Amphibologia (am’-fi-bo-lo’-gi-a): Ambiguity of grammatical structure, often occasioned by mispunctuation. [A vice of ambiguity.]
My dog was on the front page of the Sunday newspaper. He sat on Pete Hegseth’s face drooling and wagging his stubby little tail. Yesterday he sat on Donald Trump’s face and the day before that, Pam Bondi’s face. I thought nothing of it. My dog Lucky had proved his stupidity countless times. The face-sitting is just another example of his random weirdness that I couldn’t attribute any intention to. It has a veil of intention wrapped around it, but it’s just random bullshit. End of story.
The next day when I came downstairs in desperate need of coffee, Lucky was wearing a pair of glasses and looking out the living room window. He was growling, so I looked out the window. There was a squirrel sitting on the porch railing eating a chestnut.
How the hell did he get a pair of glasses on? Moreover where the hell did he get the glasses from? I almost asked him, but that would be capitulating. I wasn’t about to ask my dog where he got the glasses from and how he was able to put them on by himself.
Lucky started barking indignantly. His bark sounded clearly like “Fu*k you, fu*k you!” It was another weird anomaly to pay no attention to, but the weird anomalies were beginning to pile up. Now, he has started to chase his tail. All I can think is that he’s moving toward dementia, another write-off, this time with a rational explanation. Lucky is seventy years old in dog years. He’s starting to fall apart. I decided to buy him a life-insurance policy.
I called “Play Dead” the premier dog life insurance policy company. The policy cost $200 per month, but, when the time came, Play Dead provided a ten-foot high marble monument with a likeness of your dog sitting on it, with the epitaph of your choice chiseled on the granite base.
The insurance saleswoman rang the doorbell and I let her in. Lucky saw her, took one look, and ran whining into the kitchen. Her name was “Pinky” and she told me she had “just moved here” and was from Moldavia and had a work visa. She wore a cheap-looking dog collar around her neck and had a dog leash draped across her chest like a bandolier. She also wore a necklace made from big bone-shaped dog biscuits and she had black Poodle hair. She was beautiful.
She said, “Before we do anything, sign here and write your epitaph here. I complied: “Lucky never barked without reason, but now he is silent.” I cried as I wrote it down, stolen from an ancient Roman dog’s grave. When I looked at Lucky hiding under the kitchen table I realized I had been selling him short—he was more dog than I gave him credit for.
I called him into the living room where he barked and growled at Pinky. She pulled a gun and aimed it at me. Lucky stopped growling and barking. She told me he’s nearly the last of an incredibly rare breed, “The Zockenpinscher, a German hound bred to vex their master by doing weird things. The vexation induces a more open mind—which obviously hasn’t worked on you.” She put her leash on Lucky and backed toward the door still aiming her gun at me. I yelled at her “You’re nothing but a flea-bitten mutt!” She went out the door and I never expected to see either of them ever again.
I looked up Zockenpinscher on Google and found out that, given his rarity, Lucky was worth $1,000,000. $1,000,000 and I treated him like a common dog. $1,000,000 and I hit him with a rolled up newspaper when he was bad. $1,000,000 and I yelled at him just to see him roll over on his back and hear him whine. But, he was gone and would never be back—I couldn’t make amends to him.
All of a sudden there was scratching at the door. “Oh my God it’s Lucky!” No such luck. It was the neighborhood nuisance raccoon sitting on his butt waving a chicken bone. I slammed the door and looked at the picture of Lucky hanging over the fireplace. I was filled with regret.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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