Aetiologia (ae-ti-o-log’-i-a): A figure of reasoning by which one attributes a cause for a statement or claim made, often as a simple relative clause of explanation.
I grew up in Sodom. Nobody did anything legitimate for a living. We all lived the Sodom and Gomorrah dream—carousing, lots of tattoos, having sex with our neighbors, and mistreating our pets. I had a hound dog named Bill that I hung by one leg from my garage’s rafters. Then we’d have a “garage party” and laugh and point at Bill until I cut him down around 4:00 am when the party ended and everybody but my neighbor’s wife went home.
I sold stolen eggs on the back streets of Sodom. I had six egg snatchers working for me—Rhode Island Red was my lead snatcher. He came in every morning with two baskets filled with eggs. The rest of them were pretty good, maybe Leghorn Larry was second-best.
I had emerged as the sole egg vender after the “Scrambled Eggs War.” The battles were fought with spatulas and heavy iron skillets. You can imagine the mayhem! I had an army of mercenaries that I personally trained in the technique of skillet-bopping and spatula-swiping. In combination the two techniques were unstoppable. We beat the opposition into oblivion and we began our enterprise titled “Back Street Eggs.” After years of selling stolen eggs at cut-rate prices, we’re on the verge of stealing whole egg farms, chickens and all. As a stolen business, we’d maintain our illegitimacy in keeping with Sodom’s ethic, that is, in Sodom crime is king. Even the chicken farms were criminal enterprises relying on a constant influx of kidnapped chickens,
If it wasn’t for the fact that there were neighboring cities that weren’t crime-ridden, there wouldn’t be anybody to steal from and Sodom would go banko along with its ethic of “crime first; depravity second; unbridled lust, third.” These were our founding penciled, principle that withstood the test of time—thousands of years.
There were rumors circulating that God was out to get Sodom for its so-called errant ways. It was rumored we were all going to be turned into pillars salt and our beloved Sodom was going to be blown off the face of the earth, along with our sister city, Gomorrah. Everybody laughed it off. Why would God want to do that to a little town out in the middle of nowhere, a million miles from anything that mattered?
Then, two days later the “Big One” hit Gomorrah. There was a flash of light and the whole city disappeared. I jumped on my donkey and got the hell out of Sodom. I saw this woman by the side of the road. She turned and looked back at what was happening and she turned into a pillar is salt. It freaked me out. I didn’t look back and got my donkey up to full speed by whipping the hell out of it—Dunkin Donkey did his best—he actually galloped—and we survived the mayhem.
My hair turned white and so did Dunkin’s fur. We were marked by what had happened, forever different. I’m writing a play about what happened. It’s called “The Wrathonater.” It is about the excessiveness of God’s justice. I thought the pillar of salt woman was enough to scare the shit out of anybody in their right mind. He didn’t have to make my beloved Sodom disappear along with my hound dog Bill, my band of egg snatchers, and my neighbor’s wife.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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