Acervatio (ak-er-va’-ti-o): Latin term Quintilian employs for both asyndeton (acervatio dissoluta: a loose heap) and polysyndeton (acervatio iuncta:a conjoined heap).
Peace and love, and butterflies, and roses, and warm summer nights, and flying eagles. These are the threads of truth and beauty stitching together my soul—the neon sign flashing go, go, go determining my motions, translating them into actions dripping with motives heated by desires running after horny hopes, running, charging, stumbling, falling in a trance like a clumsy ghost or a drunken moron.
Where do we go from here? Laden with insights like a Sherpa ready to scale Mt. Everest for the umpteenth time—conscious of the dangers, well-versed in negotiating the pitfalls of the climb while singing the Sherpa song “Blueberry Hill,” introducing an element of levity into an otherwise terrifying task—to lead the rich foreigners to their deaths, making it look like a horrible accident, blaming the Yetis, who looted their victims—stealing their mittens and designer sunglasses.
The Yetis were pissed off. This was the tenth time the Sherpas had pulled the “Yetis did it” trick. Usually reclusive, the Yetis vowed to come out of their caves and show how friendly and nice they actually are. They would parade through the Sherpa village, singing and dancing and showing what harmless good sports they are. After that, nobody would believe the Sherpas’ “The Yetis did it” ever again. As they marched, they stopped singing and dancing and recited the Yeti credo: “We are the Yetis kind a true, we want to make friends with people like you.” At first the Sherpas were horrified when they saw the marching Yetis. But, when they heard the Yeti credo, they calmed down and everybody mingled, making lasting friendships and burying the lies.
The criminal Sherpas were apprehended, tried and chopped into dog food, using ice axes and crampons. The diced miscreants would be fed to the Tibetan Terriers living off the dole around the village.
Five years later, a Yeti was elected mayor of the Sherpa village. Past transgressions were forgotten and peace and brotherhood ruled the day.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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