Scesis Onomaton (ske’-sis-o-no’-ma-ton): 1. A sentence constructed only of nouns and adjectives (typically in a regular pattern). 2. A series of successive, synonymous expressions.
Big bluebird! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I dropped my binoculars and got out my bird identification guide: “Bill Birdwood’s Guide to Every Bird on Earth.”
This was no normal bluebird. The only thing it had in common with normal bluebirds was its blue body and an orange patch on its chest. I couldn’t find him in my “Guide,” so I Googled with a description: “Huge bird with bluebird plumage. He looks like a feathered basketball and makes a growling sounds like an angry dog. I haven’t see him fly, and given his girth, I’m not sure he can. He is eating discarded cigarette butts off the ground. This is an especially good place to do so—we’re at the designated smoking area for employees of the adjacent life insurance company.”
I hit return on my keyboard and got an almost instant response. It was Bill Birdwood himself! He told me the name of the bird “Blue Ball Giganticus.” He didn’t list him in his guide because the Blue Ball is considered a mythological bird—like the Phoenix. He wrote, “But, if you’ve got a live one in your sights, you better run away faster than you’ve ever run before!”
So I ran. To my horror, with much wing flapping the Blue Ball slowly took off straight up like a helicopter with a frightening growl. I tripped and fell and the Blue Ball swooped down over me, dropping a cigarette butt on my outstretched body. It landed on my chest. I sat up, grabbed it off my pant leg and threw it as far as I could—about five feet. Then, the big fat Blue Ball landed on my shoulder—which was just wide enough for him to fit on. I was terrified.
Then, he leaned toward my ear and asked: “What’s the capital of Montana?” I told him I didn’t know, and that I’m really bad at state capitals. He said “Ok ok. What is an isosceles triangle?” I didn’t know. I told him I pretty much didn’t know anything. He kept asking me similar questions for about a half-hour. I couldn’t answer any of them. He gave up and called me a “bird brain” which I thought was really weird. After all that, he asked me if my refrigerator was running.
I knew that one! I said “Yes.” Then he told me I better go catch it. He asked if I wanted a cigarette butt. I told him I didn’t and he flew away grunting and straining. Now, I could add to my list of Blue Ball characteristics: can talk, eats cigarette butts, takes off like helicopter, and is boring to spend time with. I wondered why Bill Birdwood told me to run.
I found out when I started developing a taste for cigarette butts and began picking them up off the ground and storing them in my briefcase “for later.”
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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