Exuscitatio (ex-us-ci-ta’-ti-o): Stirring others by one’s own vehement feeling (sometimes by means of a rhetorical question, and often for the sake of exciting anger).
How much longer are we going to let this go ? When are we finally going to do something? It has got to end! It has got to end NOW—RIGHT NOW!
The smell was horrendous. It might’ve been ok 50 years ago when this was all farmland. But it isn’t ok now that it’s suburbia—little White Houses where decent people live raising their pets and children, mowing their lawns and washing their SUVs in their driveways —barbecuing in their back yards and holding neighborhood garage sales.
There’s no place for a pig farm in this neighborhood. Oinking, pooping beasts covered with mud and eating clam bellies—yes clam bellies! The stench is so bad I can smell it inside my house with all the windows shut and the air-conditioning running.
Mr. Hobart has a truckload of bellies delivered from Boston each week. The truck arrives with a haze of flies following it. The bellies are dumped in the five kiddie pools in Mr. Hobart’s front yard.
Mr. Hobart’s family’s been raising pigs here since the late 1800s, but it’s not the late 1800s any more! It’s 2025 and we want the pigs the hell out of here now! The lawsuits have failed, but gunfire won’t. Tonight we shoot the pigs! Tonight we put an end to the clam belly stench and make Acorn Vista a better place to live—a better place for our pets and other loved ones. For our dogs and cats and fish and birds and sons and daughters!
POSTSCRIPT
Acorn Vista’s “fixers” were rounded up by Sheriff Hobart (Mr, Hobart’s grandson), jailed and fined $500 each for menacing. The problem persists and Mr. Hobart shows no sign of backing down.
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 