Eucharistia

Posted on August 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Eucharistia (eu-cha-ris’-ti-a): Giving thanks for a benefit received, sometimes adding one’s inability to repay.

Hi! My name is Bert and I’m a Helen-aholic!

This is my fifth wedding, and it never gets old. I’ve had my ups and downs marriage-wise. Well, come to think of it, they were all downs—especially number four—and I have the scar on my leg to prove it. BLAM! Right in the leg. If she had been a better shot, I wouldn’t be here today and I wouldn’t be married my lovely Helen. I’ll never be able to repay her for all’s done for me, from the money, to the cars, to the intimate details that will go unmentioned.

You all know we met two weeks ago on a cruise ship, on a trip to Cancun. We met at the bar, had six or seven drinks together and I proposed to her. She told me I was moving too fast and she left the bar. Ten minutes later Helen returned to the bar and accepted my proposal. I was elated. It was just what I had hoped for when I booked the trip.

I remember very little of our time in Mexico—mainly tacos and tequila. When we got back to the States, Helen’s limo was waiting for us and we took off for her parents’ summer place in the Catskills. It was about the size of my local WalMart. Helen introduced me to her parents. Her mother hugged me too long and her father jokingly punched me in the stomach and called me a “fortune-hunting prick.” I laughed and punched him back. He took me down in the basement and opened a huge walk-in vault filled with $100 bills. He put on a speedo bathing suit and handed me one told me to put it on. Then, he dove into the vault and started rolling around. He yelled “Look at me I’m rolling in dough smart-ass! Get in here!” I jumped in and we rolled around together for awhile. It felt pretty good.

Helen and I took the family jet back to JFK where the limo picked us up and took us to Helen’s condo in Manhattan. 4,000 square feet. It was so nice I almost cried.

So anyway, thanks for marrying me honey, like I’ve said, I can never repay you—literally. Ha ha! You took a chubby fortune hunter from New Jersey and made him into a king. When do I get my crown? Ha ha!

POSTSCRIPT

Bert and Helen have been married for three years—a record for Bert. They stay drunk most of the time and have no children.

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

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Euche

Posted on August 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

Euche (yoo’-kay): A vow to keep a promise.

“I promise to always love and obey you. I will never let you down. You are a ray of optimism in my otherwise dismal life. I am yours forever. I will never cheat,” I read this to Sarah off my “romance” notecard last night. She bought it. Reading the promise gives it an air of solemnity that enhances its credibility and sweeps my target listener away. I usually break the promise in about a week or sooner. I take her out to dinner and read the “break-up” note after I’ve paid the bill: “I have found now that promises are flimsy bridges built toward an unknowable future, that are bound to collapse under life’s pressure and the sweet temptations that blot them out and erase them from our lives.” Usually, while she’s crying, I give her my napkin to dry her eyes and text my next paramour to set up a date, usually, for the next day.

Sarah didn’t take the break-up speech very well. That is, she wasn’t crying so I couldn’t do the napkin thing, so I started to get up and leave. She yelled “You fu*king piece of shit!” Everybody in the restaurant stopped eating and turned to look. I sat back down and she threw the candle from the table at me. It hit me in the forehead, singed my hair, and splattered my face with hot wax. Then, she sprayed me with pepper spray. I was so shocked and filled with pain that I couldn’t move. Then, she started reciting my romance promise notecard verbatim.

As I listened, it was like my life was passing in front of my eyes. I thought of my mother who was a pathological liar, always telling me how great I was going to be, suckering me into buying her just “one more” bottle of gin. And my father who was a porno star, who told me love was about one thing and one thing only, and it wasn’t love, it was leave. Anyway, I learned to be how I am from the people I loved, but who didn’t love me.

My eyes were burning and tearing. I needed to give some kind of make-up speech on the fly to come out a winner. I said: “Oh Sarah, you’ve taught me the biggest lesson of my life. Now I can see what loser I am. Please accept my apology for breaking the promise I made to you. I promise it will never never happen again.” I smiled and some of the wax cracked off my face.

Sarah sprayed me again with the pepper spray, hit me in the face with her salad plate, and got up to leave. I yelled “Two can play this game.” And threw the remains of my T-bone steak at her. I missed and it hit one of the guys at the next table in the back of the head. He stood up and I thought he has going to beat me to a pulp. Instead, he said, “Come on Sarah, I’ll take you home. You were right about this scum bag.” They hugged for a couple of seconds, and then left the restaurant holding hands.

I was devastated. For once, my ruse hadn’t worked. I needed to change my tactics. Maybe just plain lying would work better.

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

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Eulogia

Posted on August 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Eulogia (eu-lo’-gi-a): Pronouncing a blessing for the goodness in a person.

We were huddled on an iceberg headed down the Hudson River toward New York City. There were four of us: me, Mom, Dad, and my little brother Jolly. It all started when we were watching the river in Troy, New York on a cold March morning. Dad decided he wanted to take a family portrait with the Hudson River in the background. Dad made a snow pile, set his phone camera on timer, stuck the phone in the snow, and we linked our arms together and backed toward the riverbank. We stepped onto a shelf of ice, the camera took our picture, the ice cracked, separated from the shore, and we were on our way to NYC via iceberg.

At first we kept our arms linked and gave thanks we were still alive. Then Mom punched Dad in the nose and called him an asshole. I agreed with Mom, but I wasn’t allowed to say asshole, so I called him a “smelly poop.” Jolly, was true to his name, sitting on the ice and spinning around on his butt yelling “Kudos!” He had just learned that word in the 5th grade and had started saying it frequently for no reason at all.

Dad decided we should all lay down on the iceberg spelling the word “Help.” He was sure that an airliner pilot would see it on his approach to Newark or JFK. Mom had injured herself trying to be the letter “E.” Consequently, she looked more like an “F.” Dad said “HFLP” would have to do until he thought of a four letter synonym for HELP that Mom could handle. My butt was getting cold and wet from laying on the iceberg. I stood up. We were passing the Old Fishermen’s Home in Poughkeepsie. There was an old man in a yellow raincoat waving his arms. He had a piece of coiled rope. I yelled at Dad and he stood up and yelled “Praise the Lord!” and held out his hands. The old man threw the rope and Dad caught it. Dad slid off the iceberg into the river. We watched as the old man pulled him ashore. Mt mother yelled the longest string of obscenities I’d ever heard her summon. I stuck with “smelly poop.” Jolly yelled “Kudos!”

We were giving up hope after one day when we floated under the George Washington Bridge. The banks of the Hudson were lined with people holding signs welcoming us to “The Big Apple.” There were fire boats spraying streams of water all over us and there were fog horns honking. The Coast Guard’s rescue boat smashed into the iceberg breaking it in half. Jolly floated off yelling “Kudos!” The rescue boat picked me and Mom up and then we went after Jolly. He refused to leave the iceberg and the Coast Guard guy had to throw a net over him and haul him into the rescue boat. The first thing Mom said was “Where the hell is my shit-headed husband?” The Coast Guard guy told us that Dad had brokered the George Washington Bridge celebration. For some reason, ESPN had offered him $100,000 for exclusive rights to cover the iceberg rescue.

We were all alive, but Mom was really rally angry. When Dad came running up to us to greet us at the boat slip, Mom tripped him and he fell into the water where he was chopped to pieces by the ESPN camera boat’s propeller. It was sickening to see. Nevertheless, Jolly yelled “Kudos!”

Now, Mom’s under house arrest. She wears an ankle bracelet that will set off an alarm if she tries to go anywhere. She has a picture of Dad with a noose made out of a piece of Dad’s old fisherman rescue rope.

oas ld fisherman rescue rope tied around it as a frame. She swears at it at least once a day.

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

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Eustathia

Posted on August 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Eustathia (yoos-tay’-thi-a): Promising constancy in purpose and affection.

Dear Babe,

Promise me anything. I don’t care if you make it in the heat of the night, or during a thunderstorm, or at the Shooting Moon Casino out on Highway 69. Remember? That’s where we first met—side by side at slot machines, holding our paper cups filled pennies. You told me you liked how I “did” the buttons. When I hit the $20.00 jackpot I stood up, and you did too. You hugged me and tried fish my wallet out of my back pocket. I considered having you arrested for trying to pick my pocket, but you told me you were feeling a little dizzy and put your hand in my back pocket to steady yourself. I didn’t believe you, but I didn’t care. We were two sixty-something gamblers and I figured we were risk takers. After what you’d done, the odds were against us. So, I asked you if you wanted to have a drink in the casino’s Boom Boom Room. You said “Sure baby” and off we went.

We drank vodka martinis and talked about ourselves. I told you how I had spent my life working in a tomato soup canning factory in Indiana, how my pension was pretty good, and my Social Security was really good. I told you how my wife had died when she had hit a tree bobsledding in Montana one year ago, tomorrow. I told you everything. You told me how you had run away from home when you were fourteen, got hooked up with a bad boyfriend, stole cars, worked as a hooker and sold Mary Kay Cosmetics, earned a pink Cadillac and retired two weeks ago. You were going on a cruise next week to Cancun with your 30 year-old daughter Scarletta. You told me she was born out of wedlock to you and a migrant apple picker in Washington State.

We were pretty drunk and I invited you to my room. You said “Yes baby” and off we went. We were both too old to have sex—I’d given out five years before. It was embarrassing, but I survived. I tried every supplement in the universe to get it going again—from powdered goat testicles to ground gorilla armpit ointment. Nothing worked. That was it. So, we told dirty jokes nearly all night long. You were like a dirty joke machine—l lagged way behind you, mostly with knock knock jokes.

Then, out of nowhere, you told me you had fallen in love with me when I didn’t have you arrested. I was shocked and skeptical. I made you promise to love me “until death do we part.” you did. You cried and said this was the best thing that ever happened to you in your dismal unlucky life. I made the same promise to you. Now I’m sitting in the motel room in my underpants. Everything is gone: my cellphone, my wallet & my credit cards, my clothes, my watch, and my car. But I’m not as big a sucker as you think I am.

It’s 10:30 now, so the car should’ve blown up 25 minutes ago. I could’ve easily defused the bomb, but you left the motel before I had a chance. Ha! Ha! Even though I’m 99% sure you’re dead, I’m writing this letter to ease my conscience. I’m going to book a ticket on the Cancun cruise. I doubt Scarletta will spend any time mourning you. We’ll meet, and if she’s anything like you, I’ll be giving the gorilla armpit ointment another try.

I’ll “love” you forever.

Just kidding,

Norm

POSTSCRIPT

Norm was all set. The car he had blown up was stolen, so it could not be traced back to him. His friend Rollo had hacked into the cruise line’s manifests and found Scarletta’s itinerary. She was leaving for Cancun in two months. So, Norm booked onto the same cruise—on “The Octopus.”

As Norm boarded the Octopus, he was checking the photo of Scarletta that Rollo had taken from her Facebook page. Then, he saw her! She was pushing a woman in a wheelchair whose head was bandaged. Norm struck up a conversation. He introduced himself as Waylon, and asked who the woman in the wheelchair was. “My mother,” Scarletta said. “She was injured in a car explosion. She lost her vision and hearing.” Norm felt like God was watching over him as they headed to the bar, and along the way, dropped Babe off at the ship’s day care center.

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

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Eutrepismus

Posted on August 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

Eutrepismus (eu-tre-pis’-mus): Numbering and ordering the parts under consideration. A figure of division, and of ordering.

A one, and a two, and a three. I have become convinced that dividing things by threes follows some kind of divine mandate. What can you add to father, son, and Holy Ghost? Do the Macarena? Ha ha ha. What about pot roast? Or, buttered toast. Or, fence post? Ha ha ha! All we have here is raw blasphemy, like the kind you get in pool halls, saloons and automobile repair shops—all home to cursing devil-doers making their places in hell with their filthy mouths.

But that’s beside the point. I have come to see the triune nature of my activities, and their triplification’s consistency with the divine plan—the cosmic urge for three. If I can’t do it in three steps, I won’t do it. Paying careful attention to the rule of three, I have flourished in accord with the universal trifecta—betting my life on it triplicated ways.

So, when I walk I take three steps, stop, and then start again. When I eat: 1. I pick up my fork, 2. I stab my food, 3. I shove it in mouth. I wait 3 seconds. Then, 1. I chew it, 2. I swallow it, and 3. I digest it. I can feel myself tuning to the great beyond after dinner as 1. I sit in my chair, 2. I hit the remote, and 3. I watch TV. I could list hundreds of examples of my spiritually cleansing threesomes. I feel like a Holy Lawrence Welk.

But now, I have a three-problem. My wife and I have three children. It, of course, is an intergalactic part of us living three—three children, just right. After number three, I got a vasectomy. I always wanted two more wives to round things out, but my wife Jezebel totally refuses unless she has three husbands. Anyway, by some magic trick Jezebel has become pregnant. I’d like to kill her but I’m having trouble breaking a murder down into three steps. So, that leaves the question: What do we do with a fourth child? 1. Go through with the pregnancy, 2. Have the baby, 3. Leave it somewhere? Then it dawned me!

The baby will not be mine! It is the result of Jezebel’s infidelity! The third step will be giving the baby to its father! I asked Jezebel to tell me who the baby’s father is. Finally, she told me she wasn’t sure. She said it could be one of 10-12 men she’d been seeing. “That’s fu*king amazing!” I said. I told her I wouldn’t kill her if we could have two more kids, so we’d have the right number, and I would treat the little bastard as my own. We scheduled my vasectomy reversal and then, after the little bastard was born, we went to work on number five.

The little bastard looks a lot like my errant brother Mick. He’s 1. rich, 2. famous, and 3. an asshole. He has finally agreed to a DNA test. As soon as I prove the little bastard is his, I will blackmail him so his wife and everybody else do not find out the little bastard belongs to him. I’m currently working on a three-step blackmail process.

A one, and a two, and a three, Mick will belong to me!

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

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Exergasia

Posted on August 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Exergasia (ex-er-ga’-si-a): Repetition of the same idea, changing either its words, its delivery, or the general treatment it is given. A method for amplification, variation, and explanation. As such, exergasia compares to the progymnasmata exercises (rudimentary exercises intended to prepare students of rhetoric for the creation and performance of complete practice orations).

Sometimes I wonder about things. There are so many thing to wonder about, I wonder about a new thing every time. Yesterday, I wondered why I have hands. That was easy! I think “getting a grip” is the most important reason why I have hands. I wish I knew how to use them better. My father keeps telling me “You better get a grip pretty soon or you’ll end up in the shitter with all the other losers.” He keeps pointing out how I am 32 years old and I still live at home, my mother makes my bed and does my laundry, and I play the “Grand Theft Auto” video game that I got when I was in high school. I pointed out to him that I have a lucrative job at Speedy Lube and I buy my own clothes. But, most important I showed him my grip. I put my hand on his throat and started to squeeze. He started choking. I said, “See dad! I have a grip!” He started gurgling and flopping around like a fish, so I let him go. He yelled “I should call 911! The police would throw the book at you!” He yelled as he ran out of the room and started rummaging in his desk for his letter opener to defend himself with. I said, “Don’t worry, I know we have a grip and I’ll never show it to you again.” Pointing the letter opener at me, he said “Ok son, but we’re going have to put you in your ‘play cage’ down in the basement for awhile—maybe overnight.” I was used to this and even looked forward to it because when I was in the cage Mom made my favorite pumpkin pie and slid through the feeding hole when the pie was still warm.

They let me out this morning after two days. I needed to take a shower and change my pajamas. I wanted to wear my PJ Specials: Moon Walker Mike’s Lunar Landers. They were getting a bit frayed from all the years of wear, but you could still see the “Official Lunar Lander Deputy” badge printed on the chest. Although it was rare, today I wanted to think some more about getting a grip. I realized after a night in the cage that strangling my father wasn’t the best way to show I’ve got a grip. First, I crumpled up a piece of paper into ball. Then, I squeezed the boil on my butt that had been plaguing me for a month. I took a selfie for proof. Then, I set my phone on video and aimed it at the yard from a tree. I got on my wheelie bike, gripped the handlebars, and did a wheelie across the lawn. It was like the good old days when I once did a wheelie all the way to school—two blocks!

Grip. Grip. Grip. I had it! I proved it!

Now, Dad would not doubt that I had a grip. I was elated. No denying it now, and I didn’t hurt anybody showing it. But Dad wasn’t happy. Dad said, “Son, you don’t understand what ‘getting a grip’ means. It isn’t literal, it is a figure of speech.” I had heard of figures of speech when I was younger and Dad was an English teacher at Muffet Middle School, before the “incident.” Right then and there I decided to stop wondering about “get a grip” and start wondering why Dad was fired from Muffet and now runs a 12-man, 1 woman squeegee crew by the entrance to the Holland Tunnel in New York City. I wondered, and wondered, and wondered to no avail. All I could think was “Wow. He must’ve done something really bad!” So, I asked him.

He looked at me like a cornered rat and yelled “I was framed!” “Oh, did they take your picture and hang it somewhere?” I asked. “Eventually” he said, “But it never got to the point of being hung up.” From the look on Dad’s face, I decided to let it drop and wonder about something else.

Then, I thought abut the angels. It was high time I wondered how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. I had first been asked this question when I was an Altar Boy at St. Polyps Catholic Church. Father Joe had posed the question when we were passing the bottle of sacramental wine back and forth in preparation for Sunday services. We toasted Jesus several times, and then, he me asked the question. I burped and both we laughed.

So, the time had come to to deal with the angels. I laid down on my bed, put my hands behind my head, and started to wonder.

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

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Exouthenismos

Posted on August 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

Exouthenismos (ex-ou-then-is’-mos): An expression of contempt.

Dear Lina:

Your hair looked like a bird’s nest that fell out of a tree. But then I looked more closely. It was a bird’s nest. It had three blue eggs in it. Suddenly, a mother Robin flew in the window and settled in the nest. You told me you fell asleep on the glider on the front porch and when you woke up there was a nest woven into your hair with three eggs. Moments later, the mother Robin looked at me and and cocked head..

I asked what you were going to do. You told me your dad was going to get the nest out of your hair and throw it in the garbage where it belonged. I snapped. I called you terrible names—baby killer, murderer, monster. The little blue eggs were all innocent, and you and your dad were going to smash them just to get them off your head. It was disgusting.

My rage made you cry, but you made it clear to me that your dad lays down the “law” in your family. You said he calls himself “Moses” when he looks in the mirror and has a pile of dirt in your backyard that he calls Mt. Sinai. You cried and cried. Then, to show my love, we agreed that I would take the nest and wear it on my head until the baby birds hatched and flew away.

This was easier said than done. We went inside, and with much effort, we cut the nest out of your hair, and I apologize again for the gash across your forehead. Then, we glued the nest to the bottom of a plastic mixing bowl that fit my head perfectly. We punched 2 holes along the edges of the bowl and strung the laces from my trainers through the holes for a chin strap. I promised I would only take off the nest to shower and to sleep. I’ve kept my promise.

I went Wal-Mart wearing the nest with the mother Robin in it and everybody stared, and some people pointed and took pictures. The next thing I knew, I went viral on social media. They called me “Mr. Nest Hat.” My picture had 1,000,000 hits on the Audubon Society website. Somehow, they found out my name and address. I am being asked to endorse bird products: bird feeder seed, hummingbird feeders and food, bluebird boxes, cuttle bones, birdbaths, and badminton birdies. I’m pretty sure I’ll make at least $1,000,000.

Well, the eggs have hatched and the babies are getting more and more unruly. When I take the nest off my head I have to put a bushel basket over it. So their mother can feed them, I’ve built a platform in the maple tree where I sit wearing the nest most of the day. The mother sits on the branch above us, watching over us. She has tried to feed me several times. I pretend to take the worm, but I drop in in my shirt pocket and she’s none the wiser.

So, I was wondering: since the babies will soon fly away, will you marry me? I will be rich, so you can’t go wrong! I kept my promise. Now, it’s your turn.

Love and tweeties,

Ted

POSTSCRIPT

Ted and Lina got married and live in a trailer park on the outskirts of town. Ted continues to wait for his wealth to materialize. Lina works as a server at the Golden Chicken, a saloon catering to bikers. She hates Ted and is going to file for divorce as soon as she saves enough money. One of the baby robins was eaten by Ted’s cat Patter Paws. The other two grew to maturity. One flew into its reflection in a window and died at the age of 2. The remaining Robin sibling was mistaken for a dove and shot dead by a hunter in Texas at the age of 4. The mother Robin is still going strong, living comfortably in North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains.

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

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Expeditio

Posted on August 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

Expeditio (ex-pe-di’-ti-o): After enumerating all possibilities by which something could have occurred, the speaker eliminates all but one (=apophasis). Although the Ad Herennium author lists expeditio as a figure, it is more properly considered a method of argument [and pattern of organization] (sometimes known as the “Method of Residues” when employed in refutation), and “Elimination Order” when employed to organize a speech. [The reference to ‘method’ hearkens back to the Ramist connection between organizational patterns of discourses and organizational pattern of arguments]).

Our family of six packed in a Ford station wagon, along with the family dog—a one-eyed beagle named Spot. It’s 1957 and we’re doing 70 in a 45 mph zone on Rte.1 going over the bridge to Maine from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We had just stopped at the New Hampshire State Liquor Store a few miles back so my dad could stock up on tax-free booze for our vacation in Maine. We had left NJ at 4:00am in a huge thunderstorm. The car had been struck by lightening. Nobody was killed, but it made our hair stand on end. My mother and sisters really looked crazy and I was worried that their hair would never flatten out again. But, being from New Jersey, my mom said they’d just say they were “experimenting” with different teasing techniques, and to “back the F off.” My mother had given me and my dad flat tops right before we left. Now, we didn’t have to the Butch Wax them to keep our hair sticking up straight. I saw that as a benefit of almost being electrocuted.

We stopped at LL Bean’s in Freeport. My two sisters and mother got slippers with pine trees, bears and lobsters printed on them. My father got a pair of red socks that said “AY-YUH” on them. Ah-Yuh is the Maine sate motto. My brother got a stuffed lobster children’s toy. He immediately named it “Leviticus Lobster” after his favorite book of the Old Testament. I weaseled my father into getting me a combination compass, whistle, and match stick holder that you could use if you got lost in the woods. I noticed the match stick holder was perfect for hiding cigarettes. So, I had to have it. We got Spot a bag of deer-flavored doggie treats.

We were getting close to our destination—crossing the rickety old Bath Bridge and turning off at the Wiscasset exit. we were headed to East Boothbay where my family had settled in the 1690s. It was low tide when we got to the “bridge” out of Wiscasset over the Damarscota River. At high tide, the water would wash over the bridge.

Then it happened. The sort of pleasant smell of the clam flats turned into an eye-watering nose-burning stench. Somebody had farted. My father turned around and yelled, “What the hell are you four doing back there?” We rolled down car windows, but the stench lingered. We pulled over and got out of car at Nola’s Clam Shack. We all denied farting. My father lined us up and went down the line trying to determine whether we were telling truth. He was one of those people who couldn’t let a mystery go unsolved. He had a Bible in his hand and we had to swear on it that we didn’t fart. We all swore—that eliminated us. Then, we started walking toward my mother. She looked at him coldly, but she swore on the Bible too. Then, she held the Bible while father swore on it. That eliminated everybody. Then we heard a bark from the back of the station wagon. We ran over to the car and we could see the torn open and empty bag of “Deer-Flavored Treats” on the floor of Spot’s carrier. He was able to rake the treat bag though the bars of his carrier with his paw. Spot looked bloated. When my dad opened the station wagon’s back hatch, a stench rolled out and almost knocked us down. Spot was the mystery farter! We tied Spot to a tree and stayed at the clam shack until it closed at 10:00. We were hoping Spot would be “farted out” by then. But that wasn’t enough for my dad. He tied Spot’s carrier to the station wagon’s rooftop carrier and shoved Spot in. Spot started howling from the roof of the station wagon like a police car siren as we headed down Route 96. He was heralding our annual return to the home land. We all started howling as we pulled into the summer cottage’s driveway.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text by Gorgias.

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Exuscitatio

Posted on August 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

Exuscitatio (ex-us-ci-ta’-ti-o): Stirring others by one’s own vehement feeling (sometimes by means of a rhetorical question, and often for the sake of exciting anger).

How many of you have had your life fall apart because of something you accidentally did? Where you were blamed by cruel and unforgiving sticklers of being fully responsible for something totally out of your control? Where they took pleasure in seeing you suffer for being an innocent bystander, or the unwitting victim of somebody else’s wrongdoing?

All my life I have been a catastrophe magnet. I was on vacation with my wife in Russia when Chernobyl happened. We were on a tour of the facility when sirens started going off and we were herded into a bunker. I am American so I was immediately suspected of sabotage. My wife is Belarusian so they left her alone. I was interrogated for weeks, until President Reagan called Russian President Gorbachev and told him to “tear down that reactor and let my people go.” The phone call worked and my wife and I took a bus to Berlin, and a train to Amsterdam, and then a plane back to New York, where we were greeted by ex-patriot Russian criminals who took us to Cony Island for a celebration. They designated me a “Hero of the People” and pinned a medal onto my t-shirt. My t-shirt was emblazoned with a self-portrait of Van Gogh with a bandage over his severed ear. I had purchased it at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam when we were passing through on our way beck to the US.

We were getting up to leave and go back to New Jersey when a huge fight broke out between two rival gangs—the “Borscht Brothers” and the “Blini Boys.” They had been involved in a turf war for hundreds of years—no matter where they were located they battled over territory. In Russia, it went back hundreds of years to salt mines, now located in Ukraine. Currently, the warring was over a “used” car lot on the Brooklyn/Queens border that had been wrested from the Mafia five years ago. Originally, they fought as brothers against the Mafia, and later, were brothers, until the growing sophistication of anti-theft devices and car alarms put a big dent in their inventory and the two groups divided to fight it out over the dwindling stock of stolen cars.

Imprudently, the fight included gunfire, a viscous food fight, and matryoshkaa doll bombs hurled at each other by the two battling factions. Vodka was poured on the celebration tent and set afire. It was total chaos. My wife and I ran for it. I was a little overweight, so she ran far ahead of me and waved as she boarded a bus. The police were summoned and hundreds of people were arrested. Among them was me. A policeman asked me what the medal on my t-shirt was for. I said “I’m a hero of the people for my bravery at Chernobyl—the nuclear reactor that melted down in Russia.” The policeman said “You’re under arrest. Put your hands behind you Commie saboteur.” After three days of questioning by the NYC police and the FBI, I was not charged with anything and released. I could cite hundreds of additional examples of unjust and unfair treatment I’ve endured.

My therapist has told me I should have my eyebrows lifted. Historically, being “low browed” has been taken as a sign of criminality. My therapist has low brows too, so I am suspicious of the truthfulness of what he’s been telling me. So, as a last ditch effort, I had my Tarot Card Life Reading done by Ruby Baby CGFT (Certified Gypsy Fortune Teller) who had read my sister’s cards and advised her to “Just close your eyes and jump in.” My sister jumped into an empty swimming pool at the park and got a concussion that she claims has made her think more clearly than she has in her whole life.

Ruby Baby’s summary interpretation of my cards was: “You are unlucky. Don’t talk to anybody. Stay home. Live in the basement.” Here I am: My wife does all the shopping. We eat on folding chairs by the furnace. I collect Social Security, compose techno music with Garage Band on my laptop, and peer out of one of the reflective film-covered basement windows, watching the seasons change and being grateful for Ruby Baby’s advice.

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

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Gnome

Posted on August 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

Gnome (nome or no’-mee): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegm, maxim, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

My father taped pithy sayings all over my bedroom ceiling and walls. He thought they would “infuse” me with wisdom and help me grow up and be somebody. They glowed in the dark, so they never went away. I would try to sleep with a pillow over my head to block them out, but I nearly suffocated. I would briefly wake up at night and see in the greenish glow: “Broken crayons still color.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I would try to get back to sleep, but I couldn’t until I could figure out what Ralph was trying to tell me. If we had computers back then, I would’ve just Googled it’s meaning. I moved my pillows around and focused my attention on it, although the other glowing sayings were calling out to me. First, I had never seen a broken crayon. Mine all wore down to nubs, and then, I threw them away. Nevertheless, I could see how you could use a broken crayon, and you would even have more crayons at the same time! Two, I got the idea that Ralph was trying to tell me to use broken things. Like if you break your toy fire truck, you can use it as a doorstop, or maybe, as a paperweight. This was kind of like saying on the ceiling: “Waste not want not.” I found this comparison interesting and wrote my thoughts down in my bedside notebook. Last: I thought “Why did Ralph use crayons to make his point?” I figured that out almost instantly: he probably wrote this for his children, who would be more “connected” to crayons than their elders, making the saying that much more salient and effective.

Voila! I had cracked it: there is no hidden meaning. Ralph is telling his children, and all children to stop whining for new crayons when the old ones break. When the children take the saying to heart, it will save him, and all fathers around the world, money. What a clever man!

Unlike my father.

When my hair started falling out and my gums started bleeding he took me to the Doctor who told us the glowing posters were highly radioactive and had been banned 2 years ago for safety reasons. I was suffering from a mild case of radiation poisoning from sleeping in a room full of radioactive posters. I took potassium iodide twice a day for the next year.

My father thought he was being really smart when he pulled the posters out of a random trashcan on his way to work, and then, plastered my bedroom with them to influence me. But as Melinda Gates said: “We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.” If I had lead pajamas, the light shining on me would have been harmless, and all of my physical problems would’ve been averted. In the future, after I recovered, I would say that my father almost killed me with wisdom. It was true. All he would say was “No pain, no gain, dipshit” and I would lunge at him and we’d wrestle on the floor until my mother broke us up with a wet mop. Quoting Edgar Allen Poe, she would yell “Nevermore!” We never went anywhere, but at least we stopped wrestling for awhile.

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. A Kindle edition is also available for $5.99.

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Graecismus

Posted on August 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Graecismus (gree-kis’-mus): Using Greek words, examples, or grammatical structures. Sometimes considered an affectation of erudition.

When Aristotle caught an arrow in his teeth, Homer kýlise ston táfo tou as (tolled over in his grave) as if he was a Greek loukániko (hot dog) grilling on a skewer. “Oh we Greeks” my mother always said. She was Greek and had performed with the troupe paparoúnes kai kalamária (“Poppies and Squid”). She was one of the “poppies.” They travelled around post-WW II Europe performing their act in the Skoúro Tsírko Krasioú (Wine-Dark Circus), a Geek enterprise formed to “heal the wounds of war-time folly.”

As a “Poppy” my mother did the chorós opíou (opium dance). A giant hookah would be set in center stage with the poppies circled around it, each holding a smoking tube. Hercules would be lowered on a rope over the hookah holding a flaming Zippo lighter. He would say in broken English, “Who wants to get high?” All the Poppies would giggle and wiggle around saying, “Me! Me!” However, my mother’s role was to object: “No! This is not the way to deal with our pain. We must stand up straight and rebuild, sober and clear-eyed.” At that moment, it would start raining actual squid. Writhing and slimy they would extinguish Hercules’ Zippo. Then, the squid actors would come on the stage and shake hands with Hercules. Next, the whole cast would sing “Que Sera, Sera” in the language of whatever country they were performing in.

People cried and embraced. It is said that when Prime Minister Churchill saw the performance he thought of the basic outline for “a History of the English-Speaking People,” which won a Nobel Prize for Literature. He said the idea came to him when the lead Poppy (my mother) admonished the willing opium smokers. It reminded him of the Opium Wars and the easy defeat of the Chinese maniacs, who were subsequently oppressed by the English, and later, by the French too. Colonial conquest and ruthless exploitation went hand in hand with the English language. It has many words for denigration that are celebrated in English books, poetry, and song.

My mother lost her job when the troupe began to have difficulties obtaining live squid, whose raining-down sliminess was key to the denouement of the troupe’s performance. Fried calamari had caught on across Europe and was served everywhere as a side dish—in Amsterdam they served it in paper cones with mayonnaise, in France it was served in rubber berets with dijon mustard. It was everywhere.

The troupe broke up and everybody went their own way. My mother hooked up with an American G.I. named Salvatore. She hid in his duffel bag and sailed with him on the troop ship back to the USA. He would let her out of the duffel bag at night and they would sleep together in his hammock. They got married after he bought a license in New York after disembarking, and he lugged her to a church, where they got a priest up in the middle of the night to marry them. When my father dumped my mother on the altar, the priest started crying and he and my mother started speaking in Greek. They had grown up together in a little village in Greece. My father told the priest to “Shut up and perform the marriage!” So, they were married. They got a street sweeper to witness the marriage. He asked for a dollar afterwards and my father punched and called him a “stinking leech.”

My dad already had a job. He worked in the US branch of an olive oil import/export business, a family enterprise located in Sicily. As a tribute to our luck, my mother cooked calamari on Sundays. I knew his future in the family business was dim when my brother Fredo would never eat calamari. He would demand a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or Colonel Sanders fried chicken instead. My father would glare at him.

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. A Kindle edition is also available for $5.99.

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Hendiadys

Posted on August 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

Hendiadys (hen-di’-a-dis): Expressing a single idea by two nouns [joined by a conjunction] instead of a noun and its qualifier. A method of amplification that adds force.

Fish and chips. Love and marriage. Spaghetti and meatballs. Shoes and socks. Fire and ice. Oil and water. Salt and pepper. Bacon and eggs. Hope and fear. The list of nouns connected by conjunctions stretches around the world. Here and there and everywhere, over and under.

I am a graduate student at Rugbert University in South Jersey. Rugbert was founded at the end of the American Revolution as a place to warehouse General Rowan Pulaski’s war booty. Pulaski was a Polish mercenary who headed a company of other mercenaries known as the “Weather Group.” They were responsible for the “Fall of Secaucus,” in what was known as the “Battle of Pig Run.” Thousands of pigs were liberated, compromising the Loyalists’ food supply and resulting in the near-starvation of the entire population. The rhyme “This little piggy” was composed as a protest to the pigs’ incursion and destruction of the food supply. It author, Wilfred Ginger, was nearly hanged, but he devised a game to play with his little daughter, squeezing her toes while he recited the poem. This deflected interest from the politics of the poem and it became all the rage in affected communities.

Today, Rugbert is flourishing. Some people compare it to Rutgers, but there’s no comparison. Pulaski’s war booty is sill in the university’s possession and it’s value has grown to 1,345 billion dollars, making the endowment the world’s largest. Last year, the trustees considered buying Puerto Rico as a faculty vacation resort and as a “field lab” for its environmental degradation program. The purchase was called off at the last minute when they found out Puerto Rico is an island and can’t be driven to in university vans. The decision is the result of the “if you can’t drive there, you can’t go there” policy instituted on the recommendation of the Middle Fingers accrediting body after its most recent review of Rugbert.

I am working on my dissertation in the field of the anthropology of math and linguistics. As you’ve probably guessed, I have an interest in nouns connected by conjunctions—specifically, the conjunction “and.” My dissertation title is “AI, Oi Vey, and Ee I ee I oh: The Strange Case of X and X.” My dissertation committee does not like my idea. Professor Crumbutt, my major advisor, actually called me stupid. Since I am a Pulaski legacy, I am allowed—even expected—to be stupid. So, I’ve been sitting in my dorm room for the past two years thinking up phrases made up of two nouns conjoined by the conjunction “and.” At this point, I’ve amassed 340,000. So far, I’ve noticed that many food dishes consist of “conjuncto-combonios” indicating something possibly important to my study, but I need to think about it some more—possibly over winter break when I’ll be staying at the manor house in Princeton with my family and dog Luther and feasting on family recipes—like pineapple and pheasant on a shovel, or deep-fried bunny and cheese sticks.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

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Heterogenium

Posted on August 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Heterogenium (he’-ter-o-gen-i-um): Avoiding an issue by changing the subject to something different. Sometimes considered a vice.

The police officer asked me if I knew how fast I was driving through the School Zone I had just passed through. I told him “If I studied hard, I could probably learn.” I though I was really funny. The cop didn’t. He said, “Ok wise guy, out of the car.” I got out of the car and stood there waiting to be shot or beaten up. The cop asked me: “Are you taking drugs?” I answered, “Sure, what are you giving?” The cop put his hand on his gun. “Get in the police car,” he said in a very angry voice. I said, “Ok, do you want me to drive?” He pulled out his gun and pointed it at me: “Get in the fu*king car shithead.” I promptly got into the car. Sitting in the back seat behind the wire mesh, I said “Your police car smells real good, like my mother’s perfume.” He yelled “shut up!”and turned on sire ..

Getting back to what had started my trip to jail: I did know how fast I had been driving in the School Zone. I had been crawling along at 15MPH—the speed limit. So what’s going on here? I am a “Goader.” I drive people in authority over the edge. I employ the strategy of being “passively annoying” focusing on the relational dimension of communication (verbal and nonverbal) with those people in authority who invite goading. I guess you could say, I’m disrespectful of authority. That’s why I became an anarchist.

It all started with Bob Dylan and “The Times They Are a Changing.” The world was turning upside down. I was experimenting with Lucky Strikes and nudy-nudy magazines. I found them perfectly acceptable, although people in authority told me they would ruin my life—make me into a coughing sex fiend. I thought to myself, “So what? What’s wrong with that?” When my mother found my magazines, she rolled one up and beat me with it. I pretended I enjoyed it and she beat me even harder. I had goaded her. I found that power and control are a two-way street. The tables can turned by acting like you don’t care—that you are unaffected, that your response may be irrelevant, like laughing at being spanked,.

Once, when my boss asked me “When are you going to get off your ass and do something?” It was probably a rhetorical question—he wasn’t expecting a response. This is fertile ground for a goad! I answered: “I stand for lunch. Your treat?” He tried fire me, but he couldn’t because I had photos him and Ms. Strabo in the basement, and they weren’t taking inventory, unless you do it naked laying down. The boss’s wife would surely maim him if she found out. Anyway, my response sent the boss to flip-out-ville. He was about to throw a stapler at me and I yelled: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” He knew exactly what I meant and dropped stapler.

I’ve started running workshops for powerless people. The workshops are titled “Golden Goads.” I’ve been quite successful teaching my students how to briefly turn hierarchies on their heads. No matter how brief they last, they let their overseers know that hey are vulnerable—that power is granted, not achieved.

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

An edition of the Daily Trope is available on Amazon under title The Book of Tropes.

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Homoeopropophoron

Posted on August 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Homoeopropophoron: Alliteration taken to an extreme where nearly every word in a sentence begins with the same consonant. Sometimes, simply a synonym for alliteration or paroemion [a stylistic vice].

NOTE: I have translated all text to English from Babylonian and French. I take full responsibility for any errors.

“Suffering succotash!” was coined by Sylvester Cat in 1951. Nobody knew what it meant, but he was allowed to say it by the cartoon company where he worked because he was a major star. Nobody could touch him. “Suffering succotash” is an alliteration—where the first consonants of adjacent words are the same. It has its roots in ancient Greece, and other ancient cultures, like Babylon, in Hammurabi’s Code: “6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen stuff from him shall be put to death.” I’ve highlighted “stolen stuff” because it is an alliteration. But, far out on the frontiers of alliteration is a more radical consonant-clanking concoction: homoeopropophoron.

In homoeopropophoron: almost every word in a sentence starts with the same consonant. My great great grandfather, the revered 18th century French philosopher, Marco Poulet used it to great effect in his “Memoir of a Macho Man.” In it, he recounts his life of debauchery until he met love of his life, a palomino named Monsieur Eduardo; a show pony of Spanish origin that he met in Italy at the annual Palio di Siena. Poulet was wandering around Sienna, checking out the competing neighborhoods and looking for a horse and jockey to bet on. As he entered the Caterpillar Neighborhood he saw a giant caterpillar which made him nervous. He didn’t know why. But, as he rounded a corner he heard a voice with a Spanish accent to say: “Cable coded clumps of coddled cod create clanking chords of conscience—Buy me! Purchase me! Make a bid!” It was the horse, of course, Monsieur Eduardo who was begging to be bought.

Poulet was stunned and, of course, immediately purchased the horse. They stayed in a very expensive hotel in Florence for one week before heading for Paris. Poulet had found his muse and could not help but speak, think and write in homoeopropophoron. His influential treatise “Cranial Constipation Closes Colonial Cabanas” liberated generations of Frenchmen and women from ethnocentric thinking and paved the way for the French Revolution, which initially excluded horses. That changed when they stampeded the Bastille and fell in a hail of spears and arrows. Eduardo, who led the charge, was the first to fall, calling out to Poulet as he lay dying: “Tentacles of time thoughtlessly trace transforming territories, transilluminating trouble’s tomb.”

Poulet remained heartbroken for 25 years, taking the blame for Eduardo’s death and falling deeper into homoeopropophoron. In the 25th year of his grief, he broke its spell with his most important work that would become the benchmark of excellence for all subsequent works of French philosophy. It’s title “Cloaked Closet Canary Cabal” rings out like the bells of Notre Dame to all patriotic French people. It was quoted over and over again by the best of French philosophers, and others around the world. The French philosopher Jean Jaques Rousseau wrote in the introduction to his “Confessions”: “Augustine aggregated angelic avenues aglitter with apples, but alas he was acerbic. I Rousseau radiate rectitude, rashly ranging rabbitlike; remiss, ridiculous, and rebellious.”

Poulet died peacefully in a blue brocaded armchair he had placed at the top of the Champs-Élysées, on the Place de l’Étoile, underneath the Arc de triomphe. He languished for weeks, attended only by his adoring nurse whom he had affectionately nicknamed Eduardo, who would read to him day and night, rain or shine. He loved Ovid’s works and the novel “Bélisaire.” When he died, the city of Paris erected a banner across the Arc de triomphe in his honor: “Truth is a Tyrannical Treadmill Tactfully Telling Tales.” After his death, Poulet’s nurse worked tirelessly in support of the establishment of “Joan of Arc Park” down the street from the Tuileries.

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

Excerpts from the Daily Trope are available on Kindle under the title The Book of Tropes.

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Homoiopoton

Posted on August 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

Homoioptoton (ho-mee-op-to’-ton): The repetition of similar case endings in adjacent words or in words in parallel position.

Note: Since this figure only works with inflected languages, it has often been conflated with homoioteleuton and (at least in English) has sometimes become equivalent to simple rhyme: “To no avail, I ate a snail.”

I was having hopes where I was a superhero. Not just any superhero fighting villains or saving the world. No! I was Reduplicative Man. I knew the way to San Jose. I was wise for my size. I can do tricks with sticks. It’s not nice to have lice—to have a crotch cricket in your thicket.

Eventually, I was commissioned as Reduplicator Man. My mentor’s name was Strapsky. He had taught hundreds of Reduplicators since his induction and early career partnering with Hetch to help people get their lives back on track. They roamed the cosmos in their red and white Black Hole Cabriolet until they crashed in San Fransisco, Earth. Hetch was seriously injured and had to be star-lifted home. Strapsky stayed behind and obtained a red and white Corvette that he was going to drive across the USA on Route 66–back to Chicago. But he needed a partner. I was summoned, and we met in a bar in North Beach and knew immediately that we were meant to be.

Meant to be what?

I was a novice, and Strapsky filled me in: When people think straight thoughts, they get stuck in rationality’s dead end. They “therefore” their lives away. They use “seeing” as a metaphor for thinking. They think with their eyes, as in, “I see your point of view.” we Reduplicators teach people to think with their ears. The struggle to rhyme adjacent words enables lines of thought to emerge that would otherwise go unknown. As rhyming alternatives to linear ways of thinking emerge, people may be liberated from conclusions that are dysfunctional. Once liberated, they are free to cascade—to free-fall into universes of meaning and revel in the options they poetically invite. When they make negative or horrendous rhymes, they realize they made them, and accordingly, can unmake them.

Strapsky’s greatest success was Lao Tzu who found enlightenment in his ear. He never wrote down his rhymes. Instead, he recorded what they yielded. For example: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” He told Strapsky it was in his ear as “My knee makes me free.” He massaged his rhyme and came up with his wise saying.

The first stop on our trip was Los Angeles where we knew there were a lot of disturbed people aching for us to give it to them in the ear. We put an ad in the personals section of the LA Times: “Need help? Give us a yelp.” We included our motel’s phone number in the ad. We quickly found out the ad was too vague: we got hundreds phone calls seeking help for everything from obtaining a fake I.D., to a problem with chronic constipation. We held a “Rhymorama” together in our room and came up with: “Broken love? We are your dove.”

The next morning we got one response. It was a women who was frantic. Her husband was a professional blackmailer. He had most recently blackmailed Tommy Lasorda, who was the Manger of the L.A Dodgers at the time. Her husband Gill had obtained a photo of Mr. Lasorda wearing a Yankees hat. She was disgusted, but couldn’t get it, or her husband, out of her mind. We took her phone number and began a “Rhymarama” out by the motel swimming pool. We went around and around for at least an hour, drinking gin and tonics and smoking Cuban cigars—Cohibas. Then, we heard it. Neither of us could take complete credit, but there it was: “Turn him pink whenever you think.” We called her immediately. We put it in her ear and she started laughing. We decided that laughing was better than crying, so our job was done.

Similar things happened 100s of times as we made our way to Chicago. When we got to Chicago Strapsky was summoned back home. He left me with the Corvette, a Bank of America credit card, and a load of fond memories.

  • A Kindle version of the Daily Tope is available on Amazon under the title The Book of Tropes.

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

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Homoioteleuton

Posted on August 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-te-loot’-on): Similarity of endings of adjacent or parallel words.

I dropped my bowling ball on my foot, but that wasn’t all. It must’ve fractured my toe. It was the 10th frame. If I got a strike, I would have two more balls, and I would win it all—the trophy, the $500, and the adulation of the bowling groupies who were starting to look at me with hungry stares. I had had my eye on Leda throughout the entire tournament, fantasizing about kissing her long curved neck. But right now, I was in a crisis. My toe was killing me. It was like somebody had poured sulphuric acid on it and it was bubbling away inside my bowling shoe.

Lance Prono, my chief rival since we started bowling in the sixth grade, looked at me menacingly and said, “If you don’t roll that ball in ten minutes, you’re disqualified Borjack, and I have a shot at winning the tournament.” After he said this, he held his bowling ball over his head with two hands and pumped it up and down, and spun around on one foot, mimicking my injury and talking like Elmer Fudd: “Boo hoo mommy I hoot my whittle foooty.”

That did it. I tore off my bowling shoe. My toe had started to swell. There would be no way I could make a tenth-frame strike, limping to the line and rolling my ball in agony. I made my way to the men’s room, dragging my foot like the mummy in the old movie. I looked in the mirror. There I was in my turquoise and black bowling shirt with my name in script, appearing backward in the mirror: pihC—Chip. Hoping the swelling might go down, I stuck my bare foot in the toilet and flushed it to cool the water down. I was crying like a baby, like I did whenever my hopes were thwarted. Call me a crybaby, but I didn’t know what else to do.

The men’s room door opened and Leda was standing there. She saw my foot in the toilet and she started laughing uncontrollably. Snot was pouring out of her nose. She wiped a little off her lip and told me through her laughter to take my foot out of the toilet and dry it off with a paper towel. Then, she wiped the snot on her finger onto my toe and ran out the door.

Nothing happened from Leda’s snot, but the toilet’s cold water helped my toe quite a bit. I walked out of the men’s room without a limp, wearing one shoe. I picked up my ball and rolled it. I hit a strike. If I could strike the bonus frame, I’d win the tournament and bowl a perfect game. I saw Leda out of the corner of my eye. Her nose was still running. Then, Prono yelled “You stink, loser baby boy.” I didn’t respond. I rolled my ball. I pulled a 7-10 split—the bane of all bowlers’ existence. Some people say that Jesus bowled a 7-10 split at the Last Supper, courtesy of Judas planting a piece of silver on the lane.

I did what I had been taught to do by my high school bowling coach Mr. Rollings: summon Thor the god of rolling thunder and patron of bowlers and bowling alleys. I looked up and begged: “Please Thor, let me make this split.” Nothing happened. I may have alienated him somehow—maybe because I wore earplugs at the lanes. Anyway, I was on my own. I rolled my ball, trying to hit the seven pin so it would fly sideways and take down the ten pin. I failed.

But Prono didn’t beat me. In his final final chance to win the tournament, the rear seam of his of pants ripped as he bent over to pick up his ball, revealing his Yosemite Sam underpants. Then, just as he went to roll his ball, his pants fell down! He fell on his face and his ball veered into the gutter and slowly rolled out of sight. I won the tournament!! I thanked Thor.

I looked around for Leda, but she was gone. I found a used Kleenex where she had been sitting. I took it home with me, pressed it in my scrapbook, and drew a big red heart around it.

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

Selections from The Daily Trope are available as a book under the title of The Book of Tropes.

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Horismus

Posted on August 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Horismus (hor-is’-mus): Providing a clear, brief definition, especially by explaining differences between associated terms.

“Car, car c-a-r. Stick your head in a jelly jar.” It was my first taunt, and I had authored it my self. I was nine and I yelled it out the car window when my mother was driving me home from school.

At nine, taunts were the coin of the realm. More aesthetically pleasing than teasing, some of them even rhymed like my jelly jar taunts. Most important, they presented a challenge, tending to induce anger, not shame or embarrassment like their weaker, more mean-spirited cousin, teasing.

In the late 50s we’d hang out at Charlie’s Soda Shoppe taunting each other after school. Charlie’s was a perfect replica of the Waverly Tavern down the street. It functioned as a training ground for hanging out at the bar when we got older. You could get a shot of ginger ale, and all of Charlie’s sundaes were modeled after the mixed drinks at the bar. For example, the Singapore Sundae: strawberry ice cream drizzled with Grenadine syrup, topped with a cherry and an orange slice alongside an umbrella. You’d learn how to nonchalantly remove the umbrella and politely pull the fruit laden toothpick out of the ice cream, slide the cherry and orange slice off the toothpick and slowly eat them, being careful not to bite into the orange peel. That was called a “smooth landing.”

Then, one day everything changed. Bruce Flanger asked George Bigelow if his mother had a mustache. It was a simple question, but George took it as taunt and threw his Vanilla Sour at Bruce and yelled “Your mother is so fat, when she wears high heels they poke holes in the sidewalk.” Bruce shot back: “You mother smells like the men’ room at exit 35 on the Parkway.” The Exit 35 men’s room was fabled for it’s stench. Some people believed it had been built over a mafia burial ground. Others believed it had been cursed by John Spellman, the “Farting King” from Union, NJ who used his trombone-sounding stench to clear convenience stores, and then rob them. He had been caught in the Exit 36 men’s room preparing for a robbery. State Police stormed the men’s room wearing army surplus gas masks. That’s when Spellman supposedly hurled his curse: “I swear this place will stink forever” and then he blew one that lasted for two minutes. The state police said the cloud coming out of Spellman’s pants had “a life of its own, altering the color of the wall tiles and becoming a part of the men’s room structure.”

Back to Charlie’s: The “your mother” give-and-take was starting to spiral out of control. Voices were raised, postures were angry. Then, Berty Russel raised his hands and made a conciliatory gesture. He said: “I like taunting as much as the next guy, but I’m a registered pacifist and don’t want to see it escalate into violence. I propose we view the ‘your mother’ taunt as a jest intended to elicit undirected laughter where ‘your mother’ is the ‘primordial mother,’ the ‘every mother.’ Moreover, the first known ‘your mother’ joke is 3,500 years old and inscribed on a Babylonian tablet: ‘Your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What/who is it?’ We must respect these ancient origins. Any taunt that is substantively true, will be understood as an affront, and measures will be taken, For example; your mother is so fat she’s n a wheelchair. Expect violence.” Berty was nearly making sense for once. He was from England.

So, ignoring Berty’s BS history lesson, as far as we were concerned, the “your mother” jest was born that day at Charlie’s Soda Shoppe. It has held its own into the 21st century, and will continue being used as long as there are mothers. Just then, Charlie said to nobody in particular “Your mother has a mustache.” Everybody looked at him. Five guys stood up ready to let Charlie have it, George Bigelow threw his Strawberry Mary at Charlie and we all laughed as it streamed down Charlie’s chin and dripped on his shirt.

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

A print edition of The Daily Trope is available from Amazon under the title of The Book of Tropes.

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Hypallage

Posted on August 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Hypallage (hy-pal’-la-ge): Shifting the application of words. Mixing the order of which words should correspond with which others. Also, sometimes, a synonym for metonymy (see Quintilian).

The mired deep sucked at my foot making an unmistakable sound as I slowly pulled it from it sloppy grasp. Each step was the same, slurping, burping foot pulling at the brown. At this rate it will take me a week to get to my destination—the family’s vacation cottage set on an island in the middle of this god-forsaken place. You would think that after 200 years of family ownership, somebody would’ve built a boardwalk, or installed a cable car.

I had soaked my body in Cutter’s insect repellent. Although there were hundreds of mosquitoes circling around my head, needling my ears with their annoying whine, they weren’t biting. I could only imagine what it must’ve been like for my ancestors, slathered with bear grease, barefoot, making their way through the smelly goo to “Kozy Kottage”: the name they had given to the log hovel they had built on the island. As patriots, they had hidden there during the Revolutionary War. They were so unimportant that nobody would venture through the muck to apprehend them. And anyway, there was speculation that Kozy Kottage was sited in Spanish Florida, but nobody in a position of authority was certain whether Spanish Florida still existed.

We were forced to trek the mud every summer for our family holiday. When I was 12 I got a giant leech on my foot. It was almost as big as my foot. One of our servants who had been raised in the swamp, knew how to remove a leech without killing it. He grabbed it by the tail and pulled. It made a sound like velcro and tore off leaving a bleeding circular wound the size of a silver dollar. It would probably become infected and my foot would fall off, but the the leech was still alive, squirming, trying to get out of my hand. My new pet! I named him Mr. Sucker, put him in a bucket of mud that I would water every day, and put the bucket outside, under the porch. But where would I get the blood to feed him? I felt like Dracula taking care of a bitten charge—I needed to find blood for Mr. Sucker. Then, I realized I was loaded with blood! I could share my blood with Mr. Sucker. I could slap him on my arm every couple of days.

I held my forearm over his mud bucket. His head rose out of the slurry. He wiggled a little wiggle, shot out of the bucket and clamped on my arm. I had trepidations, but they faded—he had manners, and he wasn’t a pig. He finished up oh his own and slid back into his bucket. That afternoon I painted “Mr. Sucker” on his bucket and refreshed Mr. Sucker’s mud. That night, I was sound asleep when a tickling on my arm woke me up. It was Mr. Sucker! I was frightened and astounded. I used the Velcro rip off method to remove him from my arm. I put him back in his bucket and covered it with a board with a big rock on top. He started whining! I freaked out and threw Mr. Sucker and his bucket as far as I could back into the swamp. I realized immediately that I should’ve chopped him up into little pieces and burned him. I took my father’s shotgun down from above the fireplace and loaded both barrels with #6 birdshot.

That night I kept my oil lamp lit, in anticipation of Mr. Sucker’s visit. I just knew he was going to haul his slimy body out of the bucket and out of the swamp and come to me to feed on me. I got in bed with the shotgun across my chest. I heard a sound on my bedroom stairs, then Mr. Sucker’s head poked under the door. He was slowly moving toward my bed. I raised the gun and fired both barrels. Everybody in the house went crazy. I looked on the floor and Mr. Sucker’s blown to hell remains were not there—no stain, not a trace. I told my father what had happened and he started crying. Two servants carried me across the mire to the mainland strapped to stretcher. They dumped on the ground and went back to Kozy Kottage. As I lay there I felt something crawling up my leg. It was Mr. Sucker! I pulled him off my leg, picked up a rock, and pounded him into oblivion. I was free! I headed back to Kozy Kottage. About halfway there, the swamp slurry started boiling with leeches. They didn’t bother me. It was as if they were celebrating Mr. Sucker’s death and thanking me for mashing him into paste. I wish I could say I felt gratified, but the whining cloud of 100s of mosquitoes circling around my head were driving me crazy.

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

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Hyperbaton

Posted on August 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

Hyperbaton (hy-per’-ba-ton): 1. An inversion of normal word order. A generic term for a variety of figures involving transposition, it is sometimes synonymous with anastrophe. 2. Adding a word or thought to a sentence that is already semantically complete, thus drawing emphasis to the addition.

I felt really dizzy, ready to fall down. I had lost control of my magic carpet somewhere over Pennsylvania. I had gone 900 years without a tuneup. I should’ve taken it to the shop when I hit 700 years, but I was so busy flying all over North America granting wishes and cleansing souls that I’d lost track of time.

Wishes are constituted by desire and absence tangling together in deeply personal and intense feelings—so intense that they seep into one’s soul, throwing it off course—from its interest in eternity and salvation. My job is to determine whether to “wipe” the wish or manifest it. I routinely wipe evil wishes, which are surprisingly prevalent in North America. For example, there was a politician named Mich who was having such horrendous wishes that I had to turn him off in the middle of a press conference. Thank God he was led away, and the wishes went unspoken. That was an unusual case. Usually, evil wishes can be handled with a quick memory wash, cleansing the soul of the root of the evil wish, which is often very trivial. For example, in one case the wish was rooted in resentment of a mandated bedtime. It grew and festered until, as an adult, the person hated being on time and affected his liberation by always being at least ten minutes late. His wish, as it was perfected, was to eliminate time altogether. I washed the foundational memory out of his soul and manifested a solid gold Rolex wristwatch and gave it to him. When he put it on his wrist he looked like he had just seen a cute bunny running through his yard. He yelled: “Time is on my side!” He yelled: “I have an appointment with swimming pool guy in 10 minutes! I’m on my way. I refuse to be late.”

I circled the magic carpet Repair Dome and landed smoothly on the front ramp. It was located in the middle of New Jersey’s pine barrens, protected by ani-detection devices, that were probably dependent on some kind of advanced magic. I stepped off my carpet and went into the dome. It had a sign hanging over its entrance that said “Watch Out: This Place is Crazy.” That was Bento’s sense of humor. There he was, standing behind the counter making a cat’s cradle out of bread bag twisties. I told him I had gone 200 years past my 700-year tuneup. He dropped the cat’s cradle on the counter, started flashing red and making a sound like a car alarm. “What!?” He asked, wide eyed and trembling with fear. Two of his assistants ran up to the counter. “We heard the impending disaster alarm you blew, we’re ready for action.” Bento pointed at my carpet and yelled “Tune it!” I had forgotten that my carpet model was programmed to self-destruct if it wasn’t properly maintained. My carpet was not properly maintained. The self-destruct function’s origins were obscure. It is such a bad idea that nobody can find a good reason for it, yet it persists, like so many other things—like wearing a sword or Morris Dancing.

After he repaired it, Bento told me me my carpet’s “diectionator” was almost completely shot. A couple more turns without repair and my carpet would’ve evaporated, along with me. Now, I could be on my way.

There was a terribly deluded man in Florida who was wreaking havoc on one of the longest-lasting democracies the world has ever seen. His delusions are ubiquitous and are steering his soul toward absolute evil, I may have to give him a total cleansing, a “Big Wash”—sort of like rebooting a computer and bringing it back to its original state. But, I fear this person’s original state is evil. In that case, he will eventually go to hell where he’ll sit in a circle with his feet in a fire, moaning and screaming along with Caligula, Charlie Manson, Rasputin, Mengle, and the other devils populating the pantheon of evil. For his sake, I hope I can wipe him.

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

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Hypozeuxis

Posted on August 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Hypozeuxis (hyp-o-zook’-sis): Opposite of zeugma. Every clause has its own verb.

I waved the crayon around over my head. I smiled and jumped up and down. My chest tattoo of a dormouse started showing as my cowboy shirt started to come unsnapped—pop, pop, pop, pop went the snaps as they came undone, revealing the tattoo’s caption: “Feed Your Head.” From “Alice in Wonderland” to The Jefferson Airplane, I had fed my head. So, I picked up my gold-plated kazoo, and did my best Jimi Hendrix, blasting out “Voodoo Child” like somebody was sticking pins in me. Then, I ate a handful of Smarties, as I did every day, as a tribute to Princess Diana. It was her favorite candy. Some people say she was eating a handful Smarties when she was killed in the car crash in Paris. It is almost too horrible to contemplate, but they say she had a red one stuck in her eye when they removed her body from the car. It reminded me of the time I was hanging out with the Stones, and we all put Red Stipe bottle caps in our eyes pretending we were blind Jamaican zombies with our hands stretched out in front, bumping into each other. That’s when we found out that Kieth Richards actually was a zombie. He kept saying “I smell the brain of an Englishman.” I pulled the bottle caps out of Keith’s eyes and he returned to his aged, wrinkled, nicotine-stained 80-year-old looking 35-year-old-self. I never saw him eat a brain, but he would talk about it after he smoked a little weed. He would talk about how much a “prime” brain weighs, the different “cuts” of brain and how the medulla was tremendously useful in making the heart keep track of the beat, and how it was very soft because it didn’t do any thinking.

Eventually Kieth went to South Jersey in the US for the cure. He was buried up to his neck on the beach, a perfect target for urinating dogs. After being “splashed” 13 times, he was cured. It is rumored that “Honky Tonk Woman” came out of this experience.

I was in the rock group “Sputtering Flame.” We sang songs we composed about serial killers, farm animals, and roller blading—looking for the kind of success The Beach Boys had achieved with with surfing with our music about rollerblading, Our biggest hit was “Crazy Gacy,” a song about the American serial killer John Wayne Gacy. At the same time, we were booed off the stage even if we hinted we might perform it. So, we focused on farm animals and roller blading. “Old McDonald Stole My Pig” made it to 72 on the charts—that was the best we did, although “How Now Tattooed Cow” made it to 89. Rollerblading was a catastrophe—it was almost ephemeral in its longevity. “Let Me Roll You to the Motel Next Door,” “Squeaking Wheels,” and “WD-40” were our best, topping the charts at 105, 107, and 125, and then the rollerblading craze crashed. The venues closed and “Sputtering Flame” was extinguished..

We were heartbroken, but we had to carry on. I gave up my musical career. I was awash in drugs, and still am—mostly pot and opiated hash. Although I’m nearly 80, after 40 or so years of debauchery that makes Dorian Gray look like the Pope, I got a full tuition scholarship at Candy Land Community College. I’ve dyed my hair black and lost a few pounds. I was pretty sure my creative writing professor Ms. Wangford, had some kind of crush on me. She told me I needed to come to her office for a “special lesson.” My imagination took off. It would be amazing. I got to her office and she was on all fours on her desk. She jumped down and we both sat down. She took off her wig. It was Alice Cooper. He said “Do you get the irony my man?” I was coming on to my third pipe load of opiated hash. Alice looked like the yellow circle in the center of a daisy, with white petals. Only he wasn’t only yellow—he was flashing purple and red too. Misunderstanding him, I said “I don’t do ironing. Everything I own is wash and wear.” He started spinning like a wheel of fortune and cackling. I ran out the door, slamming it so hard the glass broke.

I am almost ready to graduate with an Associate Degree in Topiary Sciences. I specialize in making hedges into squirrels and ducks. But I do have my creative moments—my senior project was a firefighter with a mug of beer in one hand and a BIC lighter in the other. I have a job with “Trendy Trimmers.” Although it sounds like a hair salon, it is the Number 1 topiary operation in North Jersey. My first gig will be making all of Jon Bon Jovi’s hedges into parked Harleys. It should take about a year.

So, it looks like I’ve landed fairly gently in life. With all my failures, it looks like I might have some success ahead. But still, I like to reminisce about the bad old days—taking the stage with “Sputtering Flame” and trying hard to be a star.

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. A Kindle edition is available for $5.99.

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Hysterologia

Posted on August 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Hysterologia (his-ter-o-lo’-gi-a): A form of hyperbaton or parenthesis in which one interposes a phrase between a preposition and its object. Also, a synonym for hysteron proteron.

“Under” (wrote the Swiss poet) “where” confusing and shocking literary critics and breaking new poetic ground, along with the “red wheelbarrow,” and “milk wood,” and “my thumb” thus eclipsing Ricola, Heidi, Swiss Miss, and the Swiss Army Knife as foundational to Swiss self-understanding along with safe deposit boxes, wrist watches and tidy smooth-running ski lifts. Nevertheless, despite the emergent markers of Swiss cultural identity, Swiss Cheese maintains its preeminence as Switzerland’s national odor.

Recently, it was discovered that Pinocchio fled to Switzerland when he was accused of elder abuse against Geppetto by shaving off his mustache when he was sleeping and hiding his glasses in a big lump of donkey poop. He is wanted in Italy and Geppetto has disowned him—saying Pinocchio will never be a real boy. Pinocchio assimilated well to life in Switzerland. He works in a Swiss Army Knife factory. Part of his job is to think of new functions for the knife. He is currently working on the hemorrhoid scratcher, tattoo needle, tea warmer, and glow-in-the-dark toothpick. Even though Pinocchio will always be a wooden boy, at 52 he’s still going strong and looks great with his youthful birch bark skin and red dye 40 dyed lips and cheeks. That’s not all—he keeps his joints lubricated with Emu Oil, never a squeak. He’s going a little bald, but that can be remedied with Super Glue and black rabbit fur. He takes medication that keeps his nose from growing.

Pinocchio lives with his wife Marloda who is a Russian nesting doll. Accordingly, Pinocchio has an extended family to take care of. He pops open Marloda on Friday nights and dumps everybody on the floor—removing them one-by-one from each other. Then, lining up and forming a chorus they sing “Edelweiss” and “Smoke on the Water.” Now, it’s bedtime and everybody scrambles back inside Marloda for a good night’s sleep. Pinocchio gives Marloda a kiss and they go to bed.

Meanwhile, in Italy as the years go by Geppetto, almost 90 years old, becomes angrier and angrier at his errant son. His mustache never grew back and people laugh continuously at the fat lip it’s absence revealed. He has been training a small troop of fashion designers from Milan who can cross borders without raising suspicions and “get” Pinocchio. He has equipped each one with a concealable pocket saw to “Cut that bastard down to size.” They each have a quart of gasoline “In case worse comes to worse.” Geppetto has become mad with his obsession. He has started making dangerous toys. The worst is the rocking horse with shards of glass protruding from the saddle. You can imagine what it does to its rider!

Geppetto and his troop of Milanese mercenaries were ready to go. When they got to the Swiss border, Geppetto cracked, pulled out his gasoline bottle, dumped it on his head and set himself afire. The Milanese mercenaries ran back into Italy discarding their pocket saws and bottles of gasoline. The Swiss guards bagged Geppetto up and dragged him back across the Italian border. The Milanese mercenaries left Geppetto in a ditch and continued back to Milan. Pinocchio heard about his father’s demise at the border and wanted to retrieve him for a proper burial. However, if he crossed into Italy he would be arrested on the elder abuse charges that had been leveled by Geppetto years ago.

Pinocchio contacted a local Gnome for help. He knew Swiss Gnomes were beneficial to gardeners. He told the Gnome if he brought his father’s body back over the border, he could use it for fertilizer. The Gnome agreed and, feeling compassion for Pinocchio, dumped the Geppetto fertilizer onto Pinocchio’s garden, greatly improving the garden’s yield of tomatoes and peppers, and winning Pinocchio a gardening prize.

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

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Hysteron Proteron

Posted on August 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Hysteron Proteron (his’-ter-on pro’-ter-on): Disorder of time. (What should be first, isn’t.)

I woke up wearing only my underpants on a bus driving in reverse on the New York State Thruway, going at least 70 mph. Everybody on the bus was in sartorial disarray. Nobody was naked, but I was the least clothed. The woman sitting next to me was wearing socks on her hands. The man walking up the aisle was wearing a necktie, boxer shorts, Birkenstocks, and knee-high black socks with birds embroidered on them. The bus driver was wearing a bus driver hat, underpants, a peace medallion, and flip flops. He seemed to be enjoying himself, driving us backwards to our doom. I looked out the window and saw that all the other traffic was going backwards, then instead of getting later, it was getting earlier. When it got to setting, the sun started rising. “This is so irritating” said the man across the isle wearing a top hat, red bikini briefs, and blue bedroom slippers. “Last week I was on my way to a funeral and was redressed from somber black to some kind of neon jogging shorts, a Taylor Ham advertising T-shirt, and hot-pink pumps. It was hard saying goodbye to Aunt Crystal in that get-up, but everybody else was dressed inappropriately, so I fit right in.”

There was only one person on the bus who looked normal—jeans and a t-shirt and Nike trainers. He had ear buds in his ears and was obviously listening to music, bobbing his head up a down to the beat. I said hello to him. He didn’t acknowledge me. He just kept bobbing his head and started tapping one of his feet. I started to get angry, so angry I pulled out his earbuds. A high-pitched sound came out of his ears. It was painful to listen to—the passengers were screaming and holding their ears. “You fool!” He yelled. I quickly stuck a Marlboro 27 in each of my ears, so the high-pitched sound wasn’t affecting me that much. I noticed there was an eye peering out of his ear. It was hazel and quite captivating. Ear buds boy stuck them back in his ears, covering the eyeball. He said, “Look, this isn’t my fault. It squirmed into my head through my Bluetooth earbuds. I wore them too much and it gave the creature an opening. It “integrated” with Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Burnin’ for You’ and infected my mind to the point of betraying Humanity by depriving them of their clothing autonomy and becoming dupes in the creature’s cause, not to mention her institution of “backwardness” in time and place. Right now, she is mocking me inside me head. She wants me to throw you out of the bus and kill you. Are you ready?”

I yelled “Screw you!” I hit him in the face as hard as I could and reached over the bus driver’s shoulder, turned off the bus’s ignition, and pulled out the keys, opened the door, and jumped out when the bus slowed down enough. As the bus rolled to a stop, I heard screaming and the passengers came running out of the bus normally dressed. Something big had happened to turn things around, including the bus which had somehow gotten turned in the right direction on the Thruway. I looked at the earbuds boy sliding down the bus’s steps. He looked like he was going to die. The eye looking out his ear looked cloudy—it had lost its charm. With his nose bleeding the life out of him, earbuds boy spoke with a woman’s voice: “I am the granddaughter of Circe. I use my musical stylings to waylay lovers of bad music on their wireless listening devices. Together we use my magic to induce people to dress badly and forget the difference between forward and backward. My grandmother turned men into goats and pigs. I turn them into fashion disasters going backwards through life. You have defeated me for now. I will return.”

After this fiasco, the FCC passed a law regarding wireless earbuds: they were not allowed to be worn more than one hour per day. Violators would be subject to a $1,000 fine and 3 years in prison. Also, people were cautioned to wear smart watches and pay attention to sunrise and sunset.

I moved to Florida. I had grown accustomed wearing only underpants and I hoped Florida’s warm climate would afford me the opportunity to wear them year-round. I was wrong. I was arrested. Now, I wear a Speedo banana hammock all he time,

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

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Inopinatum

Posted on July 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

Inopinatum (in-o-pi-na’-tum): The expression of one’s inability to believe or conceive of something; a type of faux wondering. As such, this kind of paradox is much like aporia and functions much like a rhetorical question or erotema. [A paradox is] a statement that is self-contradictory on the surface, yet seems to evoke a truth nonetheless [can include oxymoron].

I couldn’t believe it when he told me our friendship was over after 45 years. He offered me excuses like “It’s stale,” “You’ve become boring,” “You’ve gone blind,” You drool a lot more than you used to,” “You’ve become really contentious,” “Those Italian cigars you smoke smell like cat shit.” I would’ve punched him in nose, but my blindness prevented me from doing so—I couldn’t see his nose. So, I decided to get a “Home Aide” to fill in the blanks left by Ted’s abandonment. I called social services to ask for help finding somebody reliable. The receptionist put me in touch with “Helpless Humans Social Stoics.” It sounded pretty philosophical. I thought I would mistrust philosophy after I took a course in my Freshman year of college. The professor had a beard and smoked a pipe—two key indicators of Communist sympathies. My father had warned me, and he had gotten it right! Professor “Beardy-Pipe” told us we live in a cave and watch TV too much, to the point that “Bonanza” has made us want to own Lake Tahoe, be landlords, and live in a giant log cabin where we are served by the Chinese slave, Hop Sing, who cooks meals, chases bad people with a meat cleaver, and complains.

That class helped a lot. It opened my eyes and showed me the truth. I became a Communist and agitated for its implementation in the small Southern town where I lived. People called me names and wouldn’t let me live a normal life. McCarthyism was rampant. I had to leave town & that’s how I ended up in Berkely, California—a safe haven for Commies.

Anyway, Marla from Helpless Humans Social Stoics was on her way. The bell rang and I made my way to the door, stumbling over something. I opened the door. “Hi! I’m Marla and I’m here to make your life easier. Where do you keep your valuables?” She smelled so good. I just wanted to press my nose against her and keep it there forever. Instead, I told her my valuables, such as they were, were hanging in the top part of the upstairs toilet in a ziplock freezer bag.

She started into the house, tripped and screamed. “There’s a dead man on the floor!” She screamed. I felt the dead man’s face and it was Ted’s. “God Almighty!” I yelled. “Does he have a knife stuck in him?” I asked. Maria said “Yes.” “We’ve got to get his body out of here and dump it in the river.” I said. “Yes. Disposing of bodies is in my job description, and it isn’t clear whether natural causes or murder matters. Just give me your valuables and I’ll call my colleague Grinski.” When I gave her the bag I could hear her rifling through it. At one point she said “Ooh! A Buck Rogers Super Decoder Ring, worth thousands!”

Ted’s gone. The floor’s clean again, and Maria and Grinski moved into my bedroom. I sleep on the garage floor in a sleeping bag.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

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Inter se pugnantia

Posted on July 30, 2023 | 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.

My name is Ted Wayward. I was born and raised in Thirsty City, Wyoming. The town was named in 1844 right before the Consequential Aquifer was discovered. The town was divided over whether to keep the name—there was a movement to change it to Bubbling Springs. To avoid bloodshed, it was put to a vote. The Snotty brothers stood outside the polling place with their guns drawn, pretending they were cleaning them. The Snotty brothers wanted to keep the name. They thought it would be funny living in a town called Thirsty City that had plenty of water. But that wasn’t their plan. Actually, their hope was that the town, now that it had water and could grow hops, would become famous for its beer, with “Thirsty City” referring to the number of bars and the citizens’ propensity for liver damage, alcoholism, and wild parties that would attract people from hundreds of miles away. It would be good for the economy.

There was a annual music festival institutes. It was held at the fairgrounds. It was called the “Beer Here! Music Festival.” 1,000s of people would come to the festival. In addition to the music, there would be stock car races during the day—roaring, roaring around the track, spinning out, crashing and, sometimes burning, to the great delight of the fans. Nobody ever got killed. The fans could only hope and enjoy the non-fatal crashes.

When the sun started to set, the racetrack was turned into a concert venue & that’s where I come in. I’ve been playin’, singin’, and writin’ country music ever since I was nine. When I was 11 my dad insisted that I take his race car for a drive. It was crazy and stupid but I did it. I was going around 80 when I veered off the track, ran over Dad, and killed him. Right there, I decided the rest of my life would be a tribute to him via my music. Given what had happened had happened on a racetrack, my musical tribute would consist of country songs about NASCAR and the races they sponsor for loyal fans. I would take the stage to the sound of a race car revving up. Then, “Eye of the Tiger” would start playing and I would be lowered on a cable from the rafters wearing my father’s racing suit emblazoned with his sponsors’ logos—Teddy Ticket Fixer, Hair-Bot Salon, Richard’s Fashion Moats, Mars Cars, etc.

This is the first NASCAR song I wrote. I sang it at my Dad’s funeral:

The roar of the racetrack helped me today

When we put my Daddy away

He’ll be drivin’ in heaven

On the love we gave him

‘Round and ‘round forever he’ll go

Always fast, never slow

He’s a NASCAR Angel, drivin’ with God

We stand for you Daddy and give you a nod

As I sung, people raised their lit lighters and imitated race cars revving up.

“NASCAR Angel” put me in the Country Music Hall of Fame. It sold 20,000,000 copies and made me a wealthy man, which I still am now. But now that I’m getting ready to step off the stage once and for all, I wanted to say that for most of my life. My father was a pain in the ass. He’d tell me we were going to the movies, and we’d end up at the library. He’d tell me we were going fishing and we’d end up at church. He’d tell me we’re going bowling and we’d end up pitching horseshoes. Damn him! He never followed through. His promises were like sand blowin’ in the wind. But he was my Daddy and I wish I could see him again. I’d tell him how much I love him and apologize for killing him.

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

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Intimation

Posted on July 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

I’m not sayings it, but something’s wrong with my car. Ever since I ran over a squirrel on Broad Street last week, it’s been acting up. I drove past a grove of oak trees and the steering pulled to the left—almost imperceptibly. The squirrels stuffing their cheeks with acorns under the tree, stood on their hind legs like they wanted to box with me. I never thought I’d be intimidated by a squirrel, but there were six or seven of them facing me with their little paws clenched into fists.

My car pulled to the curb and the door opened. The foraging squirrels held their boxing postures. Something pushed me out of the car. There I stood facing the fighting squirrels. I didn’t know what to do. All I could think to do was to kick them like little teed-up footballs. I was bitten by a squirrel when I was a kid. I crept up behind it and grabbed its tail. The bite had broken the skin and I ran home bleeding and told my mother I had tried to pick her one of Mrs. Broadbent’s roses, but I had been pricked by a thorn. She told me, “Don’t worry son. Some day you’ll get it right, and I’ll have my rose.”

But that was then. This is now. I think I’ll be swarmed and beaten to death by a pack of angry squirrels. I had become rooted to the sidewalk and couldn’t move. Suddenly, an older-looking squirrel stepped forward. He put his paws down. He asked “Are you remorseful?” I answered with an instant emphatic “Yes!” “Good” he said “So many of you just flatten us without even swerving to avoid us.” The other squirrels nodded their heads, looking at each other. The elder squirrel continued: “Oaky-Doakey was a restless squirrel who took shortcuts. I tried to warn him over and over that ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’” All the squirrels nodded in silent agreement. “He’s still laying flattened in the street. He has been run over hundreds of times. He looks like a leather frisbee with a tail. Would you pick him up and sail him into those bushes over there?” “Yes.” I said.

I picked Oaky-Doakey up with my handkerchief. The squirrels bowed their heads and raised their fists. I got Oaky-Doakey into a good frisbee position, and I tossed him. I tossed him too hard. After being dried out for weeks in the street, he broke into pieces. The squirrels looked really angry and were making a growling chattering sound as they came toward me. “Now I’m going to die for my sins!” I thought in a total panic. But cooler heads prevailed. The wise old squirrel said, “You tried. We should have known he would turn into squirrel jerky brittle. Go in peace. Drive carefully.”

I still don’t believe it all happened. I must’ve been overworked or sleep deprived. I know I ran over a squirrel and there’s a stain on my handkerchief. Two days ago I found an acorn on my front porch.

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. A Kindle edition is available for $5.99.

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