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.
“Dog, cat, cow, dynamite, turkey.” I didn’t know what else to tell the jury. My attorney said, “See! It is just like I said, He’s selling bananas. He’s nolo logo. He’s grinding beef. He’s so far around the bend that he’ll never find his way back. In short, Your Honor, he’s nuts, bonkers, Bozo, and that’s just the short list. Today, I intend to prove that he has lost his marbles. He is a certified lunar module that will be found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.”
My attorney was the best. Sam “The Sham” Budweiser had an international reputation. He had gotten war criminals off the hook at the ICJ (International Court of Justice). One of them was a warlord (Miklo Mocklavit) who forced defeated townspeople to watch him juggle their loved one’s severed heads while he danced on their national flag to the tune of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” If he dropped a head, one of his minions would shoot a random person in the audience, decapitate them and throw their head to Mocklavit. He would he would not stop juggling, but would catch the head, add it to the other three heads, and keep on juggling.
The Sham pointed out that Mocklavit was not read his rights when was arrested in Cambodia. The ICJ had to let him go. Now, Mocklavit’s in Africa spreading the Ebola virus with hijacked wind turbines—blowing the disease across Congo and demanding a ransom to stop doing it. There’s more to the story, but suffice it to say Miklo Mocklavit is truly evil. No moral hierarchy gets in his way.
I’m not as evil as Mocklavit, but the newspapers say I’m “shockingly evil.” “Shockingly evil” is pretty darned evil. I think I’m playing in Mocklavit’s league. I was a serial killer. I was called “Driller Killer.” I would capture people walking late at night, drug them, and drill them to death in the forehead with the brace and bit that I had inherited from grandfather. I used a one-inch auger to bore a nice clean hole. I would mount different things in the holes I drilled: a door knob, an ice cream scoop, a bottle of Naproxin for the headache I had caused. Ha ha! My favorite was a red-blinking flashlight. It lit up the bushes with its flashing glow, giving them a tone of emergency that attracted attention.
I was caught red-handed when I was drilling Father Jehovah, who I had drugged down by the river. I had barely gotten my auger going, when the cops came, guns drawn, pointed at me. Father Jehovah was old and wore one of those things around his neck that transmits the message “I’ve fallen I can’t get up.” It broadcast loudly out of the device, and also, directly to 911. It was GPS equipped and could track the message’s geographic location. End of story. I was screwed.
The Sham said that I didn’t even need an attorney to prove that inanity played a central role in my 42 murders. I hired him anyway because I was too shy to represent myself. We won our case and I was remanded to the eponymous “Scarecrow Federal Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane.” Scarecrow was one of Batman’s many nemeses. His desire to inflict “pure fear” is a key personality trait for a penitentiary’s naming. But really, that’s not what it’s like. We all live in a medication-induced la-la land drooling and twitching and waiting for the next meal.
The Daily Trope 