Inter se pugnantia

Posted on October 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

Inter se pugnantia (in’-ter-say-pug-nan’-ti-a): Using direct address to reprove someone before an audience, pointing out the contradictions in that person’s character, often between what a person does and says.

I was going crazy trying to figure out what to say at the debate tonight. I was novice at politics but I believed with all my heart and soul that the Mayor of Jollyville, New York should be a dictator with unlimited power to act any way he chose to act without requiring the consent of a city council or the people of Jollyville. The city council would do what I told it to do, and the citizens would suck it up. I had read “Atlas Shrugged” ten times and knew that Commies were lurking everywhere and we needed a strong leader to drive them back where they can came from. One of my first priorities would be to clear the town library, burn the books, and replace them with 10 copies of “Atlas Shrugged” and make the rest of the library into a B&B. Next on the list is to invade Shady Glen and annex it. Our goal will be to to make Jollyville into a jumbo town taking up all of Central New York, making it a major player in Albany, New York’s capitol.

I shouldn’t be saying this, but North Korea has offered to provide us with arms to accomplish our goals. The Jollyville Fish and Game Club is looking forward to sending members to North Korea to learn how to fire missiles. North Korea also offered to provide Korean cookbooks so we can develop a better understanding of their culture. Everybody’s renewing their hunting licenses so they can walk around in the woods with loaded weapons, getting used to the future when they’ll be walking around Jollyville on my behalf. All this may seem absurd and/or frightening. It isn’t. It is all about change and returning to the America we all knew when we were a British Colony. The “Uber Mayor Party” will develop Jollyville into a model of order where the trains run on time, there are no homeless people or foreigners, and we are known for the absolute obedience of our citizens.

I think I’m ready for the debate.

Me: “To my unworthy opponent sitting there on his fat ass while Jollyville becomes a weak and listless town: contrary to your assertions regarding your toughness, I have personally seen you help an old woman stand up after her walker malfunctioned. You showed your weakness and failure to heed the dictum of survival of the fittest and leave her begging for help, lying on the ground. You have the soul of a wet noodle, unlike mine which is solid steel. What do you have to say for yourself King Wimp?”

Opponent: “You are one sick bastard. Kindness is a virtue that can elevate us all, to make our community brightly lit by charity’s heartfelt flame. Your ethic will turn our beloved Jollyville into a dog eat dog battlefield—littered with the bodies of the sick, and elderly and those in need—men, women, and children. You, sir, are mentally ill—a psychopath with no redeeming attributes. Having you as Mayor will open the door to tyranny and viscous injustice. I reject you and all you stand for.”

POSTSCRIPT

I won the election by a landslide—it wasn’t even close. My opponent has been arrested and I’m looking forward to my trip to Belarus to meet with the North Korean ambassador.

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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Intimation

Posted on October 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

Intimation: Hinting at a meaning but not stating it explicitly.

“I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going. My bowling ball is green. Do you get it?” She cocked her head and barked twice. “You’re so smart,” I told her. “Smarter than the goddamn idiot I trust my money with.” I was losing faith in my financial planner. He takes a shitload of money from me every month and invests in his latest “picks.” He says I’m young so the time is right to build a high risk portfolio. I’m 64 years old. I guess with the high life expectancy afforded by the 21st century, I could be considered young. Last month, he invested my money in a company called “Angel Soles” that makes “rechargeable” shoes. He did inadequate research into the company. I Googled it and found out that “rechargeable shoes” are shoes made of leather that can be shined when they lose their luster. Not much innovation going on here—just a new name for the same old thing. That’s unacceptable. Two months ago, he invested in a company that makes “environmentally sustainable paper mache household goods.” The company’s named “Paper Trails” and they offer to do an audit and replace everything in your home with paper mache “equivalents.” The paper mache blender caught my eye. I ordered one. It came in a box with a note explaining that it was intended as a decorative kitchen ornament to “make your kitchen a quieter more gentle place, without the annoying whirring of a conventional blender.” “Paper Trails” holds the record for quickest bankruptcy in the history of capitalism.

I’ve got to do something about the herraging of my retirement money. “Wiggly” Johnson, my financial planner, has been handling my family’s finances for as long as I can remember, starting with my grandfather, who died in penury, but swore by Wiggly, nevertheless. Wiggly is 91 years old and lives in a nursing home, where his office is located. He uses “Golden Glades” phone to do business. He uses offenders assigned on work release to Golden Glades as his “staff.” Most recently, his “Secretary” was a jaywalker who taunted motorists to “come and get her” after she stepped in front of their cars or trucks.

I set up a meeting with Whirly. I was going to tell him it was all over. He was sitting by a window holding his signature unlit cigar. He pointed it at me and said, “Cohiba.” I told him, “You’ve been the family’s financial planner for many, many years. You have invested millions on our behalf. In life, we say hello, and we say goodbye. We wave or shake hands and walk away. It’s normal. It’s expected. It’s life. I think . . .” Wiggly interrupted and said, “I know where you’re going you little shitbird. Just get the hell out of here and never come back. Fu*ck you.”

I stood up and said “Fu*k you too,” and left. I was relieved. Finally, I had gotten out from under the losing proposition. Wiggly was history. I called my new financial planner, “Red Pylon,” a 35 year-old financial wizard—so it said on his web page. I told him my finances were all his. He took me literally and liquidated all my accounts and took off with all my assets. Now, I was really screwed. I worked out the numbers and determined that I can’t retire until I’m 112. In anticipation of my future, I dress up like a homeless man and hold out a styrofoam cup on Main Street. In my despair, I call this financial planning.

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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Isocolon

Posted on October 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

Isocolon (i-so-co’-lon): A series of similarly structured elements having the same length. A kind of parallelism.

I came. I saw. I ran. I didn’t conquer. I kept running until I couldn’t run any more. I had seen the Monster of Morristown. I ran to Convent Station and hid in my uncle’s back yard, in the pine trees. I felt something under my butt when I sat down. It was a bottle of Canadian Club whisky that my uncle had buried in the yard. He had bottles buried all over the place because my aunt would not permit him to drink. He had a map of where the bottles were hidden. It worked well for him, except in the winter when he left tracks in the snow and the ground was frozen. When snow was forecast deep enough to cover his tracks, he would take his BernzOmatic torch and a garden spade out to one of his buried bottles, and, using the torch to thaw the ground, he’d dig up the bottle. He was my hero.

I’d never had a drink before. I was 15. I cracked open the bottle and took a drink and another drink, and two or three more drinks. I felt great. I hoisted the bottle and sang “Wheels on Bus” and burped really loud. That was a mistake. A loud burp is the love call of female attracted to the Monster. When I heard a return burp, I knew I was dead meat. When he found me and saw that I was not a potential mate, he would eat me. At least, that was what I was led to believe by my big brother.

“Morristown Monster” was the nickname of the greatest bully on earth who played tackle on my high school football team. His family had emigrated from Belarus. His name was Rimsky Trollinski. He weighed 300 pounds and was 6’4” tall. He smelled like a dead animal. The weirdest thing was the tattoo on his forehead that he received at birth. It said “медленный” which is Russian for “slow.” He received the tattoo because he scored lower than 30 out of a possible 100 points on the National Infant Intelligence Test administered to newborns, by the Belarusian government. It is very sad because it visibly marks him for life as dull witted depriving him of a college education and a good job. He told people the tattoo meant “gifted” but he was going to have it removed when he turned 18.

Rimsky was chasing me because I knew what his tattoo really said in English. Suddenly, Rosemarie Pinzy stuck her head into the pines where I was hiding. She was a cheerleader. She told me she had followed me hoping that, together, we could “lure Rimsky in.” You see, sho loved Rimsky and wanted badly to hang out with him outside of school, and maybe, have a romantic experience. She asked me to belch again. I was pretty drunk, so I complied. Rimsky answered with a return belch from about ten feet away. I tried to get up and run but Rosemarie sat on me. “Make another belch,” she whispered fixing her hair. After I belched, she got off me and I started crawling for my life. I heard Rimsky ask her “What you want?” Rosemarie said, “Take a look at this big boy.” Rimsky started making intense grunting sounds as I crawled out of earshot.

I was saved. I slept it off in my uncle’s gardening shed and the Morristown Monster never bothered me again. Rosemarie had tamed him with love and understanding, and something that made him grunt. Rimsky had his tattoo removed in his senior year and stopped farting loudly in the lunch room. Morristown High had become a better place.

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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Kategoria

Posted on October 20, 2024 | Leave a comment

Kategoria (ka-te-go’-ri-a): Opening the secret wickedness of one’s adversary before his [or her] face.

It was a normal day, you know, I got out of bed, went downstairs, had breakfast and took the bus to work. I was a dough twister at “Tu-Tu’s Handcraft Bakery.” Most of we twisters had been replaced by machines, but Mr. Hand, the owner, thought the art was worth preserving. I was grateful. I came from a long line of pastry twisters. In fact, my great-grandfather was known as “Twister Tagalini.” Just like sailors have their knots, Twister had his twists. His different twists sent message. Of course, there were the love twists that lovers ate together. There was the mourning twist that people ate at funerals. There was the birthday twist that played a central role in birthday celebrations. The worst was the “hit” twist. Arriving in a black box tied with a piece of black ribbon, it informed the recipient that they were targeted for death. Twister had hundreds more message twists. He had a notebook with all of them drawn and labeled. He was amazing.

I was probably the last of our twister line. My son wanted to be a landscaper and my wife thought what I did for a living was a stupid waste of time. I felt oppressed, but when I got my fingers in the dough, my worries melted away. But things got bad again when I got home. It was my wife. She was going to “Jenny’s Nails” every-other day for a pedicure and a paint job. At $60 a visit, it was beyond our means. I got the hint something was wrong when Jenny called to tell me my wife had demanded she paint her nails a new color before they were even dry from the first painting. She had gotten angry when Jenny refused, and she splashed water from to foot soaking basin all over the floor. Then, she poured a bottle of nail polish on the cash register and left without paying. That should’ve done it, but I noticed my wife never took off her shoes in front of me—even n bed. I looked up what my wife was doing on the internet—on Google. I found that my wife was suffering from a mental problem called “Peditoemania.” It is an irresistible compulsion to have non-stop pedicures, and nail paintings.

I confronted my wife and told her to her face that I knew what she was up to. Initially she denied it, then she admitted it and cried, and we hugged. She’s in therapy now and making rapid progress. During her therapy, she’s not allowed within 50 yards of a nail salon, and she is required to wear sandals showing that her nails are free of paint. She is also expected to attend weekly meetings of “Peditoe Maniacs Anonymous.”

I replaced Jenny’s cash register and paid my wife’s tab. All’s well.

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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Litotes

Posted on October 19, 2024 | Leave a comment

Litotes (li-to’-tees): Deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite. The Ad Herennium author suggests litotes as a means of expressing modesty (downplaying one’s accomplishments) in order to gain the audience’s favor (establishing ethos).

Saving lives is like saving coupons to me, but I don’t expect a discount for doing so. Noble deeds are not so noble. When I saved that baby from being eaten by a lion at the zoo, I was thinking about the last episode of “The Old Man” on HULU—not for inspiration, but because my wife and I were watching the series and were speculating about the focus of the return episode. “The Old Man” is fairly complicated and filled with beautifully gross violence—close to the real things I experienced when I was a mercenary in South Africa many years ago.

The smell of the lion’s breath snapped me out of my revery. I scooped up the little baby and gave the old broken down lion a boot in the nose. He started mewing like an alley cat a laid down on his side. I felt so sorry for him that I almost fed him the baby. Instead, I scratched him behind the ears until he started purring. Then, the baby and I made our getaway. I put the baby under my arm and climbed the 30-foot fence. I couldn’t figure out how the baby got into the enclosure. Then, I saw a little opening in the bottom of the fence. It had a little shred blue terrycloth stuck on it that matched the onesie the baby was wearing. The mother said, “Thanks a lot” in an exceedingly sarcastic tone. It was clear that she tried to feed her baby to the lion. But I didn’t care. She had given me an opportunity to conduct a rescue, however minor and inconsequential. One of the other zoo-goers had ratted her out and called the police. They took her away in handcuffs. She would probably be nailed with attempted first-degree murder. Lucky for her, I had brought the crime-count down from murder- one to attempted murder by rescuing her kid. Although, I don’t think the lion was up to eating the kid. He died of natural causes two days after the incident.

So, thank-you so much for the “Hero of the Year Award.” As a bipolar man stuck on the manic side of the coin, I have always thought highly of “Kicks LLC.” It is like a door opening to the place where I want to live—a place of danger, crisis and chaos—nonstop excitement, death defying feats, and not caring about my fate. In this place, to get to the kitchen, I have to jump through a ring of fire. To get upstairs to go the bed at night, I have to be shot out of a canon to the second floor. I don’t wear a helmet or a flame retardant suit. In sum, I had heeded “Blue Oyster Cult.” I don’t fear the Reaper. I keep him nearby. I like him.

“Kicks LLC” was founded on the belief that we’re only sojourners here on earth—temporary visitors with visions of immortality. But our lives are but a drop of motor oil staining the concrete floor of time. So, we may as well make the stain a beautiful stain. Today, in addition to my award let’s remember the giant stain, the colossal stain, left by “Exploding” Mickey Nitz. As we know, he swallowed a little stick of dynamite. It got stuck in his throat, but it exploded nevertheless. The pattern he left on the parking garage wall behind him is the pattern on our club’s flag, with our motto “He Had A Lot Of Guts” in Latin. The lit dynamite stick was thrown at Mickey from a passing car. The car was followed by a bus-load of middle-aged men on their way to a DYI exposition at the convention canter adjacent to the garage. The bus stalled in front of Mickey. Without thinking twice, Mickey shoved the lit stick of dynamite down his throat, blowing off his head and reducing the dynamite’s blast radius, and saving the bus’s passengers from certain death.

So, it is with deep heartfelt gratitude, that I must go—go to the edge—the edge of human comprehension, where I’ll find a catastrophe to embrace like a lover, spinning into chaos toward Soteria—the Roman Goddess of safety, which is always temporary. 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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Martyria

Posted on October 18, 2024 | Leave a comment

Martyria (mar-tir’-i-a): Confirming something by referring to one’s own experience.

I know that war is hell. When I was in Vietnam, I got clap four times from the same whore! As a nineteen year old maniac I made a lot of mistakes. My job was guarding the docks at Cam Ranh Bay. I stood watch every night. She came by every night around 3:00 am and we did it on the ground on my poncho behind a cargo container. She was beautiful. Her name was “Beaucoup Bang Bang”. In addition to paying her $10.00 per ride, I bought her cartons of cigarettes, bottles. of cognac, and jewelry from the PX. I even bought her a Yashica camera, an eight-track tape deck, and a set of Noritake dinnerware. When the camera was found on a VC captured at Phantom Rang, it was tracked back to the PX, and then, to me.

Colonel TZ ( “Twilight Zone”) Cambell had me hauled in by the MPs for questioning about collaborating and giving comfort and aid to the enemy. I told him I had purchased the camera for a very nice whore I had met when she had lost her dog outside the church I attend. He said, “Bullshit soldier! The medics have told me about your pecker problems. Beaucoup Bang Bang is known for infecting you troopers with clap. Have you ever heard of a condom boy? Don’t you realize that she’s a VC agent?” I’d been in Vietnam for 2 months and didn’t even know the VC had agents, and I wasn’t sure what a VC was either. “Sir” I said, “What is a condom, Sir?” I figured if I played dumb, I’d somehow get off the hook. Colonel TZ pulled out his penis —he was wearing a condom. He said, “See this? I wear one of these all the time, except when I’m takin’ a leak. You will too. Do you hear me soldier?” I yelled “Yes sir! Wilco!”

Now, I was being shadowed by a CIA operator. I was suspected of being a VC agent. After my meeting with Col. TZ a VC bunker had been discovered with a Noritake formal dinnerware service for twelve laid out on a rustic table, an 8-track cassette tape player on a shelf dug out of the dirt, alongside five cartons of Luckies, and a bottle of cognac. The tape player had a serial number that was traced to me.

The CIA operator’s name was Nadir—surely a fake name. He wore black pajamas and carried a .45 on each hip. He had a really soft voice and a skull ring on his left hand. He literally followed 3 feet behind me everywhere I went. I missed Boom Boom so much I considered killing Nadit so I could visit her at the “Reindeer Chicken” where she was a “Saigon Tea” girl during the day.

Then it happened. From wearing a condom all the time, my penis started to smell and developed pustules. It was worse than the clap. I went to the hospital. When the doctor saw my penis, he said “Wo! We had a case just like yours 2 months ago. We had to amputate the Colonel’s member.” As soon as he said “Colonel” I knew who it was. “We had to emergency medivac him to Manila where they lopped it off and gave him a fake weiner bigger than the old one.”I was ready to burst into tears when the doctor told me, “But you’re in better shape than the Colonel. With the proper antibiotics and rigorous hygiene, you’ll be back on duty in 3 weeks. In the meantime, we’re sending you to Hawaii for R&R. See you in a month!” I was given a government provided condo on the island of Kauai in Kilauea overlooking Kauai Bay. I underwent penis therapy every day. The nurse would knock on my door and yell “It’s me! I’m here to give you a hand!” Her name was Lithium, “Lith” for short. She made me laugh, and I forgot about Boom Boom.

I went back to Vietnam and was reassigned to the base mail room. I wrote to Lith nearly every day and she wrote back to me. I was totally rehabilitated and made a pact with myself to stay away from the hookers. There was a place on base called “Handy House” where I could get what I wanted without worrying about contracting an STD. When my tour was up in Vietnam, I went to Hawaii and Lith and I got married. After a year of total bliss, and the beginning of Lith’s pregnancy, a new nail salon opened called “Boom Boom Nails.” I was walking past it, and guess what? Yup, you got it. I looked in the window, and It was her. She motioned me in. She told me she got married, but did not have any children. She showed me a photo of her husband. It was Colonel XT! I was shocked, but that’s life. I had a pretty good idea why Boom Boom didn’t have any children, but she seemed happy. Life is complex. You never know what’s going to happen next.

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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Maxim

Posted on October 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

Maxim (max’-im): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegm, gnome, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

“A wise dog keeps its nose to the ground.” This proverb was passed down through our family. Its meaning was lost sometime around the beginning of the 20th century. By the time I first heard it nobody knew whether it originated on my mother’s or my father’s side of the family. My mother was German-English. My father was Viking—that’s all he would tell us. His name was Ragnar and he was bipolar and often ran amok. When he was amok, he would break things and got into fights at the corner bar, “Lefty’s.” Lefty had lost his right hand in WWII when it was run over by a tank on D-Day. He was able to use his veterans’ benefits to open “Lefty’s” and make a good living. Dad’s brawls would always get him banned from “Lefty’s” for a week. During his exile, Dad would stand outside “Lefty’s” giving everybody the finger as they went in. My father’s ancestors were lost in time. His mother and father abandoned him when he was an infant. He was raised in an orphanage—nobody wanted him because he was unruly and would spit at possible adoptive parents when they came to meet him. He worked assembling spiral notebooks until he was 16 and put out on his own. He wanted to be a professional boxer, but he hated getting hit. So, he went to work for the telephone company. He fought in WWII and lost most of his hearing.

I never quite figured out how my mother expressed her ethnicity. She had OCD. I figured that was from the German side of her family. We traced her German lineage back to Bavaria. Her great-great, great grandfather was known as Herman Barnshovel. On her mother’s side, we traced her great, great, great, grandmother back to Dublin, where she was a spy for the British. Her name was Mary O’Stale. Evidently, she was awarded a medal by the Crown, and sent to Bavaria for her own safety, where she met Herman. She got a job in a strudel factory, at the behest of the British Crown. Mary and Herman settled in Munich and had 11 children.

I took up an interest in genealogy after I graduated from college with a degree in anthropology. I would spend the post-graduation summer seeing what I could find out about the origins of the family proverb. I couldn’t find out anything about the family proverb by researching my father’s ancestors—they were forever gone. But, Dublin and Munich could be starting points.

Mary O’Stale was impossible to track down given her secret life and the alias she lived under as a spy. It was off to Munich. “Barnshovel” is a rare name, so Herman was pretty easy to find. This I didn’t know: He was seriously wounded in a taxi-horse stable when rustlers attacked and stole the horses while he was shoveling shit. He had irritated the rustlers when he shook his shovel at them and called them “dummkopfs“. He was wounded in the upper arm. Weirdly, there was a picture of him in the newspaper captioned “Shitshoveller Wounded” (Shitshovellr Verwundetsitting). He was sitting in a hospital bed wearing a t-shirt. The family proverb was tattooed in German on his forearm; “Ein kluger Hund hält seine Nase am Boden.” Eureka! I needed to do more research to see if I could find the origins of the proverb. I found that Herman had a Beagle named Beethoven that he trained to chase rabbits and run field trials. Of course keeping “their nose to the ground” is necessary for the hound’s success in sniffing out rabbits. As a metaphor it is similar to keeping your nose to the “grindstone.”

When I got back to the States, I bought a Beagle and got a tattoo on my forearm of the family proverb in the original German: “Ein kluger Hund hält seine Nase am Boden.” I’m having a family crest made, and my sister is considering getting tattooed too.

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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Medela

Posted on October 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

Medela (me-de’-la): When you can’t deny or defend friends’ faults and seek to heal them with good words.

When Joey chewed it sounded like scotch tape being pulled off of cardboard, but it has a 1-2 beat. He never used silverware. He would drink his soup from the bowl and shoved his food off his plate into his mouth, using his hand like a plow. When I asked him why he ate that way he told me he was in a hurry. He was really good with finger food, so whenever we went out to eat together, I made sure beforehand that there was nothing on the menu requiring a knife, fork, or spoon.

Today, we were at “Gill’s Burger Bunker.” Gill was a bi-polar former CIA Agent. He had spent 10 years in Saigon. After the war, he was stationed “somewhere” in South America in infiltrating Communist cells and radioing encoded reports back to Langley, where they were routinely ignored or misplaced. Gill didn’t care. He was having a great time. He learned how to tango, make ceviche, how to barbecue a guinea pig, how to ride a horse and braid whips. There’s more, but suffice it to say, Gill’s CIA stint in South America was a lot of fun. He married a Peruvian woman. They were married on the beach in Lima and have 9 children. Five of the children help out at the “Bunker.” The other five are in “government service.” That’s all Gill will say.

So anyway, we ordered lunch. I ordered fried scallops and a draft beer. Joey ordered batter-dipped shrimp and the “Aztec Whacker.” It was called the AW and it was advertised as the world’s largest coke. If you could finish it without peeing before you finished it, it was free. It came in a stone jug and cost $25.00. Gill had gotten the idea from touring Aztec ruins when he was stationed in South America. The jugs factored into the Aztec’s sacrificial rituals. The person being sacrificed drank from the jug which was filled with pulque (made from the sap of the agave plant) and peyote.

Joey had been trying to “beat the jug” ever since I knew him. He was never able to do it. Joey went to work on the Aztec Whacker. It sounded like I was sitting across the table from a hog trough. I said to Joey “Eating with you is like witnessing an atrocity, but your persistence with the ‘Aztec Whacker’ is commendable. By my count, you’re in it for $600. It’s like you’re trying to climb Mt. Everest. You know you haven’t got a chance, but you keep on trying anyway.” Joey put down the jug and smiled. He said, “Thanks Sal. You’re a true friend.”

I thought, if I was a true friend, I’d encourage him to get help and start eating like a normal person. But, I was working on a documentary about Joey. It was called “American Slob.” I had been using my cellphone to video Joey eating. The best video so far is Joey shoving a post Thanksgiving turkey croquet into his mouth with one hand while he pours gravy in his mouth at the same time.with the other hand. He chokes on the gravy and half-chewed turkey croquet is expelled, hitting his grandmother in the forehead. Joey is scolded by his mother and they résumé eating.

At some point I’ll tell Joey what I’m up to, but not yet.

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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Meiosis

Posted on October 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

Meiosis (mei-o’-sis): Reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes). This term is equivalent to tapinosis.

“He may be tall, but he’s small. That’s why we call him ‘Little Man’—a man with a shrunken soul.” That was an insult I had to endure because it was true. I was a tall bastard, a son-of-a-bitch, and a dickhead all rolled into one. I was proud of it. When I walked down the street, I hoped a homeless person would come up to me ask for money so I could push them down into the gutter where they belonged. I kept a record of my “push downs” on my cellphone. In the six months since I started keeping track, I’ve got 18. I go to the places where homeless people hang out so I can build my numbers. When a victim hits the gutter, I take a picture and post it to “Scrooge’s Circle” a social club with an ant-social agenda—Ha! Ha!

“Scrooge’s Circle” was founded in the 19th century soon after Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was published—a smarmy, ham-fisted story of Scrooge’s redemption. A perfect capitalist, he goes through a series of bullshit fairytale visitations from sniveling Christmas spirits, ending with the grim reaper scaring the shit out of him and making him into a compassionate human being—the opposite of what he was before. He’s been castrated by Christmas and converted by his own hallucinations.

When I saw “A Christmas Carol” for the first time, as a child, I LOVED the early unrepentant Scrooge. He didn’t give a damn about cripples and orphans—or crippled orphans: blind orphans or orphans with one foot or no hands. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if his employees froze to death at their desks as long as he could save money on coal to heat their workplace. He loved to evict his tenants during the holiday season to compound their grief. He also enjoyed watching penniless starving widows walk up and down the street looking for “dates” with cheating husbands so they can feed the family their husband left behind by dying or running off.

Then, the Christmas Eve disaster happened and he was transformed. He bought a giant goose for his office manager Bob Cratchet and paid off the mortgage on Bob’s hovel. He made a huge donation to the widows and orphans fund. He bought seeing eye dogs for all the blind orphans and found decent jobs for all the widows. He agitated for women suffrage and the abolition of slavery. He worked tirelessly to bring an end to child labor. What a loser!

I really felt betrayed by the changed Scrooge. He went from my idea of “The Perfect Man” to a back-stabbing ninny-nanny nambi-pambi bleeding heart weakling. He became shamelessly kind and charitable, anathema to the Capitalist ethos of British social order. Selfishness is the primal virtue along with survival of the fittest. I am not a nursemaid to the weak and feckless! I am a general, calling on my troops to beat the competition into the ground, to trample the weak and chide the helpless—to tell them to shut up if they’re whining, and to “put a stopper in it” if they’re crying. There are only winners and loser in this world. Let the losers lose!

“Scrooge’s Circle” meets once a year on Christmas Eve. We watch the first part of “A Christmas Carol” before Scrooge is wimpified. We turn off the TV and share our favorite “early Scrooge” things we’ve done over the course of the preceding year. For me, it was stealing a homeless man’s shoes. He had foolishly left them outside his cardboard box while he slept. They had a note leaning against them saying: “Put donations in shoes.” One shoe had $2.00 in it. I took the $2.00 and put it in my wallet, and then, threw both of the shoes in the Hudson River. Also, I bribed an OSHA inspector, and then, blackmailed him for taking the bribe. I got this idea from an episode of “Columbo.” I was toasted by my fellow “Circle” members. I felt good about being a greedy, uncaring, lying, cheating, morally bankrupt wildly successful businessman. Go ahead and call me “Little Man.” Maybe I’ll have you evicted—it’s almost Christmas.

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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Mempsis

Posted on October 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mempsis (memp’-sis): Expressing complaint and seeking help.

“I think I’m dying. My feet are swollen. Help me get my pants off!” I yelled. I called it “the old one, two, three.” The “dying” was done to raise alarm and a desire to help. The swollen feet were still pretty bad, but not life threatening, slowing the panic, but maintaining the urgency. Taking off my pants seemed right in light of the feet—to relieve the pressure on my ankles before it was too late. There I was stretched out in my underpants on the couch. What happened next was always a gamble, but it was worth it. It made me realize how providing steps could take people where you wanted them to go.

I learned this from Kenneth Burke. He told me about the appeal of form—how it created an appetite for its completion. That’s how my “steps” worked to keep people involved and get them where I wanted them to go. 1, 2, 3 worked well. It set anticipation into motion, increasing the appetite for the conclusion, and satisfaction, by playing out step 3. Step by step, I got my way through high school, until a few years later I robbed a lunch stand in Wiscasset, ME.

It was called “Blondie’s Eats.” It was at the bottom of the hill, right on the Sheepscott River. Before it was Blondie’s, it was called “Dive! Ice Cream.” The proprietor had served on a submarine in WWII.

I had read an article in the “Boothbay Register” about “Blondie’s Eats.” Blondie came to Maine from Prince Rupert Island, up in Canada. She was 23, unmarried, and filthy rich. Her great-great-great-great grandfather had invented the keyed sardine can. You could put a can of sardines in one pocket and a fork wrapped in a napkin in your other pocket and you were all set for lunch at work. It was revolutionary! No more can opener. There was something about the story rang a weak tinkling bell—something was there, but I couldn’t my mind around it.

I had gone into the Army right out of high school and had just completed my three-year enlistment. I had just gotten back from Viet Nam. When people found out I was a Vietnam vet, they wouldn’t hire me. There were probably wise not to do so. I had suffered a few concussions, one jumping out of a C-130, and the others in Vietnam. I was plagued by headaches, chronic double vision and diminished interpersonal skills. I got angry at nothing and slept with an unsheathed dagger under my pillow. I spent money I didn’t have and drank too much. I was going to “turn myself in” at the VA hospital in Portland.

I was broke and hungry and too proud to ask for a handout. What brought me to Blondie’s was her cash only policy. It would be easy. I parked my BSA about five feet from the stand, got off and went up to the counter. Using the old one, two, three I robbed “Blondie’s Eats.”

(1. This is a stickup. 2. Give me all your money. 3. Close your eyes and count to 100.)

I stuffed the money in my Hannaford’s shopping bag, jumped on my motorcycle and headed for East Boothbay. As I started across the Sheepscott River bridge I felt a burning in my right leg. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw Blondie shooting at me from the middle of the road. I was wounded, but I wouldn’t know how bad until I got to the base of the collapsed fire tower over Boothbay I was it calling home. Most days, I leaned against the concrete blocks and thought bad thoughts.

Blondie pulled up in a Jeep Wrangler. She had followed me!

She hopped out of the Jeep with a gun in one hand, and a bullhorn in the other. She spoke into the bullhorn: “I know who you are shithead. We spent our summers here. Fishing for flounder in Little River, hunting for beach glass, picking raspberries, climbing on the rocks, looking for crabs under the seaweed, going into the Harbor for ice cream and candy T Orne’s and a million more things. I didn’t mean to shoot you. I’ve missed you all these years. What the hell happened to you? Let’s go to the hospital and get you fixed up. Come on Johnny.”

“Holy shit!” was all I could say as she helped me into the jeep. She was my first love. I remembered her as Janie. She had disappeared from my memory, pushed out by the hell I had been through. My hell was vivid, and seemed more real than what was right in front of me. But, as I sat there slumped in my seat I saw for the first time since I had gotten home a beautiful shining ray of hope. I rested my head on her shoulder and fell asleep as we drove to the hospital. I had a dream about a bird that had forgotten how to land.

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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Merismus

Posted on October 13, 2024 | Leave a comment

Merismus (mer-is’-mus): The dividing of a whole into its parts.

My decision making has five possible outcomes : yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, and N/A (not applicable). this list is probably not exhaustive, but it helps me decide what to next, which is life’s greatest challenge. When I was young “Yes” and “no” were my go to outcomes—it was a yes/no, either/or world. I was a man of action. I was a Kierkegaardian Guardian—a knight in shining ethics engraved with moral maxims, like “Curiosity killed the day,” “You are what you eat.” I fought for the rights of turtles, pigs and donkeys. I drove 55 MPH, I made macrame peace sign plant hangers, I made my own wine and picket signs. I sold the signs at demonstrations.

Then, one beautiful spring day, I saw a baby buggy rolling down a hill unattended. The baby was holding a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse. I stood there, frozen. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t. I was just starting to get an idea of what to do when the baby blew up, and also took a couple of pedestrians with him. The horror was complete. It ate at my soul. It burrowed a hole in my conscience. Even after I found out the baby was a rubber replica of a real baby, I could not settle my mind.

The incident was part of a successful assassination plot. The two pedestrians who were killed were part of a royalist cabal who wanted to restore royal rule in Germany, and “Make Germany great again.” Their goal begged the question. But, they were real people who really died, and I stood there like I had a whole body cramp.

I was drowning in guilt, strangled by remorse, bludgeoned by indecision—or more accurately, no decision. In my plight, I wondered if not deciding is deciding nevertheless. I couldn’t escape the remorse eating at me—gnawing on my innards, inducing a sort of moral seasickness making me vomit and bringing on a bout of severe dehydration accompanied by explosive flatulence that had wounded my ass.

One night, in the middle of a recurring nightmare where I was a peanut being shelled over and over, I woke up. I yelled “I Don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know, N/A, N/A.” It was a eureka moment. I realized it was unreasonable to expect humans to know what’s going on, and go solely with yes and no, and on bad days, maybe. “I don’t know” removes the shackles of accountability, calming your conscience and restoring your soul. It is as simple as that. If you accompany this with a draught of vodka or tequila, as you feel the alcohol warming your veins, the distance between you and your unfounded self-recriminations will widen even further. You may lose your job and alienate your family, but you will be free.

POSTSCRIPT

The author was found unconscious in a fetal position in a baby carriage in the basement of an abandoned building. He was taken to the hospital where he died repeating “N/A” over and over in what was characterized as “tones so sweet and low.”

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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Mesarchia

Posted on October 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mesarchia (mes-ar’-chi-a): The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning and middle of successive sentences.

“No way, no time of the day. No way, no time of the night. No way. No time. Never.” I was a dedicated vegetarian. I abstained from meat of all kinds—even fish, including escargot. I hadn’t eaten, or even touched neat, for just over 2 weeks. Already, I could feel a change in my demeanor. I was kinder and more charitable. I had stopped cutting into line at the movies and I no longer told women on the subway with crying babies to shut the little bastards up.

I had read “Off Meat” by Swami Knishmop. It changed my life. The “book” consisted of vivid high definition color photographs of mutilated animals in the process of being slaughtered: before, during, and after. They were triptychs from hell. Following a fluffy bunny from beginning to end turned me around. I cried. I pounded my chest. I almost killed myself from the guilt I felt for the fate of the little bunny. At the end of Swami Knishmop’s book is an oath to repeat confirming your conversion to vegetarianism. The last word of the oath is missing. If you send $20 to the Swami, he will email it to you, but you must swear to keep it secret, or die. I thought that was pretty radical, but I wanted to say “The Vegetarian’s Oath” to cement my status as a vegetarian.

Week Three

I was getting tired of bean sprout, tofu, and mustard sandwiches on gluten-free bread. I didn’t even know what gluten was. But again, after seeing Swami’s pictures, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to eat meat. it was evil. So, I started eating faux meat soy products: Glamburgers, Fried Cheeky. Roasted Furkey. Broiled Founder. Peat Loaf. The list is endless.

The faux meat products were really expensive, but that’s not the main reason I gave them up. The main reason was that they tasted awful, and ironically, they all tasted and smelled the same. The only difference between them was their names. I went back to goat cheese and clove sandwiches, brown rice and jalapeños, mashed potatoes and toast, hummus topped with chocolate sauce, hollowed-out baked yams stuffed with avocado chunks and mint leaves. Not bad, but not meat.

Week Five

Two nights ago I took a bite out of a lamb roast at the grocery store. My desire for meat had become so strong that it blotted Swami’s triptychs from hell out of my memory. The raw lamb was tender and juicy. It assuaged my desire. I put the lamb in my cart and continued shopping for groceries. My vegetarian days were over. I bumped into one of the vegetarian friends I had made when I went meatless. His name was Cickpea (obviously a nickname), and he was a devoted follower of the Swami. I saw that he had a package of hamburger meat in his cart. When he saw me eying it, he shoved a box of “Grains & Nuts” over it and smiled nervously. Then, he saw my lamb roast. He said “Nobody’s perfect,” spun his cart around and walked away. I thought to myself “Yeah, exactly. Nobody’s perfect.”

I will never go back to being a vegetarian.

Nobody’s perfect.

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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Mesodiplosis

Posted on October 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mesodiplosis (mes-o-dip-lo’-sis): Repetition of the same word or words in the middle of successive sentences.

The cheap rope was starting to fray. My life was cheap—cheap as a chipped coffee mug at a Salvation Army thrift store. I was sure to have a cheap funeral—cremated in our wood stove, my ashes shoveled into a cardboard box, and deposited in the dumpster behind Cliff’s.

I was such an idiot to let price instead, of quality and reputation, determine the equipment I bought, especially if my life depended on it, Rock climbing was all about the rope. Rope snaps: life over. I had purchased my rope at Agway. Their rope was 1/8 the price of Dick’s rope—which was quite attractive, consisting of multi-colored strands woven together. The Agway rope was shining white in a cellophane wrapper. Not as attractive as Dick’s, but way, way cheaper. It was called “Clothesline Rope.” I guessed it was called that because it was shiny white and looked really clean, and you could hang clothes on it. I bought a 100 foot package of clothesline rope. If you could hangs wet clothes on it, you could probably hang on it too, at 1/8 the price.

I had gotten my boots used on Etsy, and my helmet too. The boots were made in Italy. They had mildew on them as well as tiny specks of blood. They didn’t come with any backstory about the blood. So, I just let it go. The mildew was a little more concerning. I soaked the boots in my bathtub in a mixture of Clorox, ammonia, and gasoline. It didn’t help remove the mildew, but it made them smell better. The helmet was all nicked up and had been glued back together after what must have been a severe blow. It was advertised on Etsy as a piece of an estate being settled for Mr. Amil Canyon, deceased.

All I needed next were carabiners, crucial in making rapid connections and holding climbing ropes in position, especially in rappelling. For example, riding a rope down the face of a cliff. I had shopped around and found carabiners to be crazy expensive—$20 or more. I was on my way home from my futile search when I stopped at Cliff’s for a slice of pizza. I noticed a display that said “Key Rings.” They were carabiners and they only cost $5.00! I bought ten—now I was ready to go!

The next day I drove out to “Satan’s Face.” It was a sheer drop of 200 feet. I looked over the edge and saw two ambulances standing by at the cliff’s bottom. There were representatives from every religious domination at the top of the cliff, ready to say a prayer for you for $10.00, cash only, before you started your descent. I am an atheist, so I didn’t know what to do, but I suited up anyway. Then, I heard a scream, and a loud thud followed by sirens. That did it! I tore off my gear, got in my car, and drove home, but for reasons I’ll never understand, I still wanted to defy gravity.

I had a tree in my back yard with a bare limb about 20 feet off the ground. I could rappel from my tree and experience some of the thrill of descending from a cliff, and probably survive. I leaned my trusty aluminum ladder against the limb, donned my harness, and climbed up to affix my rope to the tree limb. I rigged up and launched off from the tree limb, ready to slide gently to Mother Earth. Everything went wrong. I was hanging upside down. My key ring carabiner had bent, and popped open. Its sharp edge frayed my clothesline rope which wrapped around my leg, flipping me over. Soon the rope would break and I would soar head first into the ground. I was going to die! There was no ambulance waiting under my tree. Then I remembered. My cellphone! I called 911.

The emergency people showed up in about five minutes and safely cut me down. Before they cut me down, they all started laughing—one actually rolling around on the ground. One asked me, with tears running down his cheeks, “What the hell are you trying to do?” I remained silent, coiling up my clothesline rope like an expert, still wearing my helmet.

Later, I told my wife what had happened and she laughed and asked “Are you going to stop taking testosterone now, like you promised?”

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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Mesozeugma

Posted on October 10, 2024 | Leave a comment

Mesozeugma (me’-so-zyoog’-ma): A zeugma in which one places a common verb for many subjects in the middle of a construction.

“Cows, wagons, worms and earthquakes move up, down, over across, and under my breakfast toast.” Marlon Sweezy.

Sweezy was a 17th-century poet known as “Who?” His works were burned with the exception of the fragment quoted above. Literary scholars have come to the conclusion that the fragment is part of the longest poem ever written “Brick Carriage.” “Brick Carriage” is cited by Lady Rich who was Sweezy’s Tarot Card reader who attributed the quote above to him. She gives us little insight into why his works were burned, aside from her cryptic reference to them as “a plague that I survived.”

She said whenever she read his cards, there was a brawl. Inevitably the cards would predict dire futures for Sweezy. He would be poisoned, stabbed, strangled, drawn and quartered, or worse. Sweezy would jump from his chair and throw it at Lady Rich who allowed it because Sweezy paid handsomely to have his cards read, plus, she had two attendants who would throw Sweezy out on the street and kick him a couple of times.

Sweezy was reportedly “the most handsome man who ever walked the face of the earth.” He was charming and witty and knowledgeable on many subjects. He knew why the earth was flat. He knew where the wild geese go. It was rumored that he was an alchemist adept at transforming peas into little golden nuggets. He had so many trysts that “trysts” was almost renamed “Sweezys.” “Sweezys” failed to catch on due to the animosity he had engendered among the fathers of the daughters he had seduced, made promises to, and then, left standing in tears alone at altars throughout Europe. Instead, “Sweezy” replaced “blighter” as a term of contempt. Being called a “Sweezy” was worse than “piece of shit” or “scum bag.” Sweezy wrote it off as jealousy or the over-protective nature of most fathers. But “Sweezy” becoming an insult was not why his poems were hunted down and destroyed.

Lady Rich tells us in her memoirs that there was a terrifying property the texts possessed and this was the reason Sweezy’s works were routed out and destroyed—torn asunder, run over by large delivery carriages, and set afire.

Reading Sweezy’s poetry made people deathly ill and even killed them. They would suffer from stomach cramps, leg tremors, flatulence, sore throat, fever, ringing ears, double vision, heart palpitations, and diarrhea. Men had the added affect of impotence. The list of symptoms is long, harsh, and terrible. Older people (35+) risked an agonizing death, in a fetal position on a hard wood-slatted hospital bed, spending their last hours scratching their rectums and howling. Some depressed people read Sweezy’s poems hoping to die. They were called “poemacides” or “Sweezacides.”

We have no record of how reading Sweezy’s poetry would cause one to contract the disease. Sweezy died from “Organ Expulsion Syndrome”—the evacuation of one’s organs in a fatal bowel movement lasting one week. He was delirious during his hellish descent into death and could not be questioned. His is the only documented case of “Organ Expulsion Syndrome.”

Thank God the poetry-borne disease is not communicable. Thank God all of Sweezy’s works were burned. During his lifetime Sweezy refused to comment on the debilitating effect his poetry had on readers. When questioned, he would smile slyly and pretend to cough, perpetuating the greatest mystery in literary history and raising the question: How many have been killed by poetry?

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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Metalepsis

Posted on October 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metalepsis (me-ta-lep’-sis): Reference to something by means of another thing that is remotely related to it, either through a farfetched causal relationship, or through an implied intermediate substitution of terms. Often used for comic effect through its preposterous exaggeration. A metonymical substitution of one word for another which is itself figurative.

“You look like a dido with arms and legs.“ I had done it again. Ever since I had studied the Stoics, “I told it like it is.” My arrogant rejection of euphemism and flattery had destroyed my social life, but it had cultivated my moral life (so I thought).

When I called my wife a dildo, she hit me over the head with a wine carafe. Then, she wrapped a towel around my bleeding head and drove me to the hospital. I had to get 96 stitches across my forehead.

My wife still looked like a dildo.

Why did she look like a dildo? When I asked myself that question, I realized that the source of my comparison was not honesty and forthrightness—it was error. It was my addiction to pornography. Lately, I had been watching videos that “starred” dildos. I was becoming a dildophile and, maybe, I would start a collection of dildos from around the world. I even had a lewd fantasy of giving one to my wife and asking to watch her use it. I was lost in porno hell. I tried to quit, to wean myself from the filth. I watched “Partridge Family” and “Brady Bunch” and “Andy Griffith Show” reruns, trying to realign my moral compass. But sadly, my moral compass unerringly pointed to dildo. It was like every road led to dildo. Uh ad to shake—I had a dildo on my back.

So, I pretty much failed to cure myself of my dildo fever. None of the remedial videos worked. I even had a dream about Barny chasing Aunt Bee around the kitchen waving a purple dildo. I dreamed about the Partridges singing into dido microphones and drumming with dildos, backing up the bass dildo and the rhythm dildo. My “Brady Bunch” dreams were so terrifying that I am unable to recount them without suffering PTSD.

So, I capitulated to my dildophilia and developed a nightclub act where I told off-color jokes about dildos and juggled up to 5 dildos at the same time. I would come on stage when the pole dancers took a break. I would lay my didos on my folding table, pick one up and fondle it, then pick up a second dildo, rub them together, and begin juggling, and engaging my dildo-joke patter. For example: while juggling my dildos, I’d say “Dildos are great meat substitutes.” I stole most of my jokes from the internet.

My act was gaining in popularity, and I started to accept my addiction. They started calling me “Dildo King.” A Chinese dildo company “Lucky Stroke” offered me $500,000 to endorse their newest product “Substitute Teacher.” They advertise their dildos as “tools of love” and provide instruction manuals and a “choice of colors” tool boxes. I took the offer.

I am featured on porno sites all over the world. I love the way I sound in German dubbed in over my actual voice. Next month, I am going to Copenhagen for the annual “Porno Pioneers” gala. The oldest living porn star will be in attendance—Tawny Humper. She is 97 years old and inspired Elvis’s “Love Me Tender.” She will be receiving the “Porno Pioneers Life Achievement Award” commemorating her arrest and jailing in New York for “acting in a blue film.” The title of the film was “Rear Ended!” and it was about a woman who was struck from behind while she was driving to work, when she stopped at a stop sign. After being offered a meager payout, she seduced the car insurance adjuster for a higher payout for the damage to her car, and then, blackmailed him.

Anyway, I gave up the Stoicism and have considerably widened my circle of friends. However, there’s one Stoic precept I still entertan: “You have control over your own thoughts and actions, but not over the thoughts and actions of others.” Marcus Aurelius. This guy knew what he was talking about. If you take this to heart, a huge swath of futility will be cut from your life.

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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Metallage

Posted on October 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metallage (me-tal’-la-gee): When a word or phrase is treated as an object within another expression.

Your “shoe business” sounds like “show business.” All these years I thought you were a performer of some kind. When you talked about the shoes you sell, I thought you were talking about shows you were appearing in: “Loafers,” “Heels,” “Dockers,” “Mules,” etc.

I imagined that “Loafers” was a play about a group of wealthy people who had a club called “Loafers” where the loafed around and thought of “lazy” things to do. One of my favorite fantasies about “Loafers” was the time they paid the wages of everybody at “Eat it!” a small sandwich shop on the town green. The show followed each employee on their gifted day off. Sadly, when they started loafing, all the employees suffered from PTSD from various traumatic experiences they had in life. When they were busy at work they didn’t have time to think about their life’s horrors. The owner, Stewart Smackadakolus, in violation of a number of laws, had his employees work seven days per week, so they all seemed tired, but otherwise ok. But, ironically, Mr. Smackadakolus was probably affected the worst by the day off. When he was nine years old he had killed or wounded everybody in his neighborhood. His father had left a locked and loaded Thompson sub-machine gun in Stewart’s toy box. This is hard to comprehend, but it happened. He said he put it there because nobody would look for a machine-gun in a toy box. Stewart found the gun when he was looking for his Tonka truck in the toy box. He yelled “Banzai!” and ran out the front door into the street. He pulled the trigger and “hosed” the neighborhood down with hot lead. When he ran out of ammunition, he dropped the gun and burst into tears.

Stewart’s father was jailed for 25 years for 12 counts of second degree murder, an amazingly lenient sentence. It was determined that Stewart was too young to know what he was doing and he was released and was never criminally charged. Eventually, he went through state sponsored, post high school, sandwich-making training. He opened “Eat it!” and used his sandwich-making training and the business acumen gained from his paper route and selling Christmas cards to handle the financial end of the business. He had been an avid pet owner, so he was good at managing his employees. In short, his small sandwich shop was a success, but he was haunted by his past.

The Loafers felt sorry for him and bought his sandwich shop for 10-times what it was worth, and then, gave him the paid-off mortgage to the property. Stewart was so grateful, he gave The Loafers, free sandwiches for life. Stewart is seeing a psychologist and slowly digging himself out of his trauma.

POSTSCRIPT

So, I spent all this time making up stories that would fit the imagined titles, based on shoes, not shows. Now I see how stupid I was. I guess my hope that you were in show business motivated my whacky behavior, but you’re a shoe salesman. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Now, here’s the really crazy part: my “Shoe Business Stories” have been bought by Hulu. A movie based on “The Loafers” will start streaming in mid-December.

We should be amazed!

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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Metaphor

Posted on October 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metaphor (met’-a-phor): A comparison made by referring to one thing as another.

My face is a bowl of Crisco—round and pale with a slightly greasy sheen. I cleanse it four times a day with a special soap designed to clean away the vegetable-shortening look. It’s primarily for people like me. I’ve been locked up in Mount Rockefeller State Prison for 45 years. I have another 300 hundred years to go. Obviously, I’ll never be free again—free to murder some more people—maybe 6 or 7—kidnap children, and literally burn bridges.

When I was running wild, I almost succeeded in burning down the Bayonne Bridge! At the time, it was the longest bridge in the world. I wasn’t fooling around. The plan was to drive a tanker truck loaded with gasoline over the bridge, stop in the middle of the bridge, and light the truck on fire, but I forgot my lighter. I tried to flag people down to ask for a light. One of hose people was Detective Stromboli “on his way home from work.” He arrested me.

We found out during my trial for “attempted wanton destruction of public property” that he was actually on his way home from his girlfriend’s in Jersey. That was the highlight of my trial! The destruction of Stromboli’s marriage was more than I could hope for. Both his wife and his girlfriend were in the courtroom. The girlfriend’s name was Victoria Comer and the wife’s name was Shirley—Shirley Stromboli. Officer Stromboli’s testimony was an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane all rolled into one.

When, under questioning, Officer Stromboli revealed his affair, Shirley Stromboli went berserk. She started pulling things out of her purse and throwing them at him, yelling “Motherf*ker” with every item she threw—she hit him in the face with a set of car keys, the rest of the stuff sailed past him, leaving him unscathed. The bailiff wrested Mrs. Stromboli’s purse from her and escorted her from the courtroom. In the meantime, in true Jersey-girl style, Victoria hurled insults at Shirley: “You dried up banana peel!” “You pickle-brained pig slop.” “Scumbag.” “Your mother’s a chicken’s ass.” Victoria was escorted out of the courtroom yelling all the way.

The two women met in the hallway and started throwing punches and kicking each other. Victoria clocked Shirley with right cross and knocked her out cold. Her head hit a radiator as she went down. An ambulance was called. Victoria laughed and gave Shirley the finger as she was wheeled to the waiting ambulance. As a consequence of the blow to her head, Shirley suffered permanent memory loss. Her entire life, until she woke up in the hospital, was erased. That included marrying Detective Stromboli. There were photographs and papers documenting their marriage that Stromboli found and destroyed.

Stromboli and Comer got married and Stromboli was busted for bigamy as they left the church. Stromboli had failed to realize that his original marriage certificate was permanently filed with the Town Clerk in Richmond, Staten Island. Not only that, there were at least 50 witnesses to the marriage.

Stromboli was a pea-brained nitwit. His poor wife. It was like she landed on planet earth for the first time when she woke up in the hospital. When he was incarcerated, she quickly got a divorce from pea-brain with the help of a sympathetic lawyer.

I see the light every day for about an hour. I walk around in circles in the exercise yard. The story of my trial and conviction gives me solace as I fade into oblivion. That motherfu*ker Stombli’s life was ruined by my trial. Post-trial, as the well-known king of chumps, he had a hard time putting his life back together. Victoria would have nothing to do with him and ended up marrying a meat cutter from Jersey City. Stromboli, a convicted bigamist, ended up working as a busboy in a mob-owned restaurant in Bayonne named “Nero’s.” He was shot dead in a botched hit attempt. Nobody cares but me. Ha! Ha!

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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Metaplasm

Posted on October 6, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metaplasm (met’-a-plazm): A general term for orthographical figures (changes to the spelling of words). This includes alteration of the letters or syllables in single words, including additions, omissions, inversions, and substitutions. Such changes are considered conscious choices made by the artist or orator for the sake of eloquence or meter, in contrast to the same kinds of changes done accidentally and discussed by grammarians as vices (see barbarism). See: antisthecon, aphaeresis, apocope, epenthesis, paragoge, synaloepha.

“Don’t be a broken promise of what you coulda’ been.“ My father gave me this advice when I graduated from high school along with a pointer—a thing like a car antenna you could use to point at things. It went from six inches to three feet in a second. I used it in later life primarily for whipping employees I caught pilfering from my factory “Kiddie Karbs.” We made different flavored and colored child-sized sugar discs packaged in rolls of 20, and wrapped in red paper with a picture of a clown sleeping down with “X’s” in his eyes.

Sometimes, I actually considered encouraging my employees to try to steal from me so I could have the opportunity to reform them by whacking them on the butt 1 or 2 times. But, I pushed those thoughts out of my head—they were somewhat perverted. I was no Marquis DeSade, ha ha! Actually, I was more like L’il Abner. They called me “The Hurty-Gurty Man,” and I was unashamed! Whipping underlings was not that unusual in the 1950s—even school children were whipped, often for minor infractions like giggling or farting. There was actually a company called “Wicked Whackers” that specialized in employee punishment devices. I didn’t need them, I had my pointer, but I was fascinated by the “Correcto-Shock,” a battery-powered rod that administered a corrective shock when it was touched to the skin of the miscreant. I stuck with the pointer for sentimental reasons, as well as its effectiveness and the convenience of not having to change batteries.

When I administered a whipping I would say in a gravelly voice, “Now, you’re going to receive a pointer. Moo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha.” They would bend over a chair and reveal their naked buttocks. I would whip them one at a time—two strokes—just me and the malefactor alone in the red whipping room. In 99.999% of the cases one whipping session was enough—either they would return what they had pilfered and quit stealing, or become clever enough not to get caught. The “one percent” that I had a problem with was Nell Bender. She was apparently incorrigible.

She would steal inconsequential things like paper clips, and in some cases go out of her way to get caught. I had disciplined her 16 times when I got my latest issue of “Big Boss Man” magazine. The issue, surprisingly, was devoted to disciplining errant employees. It took a strong stand against corporal punishment. Aside from all the obvious reasons for condemning it, was the finding by modern psychology that some people actually enjoyed physical punishment, and would misbehave as a way of getting the pleasure they craved. Instantly, I thought of Miss Bender and her repeated offenses.

The article in “Big Boss Man” changed my thinking entirely. I followed the recommendation to garnish the offender’s pay until the pilfered items were paid for or returned. It was more humane and accomplished my aims far more effectively—I was no longer called “The Hurty-Gurty Man.” Now I was called “Mr. Fair-Hand.” The new regime of mutual respect increased employee productivity and solidarity. Also, I built into the new discipline regime a provision that repeat offenders would be terminated after two incidents. Miss Bender asked to meet with me to discuss the new policy. I told her “No.” I knew what she was going to ask—that I make a special exception for her and continue whipping her for her uncontrollable infractions. I did not wish to abet her desires.

But I was a hypocrite.

When I got home that night my wife was waiting at the door like she did every night. She asked, “Have you been a naughty boy today?” I said “Yes” and pulled down my pants and handed her my pointer. As I was reveling in my daily whacking, I thought about Miss Bender’s buttocks. The next day, I fired her from “Kiddie Karbs” and hired her as a household maid. I told her if she pilfered anything, she would “get the pointer.”

Miss Bender was hired and small things started going missing. First, was a potato peeler. I found it under Miss Bender’s pillow. There was a sticky note with a smiley face drawn on it stuck on the potato peeler.

I was ashamed of myself for what I had done, and it felt good.

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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Metastasis

Posted on October 5, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metastasis (me-tas’-ta-sis): Denying and turning back on your adversaries arguments used against you.

You say I ruined the “Life’s a Gamble” float. “That’s bullshit and you know it, scumbag. It was you. I know it was you. You’re just trying to cover your own tracks by accusing me. I worked harder than anybody else on this goddamn float. I’ve been here everyday, and even spent some of my own money on it!” I yelled.

“Cheeto” Smith was a dog. The senior prom was two weeks away. He had been disgruntled all the way because his idea for a float was not chosen by the committee, but mine was. He wanted the float to be a giant spider chasing the senior class to the prom, in a sort of horror movie scenario. The football coach, Mr. Bell would drive the float, zig-zagging back and forth and playing a recording of a bear growling from loudspeakers affixed to the spider’s eye sockets. The spider was designed to “eat” three or four seniors on the way to the gym. It had soft furry mandibles that were designed to pull the students in without hurting them.

The fear the spider would engender was deemed contradictory to the spirit of the senior prom. Also, Cheeto’s hygiene was brought up—his teeth were orange like a beaver’s. The committee felt that he would not represent Bass-Weaver High in keeping with its mission statement; “To strive to be a very clean and healthy place with a devotion to learning in all the facets of attainment owed to passionate, committed, and caring human beings with good posture.”

Obviously, the committee made the right decision, rejecting Cheeto’s bizarre proposal, as well as Cheeto himself. My design was selected. Cheeto vandalized it out of jealousy. My “Life is a Gamble” float perfectly represented the prom’s theme, unlike Cheeto’s monster spider. I proposed a gambling casino theme for the float with a dice table, roulette wheel, and blackjack tables surrounded by dummy slot machines. The props would be made by students in wood shop and metal shop. There would be students gambling on the float, and winning, periodically jumping for joy and waving fistfuls of fake money.

The roulette wheel had been stolen, and some of the green felt on blackjack tables had been torn. We quickly raised money to replace and repair the items with a car wash. We raised more money than we needed and bought vodka with the extra cash we raised. This would be the best senior prom ever.

Cheeto finally returned to his senses and apologized and brushed his teeth. When he heard about Cheeto’s reform, our Principal Dr. Bowling said “Mission accomplished.”

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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Metonymy

Posted on October 4, 2024 | Leave a comment

Metonymy (me-ton’-y-my): Reference to something or someone by naming one of its attributes. [This may include effects or any of the four Aristotelian causes {efficient/maker/inventor, material, formal/shape, final/purpose}.]

“The pen is mightier than the door.” Nobody knew what the hell this meant. It was supposedly written in the 18th century when revolution was in the air along with horse manure and rotting garbage. Nobody was happy—not even babies. The author of the aforequoted line was alleged to be Malarky O’Reilly. He was kicked out of Ireland, alleged to be a member of “Hearts of Steel.” He was accused of tearing down fences and poisoning livestock. The accusations were rooted in lies. Malarky was a nice guy and was happy to get a free ride to the American Colonies. Although he was Catholic, he found a job as a bell-ringer in the Presbyterian Church. He couldn’t remember the last time he had worshipped in a Catholic Church so he was untroubled by the ruse. Besides, he needed the money—bell ringing afforded him just enough money for a bed and two meals a day.

He had been told over and over that “talk is cheap.” In fact, it was free! It would not cost him a penny to talk for pay. He couldn’t afford law school, and he hated politicians. He had done some punning as a hobby. He wasn’t very good at it, but some people called him “entertaining” like a trained bear or a dog that would do tricks on command. He would say funny things instead of doing tricks. He would be an entertainer. He would make people laugh and throw coins at him.

History books tell us that standup comedy was invented in the 1800s, yet, here is Malarky, at the dawn of the American Revolution ready to give it a spin. He practiced for a month in front of his cracked mirror, repeating the same jokes over and over. When he thought he was ready, he had to find a venue. He struck a deal with the owner of one of the local coffee shops—Caffiends—owned by Jimmy “Java” Jones. Malarky agreed to give Java half of all the money he made from the “shower” of coins.

The time came: It was around 4pm. Caffiends was packed with Coffee drinkers, many on their third or fourth cup. High on caffeine, they were climbing the walls, talking really fast, and fidgeting wildly in their chairs.

Malarky stood up and climbed onto an empty apple crane he brought with him. Caffiends fell silent and all eyes were on Malarky. Java introduced him as “Malarky, the funny man from the Emerald Isle.” He thanked Java and began his routine: “I gave my brother a dollar an he spent it.” Silence. Malarky cleared his throat: “What did one plate whisper to the other plate? Dinner is on me.” Some laughs. “Should you have your whole family for a Thanksgiving dinner? No, you should just stick with turkey.” Sustained laughter and a smattering of applause. “What sits at the bottom of the sea and twitches? A nervous wreck.” Guffaws and applause.

Malarky went on like this for 20 minutes. After he told his jokes, he asked for money and his audience called him rude names and told him to go jump in the harbor with rocks in his pockets. Somebody threw a coffee mug at him and missed his head by inches. He made his escape through Caffiends back door. As he ran through the kitchen, Java yelled “Good riddance!” at Malarky and went out front to calm the crowd. Malarky gave up on the “standing there comedy” routine, moving to Maine where he worked as a sailmaker.

The eye-witness account of Malarky’s performance was recorded by Thomas Paine in his journal. Some say it formed the foundation for his “Common Sense.” This can’t be true, can it? Also, it was determined last year by a literary scholar at Cape Cod Community College that Malarky did not author “The pen is mightier than the door.” But he did write, “I wish I had wheels like Hancock’s” as he began walking to Mane.

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.

Jokes: https://www.fatherly.com/entertainment/57-funny-jokes-kids-adults-who-like-dumb-jokes?utm_medium=pro&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=gpro110082156&gad_source=1

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Ominatio

Posted on October 3, 2024 | Leave a comment

Ominatio (o-mi-na’-ti-o): A prophecy of evil.

My father is a prophet. He spends most of his time far away in the future. We don’t know who pays him, and we didn’t care. His prophecies hit the mark about one-third of the time. He saw the disco craze coming—he had Saturday night fever about one year before the first disco ball lit up the night. His biggest miss was Google Glass. He prophesied: “Woe will sweep across the land. People will be run over and their blood will flow in every gutter and their loved ones will weep from the curbs.” Dad was so far off on this one that he didn’t go out of the house or roll a public prophecy for a year.

That year was hell for our family. He needed to stay in practice as a prophet to keep his certification, so he practiced on us. Here’s an example addressed to my sister: “Lo, Marie, if you wearest those clothes your belly-button will show and it will attract the impure attentions of your male peers.” Marie answered: “That’s the point Dad. Go bother somebody else.” After Marie gave him shit, Dad put on his sackcloth suit, hoping it’s itchiness would get him on track with the future. He had given me a sackcloth suit for my 17th birthday. He told me to make sure I wore no undergarments when I wore the sackcloth suit. It was brown and smelled like goat urine. When I wore it to my first job interview my crotch started itching after the first question. I couldn’t scractch myself there or I was certain not to get the job, which was working on the assembly line at a Tesla plant.

I asked if I could be excused to use the rest room. I was granted permission. When I got to the men’s room, I ran into a stall and locked it. I tore down my pants and scratched like crazy—almost to the point of bleeding. I decided to fill my pants with toilet paper, and stuff what I could in my crotch, and wrap my penis like a bandage. I thought the toilet paper would insulate my skin from the itchy sackcloth pants.

When I got back they were eager to resume the interview. They asked me if I owned a bidet. I told them “Yes.” I had used a bidet once in France, but I didn’t really own one. They asked me how long I would sit and let it wash me. That’s when everything went to hell: the toilet paper in my pants was cheap. It was stiff and made a crinkling sound whenever I moved. The first time it happened the interviewers’ heads jerked simultaneously and the interviewers looked toward my crotch’ where the sound was coming from. One of the interviewers asked me what the sound coming out of my pants was. She said it sounded like somebody was wrapping gifts.

I told them the story of my sackcloth suit. They told me to stay where I was and left the room. Soon after, two security guards showed up and “escorted” me out of the building. I was infuriated. I tore off my sackcloth suit and threw it on the ground, and stomped on it. Naked, I caught a bus home my with my private parts covered by the toilet paper.

This is just one example of how having a prophet for a father has affected my life. When his self-imposed exile had run its course, Dad was ready to rip. He had loudspeakers on the roof of his car and he would ride around our neighborhood slowly, repeating the day’s prophecy. On his first day out it was: “Lo unto you New Yorkers, the Yankees will bring darkness and anguish to your hearts by the wrath of socks of red.” Being a Yankees fan myself, I thought Dad had a good thing going. I gave him a fist pump as he rode past our house.

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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Onedismus

Posted on October 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

Onedismus (on-e-dis’-mus): Reproaching someone for being impious or ungrateful.

You give religion a bad name. You wore a crucifix and spit on street people. You stole money from the collection basket at church. You made a joke of the Ten Commandments while reproaching other people for adhering to them. You had a line of little statues on your mantle—gods and goddesses you made offerings to. You committed adultery with your neighbor’s wife—they call that a “two-fer” in Hell. Almost everything you say is a lie.

Where did you get the idea that you can do that sort of stuff and still call yourself religious.? Morton said: “Wake up Dan! This is the 21st century. Religion’s circumference has grown. Most importantly, following outdated ‘commandments’ is no longer mandatory. You still obey the law, but porking your neighbor’s wife is ok. It’s not laudable, but it’s ok. What is laudable is hypocrisy. Being called a hypocrite is the highest form of praise. For example, people love it when you chastise a politician for stealing the peoples’ money, and then, you get caught with your hand in the til at “Burger Bell” where you work. All you have to do is point out the magnitude of the difference between your and politician’s misdeeds and throw in the accusation that Burger Bell exploits its workers and hires illegal aliens, and boom, case closed. YOUR hypocrisy is the winner, and God will forgive you. Anyway, all of us are always pretending to be something we’re not. Right now, I’m pretending to know what I’m talking about. Last month, I pretended I was a good husband, that I knew what I was doing at work, and, when I gave a homeless guy a dollar, I pretended I was charitable.

Any time we have to ‘think’ about what we’re doing, we’re pretending. When we don’t have to think about it, it’s genuine. It’s not an act. Otherwise, you’re just trying to act ‘right’. That’s a sure sign you are pretending and are fearful of stumbling over your lines or taking things in the ‘wrong’ direction. When your pretense becomes a habit, you forget you’re faking it and believe you’re being genuine, When the habits are religious, they take on an aura of sincerity. Unfortunately, for some poor souls the opposite is the case—the more a social gesture is performed successfully, the less sincere it seems to be. They grow anxious, even anomic, as ‘the social’ loses its intrinsic meaning and becomes a web of persuasion bound to belief—bound to what is in people’s heads—in there, not out there. Persuasion’s hook is tenuous, but ubiquitous and ever-present. Beliefs are replaced by other beliefs and things change as the consensus changes. Social order will always be social and ordered—shared and rule bound. Otherwise, it is chaos, and will accomplish its own decimation, unaware. There is . . .”

Ok, Morton, that’s enough of your bullshit for now. Shut up. I should know batter than to ask you a question about anything. The droning sound your answer makes always pushes me to the edge of sleep. We both know why I’ve chained you naked to the wall down here in my basement. Like I say every day when I come down here to feed you and empty your potty pot, “It’s for your own good.” I am your benefactor. After you ran over my cat in my driveway and showed no remorse, I knew your moral compass pointed nowhere and you needed help, and that’s what I’m doing—helping you. Someday you will be healed and walk out my front door a saved man, a man who sincerely believes what I believe and who is able persuade me they’re not lying and affecting my beliefs just to get out of here. Oh, and you need to do a better job of apologizing for killing Fluffa-Belle. “I’m sorry I killed your cat” will never be enough.

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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Onomatopoeia

Posted on October 1, 2024 | Leave a comment

Onomatopoeia (on-o-mat-o-pee’-a): Using or inventing a word whose sound imitates that which it names (the union of phonetics and semantics).

I zipped up my pants and stepped out from behind the big oak tree. I was shocked to see a choir standing there waiting for me to conduct them. I raised my arms and they started singing. They were singing a song about a bus load of unruly kids: “The Wheels on the Bus” (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e_04ZrNroTo). I was waving my arms around and it seemed to be working. They sounded great. I should have stopped waving my arms when they finished the bus song, but I didn’t, and they started another song. It was Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” (https://m. youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w). The jump from the “Wheels on the Bus” to “War Pigs” was dizzying. It was like “Wheels on the Bus” had been turned inside out and wrapped around a bleeding man.

I bid the choir farewell and ran all the way to the other side of the park, to the lake.

My mother was waiting there for me. It was her 62nd birthday and I had promised to go for a ride with her in one of the swan pedal boats. it was something we had done every year for the past ten years, ever since my father died of a heart attack shooting dice down by the Charles River. He had a set of totally undetectable loaded dice that he had bought in Taipei when he was there on R&R from Vietnam. He had made a fortune with them “rolling the bones” up and down the East Coast. He had some great stories—from the Catholic Priests he shot dice with, to getting into a knife fight with an old man in a wheelchair!

Suddenly, a geyser of water shot up from the middle of our swan boat. There were no life preservers! I threw my mother overboard and told her to swim for shore, all the while yelling “Help!” hoping the boat concession people would help us. I jumped. I landed next to my mother who was standing there. The fake lake was only about three feet deep. We were going to live!

We waded out of the lake and told the swan boat operator we were going to sue him. He told us to shove it, the boat was equipped with flotation devices and never would’ve sunk, and moreover, that the lake was only three feet deep. I walked over to one of the boats and ripped off the swan’s head, and handed it to the proprietor and told him to shove it up his ass. He was totally taken aback and my mother and I headed for the parking lot.

I heard a choir singing a song I’d never heard before. It was about a sunken swan boat. I looked behind me and there was that damn choir I had conducted after I had peed behind the tree. The choir was walking slowly behind us, singing. I turned around and yelled “Stop!” They kept coming toward us. That’s when I realized my mother was gone. Same old story: whenever I needed her she wasn’t there. I hated her. The choir walked through me and kept going. I had become a chimera, or something like that. I felt woozy.

Ah ha! I had entered the cliche-o-sphere again. I had fallen asleep in my comfy first class seat, flying on my way to Istanbul. Whenever I flew, if I fell asleep, I had the choir/swan boat dream. I had had the dream so often that it didn’t really bother me any more. That’s when I realized it was my mother’s birthday. I would call her as soon as we landed at Istanbul Airport.

We landed and I called my mother to wish her a happy birthday. My sister answered the phone and told me our mother was dead. She had been on a date with Ricky Tornado, a hard-drinking, womanizing loser just like our dad was. I took a deep breath and told my sister to take care of things back there, and asked how Mom had died. “She choked on Ricky’s thing. He’s under arrest and might be charged with murder,” my sister said, sobbing.

It was time to go to the steam baths and think about my life.

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.

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Optatio

Posted on September 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

Optatio (op-ta’-ti-o): Expressing a wish, often ardently.

“Please, please, please! God! Let me win the lotto,” Picky Jackson said as he put every penny he had on the counter at Cliff’s and told the clerk Margret to put it all on Mega Millions. A crowd gathered as Margret counted the cash. It took 20 minutes to count it all: $146,000. The crowd cheered when Margret laid down the final dollar and yelled “146,000!” People milled around for awhile, shaking hands with Picky and wishing him luck on his gamble. Picky put his ticket in his wallet, bought a Poland Springs bottled water and went home, as usual, all alone and eating chips and party dip for dinner. He loved the bacon/sour cream dip from Hannaford’s, that, and a couple of PBRs. Picky had gotten his nickname from having had 6 wives—he was “picky” when it came to marriage.

He worked at the town’s major employer—Built Well Box Cutters. He worked in quality control, wandering around the factory randomly checking procedures and products and citing employees that were screwing up in either or both areas. His fellow employees hated his guts. In the 14 years he worked there, two assassination attempts had been made. In one, a whole box cutter had been inserted in his tuna sandwich, on Italian herbs and spices bread, from Subway. The perpetuator was never caught. However, Picky’s fourth wife was suspected of conspiring with one of Picky’s numerous enemies. In the other attempt on his life, somebody filled Picky’s coffee mug with box cutter blades. Picky instantly saw what was going on and saved his own life when he dumped the blades into a trash can,

Picky’s most pronounced characteristic was being superstitious. He went to a fortune teller twice a week and did his best to abide by what he thought she was saying. Her name Madam Starbelt. She was responsible for Picky’s withdrawal of his life savings and their investment in a lotto ticket. She had told him: “Your fortune sleeps. The lotto weeps. Dry its tears with dollars.” Picky figured this one out in a flash. He asked Madam Starbelt if he was right—that he should wake up his fortune and comfort the lotto, and reap his reward. Madam Starbelt would not answer him. so he did what he did.

The next morning he woke up and found out he had won a half-billion dollars. it was like a miracle. Ten years down the road, people are still talking about it. Picky is on his 11th wife and lives in a castle in Scotland. When you think about it, there’s no accounting for his luck. Picky’s decision-making was more or less insane, yet he achieved his goal. Would he still have won if he had done things differently? A lot of wealthy people make up narratives that make their wealth seem to be the result of their brilliance and insight. Are they full of shit?

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.

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Orcos

Posted on September 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Orcos (or’-kos): Swearing that a statement is true.

“I swear I didn’t eat your wedding dress.” Of course I didn’t eat her wedding dress! She didn’t even have a wedding dress. I was trying to make a joke. It could be considered funny if you were really charitable. I was trying to assuage her grief. The man she’d been “engaged” to for seven years had just dumped her. He said she was too old for him. I swear, he is a perfect idiot. I guess, after 7 years she has aged a bit, but they’re both the same age. His new fiancé is seven years younger than him. Perfect symmetry.

I have loved Angie since we were little kids and threw pieces of cat shit at each other in my sand box. Her mother would come and get her and carry her away. My mother didn’t care if I played with cat shit. She spent a lot of time sitting in the window seat drinking hard cider and smoking Luckies. She hated my father and punched him in the stomach every night when he came home from work. He didn’t deserve it. He was always helping his secretary “fix things” in her apartment. It seemed like every couple of days something went wrong and Dad would have to go over to her place after dinner to “fix” it. When Dad went out, Mom would go downstairs and watch Hector the maintenance mad play Sudoku, and sometimes, they would read the Bible together.

I would be left all alone and wrote love letters to Angie to pass the time. I swore that I loved her—that I was telling the truth—I loved her more than my hamster Ed. I loved her more than than Mr. Rogers. As I got older, I told her I loved her more than Jane Russell or “The Benny Hill Show.” I kept saying I loved her and making trite comparisons until I was around twenty-five. I decided to give her all the love letters I had written, and let the chips fall where they may. The “chips” fell into the incinerator in her back yard without even being red. I was about to embark on a new strategy when she got engaged to the Loser King, Reggie Twirly. The years passed and they did not get married—he was like Scrooge, always making excuses centered on his business dealings, like Scrooge did with Belle—putting her off year after year, until things got “better.” Then, Cat came along and knocked Angie out of the running. When Reggie abruptly broke off their engagement, Angie was prepared to kill Reggie. I talked her out of and we made a plan for me to woo Cat away from Reggie and break his heart.

I tried everything, but I failed. Every time I tried to kiss her she would cry, “A thousand times no, I am spoken for by another.” She made feel like Snidely Whiplash, the 19th century cad. So, basically, I gave up on the whole thing. To hell with Cat. To hell with Angie. To hell with everything. I moved to California and started a business as a surrogate love letter writer. I had so much experience, I could whip off a love letter in five minutes. The business was called “Love’s Thunder.” I took the pen name “Cupid’s Arrow.” Business was good. I met a wonderful woman, we got married and we have a baby on the way.

Then, I got an order from Angie. It was for a love letter to me. Somehow, she had my email address from back in the day. It was still functioning! I ignored Angie’s request, gave her a refund, closed the email account and went on with my life, happily married, baby on the way.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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