Category Archives: aetiologia

Aetiologia (ae-ti-o-log’-i-a): A figure of reasoning by which one attributes a cause for a statement or claim made, often as a simple relative clause of explanation.

Pop tarts again—I liked them ok, but Mom had been giving them to me in my school lunch for two weeks. I kept asking her why and she kept telling me that I’d find out in a “jiffy.” I wasn’t sure what a “jiffy” is—I think it was something people said in the 1930s, but to what end I didn’t know. Everybody I asked (including my teacher) told me it had something to do with peanut butter, and possibly, a kangaroo. From this, I concluded it was Australian.

I was so lucky! Ms. Dundee down the street had emigrated with her brother from Australia just six months ago. Her brother was crazy. He wore a cowboy hat with a hatband made out of Platypus bills. He wore a giant knife in a sheath on his hip. It was at least 20” long and was blood-stained. He hunted alligators in the swamp outside of town. He sold the skins to a cowboy boot company in Texas. He sold the meat to wild game restaurants around the United States. His favorite restaurant was “Bloody Mess.” It specialized in “anything that bleeds, from voles to buffaloes.”

Anyway, I asked Ms. Dundee what a “jiffy” is. She laughed and said “It means quickly.” She had a pile of scratch-off lotto tickets sitting on the table. She said “Watch me. I can scratch these off in a jiffy.” She went to work—her scratching finger was a blur. In fact, her fingernail started smoking! She hit $5,000 on the last ticket. We went wild. We had to drive to the state capital to cash it in. We got to Albany late. We stayed together at “Blackmail Bob’s” a motel notorious for ruining peoples’ lives. We didn’t plan on doing anything wrong. The next morning we received a computer file showing us engaged in all kinds of crazy stuff from Ms. Dundee riding me as a horsy to me doing sexual things to Ms. Dundee with the bedside telephone.

Since we were in Albany, we took the file to our Senator. She took one look and told us it was AI—it was clearly fake and there was nothing to worry about. So, we went ahead and cashed the ticket and drove home.

When we got home I told Ms. Dundee to wait. “I’ll be out in a jiffy.” I went inside and filled a box with spare pop tarts. I handed the box to Ms. Dundee. She took a big whiff and moaned.

I had fallen in love with Ms. Dundee. We shared a pop tart.

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

The 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.

Aetiologia (ae-ti-o-log’-i-a): A figure of reasoning by which one attributes a cause for a statement or claim made, often as a simple relative clause of explanation.

I grew up in Sodom. Nobody did anything legitimate for a living. We all lived the Sodom and Gomorrah dream—carousing, lots of tattoos, having sex with our neighbors, and mistreating our pets. I had a hound dog named Bill that I hung by one leg from my garage’s rafters. Then we’d have a “garage party” and laugh and point at Bill until I cut him down around 4:00 am when the party ended and everybody but my neighbor’s wife went home.

I sold stolen eggs on the back streets of Sodom. I had six egg snatchers working for me—Rhode Island Red was my lead snatcher. He came in every morning with two baskets filled with eggs. The rest of them were pretty good, maybe Leghorn Larry was second-best.

I had emerged as the sole egg vender after the “Scrambled Eggs War.” The battles were fought with spatulas and heavy iron skillets. You can imagine the mayhem! I had an army of mercenaries that I personally trained in the technique of skillet-bopping and spatula-swiping. In combination the two techniques were unstoppable. We beat the opposition into oblivion and we began our enterprise titled “Back Street Eggs.” After years of selling stolen eggs at cut-rate prices, we’re on the verge of stealing whole egg farms, chickens and all. As a stolen business, we’d maintain our illegitimacy in keeping with Sodom’s ethic, that is, in Sodom crime is king. Even the chicken farms were criminal enterprises relying on a constant influx of kidnapped chickens,

If it wasn’t for the fact that there were neighboring cities that weren’t crime-ridden, there wouldn’t be anybody to steal from and Sodom would go banko along with its ethic of “crime first; depravity second; unbridled lust, third.” These were our founding penciled, principle that withstood the test of time—thousands of years.

There were rumors circulating that God was out to get Sodom for its so-called errant ways. It was rumored we were all going to be turned into pillars salt and our beloved Sodom was going to be blown off the face of the earth, along with our sister city, Gomorrah. Everybody laughed it off. Why would God want to do that to a little town out in the middle of nowhere, a million miles from anything that mattered?

Then, two days later the “Big One” hit Gomorrah. There was a flash of light and the whole city disappeared. I jumped on my donkey and got the hell out of Sodom. I saw this woman by the side of the road. She turned and looked back at what was happening and she turned into a pillar is salt. It freaked me out. I didn’t look back and got my donkey up to full speed by whipping the hell out of it—Dunkin Donkey did his best—he actually galloped—and we survived the mayhem.

My hair turned white and so did Dunkin’s fur. We were marked by what had happened, forever different. I’m writing a play about what happened. It’s called “The Wrathonater.” It is about the excessiveness of God’s justice. I thought the pillar of salt woman was enough to scare the shit out of anybody in their right mind. He didn’t have to make my beloved Sodom disappear along with my hound dog Bill, my band of egg snatchers, and my neighbor’s wife.

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.