Category Archives: diasyrmus

Diasyrmus (di’-a-syrm-os): Rejecting an argument through ridiculous comparison.

“Your argument is like a potato with no eyes. It’s like you’re trying to make a birthday casserole out of nails and Kool-Aide.” She just sat there looking at me. No reaction. She was a first year student in my “I and Thou” class. I used Buber as my whipping boy, presenting a counter argument for every word in the book. I advocated cruelty and the destruction of self-esteem, following my mentor’s book “Everybody’s a Loser.” Johan Brest was noted for pushing his students over the edge, making them into blithering “poo-poo pants.” If students made it to the final exam, there were ambulances parked outside waiting to take them to the mental health clinic. Brest was quite likely the worst human in the world. I was his competition. I aspired to be worse than him—far worse, I should say. I aspired to be the “King of Cruel.”

The idiot student sitting in front of me was a mere stepping stone on my way to becoming King Cruel. I took another shot: “Your argument is like an empty elevator stuck between floors.” Nothing. No reaction. “Your argument is like a smokestack up a weasel’s ass.” She squirmed a little, but then she yawned.

I was infuriated. She was too stupid to see what I was trying to do—mutilate her self-esteem and send her stumbling out of my office in a state anomie with thoughts of suicide.

I turned on my computer and Googled “people who don’t respond to insults.” The Spam & Ham Health Network to told me “These people are psychopaths and will explode with lethal rage if pushed too far.” I was terrified. She had taken out a switchblade knife with at least a 10-inch blade and was waving it in figure eights and whistling “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”

I said: “Your argument is like expensive perfume wafting through my mind.” She put the knife away and we had lunch together in the school cafeteria. I was reconsidering my quest to be King of Cruel. Now, I was tending toward “King of Kind.” I said to her: “You’re one of the most beautiful students I ever had.”

She reported me for harassment. I have been placed on indefinite leave.

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.

Diasyrmus (di’-a-syrm-os): Rejecting an argument through ridiculous comparison.

It was time to go to work again. Many students hated me. They called me Professor Piss-Face, or PF for short. I had learned to be an intolerant bastard in graduate school. My university had a religious affiliation. Dogma ruled and unflappable single mindedness was prized. Being impervious to other peoples’ points of view was the gold standard. We brought in unwitting zealots and believers of all stripes as guest speakers so we could gang up on them, disorient them, and send them away in a state of anomie. This is what God intended: total unremitting intolerance for all “ways of thinking” different from our own.

We were taught how to smash others’ arguments with “ridiculous comparisons.” Our university was named after what, for thousands of years, had accomplished this purpose: Diasyrmus University. When I had completed and defended my dissertation “Your Argument Wreaks of Sewer Gas,” I was ready to take my first teaching position. I had been employed by Tough University. It admitted students who had a hard time dealing with criticism. Most of them have terrible relationships with their parents—ranging from yelling matches, to fistfights, to sobbing, to death threats. The problems are rooted in ill-founded recalcitrance. We are there to provide them well-founded recalcitrance.

My first day of class.

Course Titled: “I’m Right, So Shut Up.”

Some Critical Gems From Class: Your argument is nothing more than a fart, your argument is like a banjo with no strings, your argument is like a raspberry stuck up a baboon’s ass, your argument is like using baloney slices to sole your shoes, your argument is like cheating on your girlfriend with a tomato.

As you can see I blew them apart. One guy wet his pants when I laid into him. There was a girl who became paralyzed and had to be carried out of class. These “bad” kids crumbled like Graham crackers. Through their tears a number of them begged for more. Of course, I had office hours in my “Cell” where I meet one-on-one to give individual students the verbal lashings they crave.

My article “Eat Me” will be published in spring in the philosophy journal “One Truth.” It is a dialogue between Goog, a cave man, and Jockatres an adherent of “The Sarcastic Method.” It vividly displays the power of the put-down as an instrument of philosophy. I’m sure it will win some kind of award and a fat pay-raise for me.

Dean Hellbrighter came by my office yesterday and told me she wanted one of my fabled tongue lashings. Of course, I complied. Afterwards, she told me my discourse was like a wet noodle looking through the keyhole of a door I will never open. Her insult was edifying. I’m planning on quoting her in my next class.

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.

Diasyrmus (di’-a-syrm-os): Rejecting an argument through ridiculous comparison.

This “case” is a basket Cael. I’m not sure what that is, but I know it’s bad. Maybe it’s like a glass that’s half paper instead of half full. But maybe it is like a broken toilet or stapler that won’t staple. Or better yet—that smells like fresh roadkill—a raccoon perhaps?

My name is Professor Dirtwedge. My nickname among my students is Dr. Prick. I am cruel. I have never given a grade above C. I humiliate my students by belittling their intelligence in class. Nobody volunteers to speak. I have call on them to thwart their fear of participation. I am a philosophy professor and teach an introductory course titled “You are stupid: Admit it.” The course is centered round the works of the renowned hippie philosopher Californicus. His work was based on the Rolling Stones’ “you can’t always get what you want, but at least you don’t get what you don’t want, and if you do, you have to act like you need it.” Mr. Jimmy’s utterance (dead) frames the text’s intention of celebrating our shared fate: dead. It elaborates on the different ways you can become dead: disease, accident, suicide, murder. Californicus elaborates the received list with less conspicuous ways that the end comes. For example, laughing, foot stomping, dancing to frenetic jazz music.

I study the games insects play and their ethical dimensions. I have discovered that all ants cheat at everything they play. To be a consummate cheater is an aspiration of all ants. As they plod along building their mounds, protecting each other and gathering food, they would rather be playing ant checkers and cheating. I have been able to interview ants by using pheromones smeared on sweet-smelling candy wrappers. Their poetry and short fiction are mesmerizing. A scrap of a poem by a carpenter ant: “I make sawdust, oh I must. I chew for you. Some day this old house will fall, and become a shopping mall.”

This is a remarkable meditation on the passage of time and the fools it makes of us all. It’s like the Bible or a sticky note stuck on a car’s speedometer or a wheel of fortune that never stops turning, and if it does, it goes the opposite direction afterwards.

So, how did I become a tenured professor here at “The Meter’s Running University”? My mother died during my oral defense of my dissertation. I started crying when I was informed, so my committee took pity and passed me. I received tenure when the President found out I had “a story to tell.” He overrode the tenure committee after he heard my story. His wife had gone missing and my ants had told me where she was buried. When I showed him the map they had drawn, he knew he was had.

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.