Monthly Archives: January 2026

Orcos

Posted on January 7, 2026 | Leave a comment

Orcos (or’-kos): Swearing that a statement is true.

“I swear I didn’t add the second head to what you say is a hedgehog.” When I said this it may have confirmed my mental “issues” for everybody present. There was no hedgehog and no second head. In addition, I didn’t know what a hedgehog is. I imagined it was a kind of hog that lived in a hedge. My mother was actually holding our cat Lucy. She was calling it a hedgehog, but it only had one head.

I had just gotten out of bed and hadn’t had my coffee and two donuts yet. I wasn’t prepared to be accused adding a head to a hedgehog. In my mental state, I saw it as plain as day, but it wasn’t my doing. My surgery skills weren’t that advanced, and besides it was an extra head on our cat, which I figured out when she meowed pitifully and scratched at her stitches.

I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. My family was doing one of its random “interventions” testing my sanity. It was my job to pay the bills, so I had to be sane. Visa and AMEX don’t like errors, and crazy people make errors. Dad did the bills until he mistook $14.30 for $143,000. He almost wiped us out, but Visa gave us a refund. That was the end of it for Dad. He hasn’t paid a single bill since. So, after the “Dad experience” the bill payer needs to be checked out periodically. That’s what this two-headed hedgehog thing is about. But I saw through it (more or less) after three cups of coffee.

Now, it was time for stage two. My mother asked me: “Have you ever wanted to be an Oscar Meyer Weiner?”

I thought this might be a trick question. But, I figured I couldn’t go wrong with “No.” So, I said “I swear to God I never wanted to be an Oscar Meyer Weiner.” She grimaced and said “Are you sure?” I said “Yes” and she handed me the checkbook.

I had passed the test! One more year (at least) of managing the family’s bill paying. As long as I take my medication regularly, and abstain from alcohol and pot, I’ll be good to go. Otherwise, God only knows what will happen. Last week, I forgot to take my medication for two days and saw Carmen Miranda dancing with a bear in my back yard. I enjoyed it, but I swear I’m going to remember to take my medication every day.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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Oxymoron

Posted on January 6, 2026 | Leave a comment

Oxymoron (ox-y-mo’-ron): Placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to one another. A compressed paradox.

“Jumbo shrimp.” We’ve all heard it before. But what about “jumbo molecules?” Never! No! Uh huh! Why not ? Because it is stupid—brilliantly stupid! Maybe, flawlessly stupid. Can something be brilliantly stupid? Yes, if I say so. What about combat hamster? No. It may capture the ethos of a fighting hamster—but it doesn’t have the faraway ring like rubber ducky or honest hoax or nutty whistle. How about “tough love.” Oh yeah, it puzzled the hell out of me when my parents practiced it on me. The only part that seemed tough was having to tie my own shoes. The love part was beyond me. I guessed it was because they yelled at me softer at night so they wouldn’t wake up my sister, who was a model human being except for stealing money from mom’s wallet. It was hard to live with, but she was my sister. To get back at her I put fire ants in her pants when she was asleep one night.

I could tell when she put her pants on: she screamed and stomped her feet and came running down the stairs with no pants on, and jumped in the back yard swimming pool. Of course, she blamed me. I was ready. I had a counterfeit article titled “Fire Ants Invade Homes, Inhabit Pants.” Siri wrote it for me so it seemed real—it was really fake, perfect for my needs. My parents bought it and told my sister to shut up or leave home.

My sister shut up, but she made a plan for revenge. She had recruited her boyfriend Lloyd to knock me out with some kind of illegal drug and tattoo a pile of shit on my forehead. Lloyd was ready, but he had last-minute doubts about doing something so obviously evil. Instead, he tattooed a picture of the Dali Llama on my ass. I was extremely grateful. It was captioned “It’s All In Your Head.” The caption’s written backward and forward so I can read it when I look at my ass in the mirror. My girlfriend loves it and pets the Dali Llama whenever she has a chance.

My sister and I have mended all our fences. We get along so well, we can’t go wrong. We fence stolen goods and sell them at the flea market each week. Selling stolen goods is a little risky, but my sister’s new boyfriend is a policeman–a Captain in the Bolder Police Force. He keeps the “snoops” away from our operation and we’re flourishing. Our business motto’s “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.” It’s a little risky, but we like it.

We’re headed to Florida for a winter break. We’ll be eating tons of “jumbo shrimp” and downing many, many beers. I hope I’ll meet a hot cool girl.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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Paenismus

Posted on January 5, 2026 | Leave a comment

Paenismus (pai-nis’-mus): Expressing joy for blessings obtained or an evil avoided.

I was walking down the street when some guy jumped out of a 10th story window and missed landing on me by inches. He would’ve crushed me and killed me. I was stunned. His wallet had fallen out of his pocket and I picked it up before the crowd gathered. I was grateful to be alive and even more grateful for his wallet. My priorities were warped, but what the hell—this was New York.

The wallet was like a Christmas present I would open when I got to my “apartment,” which was a walk-in closet in my uncle Ted’s actual apartment. I rented the closet for $50.00 per month. I considered uncle Ted generous and kind—he even let me use the bathroom.

I got “home” and went to my “room.” I opened the wallet. It was empty. I tore it apart and there was a key underneath the coin purse. It had a number 480 on it and an address: 146 State St., Reno, NV. I didn’t know what to do. I had enough money for a one-way bus ticket to Reno. I was certain the key would lead to money. The guy was dead, so it wouldn’t matter to him if I grabbed his cash!

I got on my bus to Reno at Port Authority and headed west. There was a woman sitting by me wearing a mink coat. Given that we were on a bus and not flying first class to Reno, I thought she might have a story to tell. She told me her husband had caught he cheating with the guy from across the street, a policeman. She was naked when he caught her. Her husband told her to take the mink and get the hell out. He gave her bus fare to Reno to get a divorce. When night fell, she snuggled up by me. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, successively ceding it to people who needed it, until sunrise. The woman was lying across the seat. I poked her and she sat up. She asked if I would help her get some clothes. When we got to Reno, we went to a pawn shop. She took some clothes into the rest room, came out dressed and pawned her mink. She got $300.00 for it, paid for the clothes and we parted company.

I asked the proprietor where State Street is. He said “You’re on it man!” I asked him which way 146 was. He told me it would be right, but State Street ended at 145. I didn’t believe him, so I took off down the street. He was right, the street ended at 145, but the sidewalk kept going across the street. I crossed the street and looked down at the pavement. The sidewalk looked like it had a small keyhole in it. I took out my key, inserted it and turned it. The cement slab started slowly going down like an elevator. I hopped on it. Another slab slid shut above me as I went down. Lights came on when I reached the bottom.

The woman from the bus was there. She said she was glad to see me. Her teeth had become pointed. The man who had jumped out the window, with his brain hanging out, put his arm around her and said “Looks like we got another one with the ‘Dead Man’s Wallet Scam‘ honey. Fire up the barbecue!”

I was frozen in place and couldn’t move. They were going to eat me! Just then, I woke up in my closet. It was a nightmare. Then, I saw the mink coat alongside me on the floor. It was hers! I passed out.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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Palilogia

Posted on January 4, 2026 | Leave a comment

Palilogia: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for epizeuxis.

“Dive! Dive! Dive!” I was a boxing coach and I specialized in having my boxers throw matches. “Dive”is a jargon word for “Hit the mat.” It was sort of poetic. I didn’t actually yell it. That would’ve given me away. Instead, I used hand signals, like a diver diving into a swimming pool. I’d put my hands together like I was praying and rock them up and down and silently mouth “dive, dive, dive.” It worked every time.

After throwing matches for 10 years, I decided I wanted to recruit and train a champ. I found this guy fighting off three thugs outside a bar. The thugs had their asses kicked—bloody noses, missing teeth, swollen heads, bruised necks. I thought “This guy is my meal ticket. Together, we’ll make millions!” His name was Peter Varniski. He was at least 6’7” and weighed nearly 300 lbs. He had a very pleasant demeanor and was a bird watcher. He wrote love poems and always had fresh red roses in his apartment. He was a vegetarian and his mother lived with him. She cooked, did the laundry, and kept the place clean. They watched “Monk” reruns together every night, when Peter was home. He had a pet hamster named “Hammy” that had a hamster tube running around the apartment. He and his mother, “Ma” enjoyed watching Hammy run through his tube.

I quickly found out that Peter was not a fighter. I was disappointed until I found out what put him in the fighting mood. The guys he had nearly beaten to death had called his mother a whore. He had exploded with rage. Anything bad said about his mother would send him into an unstoppable rage. I exploited this. Right before he climbed over the ropes I would whisper in his ear “That guy called your mother a whore.” He’d hit the ring swinging and knock out his opponent in 1-3 minutes. I had to hire two minders to get him out of the ring after each fight. If I hadn’t, he would’ve beat his opponent to death on the mat. He’d calm down when he got back home, playing “Candyland” with his mom after taking a shower, and drinking a cup of tea.

I managed Peter for five years. We were undefeated and we made a good buck. I retired and became a Blackjack dealer at “Rolling Moon,” the local gambling casino run by the mafia and managed by Sal Martino. I knew Sal from high school. One day, he told me he needed an enforcer for his loan business. The previous one, he told me had “Walked into a bullet.”

I told him about Peter. “Just say ‘Your mother’s a whore’ to him and he’ll beat the total shit out of somebody.” It was too late when I remembered that you had to claim that somebody else had said “Your mother’s a whore,” and point them out to Peter. Now, Sal was in a coma and Peter was in jail.

I had really screwed up. I learned a big lesson. Don’t say “Your mother’s a whore” to anybody ever. Just leave it alone. Mothers are a sensitive topic.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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Parabola

Posted on January 3, 2026 | Leave a comment

Parabola (par-ab’-o-la): The explicit drawing of a parallel between two essentially dissimilar things, especially with a moral or didactic purpose. A parable.

Prepositions mark contrasts that bring meanings to our lives. They are representative of the myriad oppositions that stand together, complete, yet incomplete, without each other. Where is up without down? Where is in without out? Where is over, without under? And even Moe important, without contraries and contradictories where would we be?

They cause pain, embarrassment, and insight and more. If it’s hot, it’s not cold. If it’s right, it’s not wrong. What else could it be? Sort of not wrong? But how do you assure it’s right? I don’t know. Just because everybody thinks it’s right, doesn’t make it right. Right? Wrong? Maybe? Oh, sweet sweet maybe.

That’s where I live: Maybe City. It is in the United States of Uncertainty, in the state of Possibility, the town of What?. We never do anything with any resolve. It is all tentative with reservations slowing all decision making. It took me 2 hours to decide what I wanted for breakfast. For example, I had deep concerns about the cereal—whether it was too crunchy and may damage my teeth. The eggs were too flexible—I might bite my tongue while chewing. I ended up having a glass of water. Then, getting dressed, I tried on 9 pairs of black socks with different degrees elasticity. I ended up going without socks. I couldn’t decide whether to wear boxers or jockey shorts so I wore my wife’s undies. What the hell! Comfy! This went on until I was clothed. 2 hours! But, in the end I’m inevitably satisfied with my decision making. I’m wearing clothes! Better than yesterday. I wore a poncho made out of a tablecloth. It had a floral pattern.

So, I get what I want. I’m pretty sure I do. Not certain. Well maybe. Very strong likelihood. No way of knowing. Call me stultified. No wait . . . .

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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Paragoge

Posted on January 2, 2026 | Leave a comment

Paragoge (par-a-go’-ge): The addition of a letter or syllable to the end of a word. A kind of metaplasm.

I was tired of being called “Bucky” when my given name was “Buck.” My father was an investment banker, so my parents named me Buck. It would’ve been better if they had named me “Bill,” short for dollar bill, or “Cash” like “Johnny Cash.” But no, they named me “Buck.” People thought that adding a “y” to my name was a sign of friendship—of endearment. Even my parents called me “Bucky.” “Time for dinner Bucky.” How many times had I heard that? Countless!

Bullies called me “Bucky Beaver,” after the smiling beaver who was a toothpaste mascot. His motto was “Brusha, brusha, brusha.” That’s what the bully Porkok (Pork-ok) Giles would yell at me when I came into range. Although his first name could easily be made into some kind of taunt, I was afraid to do so. Porkok was a thug and would probably beat the shit out of me, or, even kill me. But, I was sick of his bullshit and decided to ambush him with a taunt.

In order to spare my life, I recorded the taunt and hid the recorder in the bushes he passed every day on the way to school. It had a blue tooth control that I could use to turn on the player while hiding in the bushes across the street.

He was coming, as he passed the bushes, I turned on the player: “Poorcock, Poorcock, can’t be hard as a rock!”

I got him!

He stopped and looked around. He found the player in the bushes and stomped it into the pavement. “I know it’s you Bucky. I’d recognize your whiny girly voice anywhere. Show yourself so I can kill you.” I ran home. I was dead meat. Eventually, Porkok would find me and kill me, most likely at school.

He found me and pinned me up against my locker. He had a beaver costume. He told me if I wore it for the rest of the year, he would spare my life. I put it on. I wear it all, day and hang it in my locker when the school day is over, and put it back on the next morning when I come to school.

Believe it or not, I’ve become the new school mascot. The old mascot was a garden gnome. It was chosen as the school mascot when our town was known for growing flowers. Flower-growing ended 50 years ago. 1,000s of beavers have moved into the wetlands surrounding our town. We ate their tails and wore their fur. It was inevitable that the beaver would become the school mascot—not only was it good to eat with warm soft fur, it was industrious.

I served out my beaver costume sentence. As school mascot I donned it for school sporting events. Our school cheer was “Beavers, beavers, woo, woo, woo, the beaver team will dam up you!” I would lead the cheer. One evening I spotted Porkok in the stands. He was cheering with everybody else. He looked straight at me and reached into his jacket like he was going for a gun.

After the game he met me outside the gym. He reached into his jacket. I braced myself for the bullet, but he pulled a pint bottle of whiskey out of his jacket. We toasted “peace” and laughed a little bit. He said “Here’s to you Bucky.” I said “Here’s to you Bad Cock.” We laughed some more and went our separate ways.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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Paralipsis

Posted on January 1, 2026 | Leave a comment

Paralipsis (par-a-lip’-sis): Stating and drawing attention to something in the very act of pretending to pass it over (see also cataphasis). A kind of irony.

“I’m not going to tell you how disgusting you are.” My own Mother said this to me. I was smart enough to know that she actually thought I was disgusting. So, I said to her, “I’m not going to tell you what a shitty Mother you are.” I laughed and asked her how it felt to get hit with an oblique insult. She threw the Shepherd pie she had just made in my face. It was hot and ran down my cheeks. It tasted good! Mom really knew her Shepherd pie. We had it every-other night for supper.

I asked Mom what we would have for supper now that the Shepherd pie was ruined. She brandished a fork at me and told me she was going to stab me in the eye if I didn’t “get the hell out of the kitchen.” I got the hell out of the kitchen. I headed out to the barn to brush my prize lamb Julie.

The county fair was coming and I wanted to show her at the Fair. I was pretty sure she’d earn a blue ribbon. I had invested a lot of time in her. She was extremely well-groomed—she shone like a fluffy star. She had one small defect. Her nose ran out of control. I planned on stuffing cotton batting up her nose to absorb the drip. It would affect her breathing, but not too much.

The big day came and Julie was ready to roll. I had stuffed enough cotton up her nostrils to stop her dripping. As I walked her around the ring, she passed out. She came close to suffocating because of the cotton I had stuffed up her nose, but I cleared her nostrils and she was OK. She was eliminated because the cotton up the nose was considered cheating. We walked home.

When mom heard what had happened she said, “I’m not going to call you a stupid ass, but your showing at the Fair was the pinnacle of dumb fu*k.” I felt bad enough already. I punched Mom in the eye and stalked out the door. I slept in the barn that night and came back home the next day. I apologized to Mom. Black eye and all, she accepted my apology. She said, “It’s OK zero boy.” I hadn’t seen Julie when I got up, so I asked Mom if she knew where Julie was. Mom said, “Her leg is in the oven and the rest of her is in the freezer.”

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Daily Trope is available in an early edition 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.

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