Category Archives: cacozelia

Cacozelia (ka-ko-zeel’-i-a): 1. A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned. 2. Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.

His face looked like an ocean of rancid bubbling mayonnaise pulsing with waves of infected flesh. He tried many many remedies—an antiseptic sponge, a rag saturated with Neosporin, buffalo dung, gleanings from the bottom of a birdcage, maggots, and leaches. We have to say again: “His face was a mask of hot shit, a pancake of flexing rot, a puddle of corn-laced diarrhea. There needs to be a new word invented to denote the mess. For now though, comparisons will have to do. I will try to come up with more comparisons to put the catastrophic face into words so it can be communicated in email and post-it notes and other paper media. I am willing at some point to use photographs, and drawings, and sculptures. But for now, the face smells too bad to get close enough to use those media. Words continue to be my “voice” as I track the face from hell, from another planet, from another dimension.

“Ooze” is a good word to describe the constant dripping—a fleshy drain running down his chest, sticky and slow—a sort of bacteria-laced syrup that courses through his chest hair and pools in his belly button to be swabbed away by his nurse who throws up while she’s doing so—added to the ooze, her puke gives off a gray smoke that smells like putrefying flesh which makes everybody in the man’s room puke and cry out for God’s mercy.

Suddenly, the man rubs his rotted face on his pillow. Pieces of his face rub off on his pillow and glisten in the room’s harsh light. The man yells “God take me!” into his pillow and it catches on fire. The flames jump to his head and it crackles as it burns in the fragments of his face. God didn’t take the man. He survived his burning face. His face is cauterized. His troubled face is cleared of pus. However, his head has shrunken to the size of a tennis ball with a leathery texture, a mouth, a nose and eyes. He is “cured,” but his little head can only speak in a high-pitched tones.

His ordeal has given him wisdom. People come to him from far and wide. He has a stand like a lemonade stand where he dispenses wisdom, coughing, while chain-smoking expensive cigars. The line at his stand stretches for 10 miles. His patrons ask him questions like “What did your pus taste like?” He has small vials of pus that he had collected before the fire. He offers them for free so his patrons can taste his pus for at no cost. His generosity is valorized far and wide.

With his new name “Leather Head” he is no longer shunned when he leaves his stand and goes for a stroll down the street. Everybody knows who he is and loves him. He spends a lot of time thinking about how having his head catch on fire saved his life. Before it happened there was no way of imagining it would happen. “That just goes to show you,” he says.

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.

Cacozelia (ka-ko-zeel’-i-a): 1. A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned. 2. Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.

Novitiate: Your sobriquet manifests a quality of veritas-inducing pathos, bathos and credence in the sincerity of your verbalizations. You are known as Father Potato—your soul is wedded to the earth, with many eyes you survey your manse, and you would be ready to be whipped or mashed in service of the Lord. Not to mention, scalloped or fried in oil—to a crisp beige hue, and liberally salted, or soaked with ketchup, or even mayonnaise, if visiting Holland. We know these are all metaphors Father Potato, but they provide us with an orientation to what we can only trust as we wander this vale of tears, forgetful of where we come from. Am I right Father Potato?

Father Potato: No, you are completely wrong. Your musings about me and everything else, are like “a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan, a rider on the storm.” Thus spake Saint James of the leather pants, who died in Paris and ascended to Montmarte, to sit at the left hand of Baudelaire on Saturdays, and his right hand the rest of the week. Saint James can’t speak French, so he just nods his head when Baudelaire reads “Paris Spleen” out loud. “I woke up this morning and had myself a beer, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” Thus spake St. James. Accordingly, I have begun drinking beer and letting it roll all night long, as should you, my son. Instead of a beer, you should have a glass of orange juice when you wake up in the morning, before school. Now, please go away. I have to work on this Sunday’s sermon. It is about a man who becomes locked in a coal cellar and eats a piece of coal. The coal poisons him and he dies a slow agonizing death and goes to hell. It is an allegory.

Novitiate: Oh Father potato! I am up to my ankles in the wisdom overflowing from your words. I can’t think of enough cliches to encompass the truth you purvey—like a ladle filled with the broth of prayerful uplift on the wings of a great big white dove, soaring above the Sea of Galilee, crapping on sinners hauling their nets filled with great flopping lies, inducing vile uncharitable thoughts suited for cackling imps and howling demons. There is so much I have to learn—that I want to learn—“about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, and a little thing called love.” Thus spoke Jewel Akens. I am overwhelmed. I am going to pass out!

POSTSCRIPT

The novitiate passed out, rolling down the stairs in an ecstatic revelry—including a vivid vision of his high school English teacher, Miss Carnaletti. When he awoke, Father Potato was dragging him under the altar. He left the boy there and went to Pop’s Bar and Grill to let it roll all night long, and to ride the coin-operated pony in the back room.

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