Comer got married and Stromboli was busted for bigamy as they left the church. Stromboli had failed to realize that his original marriage certificate was permanently filed with the Town Clerk in Richmond, Staten Island. Not only that, there were at least 50 witnesses to the marriage.

Stromboli was a pea-brained nitwit. His poor wife. It was like she landed on planet earth for the first time when she woke up in the hospital. When he was incarcerated, she quickly got a divorce from pea-brain with the help of a sympathetic lawyer.

I see the light every day for about an hour. I walk around in circles in the exercise yard. The story of my trial and conviction gives me solace as I fade into oblivion. That motherfu*ker Stombli’s life was ruined by my trial. Post-trial, as the well-known king of chumps, he had a hard time putting his life back together. Victoria would have nothing to do with him and ended up marrying a meat cutter from Jersey City. Stromboli, a convicted bigamist, ended up working as a busboy in a mob-owned restaurant in Bayonne named “Nero’s.” He was shot dead in a botched hit attempt. Nobody cares but me. Ha! Ha!

Definitions 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in metaphor

Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Monthly Archives: October 2024

Homoioteleuton

Horismus

Hypallage

Hyperbaton

Hypozeuxis

Hysterologia

Hysteron Proteron

Inopinatum

Inter se pugnantia

Intimation

Isocolon

Kategoria

Litotes

Martyria

Maxim

Medela

Meiosis

Mempsis

Merismus

Mesarchia

Mesodiplosis

Mesozeugma

Metalepsis

Metallage

Metaphor

Blog Stats

Categories

Blogroll