Exuscitatio (ex-us-ci-ta’-ti-o): Stirring others by one’s own vehement feeling (sometimes by means of a rhetorical question, and often for the sake of exciting anger).
Who does he think he is? God? Chuck Norris? I can’t stand the way he makes little chirping noises when he chews his food. I don’t know how Chirpy Cowclaw does it. I don’t know what his technique is. I’ve tried mimicking him until my tongue got sore. I failed to make a sound, even with a baby chicken. I put it in my mouth with its butt facing down my throat. All it did was peep a couple of times and shit on my tongue. Chicken shit tastes awful. I went to urgent care and the used a miniature hoe to scrape off my tongue and a spray bottle of water to clear off remaining residue. Then, I washed out my mouth with a solution of baking soda, lemonade, and baby wash. The baby wash made bubbles when I talked, but I couldn’t wash it away without washing away the baking soda and lemonade. I just had to live with it until the baking soda and lemonade went away of their own accord. I was humiliated by the whole thing. I cried myself to sleep, lost in a cloud of baby was bubbles—all because of Chirpy Cowclaw. Something must be done, my friends. We MUST put an end to his chirping. I yelled, waving a scalpel a the assembled group.
Everybody yelled and waved their scalpels. It was beautiful to witness such solidarity among a group of people usually divided by conflicting opinions. Before we cut out Chirpy’s tongue, I was charged with the responsibility of learning more about Chirpy’s malady to see if it had any redeeming qualities. I bought a “Merk Manual” and looked up “chirping people.” I found: “It is induced by a ritual, not unlike circumcision. It is practiced by the Tarmacs of North-Central New Jersey. They trace their origins to what is today, Poland. They were peasants and hijacked a ship sailing to the New World. The chirping was first induced by a butcher’s knife while sailing across the Atlantic. A passenger, Timberbrain Throttle was sick of Blah Blah Goatsmell’s constant talking. He tried to cut out Blah Blah’s tongue. He slipped and cut a small slice on the left-hand side of Blah Blah’s tongue. The slice made Goatsmell chirp when he ate. The passengers took the chirping to be a mystic prayer of thanksgiving to God. Now, everybody wanted to chirp, and Timberbrain obliged them with his butcher’s knife. When they all ate together, it sounded like a flock of starlings headed south, on the ground in a field.”
I put down the Merk’s Manual. I was stunned, but not deterred. The chirping had put me on edge every time I ate with Cowclaw. He was a menace to decorum. He needed fixing. I shared the information about the Tarmacs with my scalpel-welding mob. They chanted “Cut, cut, cut” through their bullhorns. We headed for Cowclaw’s house on Elm Street—we were going to give Cowclaw the nightmare he deserved. He came out of his house and sang like a nightingale from his front porch. There was a gasp, and everybody dropped their scalpels and knelt. The sky turned red and green. There was crying and hallelujahs. Chirpy Cowclaw said “This is my way of worshipping God—the nightingale sings God’s love, the chirping sounds out a warning. If you understand that it is God’s warning, you will take heed and be grateful to have heard it.”
I was stunned. One person’s nightmare was another person’s bliss. The experience that night shifted me from nightmare to bliss. Chirpy Cowclaw had turned me around. I was saved! But would it last?
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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