Alleotheta (al-le-o-the’-ta): Substitution of one case, gender, mood, number, tense, or person for another. Synonymous with enallage. [Some rhetoricians claim that alleotheta is a] general category that includes antiptosis [(a type of enallage in which one grammatical case is substituted for another)] and all forms of enallage [(the substitution of grammatically different but semantically equivalent constructions)].
We was crazy. I were insane. I was a mumbulator—I lived a desolate lonely life, misspeaking and having to repeat myself three or four times and raising the voulume each time I repeated myself. Mumbulation was not an option. I were born with it—when I was a baby people would say “What?” when I gooed.
So the craziness? Me and my cousin together is crazier than one alone. She is a mumbulator too. It was like we was Jungian twins living out the same archetypes—the King and Queen of Plasma TV. We was obsessed with the stream. It was like our life boood. We took the same medication and ate the same food. We were the same—like two pods in a spaceship or a pair of matching socks with smiling cows on them.
Today we took a double-dose of our medication and we are going to watch every episode of Father Brown—the priest who can pick locks and who solves crimes, usually murders. His big-breasted “house guest” Bunty flirts with him while his housekeeper Mrs. McCarthy prepares him exotic mixed drinks with names like “Bishop’s Waddle,” “Confession Sour,” and “Holy Boom!” He drinks his drink and reads the newspaper waiting to hear of the latest murder.
Me and my cousin looked at each other, smiled, nodded our heads and mumbled “This is going to be good.”
In the episode were were watching, Bunty had run over a drunk with her red Jaguar. He was horribly mutilated and Bunty’s car had gotten a flat tire from the pint bottle of whiskey the drunk was holding in his hand.
Since the drunk was found in the middle of a busy road, Father Brown surmised he was already dead when Bunty ran over him. There was a sniveling Lord that lived in a nearby manor house. Father Brown ascertained that the drunk in the road was the sniveling Lord’s father. In the meantime, he looked at the drunk’s watch and discovered it had stopped due to being knocked to the pavement one hour before Bunty ran him over.
Then, Mrs. McCarthy heard through the grapevine that the father was returning to Kembleford to reclaim the manor and dispossess his mean, idiot, sniveling son, who was immediately arrested by Detective Mallory, but not before a chase. The sniveling Lord climbed a rose trellis, admitted everything, and threatened to jump. It was five feet to the ground. He jumped and sprained his ankle. Case closed.
Bunty was off the hook. Father Brown hopped on his bicycle and headed back to the Presbytery for one of Mrs. McCarthy’s double Holy Booms and some “quality time” with Bunty, who was sure to show her gratitude for what Father Brown had done.
Me and my cousin shut off the TV. We grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and mumbled our appreciation for what we’d just seen. We could tell from the tone of our voices that we had enjoyed the episode. The next episode is “Mrs. McCarthy Gets Hanged.” This has got to be a mistake! It says in the synopsis that “in a jealous rage, Mrs. McCarthy shoots Bunty, decapitates her, and lights her headless body on fire on the church altar.” Father Brown is defrocked when it is discovered that Bunty was carrying their child.
Fear not! There is new series starting called “Former Father Brown” about the defrocked priest’s exploits as an itinerant crime-solving plumber.
We can’t wait. We’re trying to get our hands on some acid.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 