The Daily Trope

Tasis

Posted on April 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

Tasis (ta’-sis): Sustaining the pronunciation of a word or phrase because of its pleasant sound. A figure apparent in delivery.

“Beautifullll! Wonderfullll! Over the rainbowwww!” I was looking at my reflection in the mirror. I liked what I saw. I had had the big three: eyebrows, boobs, and butt. I had my hairy old eyebrows removed. I had them replaced by snake tattoos slithering across my forehead where my eyebrows used to be. They were exotic, poetic, and cool. I named the left one “Snakey” and the right one “Serpentina.”

My boobs had always been too small. People called them “button boobs.” I got tired of that. Nobody wants a button for a boob! It’s like having a tube of lipstick for a toe, or an ashtray for a kneecap. Stupid! So I got a boob job to make them bigger—more confident, more cocky, more visible.

I had always loved Paramount Pictures. Some of my favorite movies have been produced by them. “The Godfather” and “Forest Gump” are my two favorites, but I love them all. That’s why my new boobs are modeled after the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo. I had snow caps tattooed on them with a tiny Marlon Brando climbing the left one and a tiny Tom Hanks climbing the right one. There’s an annual tattoo convention in Vegas and I’m going to enter the “Most Innovative Tattoo” contest. I don’t think I’ll win, but it will be fun.

My butt was like my boobs. I had a pancake but. There wasn’t much there you could call a butt. It was so flat and bony when I sat on somebody’s lap it was painful for them. They’d say “Ow!” and push me off. It wasn’t very romantic. Then I heard of the “bubble butt.” I got bubble butt implants. They bring my butt up to par and more.

The implants are the size of cinder blocks. Unlike cinder blocks, the edges are rounded to look like butt cheeks. At five pounds per cheek, they are a little heavy. I can’t run. My plastic surgeon says something may tear. That would be embarrassing if I was on a date or something. Besides, I’m not about to run with my bubble butt—it would make a loud sloshing sound courtesy of the silicone in the implants. But, I love my bubble butt. Along with my snake eyebrows and mountain boobs, I am quite attractive and get the kind of attention I like. Next week I’m getting a tattoo of floating bubbles on my butt. Very cooool!

I’m thinking now of getting a nose job. I want my nose to look like the Paramount Pictures mountain, but it would be tattoo free. However, it would still coordinate nicely with my boobs.

POSTSCRIPT

She was leaving “Inked All Over” after getting the bubble tattoo. She slipped on a patch of ice and landed on her butt. Her butt exploded in a shower of silicone.

She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It was tragic. Her most recent boyfriend Billy-B wanted to fly her body to Vegas and enter it in the “Most Innovative Tattoo” contest. Because of the red tape and the cost, he was unable to do so.

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.

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Thaumasmus

Posted on April 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

Thaumasmus (thau-mas’-mus): To marvel at something rather than to state it in a matter of fact way.

This is totally unbelievable. It’s like meeting a shark in a movie theater rest room or having a toad jump out of an orange you’re about to peel and eat, or seeing your grandma levitating over her bed pan.

Unprecedented!

I was taking a shower two days in a row! Don’t cry for me Argentina. I have adopted a new hygiene regime. I’m tired of people saying “What’s that smell?” when I approach them. And then, when I get close to them, they say things like “I smell raw onions” or “Did you roll in fertilizer?”

Until now, taking a shower has always been a choice for me—a sort of political statement and expression of my autonomy. I cut back to once-a-month in the sixties when everybody had an axe to grind. My smell went with my long hair and beard. People would say: “Where did you get that righteous smell, Dude?” Or “Far out on the odor, man.” I was a walking talking site of protest. I had a slogan I would chant in elevators and other closed places: “if you don’t like my smell, go ahead and go to hell.” When I said it in an elevator people would applaud and yell “Right on, man. Stink man, stink—stink it to the man.”

I was on top of my game. I had a purpose in life. I smelled. I wafted. I showed all those sweet-smelling losers that they were victims of the odor industry, masking the smells God gave them to find peace, love and happiness on the ripe winds of B.O.

It is 1980 now and those days are gone over. Now, my odor is seen as a sign of neglect and even neurosis. I had smelled the way I had smelled for over a decade and my world was falling apart. I had no friends and I had trouble keeping a job due to my smell. My last job was at McDonald’s. I thought the smell of the kitchen would mask my B.O., but it didn’t. People said my smell was ruining their meals. I was fired. As I was going out the door a woman grabbed me by the arm. She smelled like me. She said: “I know what you’re going through, dude.”

She has saved my life.

We sat on a park bench and started talking. Her name was Chive and she said she was tired of catcalls and abuse for her smell. She realized she couldn’t change the world. She was ready for a change. She had a paper bag with two bars of Dial Soap in it. We went to her place and showered together. It was ecstasy. We vowed to start with two showers per week and then, eventually a shower every day would be our goal.

There I was, holding the soap and waiting for Chive.

We were only at day two, but given that we showered together, I was converted. It was wonderful. I was sure that after today our smells would be controlled.

I was so grateful that Chive had come into my life—so suddenly, just at the right time.

The sixties were groovy, but wow, the eighties were going to be dope. After a week, we were already set to be married and had already settled on the name of our first child: Glade.

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.

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Tmesis

Posted on April 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

Tmesis (tmee’-sis): Interjecting a word or phrase between parts of a compound word or between syllables of a word.

“Oat-shit-meal.” That’s what I called it as soon as I learned to swear. Every morning, oatmeal. Every morning prepared the same way: plain. No sugar. No Half & Half. No fruit. No nothing. Just the steaming brown glop in a small metal dog dish. Yes, dog dish! My mother got it at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. It was imprinted with bones around the rim and I could annoy my mother by tapping my spoon on it.

It was like having hot ground boiled watery cardboard for breakfast every morning. And then there was lunch.

My mother put the leftover oatmeal in small shallow Tupperware containers and refrigerated them. The oatmeal would take on the consistency of refrigerated meatloaf. Mom would slice the refrigerated oatmeal into 1/4 inch thick squares. These were our special cold cuts. She would put one on a slice of bread, top it with a slice of American cheese, and slap another slice of bread on top. Unsurprisingly, she called them “Oatmeal Sandwiches.” She had submitted her “recipe” for her sandwiches to numerous food-oriented magazines and was rejected every time. That did not deter her—we had Oatmeal Sandwiches every day for lunch.

Mom saved Quaker Oats containers. She decorated them and sold them as tom-toms on the web. She would dip them in different-colored paint and decorate them with painted macaroni, seashells, pumpkin seeds, leaves and scraps of different-colored cloth.

Her web-shop was called “Dead Drummer Girl.” We thought she would never sell a single tom-tom, especially with the name of the shop. But we were wrong.

Punk Rock was making its debut. The first band to buy one of her tom-tom’s was the highly innovative punk band “Santa’s Wanker.” Mom’s tom-toms became ragingly popular. After Johnny Balls puked on the stage he would roll around in it playing the tom-tom in a ten-minute solo that was characterized as “shocking.” Santa’s Wanker was killed in a dumpster fire, but that did not slow things down. If anything, it caused a surge in sales. All the great punk bands had to have a tom-tom from Dead Drummer Girl.

Mom started selling the tom-toms for $2,000 each. She made millions before she quit. She quit when Iggy Stool did “something too weird” with one of her tom-tom’s. It didn’t happen on stage. We’ll never know. Mom disavowed any relationship to oatmeal. Our lives changed considerably, and we started going to IHOP for breakfast and Shogun Sushi for dinner,

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.

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Topographia

Posted on April 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

Topographia (top-o-graf’-i-a): Description of a place. A kind of enargia [: {en-ar’-gi-a} generic name for a group of figures aiming at vivid, lively description].

“Milly Joe’s Eats” was the pinnacle of eating out. I had been around the world five times and I always came back to Milly’s. It had a flashing neon sign that said “Mill Jo ats ,” it had been burned out for fifteen years and a lot people thought its truncated lettering was actually the restaurant’s name.

It was located in a former gas station down the street from The Rahway State Prison. Most of the guards ate lunch there coughing their heads off from the tuberculosis they contracted working in the prison. Between boughts of coughing and choking they’d tell stories about their lives and times as guards.

For example, one time there was a prisoner who thought he had escaped. He relentlessly looked for Cliff’s convenience store—he looked under his mattress, in cracks in the floor, even in the toilet. He needed to buy a scratch-off lotto ticket, a can of Red Bull, and a pack of tiparillo cigars. He did this every day for 25 years. Finally, his appeals were exhausted. He was executed. For his “last wish” before he was executed, he asked for a can of Red Bull, a lotto ticket and a Tiparillo. He drank the Red Bull and smoked his Tiparillo while he scratched off his lotto ticket. He won $1,000,000 and went off to get his lethal injection. The lottery winnings were divided among the 5 guards who oversaw the execution.

My two favorite things about Milly’s are the food and decor. There are only three things on the menu: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast consists of three fried eggs sunny side up and calf’s liver with onions. Lunch consists of 4 slices of baloney, 6 saltines, mustard dip and calf’s liver with onions. Dinner is the best: pizza topped with American cheese slices, and calf’s liver with onions. Just thinking about it, my stomach is rumbling.

Then, there’s the decor. The are pictures of New Jersey Governors plastered on the wall, going back to 1925. The photos are candid and show the governors having a good time with their mistresses, taking bribes, shaking hands with Mafia Dons, and in one case, running over a chicken with a Ballot 4-Light Saloon Car.

There are no tables in Milly’s. There’s just one 150 foot counter that snakes its way around the restaurant. Oh, there is one table down in the grease pit where the lift used to be. Milly built in a ramp so people in wheelchairs can use the pit, but it is mostly for family gatherings: birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, etc. The counter stools are upholstered in “genuine” Naugahyde. When it’s time to go, you slide off your stool like it’s slathered with butter. What a feeling!

Milly passed away 20 years ago. She’s buried in one of the 300-gallon tanks that were used to store gas for the pumps when the restaurant was an ESSO gas station. What a beautiful sentiment. It almost makes me cry to think of Milly laying out there on her back underneath the parking lot.

So, if you’re ever visiting a friend or relative at the prison, make sure to try out “Milly Joe’s Eats.” It epitomizes New Jersey’s complex cultural matrix, providing hearty meals and good fellowship for over 100 years.

There’s a Milly’s tradition: Whenever a fly buzzes around your head, another meal has probably been served at Milly’s. Stop what you’re doing and give thanks.

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.

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Traductio

Posted on April 12, 2025 | Leave a comment

Traductio (tra-duk’-ti-o): Repeating the same word variously throughout a sentence or thought. Some authorities restrict traductio further to mean repeating the same word but with a different meaning (see ploce, antanaclasis, and diaphora), or in a different form (polyptoton). If the repeated word occurs in parallel fashion at the beginnings of phrases or clauses, it becomes anaphora; at the endings of phrases or clauses, epistrophe.

My truck was dead. My Christmas Cactus was dead. Worst of all my goldfish Sparkle was dead. We had been living together for 12 years. I was 10 when I stole him from the pet store and brought him home in a baggie and dumped him in my bathroom sink. Then I found a pitcher in the kitchen cupboard and Sparkle had a new home. I called him Sparkle because he sparkled—his orange scales were like so many sunsets decorating his sides. Now he was dead. I ground him up in the garbage disposal and sent him to the big fish pond in the sky where he will have eternal life among the catfish, sunfish, polliwogs, and frogs. Bless you Sparkle.

Then there’s my truck—faithful Buck the Truck. I rode the highways and byways in Buck, stealing mail and packages from peoples’ front porches. I fenced so many valuable things at “Humming Fence Goods and Services.” My friend Stewy ran the business which he had inherited from his father who was serving twenty years to life. It’s unfair. He shouldn’t even be in prison. Everybody knows that Stewy’s mother was decapitated by a faulty chainsaw that Stewy’s father was waving around. He spun into Stewy’s tied up mother and the chainsaw wouldn’t turn off. Stewy’s mother was tied up because his father was practicing knot-tying for his motorboat license. Even though Stewy’s mother was having an affair with the mailman, Stewy’s father was ok with it. He only threatened to kill him three times. Stewy’s mother was threatened on a daily basis but she took it in stride—she knew that Stewy’s father was just kidding.

Anyway, my tuck had rusted so badly it collapsed in the driveway in a tangle of oxidized metal. The rust had started with the bullet hole in the driver’s side door and slowly infected the whole truck. The bullet was meant for me, but it missed and hit my little brother in the shoulder. It didn’t kill him, thank God, but it killed his prospects for being a professional golfer. He was bitter for the rest of his life. He ended up selling used cars at “Smarty Arty’s Rolling Rods.”

I had had my Christmas Cactus nearly my whole life. It was given to me 10 minutes after I was born. I was too little to appreciate it, but as I got older, I appreciated it more and more. It had beautiful reddish-orange flowers that poked out of the petals’ tips like little fists. I named my cactus Calvin and watered him once a week. This went on for 33 years. Then, two days ago he dropped dead—literally. All his leaves fell off, piling up around his pot. Today, I put Calvin in a paper shopping bag and threw him on the pile of crap in my back yard. Now, when I look out the kitchen window I feel a twinge of sorrow, but I’m too lazy to move him somewhere else. It’s horrible.

The fish. The truck. The plant. There’s nothing I can do except fill the void with new versions of the fish, the truck, and the plant. I’m going “fishing” at the pet store this afternoon. Equipped with a zip-loc bag, I’m sure to score a new Sparkle. My brother is setting me up with a “broken in” 1992 Ford pickup. Aside from the missing headlights, the “relaxed” bench seat, rusted rims, and missing truck bed, it’s good to go. I’m excited—it comes with a complimentary quarter tank of gas!

The Christmas cactus is a real challenge. I headed off to Lowe’s. They had baby Christmas cacti lined up under a purple grow light. Security had been tightened after a rash of yard tool robberies. Since people are no longer able to hire illegal immigrants to do their landscaping, they have do their own. The tools are expensive, so they steal them.

I got an idea!

I yelled “I saw a Venezuelan guy with tattoos, over there!” I pointed toward the other end of the store. All the security people ran to the other end of the store. I grabbed the cactus and ran out the door, jumped in Buck II, and drove home.

I was whole again. My grief was vanished.

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.

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Tricolon

Posted on April 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

Tricolon (tri-co-lon): Three parallel elements of the same length occurring together in a series.

I could be tough. I could be rough. I could be janky. Since nobody knows what janky is, I could get away with being janky all the time. Since I’m switching over to a more obscure and more enjoyable character attribute, I will reveal the meaning of janky as it compliments being tough and rough.

Janky can mean junky—like cheap shit crap. As a character attribute, it’s close to lanky and rhymes with it. Lanky Janky, or janky lanky. Being janky, you can see yourself as one of those stuffed animals you can win at the county fair—maybe a Goofy doll. He’s lanky, and Janky. Or maybe you be cranky janky. That would push you toward tough and rough. Your anger would obscure your janky hood, keeping it obscured and passing for something other than junk, the goal of all junk. Or jankyhood. You sort of adopt the ethos of a used car salesperson—always, all the time, with everything. You begin every interaction with “Have I got a deal for you!” Then you sell yourself as a really valuable piece of jank. You talk about your heritage, your education, your height and weight, the car you drive, and your job as a busboy at a really expensive restaurant: that’s biggest piece of junk that you’ve got to offer. If you pitch it right you’ll have a Janky’s dream: pity. If the person you’re talking to says “You poor bastard,” you have hit the jackpot, the whole purpose for being janky: pity! As you revel in the pity, you realize you’ve found your place in the social matrix: the bottom, the landfill, the garbage heap. Relax on a worn-out seat cushion and cook those potato peels on a stick over the fire in the cracked sink you found.

But that’s not all. There’s more to janky than junky.

It also means faulty or functioning improperly. There’s a lot of room to encompass the human condition in “faulty.” Being faulty is a sumptuous luxury. Being known as faulty, you can get away with almost anything. The rallying cry “I’m faulty” will prove to be a baseline excuse for just about every personal failure, from being late to running over your wife in your driveway and killing her. No matter what ulterior motive you may have had “I’m faulty” will see you through.

POSTSCRIPT

We read this paper several times and can’t really tell what its point is. We think it may be something like the power that adjectives have to determine our lives. Once you’ve accepted an attribution and the adjective enmeshes you, you become the adjective. But, attribution isn’t essence. For example, no matter how much you want to be called “honest,” as a virtue, being honest can be evil. Honesty can hurt peoples’ feelings and even get them killed. Right?

Your being is a constantly rotating kaleidoscope of conflicting points of view. Life makes it rotate. We all live on a fault line, waiting for the BIG ONE.

Just get used to it.

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.

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Abating

Posted on April 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

Abating: English term for anesis: adding a concluding sentence that diminishes the effect of what has been said previously. The opposite of epitasis (the addition of a concluding sentence that merely emphasizes what has already been stated. A kind of amplification).

“I love you, but not totally. I need to control my emotions or I’ll go berserk. I know I’m mentally unbalanced. On a good day, I can’t see the forest for the trees. On a bad day I want to burn the forest down and throw hand grenades at the fleeing animals. ‘Oops, there goes another problem ker-plop.‘ This is the way it ought to be Miss Pinkwell, but I’ll call you ‘ Barbara’ since we’re heading to Mexico to get married.”

Wow! What day. I had Barbara, my 8th grade English teacher, all taped up. She was wiggling around, obviously doing some kind of tantalizing love dance in the car’s front seat. I was going to knock her unconscious when we got to the border. I will untape her and put a blanket over her so she’d look like she’s sleeping.

Barbara is my first girlfriend ever (aside from my mom). I could tell she loved me when she would call on me and scold me for napping in class. But, when she crossed her legs under her desk, I couldn’t stop panting and crossing my own legs too. She kept me after class one day and told me I was weird and that she was going to recommend to Mom that I should go into psychological counseling “before it was too late.” It was already too late.

I broke into her house and covered her with duct tape. Then, we took her car and headed to Mexico to get married. We lived in San Diego, so the Mexican border was not that far. We would cross at Tijuana. I could see the border lights ahead so I whacked Barbara over the head with a tire iron I got out of the trunk, and rendered her unconscious. I untaped her and put a blanket over her as planned.

The US customs agent asked me why I was going to Mexico. I told him “Me and Barbara are going to get married.” I pointed at the “sleeping” Barbara. He looked surprised and told me to “Pull over there.”

Barbara was regaining consciousness and was yelling, “Save me! He’s a maniac!” The customs agent said “Son, you’re a little young for her. You better back off.” Barbara screamed again as two customs agents dragged her to a holding cell. She was going to be investigated for having a relationship with a minor.

I got back in Barbara’s car and crossed the border. I got a job selling balloons and fake Cuban cigars. Since I had disappeared, Barbara couldn’t be tried. She was released, but the story of our “love ride” had gotten back to Long Acres Middle School. she was ruined, but she married Bill Slothburger when he turned 18.

I was heartbroken.

Two weeks after they were married, Bill “fell” down a flight of stairs in their new home and died from a broken neck. I felt a sense of relief and was ready to give Barbara another try.

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.

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Abbaser

Posted on April 9, 2025 | Leave a comment

Abbaser [George] Puttenham’s English term for tapinosis. Also equivalent to meiosis: reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes: deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite)

I’m no hero. I’m no coward either. Well, I say Mount Everest is a Tibetan molehill. You may be thinking I’ve gone off the rails, but I’m talking about the power of attitude. My attitude can cut Mount Everest’s altitude down to a pimple on a Buddhist monk’s butt. I’m going to climb that little bump or my name isn’t Carl Young.

The mountain’s so-called height makes it seem insurmountable. It symbolizes strenuous walking along an upward incline. It symbolizes heavy breathing, expensive climbing boots, sore muscles, constipation, and memory loss. It is one of the toughest symbols in the pantheon of archetypes, perhaps bested only by the valley—the warm and sticky linear fissure in the soul of nature. Like a Venus Flytrap it entices its unwary prey into its sweet abyss. Its edges are littered with fallen saints overcome by passion and frozen in time. The valley must be shunned at all costs. If you succumb to its glistening slippery rim your life will become a repetitive treadmill of desire forever distracted, forever wanting to slide into the abyss head first. Amen.

I was going to Tibet to conquer Mount Everest for myself. To struggle with the perils and bury my fear. I would be a man—a man’s man, a manly man, a man among men. I took the bus from the airport. I could see Mount Everest everywhere I looked. Mt. Everest was ubiquitous, but it looked fake, like a piece of cardboard with a picture on it. I hired a Sherpa from “Cut Rate Sherpas.” His name was Gunga Dill. I asked him about my cardboard cutout theory and he laughed. That was it, he just laughed.

We loaded up the next day to begin our trek to Basecamp Jerry Lewis. Evidently, there was a French influence operative here. I had bought a BarcaLounger at the market for climbing breaks on our way up. With some difficulty Gunga was able to load it on his back.

POSTSCRIPT

The narrative abruptly ends here. Mr. Young was run over and killed by a ghee delivery truck before he even had a chance to don his expensive climbing boots. Gunga kept the BarcaLounger.

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.

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Abecedarian

Posted on April 8, 2025 | Leave a comment

Abecedarian (a-be-ce-da’-ri-an): An acrostic whose letters do not spell a word but follow the order (more or less) of the alphabet.

“A big cat developed eczema. Finding gritty helpful itching jabbers . . .” I was trying to create an Abecedarian—the first letter in each word follows the order of the alphabet. I had been working on it for three days but I was stuck on “J.” I had nightmares and came down with a cough. I was starting to think the Abecedarian was killing me. I know, it’s ridiculous, but not for somebody like me. I had killed my high school biology teacher Mr. Beazock when I yelled “You stink!” at him. He clutched his chest and flopped around on the floor and died in front of 22 teenagers. The worst was the drool that came out of his mouth and dripped on the floor after his final flop.

His doctor told me it wasn’t my fault—that it was the jelly donuts, the butter, and the whipping cream he used on his breakfast cereal and dumped in his coffee that had brought his life to an end with a stroke that had exploded his clogged-up heart. No matter what anybody said, I persisted in my belief that words can kill and that I had killed Mr. Beazock.

I got a job in a nursing home to prove my point. On my first day, I told an 85-year old lady that her husband was secretly “dating” his 27 year-old niece Betty and she was pregnant and they were going to get married as soon as they killed her. She started choking on her oatmeal and she died. Technically, it was the choking that killed her, but my lie about her husband had started the ball rolling. I had the power of killing!

I set up a site on the dark web called “Mr. Beazock’s Heart Attack.” It was named after my biology teacher, my first kill. I charged $10,000 to hit victims with words.

My first client wanted me to kill his father. His father was 97 and on the verge of death and had been talking about disinheriting my client. I knocked on his father’s door posing as a Jehovah’s Witness. While we’re talking about the Lord, he fell asleep. I stuck my life-like rubber snake up his pants leg and yelled “There’s a snake crawling up you pants leg!” He said “Wah?” and died of a heart attack. I pulled the snake out of his pants leg and called an ambulance, Everything went according to plan.

I collected my $10,000 and went out to dinner at the best restaurant I could find. It was called “Holy Shit!” because that’s what most people said when they saw the prices on the menu. For example, a slice of pumpkin pie was $300.00. At the end of my meal, I ordered the pumpkin pie for desert.

Suddenly, there was a beautiful woman standing at my table. She said “How’s the pie, big boy?” I was smitten. I asked he to join me and ordered a bottle of champagne. We got pretty drunk and went back to my apartment. It was cramped. It was untidy. I should’ve taken her to a fancy hotel. When I opened the door she said “PU!” and waved her hand in front her nose. It was gas! There was a huge explosion. It killed her and put me in the hospital for two months.

I took down my website and cancelled all my contracts. I decided to become a high school biology teacher to atone for Mr. Beazock’s murder. I enrolled in the local community college, majoring in biology. That’s where I met Teresa Trimp, the lying, conniving, cheating, back-stabbing tramp that I fell in love with. She lied to me about her feelings for me, cheated on me with one of our professors, and hacked my credit card. I asked her to marry me and she agreed on the condition that I give her all my money in cash. So, we got married.

I graduated from the community college. I transferred to Dick Jones University in Swanton, Vermont. We moved to Swanton. I would come home and there would be a line of frat boys outside the bathroom. One day, I pulled open the door and there she was sitting on the toilet with a cardboard box filled with $20.00 bills on the floor beside her. “Shut the door, I’m peeing!” she yelled, but I could see the silhouette of a person behind the shower curtain.

She was a whore! I took her for a walk in the woods. She asked why I was carrying a shovel. I yelled “Look me in the eye and tell me you love me!” She did and I hit her in the face with the shovel and I kept hitting her when she fell to the ground. I must’ve hit her on the head at least 20 times before I buried her in the woods and went home.

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.

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Accismus

Posted on April 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

Accismus (ak-iz’-mus): A feigned refusal of that which is earnestly desired.

“”I lifted fifteen tons, and what did I get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” That’s Tennessee Earnie Ford telling it like it was for him. He was pissed off, but he was a whiner. You’re going to get a year older no matter what you do—lift fifteen tons or jog 10 miles every day. And, if you’re going to send your kid to college, live in a decent home, or have nice new car, you’re bound to be in debt. We’re all getting a year older. We’re all in debt. We’re all human. We’re Americans. We have so much to be grateful for. In Tennessee Earnie’s case, he had the Union to help him through Black Lung disease and cross over to the other side choking on his comfy cot.

He should’ve been given this award. I’m at a loss to name it if he got it, but it wouldn’t be the award I’ve received here tonight for 25 years of unbroken service to Tramhill’s Train Wheels. I have been awarded the “Big Wheels Trophy” named after our beloved Boss, “Big Wheel” Bobby, the great-great grandson of our founder “Locomotive” Langoul who emigrated to America from France, where he had been a simple wheelwright, working on a Barouche cart assembly line in Marseilles. He arrived at Ellis Island covered with rat bites from stowing away among sacks of grain. He came down with “Rat Fever” which he recovered from by snorting the new wonder drug cocaine, and taking long hot baths in a Brooklyn whorehouse while drinking shots of anisette.

He was a great man. Unlike me.

So, let me just say: I don’t deserve this trophy. All I did was show up for work every day. As a wheel polisher, my job is not very challenging. The biggest challenge is finding a clean rag when mine has become too dirty to use any more. Sometimes I have to go so far as to return home and grab a clean T-shirt from my underwear drawer to use to polish wheels. None of this is very remarkable or worthy of this trophy. Clearly, showing up for work every day is hardly worth a Trophy! If I didn’t show up I wouldn’t get paid and I would be fired, like my friend Fred who missed three days with pneumonia and was fired, and died under a tarp on Broadway after losing his meager health benefits. But I understand: You can’t make a decent profit with a tardy or absent workforce!

I don’t deserve this trophy, but I’ll find a place for it on my mantel between my handgun—my first-class ticket out of here—and my high school graduation picture—my reminder of when I had hope.

Thank-you.

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.

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Acervatio

Posted on April 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

Acervatio (ak-er-va’-ti-o): Latin term Quintilian employs for both asyndeton (acervatio dissoluta: a loose heap) and polysyndeton (acervatio iuncta:a conjoined heap).

Peace and love, and butterflies, and roses, and warm summer nights, and flying eagles. These are the threads of truth and beauty stitching together my soul—the neon sign flashing go, go, go determining my motions, translating them into actions dripping with motives heated by desires running after horny hopes, running, charging, stumbling, falling in a trance like a clumsy ghost or a drunken moron.

Where do we go from here? Laden with insights like a Sherpa ready to scale Mt. Everest for the umpteenth time—conscious of the dangers, well-versed in negotiating the pitfalls of the climb while singing the Sherpa song “Blueberry Hill,” introducing an element of levity into an otherwise terrifying task—to lead the rich foreigners to their deaths, making it look like a horrible accident, blaming the Yetis, who looted their victims—stealing their mittens and designer sunglasses.

The Yetis were pissed off. This was the tenth time the Sherpas had pulled the “Yetis did it” trick. Usually reclusive, the Yetis vowed to come out of their caves and show how friendly and nice they actually are. They would parade through the Sherpa village, singing and dancing and showing what harmless good sports they are. After that, nobody would believe the Sherpas’ “The Yetis did it” ever again. As they marched, they stopped singing and dancing and recited the Yeti credo: “We are the Yetis kind a true, we want to make friends with people like you.” At first the Sherpas were horrified when they saw the marching Yetis. But, when they heard the Yeti credo, they calmed down and everybody mingled, making lasting friendships and burying the lies.

The criminal Sherpas were apprehended, tried and chopped into dog food, using ice axes and crampons. The diced miscreants would be fed to the Tibetan Terriers living off the dole around the village.

Five years later, a Yeti was elected mayor of the Sherpa village. Past transgressions were forgotten and peace and brotherhood ruled the day.

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.

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Acoloutha

Posted on April 5, 2025 | Leave a comment

Acoloutha: The substitution of reciprocal words; that is, replacing one word with another whose meaning is close enough to the former that the former could, in its turn, be a substitute for the latter. This term is best understood in relationship to its opposite, anacolutha.

My cat was mewing, talking softly to his catnip toy. Then he yowled and batted it across the floor. I yowled too and he looked me like I was nuts—crazy as the mouse that would pop out of the hole in the baseboard and taunt him with his whiny chatter. You never knew when he was going to stick out his head and start the cat and mouse games. I think the two of them actually enjoyed it. Melody could’ve caught the mouse hundreds of times, but he didn’t. He would fake-chase the little mouse.

But, then the rat moved in. Sleek and shiny with a low-profile slink, seemingly floating across the floor, silent, devious.

He took over the mouse’s little hole in the baseboard, gnawing it out so he could comfortably fit through. He was unlikeable. He wouldn’t play and we could hear the little mouse trapped behind the baseboard. The rat was holding him prisoner. We could hear him thrashing around and squealing. I got a flashlight and looked into the hole when the rat was out rummaging through trash cans. I could barely see the little mouse in the back shadows of what had become the rat’s nest.

Somehow the rat had found a piece of an adhesive rodent trap and stuck the little mouse to it. He was being tortured by the rat! I feared he would wriggle and whine until he died of starvation. Goddamn rat.

We got some rat-sized adhesive traps and put them in the kitchen along with a half-eaten raspberry jelly donut. That night, I was asleep when I was awakened by a sort of tickling feeling on my forehead. I brushed my forehead and saw blood of the back of my hand as the rat scampered off the end of my bed. The bastard had bitten me. I had to go to urgent care and get antibiotics. I got back from urgent care and went back to bed.

The next morning I made my way into the kitchen and there was the fu*king rat stuck to one of the traps. Melody was sitting there looking at him. I swear he had a cat smile on his cat face. He purred.

All I wanted to do was kill the rat. I stabbed him at least ten times with a steak knife from the kitchen drawer, and then crushed his head with the hammer my father had given me last Christmas. Then, I put his body in a paper bag and took him outside, doused him with gasoline, and burned him to a crisp. Then, I went back inside and I pried off the baseboard behind which the little mouse lived, and rescued the little mouse, and fed him some bits of New York State aged cheddar. He gobbled it up. Then, I used nail polish remover to free him from the trap. I nailed the baseboard back on and he scampered through the hole.

I called an exterminator and told him to get rid of every rat he could find, but to leave the little mouse alone.

Everything is back to normal now. Incidentally, Melody has overcome his catnip addiction and is now a drug-free cat. I attribute this to some extent to his friendship with the little mouse and the quality time they spend together.

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.

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Acrostic

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Acrostic: When the first letters of successive lines are arranged either in alphabetical order (= abecedarian) or in such a way as to spell a word.

Baloney sandwiches.

Elvis records turned up loud.

Cool water on hot days.

Knocking on stranger’s doors.

Obedient soup from the microwave.

Nudge me toward delight!

I’m Jeffery and this is it! An acrostic of things that beckon me—that nudge me toward delight. Some people would include gold and caviar. Not me. I’ve devoted myself to mundane inexpensive pleasures. “Cheap thrills” is what they’re called, with the emphasis on “cheap.”

I’ve never had a glass of champagne or a Porterhouse steak. Instead, I drink “Last Tango” fortified wine. The alcohol content is close to vodka and it’s only $1.89 for a pint bottle! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up in a strange place clutching an empty pint bottle of “Last Tango.” It also comes with a lanyard so you can hang the bottle around your neck. It’s the best.

As far as meat goes, I limit myself to baloney. The cheapest is “Nag’s Head.” It’s imported to the US from Argentina. You can get one pound for $2.25. It tastes like garlic-flavored fat. A bonus is the crunchy bone fragments lacing the baloney from the meat’s processing. Also, the baloney is bright pink. It gives the meat a happy aura, like pink tends to do—like one of Barbie’s dresses or a Mary Kay Cadillac.

Then, there’s cheap soup: “Brezhnev Chicken Fragments Soup.” It is delicious and it only costs .75 per fifty-ounce can! Why buy Campbell’s when Breznev’s is available on the internet? You just get on your computer and order it. It shows up a month later from Belarus, with free shipping. Mmmm. Every once in a while you get something weird in your soup, like a feather or a chicken embryo. You just fish out the feather with a sieve and leave the embryo alone—its tender little chickie body adds zest to the soup. If you want, you can pick it up with a pair of tongs and swallow it whole. Now, that’s a gourmet treat! For .75 you’d be crazy to pass it up.

What about beverages? You’ve heard of “spring” water. It is costly, and it comes out of the ground. Nobody knows where it’s been before it just “springs” out of the filthy earth or scum-covered rocks. Scammers put it in plastic bottles and sell it as healthful, when in fact, you can get measles from it and die. But yet, people take the risk and drink it. Very sad. Very sad.

I drink “roof” water. It is pure sky-borne rainwater collected fresh from downspouts across America. It tastes like a “roof”—a distinct flavor—bitter with a subtle hint of tar. Plus, it’s gluten free. It is delicious. At .35 per gallon, it is my beverage of choice. A tank truck delivers it to your own bucket at your door! Convenient.

One of the key benefits of my lifestyle is chronic diarrhea. I have a toilet paper dispenser on a strap that goes over my shoulder. I’m ready for a blow-out any time. I carry a beach umbrella that I open and hide behind when I’m “streaming” in public.

I’m five-foot eleven and I weigh 145 lbs. I’m as sleek as a salmon. I tire easily, but that’s a benefit—I go directly to bed after climbing the two flights of stairs to my apartment—you know—“Early to bed, early to rise. . .” I don’t go out much anyway—it ‘s so embarrassing to have to drag myself along the sidewalk moaning for help. Even if I’m not fit, at least I’m thin, unlike my former friends—a pack of fatsos.

Today, I discovered a cheap substitute for toothpaste! This will cap off my “skinny boy” lifestyle. There’s a guy selling it on the street. He refills empty toothpaste tubes with his brand “Barbarian Breath” which he writes on a strip of masking tape and tapes to the outside of the tube. It’s only .25! I bought five tubes!

POSTSCRIPT

Jeffery died instantly as he brushed his teeth. The man selling “Barbarian Breath” was a psychotic former dentist. The toothpaste contained super glue and cyanide.

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.

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Adage

Posted on April 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

Adage (ad’-age): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings, or traditional expressions of conventional wisdom.

Slogans and sayings are pretty much the same. But sayings want to teach you something and slogans want to sell you something. Sometimes they can do both. For example, “A penny saved is a penny earned” can be heard as a lesson in thrift. It can also be used as a slogan by a bank to get you to deposit money in an account in the bank. Given his ethos, Ben Franklin probably intended it to to be used as an adage and a slogan.

I was pushing 65 and I had a waddle swinging under my chin. I looked like I had had a turkey body part gafted under my throat. I tried stuffing it in my shirt and buttoning the top button to conceal it and hold it in. I’d be in the middle of a conversation and it would pop out and swing back and forth. It scared a lot of people, and one or two yelled “That’s disgusting!” and flipped over my desk, and ran out my office door. One person even pulled a gun!

But that’s not all. My grandchildren would go “Gobble, Gobble Grandpa.” The littlest one would pull on my waddle and go “Choo, choo, wa, wa!” like my waddle was the pull-chord on a train whistle. Everybody thought it was cute but me. The worst was when I was cooking on the grill and bent over to check the flame and my waddle swung into the fire. Luckily I had a bucket of basting sauce nearby and stuck my waddle in it to cool it and sooth the pain. My cruel cousin Eddie took a picture and I appeared with a basted waddle on the front page of “Cry Truth,” our local bullshit newspaper. The headline was “Local Mad-Man Bastes Own Waddle.” I was angered and humiliated and vowed to do something about my errant waddle.

A co-worker whose breasts had grown remarkably big in one month, told me about her plastic surgeon Dr. Skinner. His slogan was “A stitch in time saves nine.” I could never figure out what that saying meant, but in the context of plastic surgery, maybe it meant that stitching your time-sags could take nine years off your age. Anyway, I made an appointment for “waddle reduction surgery.” I got up early and was making a smoothie when my waddle missed swinging into the blender by a quarter of an inch. Boy, I couldn’t wait to get the damn thing fixed.

I met Dr. Skinner in the waiting room and he said, “I hear you’re a real swinger.” At first I didn’t get it, but then I realized he was referring to my swinging waddle. I almost hit him.

They laid me out on the operating table and the anesthetic knocked me out. When I awoke I saw two voluptuous bumps pushing up under my gown. I felt my neck and my waddle was still there. Skinner had mixed me up with another patient. He came into my room and asked me how I liked my new boobies. I was enraged. He told me not to worry, the “boobies” were actually coconut shells. He told me that at the last minute he had to scrub the waddle surgery. The coconut shells were supposed to make me laugh. He told me that he had realized at the last minute he had run out of scalpel blades and was unable to slice off my waddle.

We went ahead with the surgery the next day. My waddle was successfully removed. Life is good for me, but not so much for Dr. Skinner. I’m suing him for $1,000,000 for his coconut trick.

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.

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Adianoeta

Posted on April 2, 2025 | Leave a comment

Adianoeta: An expression that, in addition to an obvious meaning, carries a second, subtle meaning (often at variance with the ostensible meaning).

“Think about it.” Sometimes it was an invitation to wonder together. Other times it was an admonition focused on my failure to think about consequences. It was her favorite catch phrase—same words different meanings: one, a happy joining of mental resources, the other a painful put-down shattering my self-confidence.

I decided I needed a catch phrase too, so I could seem smart and win points by mimicking her “same words, different meanings” gambit. I nearly drove myself crazy. I saw how good irony could work—where I would mean the opposite of what I said. I could say “Your poetry is beautiful,” meaning “Your poetry sucks.” But, I was looking for a signature utterance that stood on its own as a dual-duty word or sentence.

I have a hearing problem and I say “what” a lot when I don’t hear what a person says. I realized that “what” said with a sarcastic tone, can express displeasure, or disbelief—a sort of critical jab at the speaker’s utterance fraught with negative nuances. Now, I made point of saying “What” with an ironic tone.

People started staying away from me because my intentions were unclear, and our conversations were fraught with mixed message—they didn’t know whether I didn’t hear or didn’t agree.

My girlfriend told me to think about it, and it wasn’t an invitation to wonder together—my “what” was an easy and dysfunctional way into the realm of dual meanings. I was ashamed. If I couldn’t do any better than “what” she was gone. She said again “Think about it,” and I did!

I went on a walking tour of the US. Each step I took, I tried to hit on a catch phrase with dual meanings. My shoes were wearing out and my money was running out. I had gotten half-way across Pennsylvania when some guy in a purple shirt wearing a straw hat, rode past me in a horse and buggy. I said to myself “Well Fu*k me! What the hell was that?” The guy in the buggy circled around and came back. He said “I will ride you to the bus stop.” I said, “Well, fu*k me, let’s go.”

We were clomping along to the bus stop, when I got it. After all the anguishing. After a simple episode, I found “Well, fu*k me!” as my saving catch phrase. It brought my own personal two meanings into my life and settled my heart. I was truly saved on the road to Altoona!

“We’ll fu*k me” can be an expression of joy and wonder. Or, it can be an expression of self- reproach. On the down side, its scope of use is limited. The “F” word makes it hard to use whenever you feel like it, unless you live in New York City, or anywhere in New Jersey. I lived in New Jersey!

My girlfriend thinks it’s brilliant. After a few glasses of wine she gives it a third meaning, a literal meaning that makes our time together meaningful and beautiful. Well, Fu*k me.

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.

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Adominatio

Posted on April 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

Adnominatio (ad-no-mi-na’-ti-o): 1. A synonym for paronomasia[punning]. 2. A synonym for polyptoton. 3. Assigning to a proper name its literal or homophonic meaning.

My parents had named me “Mark” after one of Christ’s disciples. When I was around five, they told me the story of Mark and why I had been named after him. I was really proud of my name until around the 6th grade. The class bully, Dillard Trimp, started making fun of it. He called me “Skid Mark” or “Skid Mark Mark.” He said I made “Low marks.”

It was especially humiliating because I had been battling my chronic skid marks since I stopped wearing diapers. My mother didn’t help things much. She claimed they were indelible and would hang my underpants on the clothesline for everbody to see. I was humiliated. Kids would walk past and make the sound of a revving motor, and then a skidding sound and then point at the clothes line and yell “Wow! Look at Mark’s marks.”

Soon everybody was calling me Skid Mark, even my teachers: “Skid Mark, I’m still waiting for your writing assignment,” Sad Miss Turnbull. Everybody would sniff the air, some kids would ask “Do I smell a mark?”
I didn’t want to go to school any more. I felt so bad, I thought about running away from home. I HAD to get rid of my skid marks so when my mother hung out my underpants they would be hanging frosty white on the clothesline.

I bought a can of white spray paint. I painted over my skid marks and threw my underpants in my laundry basket. Two days later when my mother hung out the laundry there were my underpants, skid marks and all. The paint had washed off, but not my skid marks. I was devastated, but I would not give up.

Next, I went on a cream of wheat and rice diet—an all white food diet. My mother protested, but I talked her into it. After one day, I couldn’t wait to poop all-while poops the next morning. My skid marks would blend into my underpants and I would be saved. It didn’t work. My poops were the same old brown color. Finally, I came to the conclusion it was my wiping technique that was to blame.

I Googled “How to wipe your ass.” There was a video on YouTube that was very helpful. I tried the technique. The doctor in the aloha shirt in the video made it seem really easy. What I had been doing wrong was wiping across my crack instead of up and down it. I had this unwarranted fear that if I wiped along my crack it would grab me and not let me go. I’m not sure where this idea came from. My entire life I had been in denial, but the YouTube tube video had brought it to conscious awateness so I could confront it and combat it. I think I may have gotten the idea of my crack grabbing mu hand from a movie I saw where a diver gets his foot clamped by a giant clam. He can’t escape and he drowns. It was easy to see the connection between my crack and the giant clam! That’s where my wiping problem began—I was afraid of getting trapped in my crack.

The next morning I ate breakfast and headed to the bathroom for my daily poop. I followed the wiping instructions and pulled up my underpants. When I got home from school I ran up to my bedroom to check my underpants. No skid marks! I ran downstairs and told my mom. She shard my joy. I hugged her and cried. She pushed me away, smiled, and said to me, “Now Mark, we’ve got to work on that little bit of leakage on your pants after you pee.” I said, “You’re right Mom. I’ll Google it!”

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.

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Adynaton

Posted on March 31, 2025 | Leave a comment

Adynaton (a-dyn’-a-ton): A declaration of impossibility, usually in terms of an exaggerated comparison. Sometimes, the expression of the impossibility of expression.

“This is impossible. It’s like skinning yourself with a table knife, or making delicious stir fry with gravel.” These were Dr. Plug’s final words as he died, as his doctor said, from “trying too hard.“

He had been a professor at Habernero University (HU), holding the Chair of Repetitive Anomalous Ergonomics for fifty years. He had seen academic fads come and go—phlogiston, ghost plasma, total quality management, left-handed desks, faculty wife-swapping parties, etc. He always characterized it as “a wild ride.” He got tenure after his book “How Much?” was published in Poland by “Wydawnictwo Płatne.”

“How Much?” Was based on his decades-long study of the famous “Woodchuck” conundrum: “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck wood?”

He spent days and nights in his laboratory. His wife left him and he forgot his son’s name. He called him “What’s his name?” The university’s Trustees saw the importance of his research. He was relieved of his teaching responsibilities so he could focus his endless intellectual energies on the Woodchuck Conundrum.

On campus he was a myth and a legend. Students were injured scaling the locked building where his laboratory was located. They wanted to get a glimpse of him through the second-story window working on the Woodchuck conundrum. Numerous students fell and were seriously injured. One student, Ted Clamb, managed to get a glimpse.

Clamb saw dozens of caged woodchucks and a pile of split wood on the floor. The woodchucks had muscular front legs and larger the normal paws. The student lost his grip and fell off the building before he could see more. He was seriously injured. After Dr. Plug complained about the “peepers,” armed guards were posted around the building. Unfortunately, a newspaper reporter was shot and killed when he breached the guards’ cordon and rushed the building. His death was judged to be justifiable homicide after a lengthy trial.

Based on Clamb’s observation, it became clear that Dr. Plug was secretly breeding wood-chucking mutant woodchucks as a preliminary to completing his central question regarding how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. We believe he was on the verge of teaching the woodchucks to chuck wood. In fact, events after his death have convinced people that he had succeeded.

One week after his death, his laboratory was vandalized by animal rights activists. They set free all of Dr. Plug’s mutant woodchucks. It didn’t take long before there were reports of rock-throwing woodchucks. Car windshield had been damaged, people were hit in the head by rocks, requiring stitches, and in some cases, hospitalization.

We are trapping the mutant woodchucks and returning them to Dr. Plug’s laboratory where his estranged son Woody will continue his father’s research.

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.

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Aetiologia

Posted on March 30, 2025 | Leave a comment

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.

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Affirmatio

Posted on March 29, 2025 | Leave a comment

Affirmatio (af’-fir-ma’-ti-o): A general figure of emphasis that describes when one states something as though it had been in dispute or in answer to a question, though it has not been.

“I would never do anything like that, even for all the money in the world, or all the tea in China, or all the tomatoes in Italy, or all the ice in Iceland, although it’s not worth much.”

Everybody knew this was just another one of his ploys to blabber about his righteousness. There was always a lurking suspicion that he was a miscreant, although nobody had the nerve to actually accuse him.

He was surrounded by so many so-called accidents he had to be an insurance company’s nightmare. His house burned down ($500,000). His wife lost both her hands in a near-fatal lawn mower accident ($125,000). He lost a foot in an unprecedented golfing accident ($100,000). His daughter accidentally lost both her eyes in a boating accident ($1,000,000). He had killed his son by accident with a handgun deemed “unreliable” by a jury ($1,000,000). Most recently. He was run over by a hit and run driver. He hasn’t reached a settlement yet. “Somebody” had removed the stop sign from the intersection where he was crossing and he’s suing the town for $2,000,000 for “negligent signage maintenance.”

I’ve been a private eye for 25 years investigating insurance scams. Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything, but this guy is just too accident prone to be true. The insurance investigators have been lax, and might be getting kickbacks for turning a blind eye—ha ha. Blind eye.

I just got a phone call—a bookshelf loaded with books landed on his head, fracturing his skull. I’ve decided to tail this guy to see if I can get something on him.

After a month, I think I might have something. I saw him doing something with a saddle cinch at the riding club. His back was turned to me so I couldn’t see exactly what it was. Before I could confront him, he saddled up and rode out of the stable and onto the bridal trail through the woods.

Later that day, I got a call telling me he had hit a low-hanging tree limb at full gallop and died instantly when he was decapitated. After that, I didn’t bother to check the saddle cinch. He was gone. But I heard his wife was already calling her lawyer, before his body was even cold. There’s going to be hell to pay by the riding club for the low-hanging limb that knocked his head off.

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.

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Aganactesis

Posted on March 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

Aganactesis (ag’-an-ak-tee’-sis): An exclamation proceeding from deep indignation

“Who died and made you King?” I’m sick and tired of you telling me what do, and suspecting me of anything you can imagine. I did not murder our daughter. She’s watching TV in the living room!” Last week my crazy husband had accused me of cutting off his foot. The week before that he had accused me of being a divisive chimpanzee.

I was fed up. I was told he wasn’t crazy enough to be admitted to the state mental health facility, Medication Station. I couldn’t afford a nursing home for him. I tried leaving him in the Walmart parking lot, but he found his way home. He accused me of trying to kill him, but it wasn’t true. I was just trying to get rid of him, like a piece trash, not kill him.

I had to do something really drastic. So, I decided would go to France. I would leave him somewhere in Paris with no money or passport. It was horrendously cruel, but I felt I had no alternative. I was hoping he would die of starvation or something.

I got home. Peace of mind at last! No accusations. I prayed every night that he’d never return. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty. Then, one afternoon I was reading “Star” magazine. And there he was! He was the star of a fabulously popular French TV show: “Une Accusation.” He made outlandish accusations and the contestants made outlandish defenses. He was famous for dressing in thrift store clothing and seeming to be drunk all the time. He was compared to Jerry Lewis and venerated as “L’icône Américaine“ (“The American Icon”).

I threw the Star on the floor and stomped on it with my high heels. My crazy, loony, abusive husband—and my God—he had even managed to learn to speak French. My husband had become a French superstar.

I decided to go back to Paris and go to his show. I was going to sit in the audience and heckle him mercilessly, until he cracked and was booed off stage. I hated him.

It was a matinee and the studio was packed with adoring fans. He came on stage to a standing ovation. As soon as the applause died down, I stood up and yelled “You are a crazy bastard who broke my heart!” The people sitting on either side of me grabbed my arms and dragged me outside and handed me over to two gendarmes who arrested me and took me to jail. I learned it is illegal in France to heckle performers. I paid the 50 Euro fine and went back to my hotel. There was a knock on my door. I expected that it would be my husband, but instead it was the guy who had given me the eye in the lobby. “Did you know you are on the front page of the evening edition of La Monde?” He sad calmly, and left. No wonder he was looking at me. I got a copy of the paper. I was characterized as a rude, brutal stalker who had deeply hurt the great star, the Accuser, and offended the French people beyond repair.

That was it. I bought a plane ticket back to the US. I went directly to the airport and was going though airport security when HE showed up. He yelled, “Stop that woman. She has my foot in her purse!” The airport security guards applauded gleefully and looked in my purse, laughing.

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.

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Allegory

Posted on March 27, 2025 | Leave a comment

Allegory (al’-le-go-ry): A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse.

The gym’s exercises contorted my life. I was squatting—a frog of help. I was doing handstands of love. Jumping jacks of joy. Push-ups of popularity. Squat-thrusts of hope. Cartwheels of fear. All complicated moves, and easily screwed up. Once I did a chin-up of friendship and was ridiculed for ten repetitions, and pushed off my exercise mat, and made into a joke.

I’ve started drinking excessively and did the drunk— staggering, slurring words, falling down and puking—all easily mastered poses. Easily induced by the effects of alcohol’s chemical motive that only needs to be imbibed. The performance of everyday life takes care of itself—drunks don’t do push-ups of popularity. No more going to the gym looking for love and longevity—doing all the exercises required of the good life.

I have run my jockstrap down my sink’s garbage disposal. I don’t need its chafing or support. I let my balls swing free. I am outside the gym—I have left it behind. Now, I walk, I talk. There are no set moves, poses, or displays. There’s just me comporting with others like me at an AA meeting every week. In some respects, I’ve cast off the burden of “trying.” I just “am,” I am sober and I practice good hygiene—the only aspect of my life stemming from the gym that I still perform..

I don’t care if I measure up. I don’t care if I make the grade. All I want to do is stay sober and brush my teeth twice a day.

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.

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Alleotheta

Posted on March 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

Alleotheta (al-le-o-the’-ta): Substitution of one case, gender, mood, number, tense, or person for another. Synonymous with enallage. [Some rhetoricians claim that alleotheta is a] general category that includes antiptosis [(a type of enallage in which one grammatical case is substituted for another)] and all forms of enallage [(the substitution of grammatically different but semantically equivalent constructions)].

We was crazy. I were insane. I was a mumbulator—I lived a desolate lonely life, misspeaking and having to repeat myself three or four times and raising the voulume each time I repeated myself. Mumbulation was not an option. I were born with it—when I was a baby people would say “What?” when I gooed.

So the craziness? Me and my cousin together is crazier than one alone. She is a mumbulator too. It was like we was Jungian twins living out the same archetypes—the King and Queen of Plasma TV. We was obsessed with the stream. It was like our life boood. We took the same medication and ate the same food. We were the same—like two pods in a spaceship or a pair of matching socks with smiling cows on them.

Today we took a double-dose of our medication and we are going to watch every episode of Father Brown—the priest who can pick locks and who solves crimes, usually murders. His big-breasted “house guest” Bunty flirts with him while his housekeeper Mrs. McCarthy prepares him exotic mixed drinks with names like “Bishop’s Waddle,” “Confession Sour,” and “Holy Boom!” He drinks his drink and reads the newspaper waiting to hear of the latest murder.

Me and my cousin looked at each other, smiled, nodded our heads and mumbled “This is going to be good.”

In the episode were were watching, Bunty had run over a drunk with her red Jaguar. He was horribly mutilated and Bunty’s car had gotten a flat tire from the pint bottle of whiskey the drunk was holding in his hand.

Since the drunk was found in the middle of a busy road, Father Brown surmised he was already dead when Bunty ran over him. There was a sniveling Lord that lived in a nearby manor house. Father Brown ascertained that the drunk in the road was the sniveling Lord’s father. In the meantime, he looked at the drunk’s watch and discovered it had stopped due to being knocked to the pavement one hour before Bunty ran him over.

Then, Mrs. McCarthy heard through the grapevine that the father was returning to Kembleford to reclaim the manor and dispossess his mean, idiot, sniveling son, who was immediately arrested by Detective Mallory, but not before a chase. The sniveling Lord climbed a rose trellis, admitted everything, and threatened to jump. It was five feet to the ground. He jumped and sprained his ankle. Case closed.

Bunty was off the hook. Father Brown hopped on his bicycle and headed back to the Presbytery for one of Mrs. McCarthy’s double Holy Booms and some “quality time” with Bunty, who was sure to show her gratitude for what Father Brown had done.

Me and my cousin shut off the TV. We grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and mumbled our appreciation for what we’d just seen. We could tell from the tone of our voices that we had enjoyed the episode. The next episode is “Mrs. McCarthy Gets Hanged.” This has got to be a mistake! It says in the synopsis that “in a jealous rage, Mrs. McCarthy shoots Bunty, decapitates her, and lights her headless body on fire on the church altar.” Father Brown is defrocked when it is discovered that Bunty was carrying their child.

Fear not! There is new series starting called “Former Father Brown” about the defrocked priest’s exploits as an itinerant crime-solving plumber.

We can’t wait. We’re trying to get our hands on some acid.

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.

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Alliteration

Posted on March 25, 2025 | Leave a comment

Alliteration (al-lit’-er-a’-tion): Repetition of the same letter or sound within nearby words. Most often, repeated initial consonants. Taken to an extreme alliteration becomes the stylistic vice of paroemion where nearly every word in a sentence begins with the same consonant.

It was the dreaded dog. It had gotten loose again and was dragging a chain behind it. He was running towards me. Soon, my windpipe would be hanging out and I would be the dreaded dog’s latest victim. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead of ripping out my throat, he was whining and running in little circle like Lassie did when she wanted Timmy to follow her.

I took the cue and we ran down the street together, crossed the street to the park, and ran into the woods. He growled at me. “This is the end,” I thought as he shook his head back and forth. “He suckered me into the woods, now he’s going to kill me.” That was it. I closed my eyes and waited to be torn apart. He could catch me if I ran, so, forget that.

Suddenly it got quiet. I opened my eyes. There was a smiling baby lying at my feet, kicking its legs. I picked it up and carried it home. When I got home I yelled “Ma, I found a baby!” She said “You found a what?” “A baby.” I answered. We decided to take it to the police station. There was a $500 reward. That gave me an idea.

I could train the dreaded dog to lift babies from their bassinets, I could “find” them and return them for the reward.

My plan failed when I realized if I started finding babies everywhere, I would become a suspect for kidnapping them. So, I toned it down. I befriended the dreaded dog with beef patties and Milkbone treats. I taught the dreaded dog to snatch purses. I took off his chain and gave him a respectable name: Marlon. We did well. He’d go up to a woman carrying a purse and look cute. She would bend over to scratch him behind the ears, and he’d grab the purse and run home.

Two months ago Marlon was caught by animal control. After being in doggie jail for awhile, he was adopted by a nice family and the kids loved him. When they were taking him for a walk, he got loose and grabbed a women’s purse. He brought it home to me. I was happy to see him—it was just like the good old days.

I emptied the purse, and I went to throw it on the pile of purses on the living room floor. But I noticed it had one of those little GPS trackers in it. There was pounding on my front door.

Guess where I live now. It’s not Elm Street. I’ll be at this address for two years.

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.

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Allusion

Posted on March 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

Allusion (ə-ˈlü-zhən):[1] A reference/representation of/to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art . . . “a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary work or passage”. It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection . . . ; an overt allusion is a misnomer for what is simply a reference.[2]

I was going to college, I was the first person in my family to go to college. I was ready to conquer the world. My Uncle Guido had “arranged” a scholarship for me in accordance with my father’s last wishes. I was going to Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Uncle Guido told me all I needed to do for the scholarship is get a couple of decent rackets going at Rutgers. Like Rodney Dangerfield said,“The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I’d be honest.” I’m not certain how pertinent this is, but I love Rodney Dangerfield.

School was going to start in two weeks, so I needed to hurry up and get something going. I came to the conclusion that parking and sex were two categories of college life that might form a foundation for solid rackets.

Parking was always at a premium and it was expensive. I found a friend of Uncle Guido’s who did time for counterfeiting. He was eager to help. He printed 500 fake parking permits. The University charged $100 for the academic year. We charged $50! I sold the permits from my car. I sold out in an hour. I ordered 500 more, and 500 more! Pretty soon all the campus parking permits might be fake. Guido congratulated me and told me I could work for him when I graduated!

Then, there was getting laid. For many male students, getting laid has a higher priority than studying. Many a lad has gone down the tubes, neglecting their studies in search of ass. I would fix that. I would flood campus with cut-rate hookers who were willing to slash their prices because of the almost endless opportunities to ply their trade—it was like wholesale hooking. They would hang around dormitory entrances. They would say things like “How about a little biology,” “Can I sharpen your pencil?” “Do you want to do the horizontal boogie?” It was crazy.

Sex was so easy to obtain now that students didn’t need to waste their time looking for it and grades went up. Students were happier. Rutgers’ rankings among other colleges improved, and everybody was happy, including Uncle Guido who skimmed 10% off each transaction. Although I didn’t like it much, I was nicknamed “Professor Pimp.”

The four years flew by. I’m graded two weeks ago with a degree in philosophy. My little brother took over my action at Rutgers, and I’m working for Uncle Guido. I’m his driver. Where he goes, I go. My favorite is Monmouth Race Track. I lose $300-400 per visit, but who cares? Uncle Guido pays me four-grand per week, plus benefits.

If you’re thinking of going to college, you should go. Look at me,

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.

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Amphibologia

Posted on March 23, 2025 | Leave a comment

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.

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