Monthly Archives: December 2024

Ecphonesis

Posted on December 31, 2024 | Leave a comment

Ecphonesis (ec-pho-nee’-sis): An emotional exclamation.

“ Ooh, ooh, ooh! Harder! Faster, faster! That’s it! Aaaaah.” I was scratching a mosquito bite on my girlfriend’s back. We had gone swimming in Mickey Numnutz Pond. It was named after Mickey Numnutz who had been rescued from what was then Still Water Pond 11 times before he finally drowned at the age of 49 when he went swimming with his shoes on at 3.00 a.m. Nbody was around to save him. There was a Golden Retriever who gave it a try, but he failed. He was named “Toto” and was a feral dog who had escaped from the local animal shelter when an incompetent worker left his cage open after feeding him. He was notorious for growling at children and chasing his tail. Toto was seen by some hikers running through the woods holding a severed human arm in his jaws. Numnutz was missing an arm. When Toto was chasing his tail, he dropped the arm. It was wearing a Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” bracelet identical to Numnutz’s. It was determined that Toto chewed it off after trying to rescue Numnutz and had worked up an appetite. A foster home was subsequently found for Toto and he learned to beg and roll over. This should’ve been a happy ending.

But it wasn’t.

There was an obnoxious Chihuahua named Macho Man who lived next store. When his owners let him out in the yard it was “Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!” the whole time. He wouldn’t let Toto sniff his butt through the chain link fence, which is the ultimate dog insult. Macho Man would fart and run away yapping. Toto hated Macho Man and wanted to kill him.

Easter was coming. He and his owner Mrs. Calder were going shopping for candy at the most upscale candy store for a thousand miles around: “Sweet Tooth’s.” Along with all the other candy, it sold chocolate sculptures of purebred pets. Toto spotted a Chihuahua on the shelf. He sat in front of it and whined until Mrs. Calder noticed. Mrs. Calder thought it would be cute to get a chocolate likeness of Macho Man for Easter and she bought it.

When they got home Macho Man was yapping in the yard. From an experience as a puppy Toto knew that chocolates would kill Macho Man. He had been lucky to survive his own chocolate poisoning when his then-owner took him to the vet.

Toto pulled the chocolate Chihuahua out of its bag, took it into the back yard and dropped it over the fence. Macho Man jumped on it and started gobbling it up. Later that afternoon, his eyes bulged out and he started twitching. His owners didn’t know what to d. They put him out in the yard and Macho Man collapsed dead.

Toto furiously dug a hole under the fence and squeezed underneath and picked up the remains of the chocolate Chihuahua and squeezed back under the fence. He carried the pieces to the yard’s far back corner and buried them. Then, he ran back to the fence and filled in the hole he had dug and covered it over, concealing it with leaves.

Macho man’s owners called for him. There was a loud gasp, and then, crying. They carried the dead Chihuahua inside.

The perfect crime.

Two days later the neighbors bought another Chihuahua and named it Macho Man. Toto ran away: one murder was enough.

An investigation determined that Toto may have played a role in Macho Man’s death. Mrs. Calder told investigators the the chocolate Chihuahua was missing and the coroner had found traces of chocolate in Macho Man’s bloodstream. “America’s Most Wanted” did a feature on him titled “Murder: Doggy Style.” Now, Toto was a fugitive.

He joined a small pack of Coyotes and was last seen feeding on a deer carcas with the pack down by “Mickey Numnutz Pond.” If you encounter Toto he may seem harmless and playful when he chases his tail. Don’t be fooled.

He is a killer.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Effictio

Posted on December 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

Effictio (ef-fik’-ti-o): A verbal depiction of someone’s body, often from head to toe.

So much is bound up in what we look “like.” Our bodies are the reservoir: What a babe! What a dog! Nice ass! Your nose looks like a shark fin! Where’s your hairline? You look like an alligator with boobs! You could ski with those feet! You’re so ugly you make onions cry.

On and on they go—rude, nasty, often hurtful. Even brutal. Even the complements above shadow insults: “babe” and “nice ass” aim in a negative direction. Sure, we call people beautiful, and handsome, and fit, and attractive, but it is rare that we say anything about the body that evokes a judgment that isn’t somehow rude or weird, or flattery.

I have a “button nose.” That’s a compliment? I think it’s an insult. Body builders probably have a vocabulary of body-praise that is commensurate with their valued goals—all coming down to “rock-hard, toned and pumped up.” The body’s shape can become distorted—a small head resting on a giant body rippling like a lake of meat.

I think I’m getting lost trying to make a point about bodies, which are usually referred to as such when they’re dead, or depressions filled with water, collections of stars, objects in motion, or medicinal cures as in “anti-bodies.”

My Uncle Willie is a hunchback and proud of it. He has a sweater knitted like a target that fits over his hump. He had his hump tattooed like a snow-capped mountain in a sort of Japanese Mount Fuji motif. When people asked about his hunchback, he would say he was pregnant. Sometimes he would joke and say “I wish I could get this thing off my back.” Sometimes he’d go to Church dressed like Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, and yell “Sanctuary” at the end of the service. He would jokingly tell people who asked about his hump that they could touch it for $50.00 cash.

Uncle Willie was a handsome man. He was tall with black hair and gentle blue eyes. He had the grip of a pipe wrench. In addition to the mountain tattooed on his hump, he had an angel with its wings spread tattooed on his chest with “Love Will Set You Free” inscribed beneath it. His face was filled with kindness mainly communicated by his lips always being slightly upturned. Uncle Willie had a pierced ear—he wore a diamond stud that sparkled when he moved his head. He always wore his Rolex. It communicated his wealth which was substantial. Last, he wore black Blundstones giving him a certain “je ne sais quoi” when he wore them with a suit. He had the aura of a movie star.

Uncle Willie has a wife and two children; a boy and a girl. His wife is an attorney and his two children are geniuses. At the ages of 17 and 19, respectively, they had invented an electric heater that can be plugged in the wall and heat your whole house for just pennies a day. They’ve made millions.

Where am I going here? I really don’t know.

I think I’m trying to make a point about the body’s surface and the importance it has in a constellation of critical judgments we may make about our fellow humans. This is probably the usual bullshit admonition about judging books by their covers, but it nevertheless rings a bell. Using the “cover” as a criterion for the next step in love saves time. It may be shallow, but it’s a starting point.

What you see is not what you get in a relationship with another human being. First impressions may last for awhile, but awhile isn’t good enough with something that’s supposed to last until death. Twenty year-old her or him is not 60 year-old her or him.

The saggy boobs and the limp wiener have arrived. Where did your love go? To the soul. To character. To mutual respect. To trust. To devotion. You look at him or her and you see a good person.

You feel warm inside.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Ellipsis

Posted on December 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Ellipsis (el-lip’-sis): Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.

I was tired of everything. I was disgruntled. I complained. My demeanor was abrasive. I was going crazy . . . a loon irritating the hell out of everybody within earshot.

I was getting soft like a bowl of pudding. I knew I wasn’t dying, but something big was happening.

A self-described shaman from Connecticut had put a curse on me. I had told his daughter she looked like a mushroom with eyes—a really stupid comparison that she blew off with laughter. Immediately, I tried to think of a new and better insult. I compared her to a bale of hay, and then to a damaged guardrail, and then to a used tissue. She kept laughing at me, so I dropped my atomic insult bomb: “You look like a piece of shit.” She stopped laughing and hit me with a left hook and ran home crying to her father. Her father was enraged and swore if I came to see her ever again, he would put a curse on me as big as the moon. The daughter invited me over. I was curious. I didn’t believe in curses, so off I went. We sat down in the living room and I told her she looked like a bowling ball with legs. She called her father and told him I was doing it again. He pulled a wand out of his back pocket and pointed it at me and yelled “You’re a piece of shit!”

I laughed it off at the time, but with my emerging symptoms, I’ve got what look like corn kernels embedded in my skin. My mother took me to a dermatologist. She was shocked. She tried pulling the kernels out with tweezers, but it was impossible.

I was turning into a piece of shit accented with corn kernels.

I was awakened the next morning by the strong smell of shit—it was me. I had turned into a piece of shit and I was on the floor under my bed. I could talk and see, but I had no hands, or arms, or legs. I just sat there: a piece of shit. I didn’t know what to do. I yelled for my mother.

When she entered my room it looked empty to her. She started sniffing and said out loud to herself, “Somebody did number two in here.” I yelled, “I’m number 2. I’m under the bed Ma!” She looked under the bed and yelled “You’re a piece of shit!” She went downstairs and came back up with spatula and scraped me up off the floor and carried me carefully down to the kitchen. My father was sitting there drinking a cup of coffee, which he dropped on the floor. “Why the hell are you carrying a piece of shit around?” She answered, “Its our son.” He said, “I know it’s that goddamn shaman, he said he would fu*k our son over if he kept insulting his beloved daughter. What the hell is wrong with you son?” he asked. I said sarcastically, “I’m a piece of shit accented with corn kernels.”

Luckily, the shaman owed my father a favor. My father had saved him from being burned at the stake during the Evangelical Uprising that cost many good people their lives. My father had hidden the shaman in a box labeled “Bibles” and smuggled him out of the dungeon.

We got to his house. My father handed the spatula with shit me on it to the daughter, and he and the shaman embraced and spent some time talking about the good old days. I told the daughter I would never insult her again. I told her I loved her, and as soon as I was a boy again, we would go on a date—to the movies. I actually meant it.

The shaman pulled out his wand and pointed it at me and yelled “No shit Sherlock,” and there I was in my pajamas, no longer a piece of shit. The girl and I hugged. My life was back on track. My father told me if I ever insulted the girl again he would feed me to our pigs.

Everything is going well with the girl. I have made my little brother the target of my neurotic need to insult. Yesterday, I told him he looked like a walking talking cigarette butt. I am working on an insulting blog called “Demeaning is in the Message.”

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Enallage

Posted on December 28, 2024 | Leave a comment

Enallage (e-nal’-la-ge): The substitution of grammatically different but semantically equivalent constructions.

We was shocked—it’s like we’re sitin’ butt naked on a piece of bare wire plugged in the wall. Time ticked. The stars moved. We was shocked. What was unexpected slipped out of nowhere. Wasn’t that a wave—that tsunami of shock flooding our expectations away. Now they are replaced, but we don’t know it since our memories have been deleted by the shock, giving us only shock cutting our ties to the past like a cleaver, like a chainsaw made of molten metal searing the edge.

The feeling is odd. The deprivation of memory, especially long term, it leaves a hole in your consciousness you can crawl into to look for your past. Your identity has become like a flame flickering on a candle, consuming its wick in the present with its genesis consisting of the memory of when it was first lit ten minutes ago—not your birth and trajectory into the present.

And oh the shock! The tasteless colorless shock of our birth from the void—the null and the void, what we avoid when we grind our way through another day of mapless wandering, following nothing, going nowhere.

The shock. What makes the shock? What if we didn’t forget. What if we remembered what made us forget? Are we truly whole without being able to tap the trauma? Should we remember? Do we have a duty? Have we really forgotten or are we just trying to forget?

Is there a witness who can tell us what we underwent? Will that make a bell ring in our heads?

You assure me that we did not kill our mother with a hammer, dismember her with a hacksaw and bury her in the rose garden. You assure me. Your assurance keeps my memory blank, like some kind of special medicine made for fiends and serial killers.

I assure you that we did not kill our mother with a hammer, dismember her with a hacksaw and bury her in the rose garden. I assure you. My assurance keeps your memory blank, like some kind of special medicine made for fiends and serial killers.

But we are neither, as far as we remember. Hopefully, we will never know the source of our shock—the metaphoric shock of sitting on a wire, the literal shock of some real experience. We shall never know who plugged the wire in. As a shock, only a masochist would want to know it and experience it in memory. So, we are clear. We are free. There’s a lot missing, but it’s beneficial.

I found a tooth on the garage floor.

I have no idea where it came from. My sister told me to forget about it.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Enantiosis

Posted on December 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

Enantiosis (e-nan-ti-o’-sis): Using opposing or contrary descriptions together, typically in a somewhat paradoxical manner.

It’s not hot. It’s not cold. Is it just right? Maybe. What the hell is just right anyway? Was Goldilocks right when she sampled the Three Bears’ porridge? What’s the difference between hot and too hot, cold and too cold, and just right? It is all a matter of taste.

It is articulated by the tongue wrapping around the senses: taste tells us the story, the very personal story, of what repels and compels us. What doesn’t repel and compel us does not exist: indifference is a matter of taste.

I ate fermented shark in Iceland. It smelled so bad it came to the table in a sealed jar. I was told to open and close the jar as fast as I possibly could and stuff the shark in my mouth as fast as I could or the other patrons might evacuate the restaurant. I followed directions, and got the shark past my nose into my mouth. It smelled like a dead body, but it tasted exquisite—so exquisite that I placed another order.

How many experiences do we have like this in life?

Where on one “level” something is horrendous and on another level the same thing is sublime?

You may have a rich aunt who buys you a winter coat and then makes you wear it all the time. You’re sitting at the dinner table in your new peacoat from B. Altman’s sweating your ass off. You wear it like a bathrobe over your pajamas. Your mother makes you sleep in it so as not to insult Aunt April who is really rich and really old.

You get suspended from school for insisting on wearing your coat in class. When you try to explain, your teacher and the Principal laugh and shove you out the door.

The worst was being detained at the airport for refusing to take your coat off at airport security. They took you in a back room and told you to tell your story. They started laughing, cut off the coat’s buttons, and tore off the coat. They gave you the buttons off the floor to sew back on when you got where you were going.

You’re going to stay with Aunt April for a week in her mansion in Mawah, New Jersey. When she saw you in the buttonless coat at the airport, she screamed “Nooooooo!” She started swinging her purse and she hit you in the head with it. She knocked you unconscious. You wake up in a hospital bed wearing a new coat with a zipper. Aunt April says the coat is “just right,” and you think it’s all wrong.

But, it’s a matter of taste, the criterion from hell.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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

Enigma

Posted on December 26, 2024 | Leave a comment

Enigma (e-nig’-ma): Obscuring one’s meaning by presenting it within a riddle or by means of metaphors that purposefully challenge the reader or hearer to understand.

“It’s no mystery to me.” I lied. Lately, everything was a mystery to me. The time had come for the King to lose his horse. The ducks were walking backwards. The glue didn’t stick. The onion made me laugh. My ass was not in pain. The molehill was flattened by a UPS truck that veered off my driveway onto my lawn.

I apologize for putting it all this way: my plate is not full. In fact it is empty and chipped in two places: my bank account and my septic system. My bank account has drained and my septic system won’t. It flooded my basement. When the tide suddenly went out, it left the basement floor littered with mud-colored sheets of paper that had been stuck in the drain along with a big blob of fat.

But that’s not the real problem: Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m driving around in sub-zero weather with my windows stuck down. My daughter’s marrying some guy who makes sewage look like something that might be good to eat as a snack food. He makes my bankruptcy look like I won the Mega Millions lotto.

He whines. He has no ass—he looks like his ass was transplanted to his stomach which sticks like an ant hill with a belly button. His favorite saying is “Whatever man.” How’s that for somebody going nowhere? He wears sweatpants and a hoodie that says “I Shit My Pants” on it.

At least he has a job. He gets paid next to nothing for it. He strings beads for a living. He brags: “Bead stringing enhances my eye-hand coordination and concentration, fostering patience and problem-solving. As I poke the string through a bead, I implement its placement and improve my string handling.” This indicates to me that he has “issues.” I don’t know what they are, but he played ice hockey for four years in college. He was taken off the ice on a stretcher 19 times, and that was just at home games.

But that’s not the worst. He drools when he looks at my daughter. It isn’t a lot of drool—just a tiny line at the left-corner of his mouth. He wipes it away with his sleeve and makes a snoffling sound, like a boar with impure thoughts. My daughter has taken to kissing away the drool and making her own sow-snoffle sound. When this happens, I want to kill them both.

Somehow, I have to drive a wedge between them. This marriage cannot take place. I had to get him on video cheating on my daughter. I looked up M’ Lady Marvelous. I used to use her services when I was an alcoholic philanderer. I set up a motel room with CCTV and hired M’ Lady to pick the boyfriend up at the bar he hangs out at and spend a wild night with him at the surveilled motel.

M’Lady pulled it off—video and all. She said he was the best “bang” she had in her whole life. I started to worry. I sent the video anonymously to my daughter. It was beyond creepy, but I had to get this guy out of her life. She told me about the video and that it made her really mad. She wanted to know why the boyfriend hadn’t invited her along to the motel too. She said she felt betrayed and was calling the wedding off.

I thought I had won a major battle until she brought the next fiancée home. He dresses like a Flamenco dancer and writes poems in praise of General Jorge Rafael Videla. I’ve bought a gun.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Ennoia

Posted on December 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

Ennoia (en-no’-i-a): A kind of purposeful holding back of information that nevertheless hints at what is meant. A kind of circuitous speaking.

The kettle was boiling, singing its song—announcing that tea was on the way. It reminded me of the miniature steam engine I got one Christmas when I was around 14. You filled it with water, put a cone-shaped fuel pellet under it and lit it up. When the water boiled a wheel spun around and you could blow its whistle.

I started to think of what else I could do with the fuel pellets after I got tired of the steam engine. I had seen people make toy hot air balloons with garment bags from the dry cleaner stretched across crossed coat hangers with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol affixed where the coat hangers criss-crossed.

My older brother had a dresser drawer filled to the brim with condoms. He told me they were “just in case.” Anyway, I knew he wouldn’t miss just one, so I took one. My plan was to make a hot air balloon with a condom and launch it in one of my classes—most likely health class. First, I had to do a test launch.

The fuel pellets were down in the living room by the Christmas tree. So I went down and loaded one on the condom blimp. It had one of those reservoir tips—I was going hold onto that while I ran the test. So, I stoked up the pellet and the condom filled with hot air. Then the tip slipped out of my fingers. I didn’t count on the condom being lubricated.

It took off over the Christmas tree. The condom caught on fire. The burning blimp crashed into the Christmas tree, and the tree caught on fire. Our house burned to the ground.

This was the worse thing I had done, but not the only thing I had done. I had shot holes in my father’s company car—I wanted to see if .22 bullets would penetrate it. I had sawed off my little brother’s left thumb while I was showing him how to hold a piece of wood when it was being sawn. I had brought home a poison ivy plant and potted it and put in my sister’s bedroom as a birthday gift. She grew gigantic blisters in her nose and had been taken by an ambulance to the hospital.

After burning the house down, my dad said it was time to send me to a place in Colorado for “nut cases” like me. All my belongings were burned in the fire, so I left our motel with just the clothes on my back. The person I sat next to on the flight to Colorado asked to be moved to another seat because of my smell. She was refused. So, she waved a magazine at me for the rest of the trip to blow the smell away.

There was a man at the airport from “Under Where?” to pick me up. He was holding a baseball bat wrapped with barbed wire. He said “get in the fu*kin’ van before I hit you in the legs.” I ran. I jumped in one of the cars in the airport queue and begged them take me with them. I told them my story and they took me away.

They are wonderful people. I am their pool boy for their indoor pool. I look older than my age, so I’m getting away with it. So far, I haven’t done anything crazy. Mr. Clack’s wife has gone missing, but I’m 99% sure I didn’t have anything to do with it.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Enthymeme

Posted on December 24, 2024 | Leave a comment

Enthymeme (en’-thy-meem): 1. The informal method [or figure] of reasoning typical of rhetorical discourse. The enthymeme is sometimes defined as a “truncated syllogism” since either the major or minor premise found in that more formal method of reasoning is left implied. The enthymeme typically occurs as a conclusion coupled with a reason. When several enthymemes are linked together, this becomes sorites. 2. A figure of speech which bases a conclusion on the truth of its contrary. [Depending on its grammatical structure and specific word choice, it may be chiasmus].

If it’s impolite to fart in public, it’s polite to keep your butt cheeks clamped shut in public. Right? Of course it’s right. It’s like if something’s small, it’s not big, or even medium sized. I’ve built the mental mansion that is my mind on this way of thinking.

I honed my reasoning skills when I was in sixth grade. I was reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It was fairly dull, but I was a child prodigy. I was frequently compared to Mozart, but I knew I was smarter than him, but I did like to drink. I had used my genius to make a fake I.D saying I was 26. Even though I was only 16, it worked like a charm. It was a work of art. I used it to get booze, a driver’s license, a union card, cigarettes, and a private detective’s license. I called myself “Sammy Snoop P.I.” I used the towering edifice of rationality towering in my head to solve the most complex mysteries that I could take on as Sammy Snoop, P.I. They ranged from missing pets to missing mother-in-laws.

The most convoluted case I have ever been involved in was “The Case of the Missing Dust Bunnies.” Yes, dust bunnies. Curlo Doughbell collected dust bunnies. He cultivated them around his home’s heating ducts and under beds. He had over 250 dust bunnies, all labeled with a name, size, weight, and date of collection. His biggest dust bunny was four feet long and weighed 3 pounds. It was the only dust bunny in his collection that he hadn’t raised himself. It was from China and it was sold on Amazon.com. It was advertised as a “Dust Dragon” from the Ming Dynasty—it was ancient and revered.

And of course, it was a target for criminals—for burglars bent on obtaining the ancient dust dragon.

I thought: who the hell would steal a Dust Dragon? Why would they steal it? Then, I thought, if it is right not to steal, it is wrong to steal. I was on the trail! Honest people don’t steal, therefore crooks do. We had one big crook in our town: Joey Marinara. His wife Flicky loved fashion and wore unusual clothes, like an apron with spikes on it, a pair of shoes made out of treated banana peels dyed blue, or a dress made out of functioning cellphones displaying reruns of “The View.”

Joey was stacking up as my number one suspect. Chances were, given his wife’s taste in clothes, that somehow she was wearing the Dust Dragon. People who wear weird clothes, don’t wear normal clothes. Flicky didn’t wear normal clothes.

I went to Bella Donna Casino that night. It was Joey’s and Flicky’s hangout—they were always there. I ordered a drink and sat down by The Wheel of Fortune, Flicky’s favorite game. The odds of winning are a zillion to one, but she loved it. She came walking over and sat down by me and did a spin of the wheel and lost. She had the Dust Dragon wrapped around her neck like a boa. I asked her where she got the neck fixture and she told me Joey got it for her. That clinched it—like I thought—in the recesses of my marvelous mind—it was Joey who had stolen the Dust Dragon.

How would I get it back? I would steal it back. I grabbed the Dust Dragon and pulled on it like the rope on an outboard motor. Flicky screamed and spun around on her stool and the Dust Dragon came sliding off. Joey came running across the Casino with gun drawn. I waved two one-hundred dollar bills at him and he stopped running and put his gun away. If you get something for free you are likely to take money for it.

This is one example of how Aristotle has helped me fight crime. All great detectives have used Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Analytics to put their minds in motion toward making astute deductions, and drawing inferences—seeing how things add up, or filling in missing premises in the shape of enthymemes. Without Aristotle, despite the fact that I am genius, I couldn’t even find my way to the bathroom at night.

Doughbell got his Dust Dragon back and I got paid my fee. My current case (which is unsolved) is “The Case of the Dead Duck.” This man called me and said “I’m a dead duck.” Dead ducks are not alive, therefore, this man is lying. Similarly, people are not waterfowl. We are meeting tomorrow.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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

Epanodos

Posted on December 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epanodos (e-pan’-o-dos): 1. Repeating the main terms of an argument in the course of presenting it. 2. Returning to the main theme after a digression. 3. Returning to and providing additional detail for items mentioned previously (often using parallelism).

I don’t know why I wanted to learn how to shuck oysters. I don’t know why I wanted to learn how to make pan flutes. Why did I want to knit caps for new-born babies? Why did I want to learn how to make a pipe bomb? Why did I want to blow up the statue of Ramble Balforth on the village green?

He was THE founder of our little village of Balforth, NY, founded in 1787. His descendants still dominate the town, from the supermarket to the hardware store, to mayor Gumby Balforth, named after the claymation action figure his father loved. He’s about as smart as a ball of clay. Since he’s been mayor, Balforth has become a cesspool: the mayor has leased Belforth’s dells to “Poopy Dipper” a septic tank pumper. Now, the village is surrounded by “lakes” of human waste. The mayor claims the village has benefitted from the poop trucks pumping out their contents around the village—surrounding it with a smelly brown soup! The mayor has purchased a beachfront condo in Florida. His plan is clear: take the poop-money and run. Gumby is a crook and a grifter!

The pipe bomb will go a long way toward getting rid of him and remedy the evil on the village green.

Rambler Balforth’s claim to fame was buying and selling orphans. Child labor laws were nonexistent and you didn’t have to pay kids much, no matter what their job was. They were employed as physicians, coal miners, vicars, used stage coach sales people, gourmet chefs, chemists and more! There were numerous orphanages back then, and that’s where Rambler got his children. He would pick them up in a mule cart and sell them at the Farmer’s Market on Thursdays. He specialized in toddlers because they were small and many could talk. In addition, he could pile them high in his mule cart without injuring them. He sold them by the pound, like cows or pigs.

His statue deserves the pipe bomb. He was a fiend.

My great grandfather five times removed, Ben Rice, was one of those children that Balforth bought and sold. He was sold to a traveling accordion player named Fitz Punky. Fitz taught him to play the accordion. They would do duets on the streets of Boston. Fitz was run over and killed by a milk wagon. After Fitz’s death, Ben went back to Balforth to seek his revenge. His plan was to assassinate Balforth at the Farmer’s Market. He was too poor to afford a decent weapon, so he secreted a knife in his accordion. He strolled around the market playing the accordion. When he got to Balfortn’s stand he started playing and singing Ben Franklin’s “Visitors and Fish.” When he got to “stink,” he lunged forward, pulled the knife, and stabbed Balforth to death.

Balforth was so universally hated, that Ben was not charged with a crime. He got married, had children, and played accordion on the Village Green. He died at the age of 103 from chronic severe rickets. One day, his bow legs collapsed, hurling him in front of a galloping horse. The horse stepped on his head, leaving a stain on the street that some people claim they can see to this day.

POSTSCRIPT

I arrived at the Village Green at 2:00 a.m. I pulled the pipe bomb out of my backpack and duct taped it to Rambler Balforth’s crotch. I lit the fuse with my Bic and ran behind a tree. BLAM! Rambler Balforth was reduced to rubble scattered everywhere. Justice had been served. I decided to leave Gumby alone. He was destined to be caught, and the dells pumped.

Two weeks after I blew it up, there was a new statue of Rambler Balforth erected on the Village Green. I don’t want to risk another bombing. I have started spray painting the statue with graffiti. The first time I showed up there was a policeman on guard. He motioned me over to the statue. He saw my spray can and asked if he could paint something on the statue.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epanorthosis

Posted on December 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epanorthosis (ep-an-or-tho’-sis): Amending a first thought by altering it to make it stronger or more vehement.

I think I will achieve fame if I just keep going. No, by god, I will achieve fame! I’ve tried to become famous for so many things: running over baby ducks with my truck, hiding my mother’s leg brace in the woods underneath a big log, eating a Black Widow spider, going to church naked with a golf club up my ass, standing on the roof of my cousin’s car while we were riding around village green, and eating the tip of a cat’s tail—that was painful and noisy, There are at lease 100 additional amazing deeds, but let’s stop and think for a minute.

Part of being famous is the buzz. But “buzz“ isn’t exclusive to fame. When I was arrested, ridiculed, and the subject of a story titled “There’s a Whack Job in Town,” in “Porta-Paper,” word spread, but it wasn’t because I was famous, it was because I had become infamous: “well known for some bad quality or deed.” So, I stopped right there and determined to do something righteous that would generate the buzz I so desperately craved.

I decided to save somebody’s life. I learned basic first aid, CPR, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and I carried a six-pack of NALMEFENE HC to bring OD’d herion addicts back from the dead.

So, I was leaving a party at a friend’s house. There was this guy laying face down on the sidewalk. “Woo-hoo! It’s get famous time! I’m gonna save this guy.”

Out cold: Clearly, he had overdosed. I pulled out my six-pack of NALMEFENE HC and stuck some needles in his leg. I didn’t call 911 because I wanted all the credit for saving him. He didn’t move, so I stuck 3 more needles in him. Someone else came out the door and saw what was going on and called 911 and the police. I yelled “You’re ruining it!” He looked puzzled.

I was arrested.

The man on the sidewalk hadn’t overdosed. Rather, he had too much to drink and passed out. I had killed him with all the NALMEFENE HC I had pumped in him. Now, I am serving a 3-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter. I am remorseful for what I did, so I may get out early.

My quest for fame has not ended. Here in prison I’m writing poems for the other inmates to send to their loved ones. The inmates give me a general sense of what their love is about and I write a fitting poem. I take a portrait photograph and include it with each poem.

I hope to become famous as the “Prison Poet” and be a guest on daytime TV shows broadcasting over ZOOM. I have a laptop in my cell and the lighting is really good.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epenthesis

Posted on December 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epenthesis (e-pen’-thes-is): The addition of a letter, sound, or syllable to the middle of a word. A kind of metaplasm. Note: Epenthesis is sometimes employed in order to accommodate meter in verse; sometimes, to facilitate easier articulation of a word’s sound. It can, of course, be accidental, and a vice of speech.

My screwdriver made me happy. It was my favorite tool. When I twistyed it, my heart beat faster. It was so basic, so earthy, so uncomplicated and effective. Not only that, it was versatile. Although it is named for the screw and its function of screwing them in, there’s a lot more to the screwdriver than is captured in its name. Where do I begin?

There was a serial killer in the 1800s who killed his victims with a Philips-head screwdriver his father had given him for Christmas. He favored the Philips-head screwdriver because it had a pointed tip. As you would expect, he was called the “Screwdriver Killer” but people also called him “Screwdy.” Killing his victims wasn’t enough—he screwed a Philips-head screw in each of their eyes. When asked why he did it, he said he “liked mutilating eyeballs with screws.” That’s pretty straightforward. When asked why he stabbed his victims with his father’s Christmas gift, he said “I like stabbing and killing people with my Christmas gift.” Neither answer gives much insight into his motive, but clearly, it’s not very complex—it’s just a man and his screwdriver.

I used my screwdriver to good effect last night. I used it to pry open my next door neighbor’s back door. My neighbors went to the Bahamas for Christmas, so their place was fair game. I made one startling discovery—the mummified remains of Bill’s mother was sitting in a chair in the master bedroom’s closet. She was wearing a black Polartec bathrobe with seagulls printed on it. I had to hand it to Bill! His mother was also wearing a wedding ring. I grabbed it and pawned it this morning.

One more: you can use a screwdriver to pry cans open. I guess that may be a little bit like jimmying doors and windows, but you try not to damage the can. Doors and windows are another thing altogether—lots of splinters. I pried open a can of white paint, stirred it, and went to work covering the stains on my bathroom wall. The stains turned the white paint a very light pink. I liked it—the paint would destroy the DNA on the wall, so the color shift didn’t matter.

In closing: before the screwdriver was invented, people twisted screws in with their fingertips. Professional “Screwers” had huge callouses on their thumbs and forefingers and vise-like grips. The wonderful thing was that they weren’t displaced by the screwdriver’s invention. In fact, the screwdriver made their job easier.

I don’t have the time, or I’d offer you advice on obtaining a screwdriver. All I can say right now is don’t get screwed, buy USA. Ha, ha.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epergesis

Posted on December 20, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epergesis (e-per-gee’-sis): Interposing an apposition, often in order to clarify what has just been stated.

I was going berserk, a flower pot on my head, singing Devo’s “Whip It.” 27 years old, I was the birthday boy.

All my friends were there: Bongy Wingo my stalwart ice fishing friend, Marbella Bella who loved me, Gamble Marlow my financial adviser, Wheels Driver my Uber man, Doughball Jackson the fat guy who makes me feel good about my own obesity, Scrub Clipsy my manicurist, Nuts Muffler my mechanic, and Snowbank Miller, my snowplow man. There were five or ten more friends there, but enough is enough.

All my friends have nicknames—some pretty weird. We are all members of a cultural group that goes by nicknames who emigrated to the US in the 19th century. They used nicknames so nobody knew their real names. That would keep them out of trouble—no body could squeal on them. One of my favorite nicknames is Scarface. It projects the aura of a battle-hard bruiser ready for action. The world needs more people like that, instead of the whimpering cowards we’re surrounded by everywhere we look.

My nickname is Bloody John Bandwit. I used to be a hitman, but I wasn’t trusted, so, after a couple tries, I got permanently reassigned. I had family rights to the job, so, even though I had the nerves of a rabbit I got the job. My dad is Talons Bandwit and he was so proud when I was initiated. I had beaten a mouse to death with a hammer, so he thought I was ready for the job. I wasn’t.

My first assignment was to hit a Christmas bell-ringer—one of those annoying Salvation Army Santas. This guy was using his money kettle to launder money he had stolen from a West Coast operation run by a Quaker splinter sect specializing in the “Big Thee Thou” a very lucrative phone scam. The bell-ringer’s name was Job. I couldn’t kill him. To deter what he was doing, I was supposed to shoot him with buckshot, stab him and leave the knife in his chest, and smash his head with a big rock, and then take pictures to be circulated among the members of the Quaker splinter sect to scare the shit out of them. I refused.

Luckily, my father kept me from getting hit! I was reassigned to smother an old lady in her bed with a pillow. I took the job. I got to the house and crept silently up to the bedroom wearing a balaclava. When I opened the door, her husband was sitting in the bed smoking a cigarette, waiting for me to kill his wife who was sound asleep next to him. He handed me his pillow and motioned me to hurry up. I pressed it on her face and she started squirming around. Then, she died. Her husband thanked me for freeing him from a life of hell. I felt good, but I found out later that I screwed up when I talked to the victim’s husband—he could recognize my voice.

I was reassigned. Now, I sell stolen cars. It would take ten pages to explain how I get away with it. My car lot is called “Millennial Motors” and I cater to dishonest sleaze-balls who want a good deal.

Anyway, happy birthday to me. Thank God I have my father to cover my ass.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epizeugma

Posted on December 19, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epizeugma (ep-i-zoog’-ma): Placing the verb that holds together the entire sentence (made up of multiple parts that depend upon that verb) either at the very beginning or the very ending of that sentence.

Going to school was a saga, a trail of barbed wire, a minefield. I walked. It was four miles. Part of it was through the worst neighborhood on the East Coast: “Trauma Town.” It was populated primarily by psychopaths dumped there by the State because they were indigent. The hope was that they would die somehow and be taken off the books. They were afforded every way possible of killing each other—hand grenades, handguns, knives, poison gas, ligatures, shotguns, rifles, etc.

All well and good for the State, but what about me walking to school? My school, “The Local High School,” issued me a Kevlar vest and an Army helmet. In addition, I was allowed a baseball bat. By the end of my Junior year, I had beaten 9 unarmed attackers with it. I ran like hell from everybody else. My Army helmet had been nicked twice by small arms fire.

I started a campaign for the State to provide the residents of Tauma Town with medication. It would be much much cheaper than guns and explosives. The State agreed. They enlisted 25 psychiatrists to diagnose and prescribe the appropriate medication. Almost everybody was prescribed lithium—one in the morning, one at night.

It was a miracle! “Trauma Town” became “Trigonometry Town.” It was a model neighborhood. The adult residents got educated at on-line high schools and universities. The children went to the local schools. A few residents refused to take the lithium. They were held in the thrall of conspiracy theories. They were totally crazy like the old days. They would chase people down the street and throw rocks at baby carriages. There were four hardcore crazies—“Buffalo Bill” Bird, “Big Mama” Melon, “Gin” Wilton, and John Jones. They were such a nuisance that they were killed by the police; picked off one by one as they engaged in their villainy. Their children were left to fend for themselves—taking their lithium, they grew up to have jobs—dishwasher, shoe salesman, and the one who went to college, the manager of doorbell sales at Lowe’s.

I met a Trigonometry Town girl when I was walking to school. We dated through college and got married. Everything was fine until she started skipping her lithium on weekends for “recreational purposes.” She would tie me naked splayed out on the dining room table. She would pluck my beard hairs with tweezers. She would only pluck five, then she’d splash my chin with Polo cologne and rub her face in it and yell “Chin up mother f*ker!” Next, she’d untie me and make me stay naked for the weekend. Inevitably we’d go out to dinner—for sushi. She made me wear a Donald Duck bathrobe that was way too small. She made me quack-speak like Donald Duck and made eat a raw duck (duck sushi) for dinner. The proprietors of the sushi place “Tuna Toyota” loved us.

We drew a crowd. We were good for business. We ate for free. Eventually my wife started taking her medication again, but I kept dressing and acting like a crazy person when we went out for sushi.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epizeuxis

Posted on December 18, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epizeuxis: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for palilogia.

“Take me the fu*k home! I want to go home RIGHT NOW!”

She wasn’t having a good time. She was tied up and blindfolded and stuffed in his car’s trunk. You should’ve gagged her so she wouldn’t upset you with her yelling.

You met her at church. You sat next to each other. You sang hymns together: “Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty” was your favorite. You often feel almighty when you’re on a “dupe date” with somebody. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get somebody in your car’s trunk. You say, “Wait a minute” and pull over. You jump out and open the trunk. Your date is curious and bends over to look in the trunk. You give her a little shove and you bagged another one. Before they know what’s going on you inject a sedative in their butt, blindfold them, tie them up, and slam the trunk shut.

Now, the date begins.

You drive around for awhile listening to their muffled screams and their flopping around. They all remind you of your sister who you accidentally decapitated when you were kids. Your Uncle Harry had brought you back a machete from Malaysia where he had worked on a rubber plantation. Your Mom said it was a bad idea, but Uncle Harry assured her that you were a well-balanced young man who would probably just hang it on his bedroom wall as a souvenir. Uncle Harry was wrong. You chased your sister around the house with it swinging it over your head, until finally, you tripped on the hallway carpet and lopped off her head. Since you were a child you were not charged with a crime.

Two months later your copy of “Boys Life” magazine featured a taxidermist who decapitated dead animals and mounted their heads on wooden plaques. You felt vindicated. You made a squirrel trap, caught squirrels, decapitated them, and nailed their heads to pieces of wood. You made ten of them and took them to the Farmer’s Market to sell for $59.95 each. Your stand was called “Dead Squirrel/Good Squirrel.” The Game Warden was summoned. He complimented you on your craftsmanship and bought two—one for his father and one for himself. This further affirmed that you were doing something good. A Game Warden! Your mounted squirrel heads sold out. Dead Squirrel/Good Squirrel was a hit! People had all kinds of reasons for buying them. Your favorite was the guy whose brother owed him money. He was going to put the squirrel’s head on his brother’s pillow to scare him into paying up.

Anyway, as you got older the squirrels’ heads and your sister’s head got mixed up in your mind. You started decapitating women and mounting their heads on boards. Tonight, you were shit out of luck. Your trunk prisoner was able to get ahold of her switchblade and cut her bonds and take off the blindfold. She got her cellphone out of her jeans and called 911. Her friends told her she was paranoid, but she carried bear spray anyway. She had it in her hand and she was ready to spray the living shit out of the guy who had kidnapped her.

And there you were machete in hand, opening the trunk and getting soaked in the face with bear spray. The pain was deathly—you were repelled and ran to get away and ran into a tree and knocked yourself out. The woman stood on your throat until the police arrived. You were crying as they handcuffed you and guided you into one of the waiting police cars.

You are considered a serial killer. There were 6 heads hanging in your garage and another one on your workbench in the process of being mounted.

Of course, you’ll plead insanity and try to get sentenced to a mental institution. But that won’t work. You kept a diary that is lucid and meticulously records the details of each of your murders and shows how all the murders were premeditated.

You are a monster—how could you sing “Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty” with a woman in church while at the same time planning to decapitate and mount her head? Maybe your Uncle Harry is somehow to blame for giving you the machete in the first place. He’s back in Malaysia serving time for stealing buka balls and putting wigs on them.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epicrisis

Posted on December 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epicrisis (e-pi-cri’-sis): When a speaker quotes a certain passage and makes comment upon it.

Related figures: anamenesis–calling to memory past matters. More specifically, citing a past author from memory–and chreia (from the Greek chreiodes, “useful”) . . . “a brief reminiscence referring to some person in a pithy form for the purpose of edification.” It takes the form of an anecdote that reports either a saying, an edifying action, or both.

“Pink, pink, you stink.” The great portrait painter, Nolo Stroketti, said this. He is one of the first human beings to realize that colors are multidimensional. He paid the price and was sentenced to 2 years in prison for what he unguardedly said about pink.

Back then, colors were colors. People believed the earth would come flying out of its orbit if colors were granted qualities other than their colors. Pink was pink. It was not permitted to stink under any circumstances. In short, pink did not, and would not ever stink.

But hundreds of people demonstrated on behalf of Stroketti, chanting “Pink, pink, you stink.” This rattled the Kingdm of Penseel’s scientists, They could feel the earth beginning to wobble on its axis. Since they were in charge of everything, they told the army to mow down the demonstrators “and be done with it.” The soldiers locked and loaded and headed for the prison. Their only fear was that they’d run out of ammunition before shooting all the demonstrators.

Suddenly a man standing in a donkey cart blocked the street. He was wearing a pink robe and it stunk. The soldiers started coughing and falling to the ground. One of them said in a strangled voice “Pink, pink, you stink” as he fell to the ground. The man in the cart said, “Lo unto you, I am immune to the stench. My Father hast given me the remedy. Now thou shalt see, pink mayest stink, but not in itself, it is a medium that mayest stinketh. So, Stroketti is not altogether wrong. Free him or my Father will destroy the Kingdom of Penseel with famine, disease, penury, and corn hole.”

The man in the cart was burned at the stake.

The Kingdom of Penseel remained mired in misbelief for another 75 years when they were invaded and conquered by the Blasphimites who didn’t believe “jack shit.” The old theory of color was the first go. Pink was allowed to stink, red could be dead, yellow was mellow.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epilogus

Posted on December 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epilogus (e-pi-lo’-gus): Providing an inference of what is likely to follow.

“Too much trouble. Too much heartache. Too much sorrow. Too much. Too much. Too much.” I was writing a song for my new album titled “Too Much.” This would be my fiftieth album—a landmark in my career. I had talked my old record producer into fronting me the money to produce it and go on tour.

I hadn’t sung a note in twenty years. I was wealthy but I wanted to cap things off and go out with a bang. I planned on shooting myself in the head at the end of my final gig. I had a solid gold walker with a holder for my pistol built into the handle bars. I had designed it and it worked quite well. I could’ve concealed my gun in my leg brace, but it would’ve been harder to reach.

The only downside to the record deal was Joe Potato’s insistence that his daughter Jeckyl join the tour. She is 19. I was way way older than that—84. She couldn’t sing worth a shit and she couldn’t play drums, guitar or keyboard. However, she was beautiful. Every time I laid eyes on her I got a feeling. It was a barely detectable echo of the man I used to be, when I could feel, and my feelings were real. I was going to have Jeckyl stand by me on stage and slap a tambourine while I did my thing. She made me look good and she brought us good luck.

“Throwing Stones” first concert was a blockbuster. I dyed my hair black and used a Vocorder. I had skateboard wheels put on my Walker so I could roll around the stage and come back to Jeckyl’s side. Also, I could press a button and candy-colored lights would shoot up and down the walker. The audience loved it! But the dance Jeckyl did while she played her tambourine blew the audience away. Teenaged boys were moaning and groaning and begging on their knees, grown men left their wives and girlfriends and barged to the front of the audience, held their hands over their heads and danced like dervishes along with her. It was wild. Jeckyl put men and boys in a trance.

I wrote her a song that I sang to her at the end of the show while she stood in the beam of a red spotlight, looking up and slowly writhing:

“There is a fire in my heart

Tearing me apart.

You’re so young and I’m so old

You shine like 24-carat gold,

I am rusted like a nail in the rain

I look at you and feel only pain.”

There are more lyrics, but this should give a good idea of the schmaltz level. I didn’t believe a word of it, but the audience loved it, and so did Jeckyl. She started motioning me toward her when she did her dance. She gave me ginseng gel caps. She weaseled her way to my hotel room to watch TV. She confided in me that I was her best friend, really, her only friend: “Sharks, you’re the best friend I ever had—even better than my own father Potato’s.” She told me she knew the closing song was bullshit. I was relieved. After the show, we would make popcorn and watch “Andy of Mayberry” reruns, and “Fargo” too.

Then the last gig of the tour came. I got dressed and loaded my gun. It was time to blow my brains out and make my grand exit from show biz. But, I thought about Jeckyl. After all these years had we had bonded. It was weird. Then, Potato called to wish me well on the final gig of the tour. Then he dropped a bomb: “Sharks, you’re Jeckyl’s father.” I had always been her father, but I didn’t know it.

She was born when I was 65. I had an affair with Joe Potato’s very young wife Tippy. Joe suspected, but he never knew for certain, Tippy ran off soon after Jeckyl was born. She was raised by her paternal grandparents.

I decided to live a few more years. I told Jeckyl she was my daughter. She said she already knew and that Joe put her on the tour with me so we could get to know each other. Now I knew where my feelings for Jekyl came from! We would hook our pinkies together and say “Pals Forever.”

Now that she’s a star, she’s inundated with friends and is going back to college. I’m still writing bad songs.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epimone

Posted on December 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epimone (e-pi’-mo-nee): Persistent repetition of the same plea in much the same words.

“Give it to me! Hand it over! Come on! It’s mine! At least let’s share the damn thing.”

Charlie’s piece of shit cabin cruiser’s hull had split and we sank somewhere in the middle of the ocean between Florida and Bimini. We were fugitives. We had left our wives. We filed for divorce and jumped on “Ball Joint” and sailed off to paradise. Charle repaired cars’ front ends for a living so he named the piece of shit boat “Ball Joint.” He had taken it in trade from a guy who couldn’t pay his repair bill. The boat was tied up at the marina and Charlie never had it checked for seaworthiness. The Coast Guard had never inspected it it because Charlie had left it registered to the previous owner.

I realized the boat was sinking when I looked below and saw a bunch of stuff floating around. We had to abandon ship with a couple of bottles of water and a fishing pole. The “lifeboat” was the size of a bathtub and was powered by oars. Luckily, I had rowed a boat before at the lake at the Jacksonville City Park. It was when my wife and I had first started dating. How ironic!

The fishing pole belonged to Charlie’s kid, Devon. It was literally a Mickey Mouse rig. The push-button reel was shaped like Mickey’s head. The rod was around three feet long and it was light blue. The lure was a silver jig with red and yellow feathers. I had to retie it. Basically, Devon had tied a slip knot!

We were hungry. I yelled “Sushi!” and cast the lure out into the ocean. Bam! Something hit the lure. I set the hook and started reeling. The little rod was bent double. Despite that, I could tell the fish wasn’t very big. But it was something to eat. I hauled it in and flipped it over the gunwale. Charlie caught it one-handed. It was a Speckled Sea Trout. I had caught 100s of them in my life. I knew they ran in schools and we could probably catch more. Charlie wouldn’t let go of the fish.

He pulled a flare gun out from behind his back, aimed it at me, and yelled “Fu*k off or I’ll burn a hole in you!” He started eating the fish right off the hook. He hooked himself. He tried to twist the hook out of his lip and it got even worse and hooked into his gums.

“Why didn’t you tell me we had a flare gun, asshole?” He was crying and saying “God forgive me!” Over and over again. What he did next shocked me. It was totally unexpected—he shot himself in the head with the flare gun. He almost missed! He blew the corner off his head and the flare kept going. It was seen by a Coast Guard vessel and I was rescued.

When they saw Charlie, they shook their heads and frowned. “How did he manage that?” said the Coast Guard skipper. I told the skipper that it started when we were in high school: “He always took more than he deserved and panicked for no good reason. For example, we were playing “Hide and Go Seek” one night. His flashlight battery went dead and he kept hearing noises. He freaked out and grabbed my flashlight and ran straight into a huge cactus. He had to go to the Emergency Room and spend the night having cactus needles pulled out. This is just one example of many I could cite.” The Skipper said to me: “Yeah, I know. A lot of people in the Coast Guard are like Charlie.”

He asked me if I wanted to continue on to Bimini and I said “Hell yes.”

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epiplexis

Posted on December 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epiplexis (e-pi-plex’-is): Asking questions in order to chide, to express grief, or to inveigh. A kind of rhetorical question [–the speaker does not expect an answer].

How do you think I feel? Do you think I’ll ever recover from Joey’s death? Can I live without him? How can I throw a handful of dirt on his coffin and watch it sink into the ground, buried forever in this decrepit old cemetery?

This is the worst day of my life since I lost my bid for Homecoming Queen to that slut Margaret Pinole. I took diet pills for a month. I had a hairdo like Marie Antonette. I got my gown from “Off the Truck” a well-respected Mafia cut-rate retail store. My gown looked like a puffy white cloud tinted by the setting sun and floating over South Beach, Miami. I lived in Linden, New Jersey, but everybody had relatives retired in Florida. My Aunt Pickle and Uncle Red lived there. Aunt Pickle watched game shows while Uncle Red went fishing. In New Jersey, Uncle Red ran numbers until lotto was legalized. His numbers came from the number of shares sold on the New York Stock Exchange. After the numbers, he had a used car lot. It was called “Stars Cars” and was stocked with “babied mobiles.” He took only cash and would not tell anybody where he got his cars from. One day, Joey asked him and he beat the shit out of him and told him he may “die” if he pushed it.

I think that beating may have hastened Joey’s death. I think when Uncle Red hit him in the head with the rock, it did something to Joey. He wasn’t good at anything after the beating. For example, he used roll-on deodorant and he kept rolling it across his chest. Sometimes, you could see his heart beating through his Banlon shirt. The weirdest was that he couldn’t talk without singing what he was he was saying. He had a beautiful voice. He sounded like Frank Sinatra. Everybody loved his speech. He would say something like “I’m goin’ to the fu*kin’ deli” and it would sound like nightclub act in Vegas. Eventually, he went to work for Western Union doing singing telegrams. That’s how he came to have the affair with Mr. Big Shit’s wife. As soon as I found out she disappeared from the face of the earth and big my brother Orzo cut 2 of Joey’s fingers off. I kept them in a jar over the kitchen sink so stupid-ass Joey wouldn’t forget that what he had done was wrong and there was a price to pay.

I took the jar down when Joey died. He was torched in back of the “Palsy Walsy Pub.” He’d gone outside to take a leak and somebody threw gasoline on him and sent him up. I went looking for him and saw the smoking heap. Then I saw the glint of the giant gold cornicello I had given him as a surprise for being good for 2 months. It was lying by the heap that was Joey. I fell down on the ground screaming and crying. I was out of my mind. They took Joey to the morgue and my brother Orzo drove me home. I put Joey’s cornicello on the kitchen windowsill.

Joey was innocent. He wasn’t mobbed up. He was just a telegram singer. The only thing I can think is he was fooling around with an another woman and a husband found him out. What else could it be? What a shit, but I loved him. When he sang “Cara Mia” I would melt like hot wax dripping down a candle.

A couple days after Joey burned, I got a condolences card from somebody named Sal that I didn’t know. It said: “Sorry about your husband.” I knew it was the killer trying to needle me. The dumb ass had put a return address on the note. A Good Samaritan took care of him. The police found his head on Rte. 9 on the road shoulder somewhere near Elizabeth. Fu*k him.

It turned out he was a rich ass sorry bastard who collected debts for a living. That doesn’t exactly make me want to cry.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epistrophe

Posted on December 13, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.

I was tired of my classmates making fun of the size of my penis. I dreaded post-gym class showering. It was not good showering. I wish it was the end of showering. I tried wearing swimming trunks in the shower, but Beatsy March, the class bully, de-pantsed me every time.

I had a 1’ 11 1/4” penis.

When I was born my mother thought a body part had popped out of me. I had to go to “Petro’s Delicatessen” to get circumcised. A crowd watched through the widow. My parents wanted it to be a public spectacle, so, as I got older, everybody would know I was “packin’ meat” and I would be popular. As you probably guessed, it did not work out that way. Two weeks later my mother was “put away” from the stress of dealing with a baby with a zucchini hanging between its legs. My father raised me.

My penis grew with me as I got oder. Nobody knew I had a giant hooter. I tucked down my pant leg and it was well concealed. Boners were still a problem though. Boners had the potential of ripping my pants. So, I wore an Electro-Limper—a little-known product of Dr. Scholl’s. It was an electric device that consisted of a bare wire band encircling my penis with a flesh-colored wire that was connected to a control box with a battery and a red button that I wore on my belt. If I felt an erection building, I would press the button once or twice and subdue it with shocks. It was quite effective.

The one time my Electro-Limper failed was my fault. I forgot to plug the wire into the control box. I was working in the 6th grade’s garden. Miss Crane bent over to pull carrots and I briefly saw her underpants. My penis tore through my pants and pointed at Miss Crane. I thought fast and put a bushel basket over it and told Miss Crane I had wet my pants—pretty bad, but much less embarrassing than displaying my King Kong dong to my teacher and fellow 6th graders. Miss Crane told me to go home and change my pants, and I did.

Then came high school, “Orange Ditch High School.” It was named for the 200 students who died of lung cancer there in the 60’s that was contracted from the orange-colored ditch that ran through the playground. We still had to wear little badges that changed color when we were in danger. The Board of Education believes the threat has been ameliorated. They changed the course of the ditch. Now, it runs alongside the parking lot and there’s little bridge we cross on the way to the bus stop. Also, they cite the fact that only two students have died from lung cancer this year, and we have to stop being “big fat scardy cats” and get to work on teaching and learning.

When I got to high school, I was required to take off my clothes and take a shower after gym class. I begged the principal to excuse me. He told me to be a man and had me pose in the shower while he took pictures of me on the first day of gym. Thank God he never came back. But, the students did.

They would hoot and holler things like “Big dicks sink ships,” “Hey, Salami Man, why don’t you put some mustard on that thing?” Or “Drill me a hole.” Or, “Batter up!” I learned how to twirl my dick like a mini-lariat. My dick was so long that I could do “butterfly loops” by my side. I’d go “Yahoo! and “Wee Haa” with a blank stare while I twirled. It kept the bullies off my back in the shower. When I had my clothes on they were not interested. I was grateful for that.

In my senior year Nicky Potlid sat down next to me in the lunchroom. She whispered in my ear “Will you show it to me?” I said “Yes.” She told me nobody was home at her house after school, and that I could show her at 4:00 pm.

I knocked on her door exactly at 4:00. She answered in a nightgown with tiny pictures of puppies on it. I told her I just wanted to get it over with it. She told me to stand on the dining room table. I complied. I pulled my pants down and held up my penis. Nicky clapped her hands and gasped when my dick swung loose and started to get hard. I activated my Electro-Limper and it immediately went flaccid. “You poor boy.” she said as I pulled up my pants.

Nicky asked me if I wanted a Coke. I was glad for it! We sat there sipping our Cokes and talking about what a bunch of shit school is. Before I left, I had to ask Jackie why she was wearing a nightgown. “For my after-school nap. It helps me get ready for homework.”

Jackie and I became great friends. In fact, we’re both going to the same college. I make extra money at parties and strip clubs doing my lariat routine. I dress up like a cowboy with crotchless Levi’s. I call myself “Cowboy Dick.”

Jackie’s my stalwart manager. She’s studying accounting and I’m studying dance.

Jackie is my best friend.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epitasis

Posted on December 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epitasis (e-pit’-a-sis): The addition of a concluding sentence that merely emphasizes what has already been stated. A kind of amplification. [The opposite of anesis.]

They grew up together in Tuscany in the small village of Collodi. Piccola, aka the “Elf on a Shelf,” came from a long line of spies working for Santa Claus keeping children under surveillance from shelves in their houses. Pinocchio was a walking talking wooden marionette made by his father who was Tuscany’s premier puppet maker. He had made Pinocchio when his wife had left him for a cuckoo clock repairman and they ran away to Germany’s Black Forest. So, he made the boy because he was lonely. As a single father he was exemplary. He cooked, did the laundry, cleaned the house and bought a lotto ticket every Friday, hoping he would win so Pinocchio could go to college.

Piccolo was a cripple. It was hereditary in his family due to hundreds of years of inbreeding. Piccolo, his father, and his uncles were born in a squatting position. It was ideal for sitting on a shelf for days at a time, but it made it difficult to walk. Piccolo, like his relatives, walked like a duck in a squatting position. It was exhausting, but his friend Pinocchio would help him out. Pinocchio would carry Piccolo on his back. Pinocchio’s sturdy wooden legs could carry Piccolo everywhere.

They frequently went to Gino’s Gelatos. Pinocchio would set Piccolo down in a chair across from him. They would talk and Pinocchio would talk about his most cherished topic: How do I become a real boy? He was tired of his life as a glorified piece of lumber. Piccolo tried to to console him but it was to no avail. Sometimes Pinocchio would stick a fork in his wooden head to prove his point.

Then one day an incredibly beautiful girl walked into Gino’s. She had black, black hair, light blue eyes, and skin like Ascolana del Piceno olives. The boys invited her to sit. She did, and told them her name was Bianca Cardanelle and had just moved to Collodi from Rome. Her father “made bad things go away” for a living.

She ordered a chocolate gelato grande. Picollo and Pinocchio argued over who would pay for it. She pointed at Picollo and gave him a little smile. Pinoccocio was upset. He told Picollo he was going home. If he waned a ride it was time to go. They left Bianca sitting there alone. On the way home Pinocchio “slipped” and dropped Picollo off a cliff with a ten-foot drop and walked away laughing. Picollo was stuck there until his family found him the next morning.

The friendship was over.

Clearly, Pinocchio had become a psychopath. Since the 7th grade he started falling apart. His obsession with becoming a real boy had turned him bad. Jealousy and paranoia were his two key characteristics. In short, he was dangerous—Picollo had urged him to go into counseling, but he refused and slapped Piccolo in the crotch.

Now it was war.

Pinocchio wasn’t a real boy, so there would be no penalty for whatever Picollo did to him. The first football game of the year was coming up. There would be a bonfire. It gave Picollo a crafty plan. He would stuff Pinnochio into the middle of the woodpile and watch him burn. Picollo enlisted the help of his big brother. His nickname was “Chadrool.” He had giant biceps and could waddle up to 29 MPH.

The brothers put on their balaclavas and headed to “Gino’s Galaţos” where Pinocchio had been spending all his time hanging out with Bianca. Bianca hated him and wanted to help the brothers get rid of him. She was sick about hearing about his “wood” and would do anything to get him off her back. The day before the bonfire, they told her to keep him at Gino’s the following day, until they showed up. The next day the brothers burst through Gino’s door at full throttle waddle and tied and gagged Pinocchio and threw him in a canvas bag. They dragged him to the football field and shoved him deep into the pile of wood.

The time came.

It was 8:00 pm and soon Pinocchio would be ashes. As Beauty Queen, Bianca had the honor of lighting the fire. The Principal poured gasoline on it and Bianca lit it. It was burning with great gusto when Pinocchio came running out of the flames blazing like a comet. He ran across the goal line and collapsed into a pile of smoking embers.

They had once been friends.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epitheton

Posted on December 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epitheton (e-pith’-e-ton): Attributing to a person or thing a quality or description-sometimes by the simple addition of a descriptive adjective; sometimes through a descriptive or metaphorical apposition. (Note: If the description is given in place of the name, instead of in addition to it, it becomes antonomasia or periphrasis.)

My friend Tolbert yelled at me “Hey, any luck so far?” I told him I had grabbed one. I was waiting for the bell. Everybody would be changing classes, filling the hall with targets. The bell rang and the hallway filled. A ninth-grader yelled at me “It’s the Mad Ass Grabber.” She pointed at me and there was a stampede to get away from me. She fled along with everybody else.

To my surprise, there was one person who went nowhere. She was bent over, looking over shoulder at me and patting her butt. It was Mary-Linda Wooperetti. She had just been declared the fattest girl in New Jersey who was still able to walk. She weighed 422 lbs. I met her once at the doctor’s. My asthma was acting up. She was there for her weekly blood pressure check. Given her size, she was a risk for a heart attack.

I decided I was going to grab Mary-Linda’s ass. Clearly, she was asking for it. I decided to do a “Super Grab.” I lifted her skirt with one had and pulled down her panties with the other. I reached in and grabbed her ass. My hand sunk into her butt cheek. It had the consistency of a marshmallow. It surprised me. I started to pull out my hand, but Mary-Linda clamped her butt muscle trapping my hand. Mary-Linda said, “Come on, it’s time for lunch and started pulling me toward the cafeteria. I draped my hoodie over my arm so nobody would see my arm sunk in Mary-Linda’s butt cheek trapping my hand.

I didn’t know what to do. I sat alongside her with my hand in her but cheek. It was hard eating lunch with one hand. I had to ask Mary-Linda to help me cut my meat. She helped me.

After lunch, we skipped out of school. Mary-Linda had a car. We headed for her family’s cabin in the woods. I begged her to let go of my hand. She refused. We arrived at the cabin. I followed her inside (What choice did I have?). She bent over the couch, lifted her skirt, pulled down her panties, and let go of my hand. It slid my hand out of her cheek, and I flexed it to overcome its numbness and cramps.

After Mary-Linda let go of my hand, she turned around and faced me. She had the most beautiful blue eyes and nearly white straight blond hair. She told me I could grab her ass anytime. She knew that I had a mental problem and would make her ass available to keep me from grabbing random asses, which had already gotten me in trouble. She called me “Mr. Clean” and told me that she would make sure everybody would call me that—“no more ‘The Mad Ass Grabber,’ or ‘Grabber’ for short, just Mr. Clean.”

We fell in love right there in the cabin.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epitrope

Posted on December 10, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epitrope (e-pi’-tro-pe): A figure in which one turns things over to one’s hearers, either pathetically, ironically, or in such a way as to suggest a proof of something without having to state it. Epitrope often takes the form of granting permission (hence its Latin name, permissio), submitting something for consideration, or simply referring to the abilities of the audience to supply the meaning that the speaker passes over (hence Puttenham’s term, figure of reference). Epitrope can be either biting in its irony, or flattering in its deference.

I am lost in a rocky twisted vale, knowing I cannot find my way home unassisted.

I never should’ve opened “Twilight of the Idols,” let alone read it. Nietzsche’s “philosophizing with a hammer” smashed my heart with its unrelenting pounding, recasting it into an unreliable source of moral comfort.

So, I’m calling Miss Grimes, for help. “You may not remember me, but I remember you. You were my sixth grade teacher. You spanked me in the coat room. It was ecstasy feeling the blows of your bony hand and your chanting ‘bad boy, bad boy, bad boy’ over and over until you got tired and left me alone in the darkened cloak room to contemplate the sting of my misbehavior. I never knew what I had done to warrant the spankings, but I looked forward to them, from the sacred blows of your spirited hand. You were my Eulabeia (although I did not know it at the time).

As I look back, I think I’ve already hammered a lot of idols to pieces, without even knowing it, before reading Nietzsche. For example, I consistently fail to excuse myself when I fart. My hope is by remaining silent nobody will know it was me. I also grimace and look disapprovingly at the person nearest to me. Another example: I have stopped holding doors for women, even though sometimes an unhelpful door will hit them in the face and causes a minor injury such as a bloody nose—another idol smashed by my will to power? In addition: I’ve started spanking myself on the subway and in the rest room at work. I can’t drop my pants on the subway, so it is only a partial perfunctory spanking.

Now I know how morally confused I am. Up is down, down is up. I hope you can help me. How about a good old spanking for old time’s sake, to reset my moral compass and make north into north again?

I am always free on Sundays. There is a storage room in the Church where we could go and listen to the choir while you spank me. Help?”

Miss Grimes: “You’re a bad, bad, bad boy.”

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epizeugma

Posted on December 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

Singing Christmas carols, Scottish folk songs, and oldies, it was from the rum more than anything else. I was wearing a wreath on my head. Uncle Vic had his shirt unbuttoned to his belly button. Aunt Cat was holding her boobs and wiggling. Uncle Tom was showing off his plumber’s butt, bending over the piano. Aunt Millie kept raising her skirt, showing off her undies with Santa’s face on the front, complete with a beard. Uncle Joe had a stocking hanging out of his pant’s fly. The triplets were wearing Trump wigs and were kicking an inflatable sex doll around the Christmas tree.

Once a year, my family goes insane on Christmas Eve and does these things, and more. I tried to find out for nearly my entire life, why? Nobody knew what our ethnicity was, so I couldn’t find its cultural origins. Plus, the tradition was so much fun, they didn’t want to lose it. As far as they could see it was unique to our family. Nobody else in the world celebrated Christmas Eve like we did.

Then it happened. Right before he died, my great-grandfather Bart told me he had a story to tell. I was visiting him at VA Home where he lived for free because he was disabled from serving in the Army. He had lost a leg, and an eye, and a hand in combat in the Korean War, where, as he put it “My mind was blown beyond repair.” Although he had an artificial leg, he preferred his electric wheelchair. In his later years he was awarded a Tesla wheelchair by the VA. It went like a bat out of hell and Bart had several collisions. One more thing: he had invented a small compact wheelchair tire inflator that made him a ton of money, and almost, a Nobel Prize.

Now, he was going to tell me the BIG SECRET. His breathing was shallow as he began. This is what my great-grandfather told me: “Your anscestors Woke up in Utah before it was Utah. There weren’t even cave men. Nobody else was there. They were alone. They were on the banks of what we now call the Great Salt Lake. They built a fire and sat there trying to figure out where they came from. Most of them believed they came from a distant galaxy and were dumped by the lake as punishment because they had committed crimes. At least they recognized each other, even if they were like strangers in every other way. They didn’t like where they had landed, so they walked away together eating prickly pear cactus and jackrabbits roasted on sticks. They hiked for 140 days and 140 nights, reaching what we now call Lake Tahoe, depleted and nearly dead. But lo and behold, there was a thriving little town there called Ponderosa. Your ancestors were shocked and grateful and immediately moved to assimilate, mostly working in the casino and hotel businesses. They adopted “Casino” as the family’s last name.

It was December and everybody in Ponderosa kept talking about “Christmas.” It was a celebration. Your anscestors wanted to be a part of it, so they studied it and discovered Santa Clause. They practiced going ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ and bought red suits to wear on Christmas Day. They got a tree and decorated it with soup can lids, drilled with a hole and tied to the tree’s branches with pieces of yarn. They bought presents for each other and put them in pillowcases under the tree.

Christmas Eve had come! First they . . .”

Great-Grandfather started choking and gripping his throat. He could no longer talk. Green smoke came out of his mouth. His nurse screamed and ran out of the room. Two creatures with gigantic heads suddenly materialized at the foot of the bed. Like all of us Casinos he had a boil on the back of his neck. One of the creatures lanced it and great-grandfather deflated. They folded great-grandfather lengthwise, neatly rolled up great-great grandfather, put him in a gym bag, and vanished. The nurse came back in the room and remembered nothing. She told me to get out or she would call security.

Although I was frustrated that great-great grandfather couldn’t finish his story, I felt that I was closer to knowing where my family originated. But, I’ll never know how they came up with our weird Christmas Eve tradition. We were the Casinos, and that was that.

So, I’m sitting here watching this year’s celebration when Uncle Billiam hops by with pencils in his ears and nostrils, and a tomato in each hand.

Merry Christmas.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Epizeuxis

Posted on December 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epizeuxis: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for palilogia.

“Hope, hope, hope,” that’s what my friend Lyle yelled every time we took off for the Passaic River. We were ten years old and we had watched too much “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, and His Faithful Husky King” on Saturday morning TV. I started calling my beagle King. His real name was Checkers, but he didn’t care.

Lyle and I had decided we should be gold miners like everybody on “Sgt. Preston.” The Passaic River ran past a golf course near where we lived. We took pie pans from our mothers’ kitchen cupboards. We practiced with the pie pans in my bathtub using marbles for gold nuggets. We got pretty good. The next day I hid my pie pan under my shirt, and my sock to hold nuggets in my back pocket, and headed for the door. My mother said from her chair, “Stop!” I thought I was caught, but she just wanted to give me a hug.

I rode my bike and met Lyle at the caddy shack and we took off across the street to the river. The banks were too high to pan, so we walked along the bank looking for a low spot. We walked past rusted shopping carts, a baby crib, a rotted mattress, and a lawn spreader. What a mess.

Then, we came to a low spot. It was sandy. We dug in our pie pans and swished the river water around. We did that for a half-hour to no avail when I hit something that looked like canvas. I pulled it out of the sand and rinsed it off. I instantly knew what it was! A mail pouch just like the one Sgt. Preston carried to Moosejaw once a week. Then, I noticed it said “Madison National Bank” across the front. On the back it said in big red letters “DEPOSITS.” The pouch was locked.

I pulled out my switchblade and flicked it open. It was illegal, but I carried it out of respect for my grandfather who had given it to me a couple of weeks ago on my tenth birthday. I slit open the pouch and a black balaclava fell out along with a little .25 auto pistol. I was elated! Now I could hunt squirrels in the woods behind my school!

But then! Bonanza! Money started falling out. $100 dollar bills wrapped in bands saying $20,000. We were rich. Neither of us had a backpack. So, we split the money and stuffed it into our shirts, our waistbands, our socks, our Yankees hats, and our underpants. I put the pistol in my nugget sock and tied it to one of my belt loops. I threw the balaclava into the river.

We could hardly walk, but we didn’t care. We yelled “Rich, rich, rich, we’re fu*kin’ rich!”

We walked our bikes out of the woods, waddling with our loads. There was a black Cadillac parked sideways at the head of the trail. The back window went down. It was Big Al whose “Sporting Good” store sold dynamite, fully automatic weapons, hand grenades, LAWs, silencers and switchblade knives along with fishing lures, worms, shotguns, rifles, fishing poles and reels, and ammo.

Big Al looked directly at me and said, “I think you have something that belongs to me.” I almost shit my pants, but I held it for the sake of the money stored in my underpants. “What?” I asked. Big Al asked me if my grandfather had given me a switchblade for my birthday. I said “Yes.” “That old fu*k stole it from my store. Give it back now and Melee won’t slice you up into little meat cubes with his machete.” Big Al said with a smile. With great care I fished out the knife and waddled over to the Cadillac and handed it back to Big Al. “You better do something about that crotch rash” he said as he rolled up his window, Melee drove them away.

Lyle and I were elated. We did it. In great pain we rode our bikes home. I waddled in the front door and Mom asked if I was ok. I told her I was fine and crawled up the stairs to my bedroom. I unpacked my self, throwing the money on my bed. The pile was high. I didn’t want to count it.

I got a safe deposit box at the bank. It was New Jersey, so there were no questions. All I needed to do was sign a signature card. I rented two of the biggest boxes. I wrapped the money in a blanket and put it in my wagon and pulled it back to the bank. I was given a private room where I stuffed the money in the two boxes.

I was home safe. When I was old enough to drive, I bought a red Thunderbird for cash. I paid my college tuition in cash. I’ve funded a revival of “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.” The only differences from the old show are that the sled dog King was replaced by a snowmobile, and Sgt. Preston is bipolar.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Erotema

Posted on December 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

Erotema (e-ro-tem’-a): The rhetorical question. To affirm or deny a point strongly by asking it as a question. Generally, as Melanchthon has noted, the rhetorical question includes an emotional dimension, expressing wonder, indignation, sarcasm, etc.

What the hell is going on here? Why is my world melting into a pile of smoking plastic? Don’t answer me. I am beyond answers. I only have questions—questions about questions, questions about questions about questions, questions about questions about questions about questions. Questions aiming nowhere. Questions questioning questions. Questions of infinite extent pointing toward the endless sky. Questions always delivered with an upward inflection of the voice, or possibly, they would be misunderstood as mere sarcasm or cut-rate irony.

When I was 14, I started building my own home, so I could, as my father told me, “get off” my “ass and be somebody.” I was young, but I was determined to show Dad a thing or two. There was a vacant lot next door. I talked my dad into buying it for me so I could show my worth—just like he wanted. He agreed—he had to enable me to live up to his expectations.

Now that I had the lot, I needed to do something with it. My planning skills left a lot to be desired. First, I thought about installing a swimming pool. I would dig a huge hole and fill it with water. I started digging. After two days I quit. I ached all over. Dad took a look at what I had done and said “Looks like a basement son.” Bingo!

I had gotten a set of Legos for my birthday. I looked on their website in Denmark. They had a whole miniature Lego Town—including little Cape Cod houses. I wrote an email telling them I wanted to build a full-size Lego house and live in it. I got a congratulatory email back from them. They would give me all the Legos I needed if I would promise to hold an open house twice a year. I made the promise. Two trailer trucks showed up the next day. Each one delivered ten pallets of Legos. The driver of one the trucks handed me blueprints and wished me “A lot of fuc*in’ luck”

I worked day and night, almost flunking out of school. It was hard work snapping together thousands and thousands of little plastic pieces. But it was worth it. My Lego home made its debut on my 20th birthday. I moved in with my girlfriend Barbara Anne. We loved lolling around in the hot tub, watching TV in our pajamas, playing Twister on the living room floor, and engaging in other censored activities elsewhere. As agreed, we were going to hold our first open house right before Christmas.

The day came. I got up early—around 6:30 a.m. I looked out the living room window. There were at least 100 people in front of the house. When they saw me in the window, they started hooting and yelling and inching toward my house. I was scared and so was Barbara Anne. I told her to hold my hand and she calmed down a little. I went outside and told the crowd to calm down, to line up on the sidewalk and enter the house five at a time. The ordeal lasted pretty much all day. When it was over, our home was ravaged. The carpets were filthy and the photo of me and Barbara Anne had been stolen, along with everything else that wasn’t nailed down. The Lego bathroom shower wall had been dismantled and stolen.

I called Denmark the next day and told them what had happened and that I was finished with the open house business. Aksel said “A promise is a promise. We will give you a two-week trip to the Cayman Islands so you can work things out.“ I took the offer to go to the Caymans, but made it clear, I was still withdrawing from the open house agreement. Aksel said, “That’s too bad. We will be in touch.”

While we were in the Cayman Islands, we got two or three calls from Aksel every day asking “Will you reconsider?” My answer was always “No.”

So, when we got home, the house had been torched—melted to the ground. I thought, “Those Danes don’t fuc*k around.” Neighbors had seen a Viking ship on wheels being towed by an Audi pull up in front of my house. The ship’s crew had lit torches, were wearing leather tunics, capes and trousers, and leather helmets with cow horns. They marched in formation to my house, encircled it, and threw their torches inside after breaking the windows. Then, pulled by the Audi, they sped away in their ship singing “In the land of the north where the wind blows cold there’s the blood of a Viking. . . .”

Aksel called the next day to let me know we were even, and he was right. Now I had the answer I was looking for. Why was my house destroyed? I had broken my promise. Was that a good reason?

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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

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