Category Archives: amphibolgia

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).

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.

Amphibologia (am’-fi-bo-lo’-gi-a): Ambiguity of grammatical structure, often occasioned by mispunctuation. [A vice of ambiguity.]

It was a foot of wood. That’s all I needed to patch the side of my house where I had hit it with my lawn tractor. It happened when I was on my way to the dentist to have a crown replaced. I was driving full speed. I was driving my lawn tractor because my driver’s license had been revoked for going 85 in a school zone. It was 10 in the morning when I was clocked. Everybody was in class, why the hell do you have to go 15 if there’s nobody there? More government bullshit. The crossing guards are sucking us dry while my kids don’t learn anything useful. What the hell can they use US History for? The past is past. It’s over and it’s useless. It’s like moldy cheese or last year’s model toaster.

Anyway, if I was late for my appointment, my dentist would pull my face off. I think she has a problem. She keeps yelling at me to open wider—I can’t open any wider, but I try. She slaps me in the face and calls me a “jaw wimp.” Then, she pulls a giant syringe out of nowhere and jams it in my gums. My whole face goes numb and I can’t talk. She tells me if I feel pain while she’s drilling to raise my hand. She starts drilling. It hurts like hell, so I raise my hand. She nods her head and keeps drilling. I say “Reejus Rice!” That’s the best “Jesus Christ” I can do with my numbed face. The woman running the spit sucker is watching something on her cell phone and my mouth is starting to flood. I have to swallow and my tongue hits the drill. I hear my dentist say “Uh Oh. That’s the end of that. You’ll have to get an implant. They’ll screw in a new tooth for you. I’ll make you an appointment. See the office manager on the way out.” The crown wasn’t replaced and I was pissed off.

I had an appointment at “Dr. Puller’s Screw-in Teeth.” My damaged tooth would be removed and a new one screwed in. I arrived at Dr. Puller’s at 7:00 am. His office manager was dressed in black. She was wearing a necklace of gold crowns. Dr. Puller came out of his “workroom” to greet me. He had a black patch over his left eye and a black leather glove on his left hand. “Come in and sit in the chair,” he said with a small smile on his face. He had a hand drill in one hand. He laughed and said “Just kidding. Here, hold this little teddy bear while I do your tooth.” Dr. Puller placed the reddy bear in my lap. “That tooth’s got to go now!” He yelled and held up a small electric saw. He said, “Don’t worry about novocaine, I am a professional. If anything bad happens, we call 911.” Just then, his assistant walked through the door. She was wearing rubber gloves and was dressed like Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.”

I decided to get the hell out of there, but my wrists were bound to the dentist’s chair. Suddenly, a thing that looked like a vacuum cleaner attachment came down over my face. I took one breath and was headed for cloud cuckoo land. As I fell into a stupor, a high pitched whining began. The last thing I remember was Dr. Puller yelling “Not that one!”

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the little teddy bear in my lap had big blotches of blood on it. Then, Dr. Puller held up a mirror to my tooth and said “Welcome back.” His assistant had slipped a note in my pants pocket when I was sedated. I started to unfold it and she told me to read it when I got home.

My tooth looked ok, but what did I know? It was apparently screwed in nice and tight and would work well as a replacement. When I got home I read the assistant’s note: “If you got me pregnant, I’ll give you a call.” I’d heard about things like this on FOX News, so I didn’t give it a second thought. “Dorothy” was full of shit. How unprofessional.

The next morning I was awakened by the NPR theme song. I don’t have a radio in my bedroom, so I was puzzled. I listened hard and discovered the music was coming out of my screw-in tooth. I called Dr. Puller and he called me back just as the NPR morning news was coming on. We made an appointment to have it fixed.

I got to his office around ten and went straight into his “workroom.” His assistant told me how ashamed she was for writing the note. She wasn’t pregnant after all. I said “That’s ok.” And sat in the chair. Dr. Puller came in the room. “You have Radiohead. Your tooth is like a germanium diode radio. It runs off your body’s electric current. I have to “tune” it by twisting it like a radio dial—twisting it by mini-microns—until I land on static-free dead air.” It took Dr. Puller a couple of minutes, listening through a dental microphone temporarily mounted on my tongue. He was a genius.

When I got home, I sat in my chair, stared at the wall, and drank Johnny Walker black. The doorbell rang. I answered it and it was Dorothy from Dr. Puller’s. She told me she had lost her dog Toto and wondered if he might be in my bedroom. I let her in and we went to take a look.

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.

Amphibologia (am’-fi-bo-lo’-gi-a): Ambiguity of grammatical structure, often occasioned by mispunctuation. [A vice of ambiguity.]

My cat was on the front page of the newspaper again. He sat there like he belonged there, like he saved somebody’s life, or drove a car, or something special. The newspaper was the “Daily Glockenspiel,” founded in the late 19th century, catering to German immigrants.

The “Glockenspiel” staff weathered torture, fires, shootings and worse during WW1 and WW2 due to their unwavering support of Germany. They were lucky. They survived both wars by shedding their Germanic mage after the wars. For example, their tagline was changed from “Gott mit uns” to “We are the apple pie newspaper.” They stopped reporting on events taking place in Germany and focused on human interest stories from the so-called “Heartland.” For example: “Cow adopts family of wolves,” or “Bear rides bicycle across Kansas,” or “Family of five dances in back of dump truck.” As you can see, they documented some pretty weird stuff.

In the past five years with the resurgence in conservatism in US politics, “The Daily Glockenspiel” has inched away from human interest toward its old commitments. The worst example was a story about “Madhoff Hiltner” living in North Carolina writing a book titled “My Camp” about his summer place on the Nag’s Head beach. It talked about his benevolence and opposition to teaching history. He was generous and paid for everything with shavings from gold bars. His wife Eva spends her time bad-mouthing Democrats, doing acrobatics wearing jack boots, feeding her famous diuretic strudel to homeless families, and selling t-shirts with a silk-screened image of Elon Musk titled “Ubermensch.” She is loved by her conservative neighbors, but there are many others who see her as a crypto-Nazi.

As a consequence of significant controversy over its mission, the “Daily Glockenspiel” will be reverting to human interest stories after the November elections. I have been given a glimpse of what’s to come: “Democrat survives severe beating after being rolled into the gutter unconscious.” I asked the Editor how he could know this before it happened. He told me “It is in the stars.”

If things go the wrong way after November, I am moving to the UK. I will live in London, the new capital of the free world. My cat will come with me. After a brief quarantine, we will be reunited.

Definition 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.

Amphibologia (am’-fi-bo-lo’-gi-a): Ambiguity of grammatical structure, often occasioned by mispunctuation. [A vice of ambiguity.]

He was up to his neck in wet cement. It was slowly hardening and he was slowly dying. As the cement hardened, it became harder to breathe. What a way to go—a head sticking out of the floor of a basement in a new housing development. He never should’ve listened to his friend Eddie. He told Eddie he had a traffic fine to pay—that he had ignored it and now he would go to jail if he didn’t pay it by next week. He was unemployed and nearly homeless—his widowed mother would let him eat dinner and take a bath once a week. She was living on Social Security, receiving a check for $75 one a month. It was barely enough to pay for the phone, and water, and electricity, and food. The mortgage was paid, so that wasn’t a problem. She had taken in a boarder, Miss O’Trapp. He was in love with Miss O’Trapp, but she would not let him show it. She pushed him away and told him she didn’t feel that way, but would be happy to dance for him up in her room. He settled for that—spirited Irish step dancing that drove him wild. And when Miss O’Trapp sang “Danny Boy” he would break down and cry—actually sob and then leave Miss O’Trapp’s room with his shirt wet from tears. But now, we was slowly suffocating in hardening cement.

He never should’ve listened to Eddie. When he met Duke the money lender, he had instant trepidations. Duke had a gun-bulge in his jacket and diamond rings on all his fingers. He was wearing lizard skin cowboy boots, a red suit and a black shirt. He looked familiar, like a wanted poster he’d seen in the post office. As Duke counted out the $50 he needed to pay his fine, Duke looked at him and asked him if he knew what “cementing” a deal means. He thought he knew what it meant, so he answered “Yes Mr. Duke.” Now, up to his neck in cement, he knew should’ve asked Duke to elaborate on “cementing a deal.”

He had missed one payment on his loan. “Cementing” is what loan sharks like Duke did for failure to pay.

He started yelling for help. Miss O’Trapp came down the basement stairs wearing rubber boots. “When they carried you away this morning, Mr. Johnny, I followed,” said Miss O’Trapp. She was carrying some boards and had a hose. She set the boards down in a path and walked to Mr. Johnny. She shoved the hose down into the cement and it started to liquify—turning into slurry. She went outside and came back with a rope attached to the rear bumper of her car. She tied the rope under his armpits, went outside and drove her car slowly away from the house. She felt the rope give and she knew Mr. Johnny was saved. As she dragged him out of the basement, Duke showed up with gun drawn. She pulled $75 out of her purse and handed it to Duke. He put away his gun and left.

Miss O’Trapp hosed down Mr. Johnny and they headed to his mother’s house, where he took a bath and put on dry clothes. They went upstairs to her room. She sat on the bed and took off her rubber boots. She unbuttoned the top three buttons of her cardigan. She put on her clogs. She turned up the record player and danced like she’d never danced before. Mr. Johnny could feel the heat. He stood up and raised his arms. She ran toward him and embraced him as the music blared. He proposed. She accepted. He got a decent job, and so did she: he, playing records on the radio, she, giving dance lessons to children. Their relationship was cemented by the bond of marriage and they had a nearly perfect life together, debt free and full of love.

Definition 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.