Monthly Archives: June 2026

Ratiocinatio

Ratiocinatio (ra’-ti-o-cin-a’-ti-o): Reasoning (typically with oneself) by asking questions. Sometimes equivalent to anthypophora. More specifically, ratiocinatio can mean making statements, then asking the reason (ratio) for such an affirmation, then answering oneself. In this latter sense ratiocinatiois closely related to aetiologia. [As a questioning strategy, it is also related to erotima {the general term for a rhetorical question}.]


I had been working for a billionaire Canadian for ten years. I live in Toronto.

Not only is he a billionaire, but he is “slow.” His father had dropped a chainsaw on his head when he was just a little tyke. The grip handle struck him on the side of the head. The blow made him deaf in one ear and mildly addled his brain, affecting his decision-making skills, but also making him an idiot savant in two areas: 1. In minutes, he could count the number of leaves on a maple tree, 2. He became a beaver whisperer and built a real estate empire, employing beavers to erect his inventory of shopping malls, theater complexes, and three-bedroom homes.

We made a lot of money with maple leaf scam. We go to a gambling casino and find a well-heeled player. We’d get to talking while my boss stands there looking like the idiot that he is. I laugh and tell him my rich brain-damaged brother thinks he can count the number of leaves on a a maple tree. At that point my boss steps in and says “Wanna bet?” Usually the mark shows no hesitation. There were small maple trees growing by the casino, so we went outside for the “count” but not before the $5,000 bets were made. The mark picked out a tree.

My boss had a leaf-counting app on his phone. It was developed initially for landscapers to use to estimate the cost of removing leaves from customers’ properties. Anyway, after the boss said his leaf count, he’d run the phone app to see who won the bet. The app was humorously named “Leaf it to Me.” The app’s count and his count were always identical. We won the bet every time without cheating. We had always followed the seasons so he’d have maple leaves to count.

But isn’t this a kind of cheating? Not disclosing the boss’s unique ability makes it seem like the odds are stacked way in favor of the mark. But, the boss was given a special gift. He should use it. If the gift does more harm than good, though, he should probably quit using it. He should realize that his beaver building empire is netting more income than Greenland’s GNP. In addition, he could find a socially responsible use for his maple tree leaf counting genius. We couldn’t find one, but the boss was still compelled to count leaves—he would become homicidal if he couldn’t count for one month. We took that into account. If he abstained he would eventually kill somebody. We started down the road of the lesser of two evils: Cheat or murder?

Eventually, we came up with a solution we would give the marks their bets back. We rejoiced and the boss made us his special barbecued beaver tail with potato salad and baked beans.


Repotia

Repotia (re-po’-ti-a): 1. The repetition of a phrase with slight differences in style, diction, tone, etc. 2. A discourse celebrating a wedding feast.


Time was running out. Actually time was dripping out. The water clock on my mantel was slightly clogged, keeping it from pouring down the time-drain. In about 160 drips, I was going to get married. I was about to become a “forever man.” My wild days had hit a brick wall when in met Chlarine. She was at the mall giving out free cheese samples on toothpicks. The toothpicks were sharp and she stuck me in the butt with a skewered piece of aged cheddar. She giggled and said, “It’s made in New York like a bunch of other great things—mostly tall buildings on Manhattan Island. I’m here to please with cubes of cheese: cheddar, Swiss, Brie, Camembert, Blue, Gorgonzola, and Never-Never Land.

I’d never heard of Never-Never Land cheese before. I associated Never-Never Land with Peter Pan’s island.

I ate a cube and sat by the mall’s fountain. I felt like my perception of reality was being run through a painless blender. It was being mixed up. I felt myself diminishing. I was like a puddle evaporating in the sun. Then, I disappeared. I reappeared wearing a tuxedo checking the time in my living room. Chlarine called me to make sure everything was set for our wedding. I assured her it was. I looked at the calendar hanging in the kitchen and noted that a year had elapsed since I had eaten the cheese. The year was a blank to me, but I wasn’t going to let that slow me down! I loved Chlarine. I couldn’t wait to be pronounced “husband and wife.”

Everything went well. At the reception feast, I gave this speech:

“Dogs run free why not we?” The great poet songwriter sang Bob Dylan this, strumming his guitar and blowing on a harmonica. It is a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it anyway—I’ve always been something of a misbehaviorist.

We don’t run free because we have relationships with other people, unlike packs of dogs, we maintain our unique identities. They’re based on our unique trajectories through life. These trajectories differ from everybody else’s’s and pose the prospect of conflict. In marriage, it’s even worse than friendship. You’re locked in legal cage that is costly to be freed from. The key can cost you everything. So, you stay.

But, you discover that marriage is like aged cheddar. It gets better with time.

I look forward to the vexations of time, when Chlarine pokes me in the butt with a toothpick, letting the good times roll in our king-sized bed.


Restrictio

Restrictio (re-strik’-ti-o): Making an exception to a previously made statement. Restricting or limiting what has already been said.


“You think life is a basket of cherries sweetly beating under your chests.” That’s what my Creative Writing teacher told us on the first day of class. I was high on weed so it made total sense. She was trying to tell us not to put all our eggs into basket metaphors or the chickens will come home roost and we’ll have egg on our faces and weird names like “Rhode Island Red,” “Leg Horn,” or “Bantam.”

I disagreed wildly with my own interpretation. This happened when I tried to reason with myself on weed. I would revise my thoughts six or seven times and then give up and take another hit. My introduction of chickens had steered my interpretation erroneously toward what I called “The fog of bore.” In the fog, I would bump into words as if I was sleepwalking. I would utter them, intending to induce comfort and joy. Instead, they induced snoring and drool.

My teacher continued, “I will cure you of your dependence on a thesaurus and a dictionary for inspiration and meaning. You must stand in the shade waiting for Goddo—waiting for that special synapse that will give voice to your creative thoughts—without the protheses of coffee, acid, or shrooms. Alcohol and weed are all you need to unlock your doors of conception and stumble into the light, clutching your laptops, ready to write. Welcome to Lemongrass College, Creative Writing 190. I am your instructress Dr. “Hot May” Maloney. You may address me as “Dr. Hot.” Let’s get started. Hold up the Voodoo dolls you were given by my assistant Barbie as you entered the classroom.”

I was so fu*ked up that most of what Dr. Hot had to say was deeply inspirational. Oh, but wait, I wasn’t so fu*cked up that I couldn’t tell Dr. Hot that I was inspired, inspired to tell her she should forget about the “doors of conception” and dive into the Blue Lagoon of Love Undone, instead—the giant hot tub in Iceland—where failed writers go to drown. But, when they hit the water they temporarily turn into different colored floaty noodles, bobbing blissfully in the steaming blue water. After five minutes of finding their bliss, they all transform back into humans and go home to be mathematicians and lumberjack’s wives.

I could see that Dr. Hot was heating. Sweat ran down her forehead and wet circles were appearing under her arms. Her hands were trembling. She looked at me with her beautiful blue eyes—I could actually feel her gaze kissing my lips. She said: “Class dismissed. Mr. Kent, meet me in the back seat of my car in Parking Lot B at 7:00pm. It is a Delorean with California license plate “WOKE 69.”

I brought my iPad and some of my best weed.


Sarcasmus

Sarcasmus (sar’kaz’-mus): Use of mockery, verbal taunts, or bitter irony.


I love you more than a carrot up my ass. I love you more than snake shit. I love you less than God and Country. I love you more than a peanut butter and sardine sandwich, but less than my bicycle Lily. She’s built to last. She is 35 years old and she’s hard as a rock. You’re 25 and you’re soft as a slug. Your hair looks like a wet mop peppered with grit from a garage floor. Your nose looks like a sawed-off hot dog. Your hands look like giant fly swatters with fingers. Why do you keep showing up?

I was really letting it rip. I was standing naked in front of my motel room’s dressing mirror. I was talking to myself. As usual, I berated myself. Every once in a while, I would throw something positive in for variety’s sake, but 99% of what I said was nasty, brutish and short—like Hobbes the big-time asshole philosopher said. In my “Odes on a Motel Mirror,” I hit all three notes: my insults are nasty, my demeanor is brutish, and I am barely five feet tall. I have a custom t-shirt that says “I’m Nasty, Brutish, and Short” on it for the whole world to see.

Suddenly, there was pounding on my motel room’s door. My so-called girlfriend Dirty Laura (aka Di) yelled, “Let me in Shorty, you nasty brute.” It was time for our monthly tryst. It went the same ay every month. I’d begin by insulting Di with a recent quote from my podcast “You Suck!” This month I used “You’re no better than jock itch.” It was nasty. Then, Di would wash my mouth out with soap for a full five minutes. After that, I would run around the room foaming at the mouth with soap suds—like a rabid dog. Di would yell “Bad dog!” and I would try to hump her leg. She would push me away and yell “Lay down on the bed you filthy mutt! Roll over! Beg!” Then, we would have sex while we repeatedly yelled out two passages from Paul’s Epistles: “Who will render to every man according to his deeds? As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one!” Di She is the daughter of a Methodist preacher and insisted on integrating religion into our sexual activities. After all was said and done, Di left and went home. I stood in front of the mirror again, alone. I continued berating my self until I went to bed at 11:00.

I am ready for a change. I need to something about my self-image. Accordingly, I’m enrolling in the Trump Self-Esteem Academy. The brochure promises that after two weeks of “zooming with confident Don” I will become a “total narcissist.”


Scesis Onomaton

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, esteemed members of the Jury, he’s nuts, bonkers, Bozo, and that’s just the short list. Today, I intend to prove that he has lost his marbles, that 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 run outside and get another one off the pile, and throw it to Mocklavit. He would not stop juggling, but would catch the head, add it to the other three heads, and keep on juggling.

In his trial, “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 compass gives him direction as he trample the true, the good, and the beautiful wherever he goes.

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 so-called “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. For Eva mole, and a door knob, an organic carrot, an American Flag, and an empty toilet paper roll. My favorite was the red-blinking flashlight. I’d turn it on and shove it in. It lit up the bushes with its flashing light, giving them a tone of emergency that attracted attention. I always got away and never got caught. Until. . . .

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 and 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. I was caught.

“The Sham” said that I didn’t even need an attorney to prove that insanity played the 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. There is no fear. We all live in a medication-induced la-la land drooling and twitching and waiting for the next meal.


Sententia

Sententia (sen-ten’-ti-a): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adageapothegemgnomemaximparoemia, and proverb.


Every night, when she tucked me in Ma said, “He who wrangles clouds gets rained on,” and then she’d read me “Why Was the Rancher Jolly?” or “Grandma is Stranger Than Fiction.”

She repeated this bedtime ritual over, and over, and over. I asked her countless times what the saying meant and she told me she didn’t know, but a smart man said it. Ok, I thought. When I asked her who the “smart man was,” she shrugged her shoulders. When I asked her why she said it to me every night, I got the shoulder shrug again. I asked her how I could use it to make me wise. She told me, “When you get older, you ‘ll know.” “Thanks Ma,” I said sarcastically. This was my life until I went off to college. It was odd that my mother tucked me in, read me the same bedtime stories over and over, and recited the saying until I was 17. I didn’t care. I had tuned out the entire ritual when I was around 14. I had a counter-saying that I would repeat over and over in my head to drown everything out. It was “Two things are certain: Death and Taxes.” I could get my head around that. I liked it. It wasn’t all hoity-toity. There was no mystery. It was humorous too. I think it preserved my sanity.

When I hopped on the bus to College Town and was waving goodbye out the window, my mother yelled “He who wrangles clouds gets rained on!” It was ironic that it was raining and that I got rained on boarding the bus. I thought it might be some kind omen, but I was unaware of any “cloud wrangling” that I had done. But, the saying had inspired me to study meteorology and become a weatherman. I guess some good had come from Ma’s saying. She had given me a pointer when we got to the bus station. It was collapsible and could be used to point out things on the screen when I reported on the weather. She didn’t know that was done with a mouse in the 21st century. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I didn’t “point” that out to her. Ha ha!

I graduated at the bottom of my class after five years. I had some “issues” that had slowed me down, but that didn’t stop me from getting my dream job at Channel 227 as one of the weather people. I changed my name to Stormy Wrangler and wore very tight pants with my shirt unbuttoned four buttons down, and a golden cloud emitting a lightning bolt hanging on a golden chain around my neck. I was hot.

I began every weather broadcast with Ma’s saying “ He who wrangles clouds gets rained on.” I would bow my head and hold a burning candle. I was very solemn. Then, I would raise my head and smile, blow out the candle and say “Two things are certain: death and weather. Let’s get started with the snow—whoops I meant show.” Then I would say something like, “It looks like we’re not going to die, but there’s a warm front headed our way again from Mexico.”

Now I have a fan base of 2,000,000 viewers. It all reminds me of a saying attributed to the Greek philosopher Skeptikus Pathetikus: “You never know.”