Category Archives: ellipsis

Ellipsis (el-lip’-sis): Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.

I could actually see the germs crawling around on my hands. They were . . . wriggling and curling up like springs. I was cursed with telescopic vision. The lenses of my eyes adjusted to distances, randomly without warning. One minute, I could see parameciums swimming in polluted water and then, without warning, the moon’s craters. Sometimes, when I looked in the mirror, I saw these microscopic bugs running around on my face. They were flesh colored and hairy and it looked like they were wearing tennis shoes. That really scared me. Although my ophthalmologist assured me I was suffering from telescopic vision, I thought I was losing my mind. She had prescribed me special glasses that were supposed to control my malady. But, before I was able to pick them up, I met the man in the moon.

I was moon-gazing out by my swimming pool when suddenly I telescoped toward the moon. I felt like I was flying through space. I was cold. Suddenly, I landed on the moon! There was a man standing there. He was wearing a calico nightshirt and black rubber boots. He said, “I’m the man in the moon. Who are you?” I told him I was Brad Bonecharge and I had an eye problem. He lifted up his nightgown and said “We all have our problems.” I telescoped in and I was shocked and panic stricken. There were tiny little people crawling around in his pubic hair. They did not seem to be very happy. I turned my gaze back to earth and telescoped into my back yard—to my swimming pool. I flew home and realized that I was starting to get some control of my malady. Nevertheless, I picked up my special glasses at the optometrist’s and started wearing them all the time.

I went to my first monthly appointment with my ophthalmologist. I sat across from her and we started to talk about my eyes. Suddenly, I heard mumbling coming from between her legs. She must have noticed my discomfort because she lifted up her dress and told me not to worry, “they” were harmless and had moved into her crotch a couple of moths ago. She said she didn’t understand their language, but she was keeping them because she enjoyed the company and the tickling sensation. She said the only inconvenience was waiting for them to climb off when she’s going to bathe. She has a doll house bench that they sit on while she takes a shower.

The more we talked about the little people, the louder the din became coming from her crotch. I was convinced that I had gone totally psycho, that my visit to my ophthalmologist was a total hallucination. Then, I felt a tickling in my crotch. I excused myself and went into the office bathroom. I pulled down my pants and saw six or seven little people talking and laughing. I pulled up my pants and ran out of the office.

How would I take care of these little people? How would I feed them? I found out that night. They latched onto me like tiny ticks. That’s when I realized they were vampires. They lived in the darkness of people’s underpants and were distantly related to leeches! I had read about them in National Geographic, but I thought it was a hoax. I realized, given they were vampires, if I pulled down my pants out by the pool in the afternoon they’d go up in smoke, or maybe, I could stick wooden toothpicks in their chests while they were sleeping.

I had a decision to make.

The next day I was out by the pool. I was ready to pull down my bathing suit in the bright sunlight and fry those little suckers. I put my thumbs under my waistband. I heard screaming and crying and what sounded like begging coming from my swimsuit. I relented. . . let them live.

I recorded their mumbling and took the recording to a linguist friend of mine. She was stunned. She told me the dialect hadn’t been spoken for 900 years when it was erased along with the little people who spoke it. She said is was a dark day in Romania when the little people were eradicated due to a rumor they were vampires.

My friend loaned me a valuable text that had been translated from “Vorbe Mici” (Small Talk) into English. It was a biography titled “Night Moves” (Mișcări de noapte). The “book” was one inch by 2 inches in keeping with the size of the author and his readers. I used “Night Moves” to learn the ancient dialect, using the English translation as a key. I realized that I was slowly becoming a vampire: I have been bitten over and over again. I got a night job at Cliff’s. I sleep during the day in an unplugged chest freezer in my basement. Since I’ve started sucking blood from my neighbor Thelma, my telescopic vision has gone away.

I told my ophthalmologist about my cure and she suggested we take a night walk down by the river where a lot of “juicy” homeless people camp.

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.

Ellipsis (el-lip’-sis): Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.

I was tired of everything. I was disgruntled. I complained. My demeanor was abrasive. I was going crazy . . . a loon irritating the hell out of everybody within earshot.

I was getting soft like a bowl of pudding. I knew I wasn’t dying, but something big was happening.

A self-described shaman from Connecticut had put a curse on me. I had told his daughter she looked like a mushroom with eyes—a really stupid comparison that she blew off with laughter. Immediately, I tried to think of a new and better insult. I compared her to a bale of hay, and then to a damaged guardrail, and then to a used tissue. She kept laughing at me, so I dropped my atomic insult bomb: “You look like a piece of shit.” She stopped laughing and hit me with a left hook and ran home crying to her father. Her father was enraged and swore if I came to see her ever again, he would put a curse on me as big as the moon. The daughter invited me over. I was curious. I didn’t believe in curses, so off I went. We sat down in the living room and I told her she looked like a bowling ball with legs. She called her father and told him I was doing it again. He pulled a wand out of his back pocket and pointed it at me and yelled “You’re a piece of shit!”

I laughed it off at the time, but with my emerging symptoms, I’ve got what look like corn kernels embedded in my skin. My mother took me to a dermatologist. She was shocked. She tried pulling the kernels out with tweezers, but it was impossible.

I was turning into a piece of shit accented with corn kernels.

I was awakened the next morning by the strong smell of shit—it was me. I had turned into a piece of shit and I was on the floor under my bed. I could talk and see, but I had no hands, or arms, or legs. I just sat there: a piece of shit. I didn’t know what to do. I yelled for my mother.

When she entered my room it looked empty to her. She started sniffing and said out loud to herself, “Somebody did number two in here.” I yelled, “I’m number 2. I’m under the bed Ma!” She looked under the bed and yelled “You’re a piece of shit!” She went downstairs and came back up with spatula and scraped me up off the floor and carried me carefully down to the kitchen. My father was sitting there drinking a cup of coffee, which he dropped on the floor. “Why the hell are you carrying a piece of shit around?” She answered, “Its our son.” He said, “I know it’s that goddamn shaman, he said he would fu*k our son over if he kept insulting his beloved daughter. What the hell is wrong with you son?” he asked. I said sarcastically, “I’m a piece of shit accented with corn kernels.”

Luckily, the shaman owed my father a favor. My father had saved him from being burned at the stake during the Evangelical Uprising that cost many good people their lives. My father had hidden the shaman in a box labeled “Bibles” and smuggled him out of the dungeon.

We got to his house. My father handed the spatula with shit me on it to the daughter, and he and the shaman embraced and spent some time talking about the good old days. I told the daughter I would never insult her again. I told her I loved her, and as soon as I was a boy again, we would go on a date—to the movies. I actually meant it.

The shaman pulled out his wand and pointed it at me and yelled “No shit Sherlock,” and there I was in my pajamas, no longer a piece of shit. The girl and I hugged. My life was back on track. My father told me if I ever insulted the girl again he would feed me to our pigs.

Everything is going well with the girl. I have made my little brother the target of my neurotic need to insult. Yesterday, I told him he looked like a walking talking cigarette butt. I am working on an insulting blog called “Demeaning is in the Message.”

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.

Ellipsis (el-lip’-sis): Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.

Jeff: Count with me: 1, 2, . . . yup, that’s right, 3. But actually, I was gong to say four. What’s next is always a big question, I’m going to jump up and down now, and what will I do after that? Moo hoo ha ha ha. Here I go! Whoops! Your picture of mom is under my feet. Oh no! The frame broke and the picture tore. What would I do next? Sweep up the mess and threaten to push you out of your bedroom window if you tell mo?.

If you don’t stop crying I will strangle you. I want you to lure Lawrence Burnborn to our basement. Tell him you will give him Peanut Butter Cups and Peter Paul Mounds. He is such a pig that he would crawl through broken glass to get the candy.

Sister: Jeff, you have flipped your wig again. You must’ve stopped taking you meds. Remember what happened last time? You lit my three little hamsters—Iggy, Swiggy, and Ziggy—on fire and put on a flaming hamster juggling show. The show was a failure because you couldn’t get the hamsters to stay lit. They took you to Cortex Creek Rest Home, where you stayed 6 months. You were fine when you got out. It was the meds, the “Normalacyn.” You were diagnosed with “Quadra-Polartechinosis,” a complex condition with four shades of “crazy:” 1. Deep Landfill, 2. Totally Bummed, 3. Starting Up, 4. Running Wild. Now, I think you should go . . .

Jeff: Shut up you human slag heap! You are telling me what I already know, snot face. Now, just go and get Lawrence and bring him back here. In the meantime, I”ll check my electric drill and jar of sulphuric acid. Go get him! Now!

Sister came back in a half-hour. Lawrence was not with her. Jeff went berserk. He chased Sister around the basement with his drill whining. Sister ran back up the basement stairs. Her boyfriend “Nordic” Bill, a giant and Icelandic Exchange Student, was waiting. He was holding a Narwal tusk.

Jeff came up behind Sister and drilled her in the buttocks. He pulled out the drill and went for Nordic Bill. Bill was waiting for Jeff pointing the Narwal tusk in his direction. At the last second, Bill dropped the tusk and turned and ran. Now, Jeff’s father Strom showed up and pointed a double-barreled shotgun at Jeff.

Strom: Put down the drill. You’re headed back to Cortex Creek.

Jeff put the drill down, but picked up the Narwal tusk and pointed it at his father. His father shot hm in the head—firing both barrels. A creature that looked like a small turtle crawled out of Jeff’s mangled head. The ambulance arrived for Sister. The “turtle” skittered out the front door which had been left open by Strom when he rushed into the house. Strom never said a word to anybody about the turtle.

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.