Anacoenosis

Posted on August 23, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anacoenosis (an’-a-ko-en-os’-is): Asking the opinion or judgment of the judges or audience, usually implying their common interest with the speaker in the matter [and illustrating their communally-held ideals of truth, justice, goodness and beauty, for better and for worse].

I went to Chicago for a reason, with an accordion on my chest and a super-size styrofoam cup in my left hand. I had just graduated from George Washington Street Musician Academy—at the top of my class. Joan Mitchell, Robert Dylan and William Nelson were way behind me, still trying to learn how to set down their super-size styrofoam cups in the right place for maximal collection of coins and bills.

In addition to the street, I achieved some off-street success. My polka version of “All Along the Watchtower” briefly made the Billboard Charts, and my self-authored accordion solo “Roller Blade Inferno” became a standard at roller rinks across the country—it’s tempo was manic and complimented the cocaine stuffed noses racing wild-eyed around the rink. Sometimes “Roller Blade Inferno” would be played over and over for an hour or more. Skaters would drip sweat, push each other down, fight, and both men and women would tear off their shirts and swing them over their heads like lariats as they sped like a wolf pack around the rink howling and trying to bite each other.

Those were the days, and “those days” are what bring us all here together on this important day. Soon, you will process up here, and receive your super-size styrofoam cups. You have earned the title “Trained Street Musician” and your cups’ spaciousness signifies the nearly limitless opportunities that lie ahead. May your “cups runneth over” with determination, musical skill, and money.

We all agree, don’t we? There is no better life than the life you’re about to embark on. If you have to pawn your instrument from time to time to make ends meet, remember, your pawn ticket is your ticket to the future. Wash dishes, rake leaves, get yourself institutionalized for “observation.” Do whatever you can so you can use that ticket to bail out your hopes and head for the street again. Thank you.

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

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Anacoloutha

Posted on August 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anacoloutha (an-a-co’-lu-tha): Substituting one word with another whose meaning is very close to the original, but in a non-reciprocal fashion; that is, one could not use the first, original word as a substitute for the second. This is the opposite of acoloutha.

There is a trellis outside my window entwined with blooming roses, velvet red, soft, twisted, filling my room with breeze-driven shadows brushing along the walls. I can hear the waves hitting the beach. The tide is coming in.

I lay there wondering about hope and it’s vague projections of wobbly futures, trying to form a hope: something to want, but not to need. I could only conjure what I had lost, especially my dog “Goddamnit“ who ran away during the 4th of July fireworks. I was yelling “Goddamnit” out in my yard for two hours and then gave up. I yelled “shit” and a big expensive-looking dog shot out of the bushes by my house, knocked me down, and licked my face. I thought about the one-two-ness of it all. I missed Godammnit, but Shit was a pretty good replacement. But, I hadn’t hoped for Shit. I just wanted to bring Godamnit back home. Laying there, I realized that hoping was a waste of time, that something always comes along to fill the gap. In my case, right then, it was Shit. Who knows? In your case it could be a raccoon or a man or a woman. And, I think you can be optimistic without being hopeful. That means you think good things can happen without knowing what they are! In fact, you may not even think they’re good.

I met my first wife when I got a flat tire outside of Bakersfield. She pulled up in a dune buggy, we got married, and the rest was misery until we divorced three weeks later—barely missing the annulment deadline. But, the first two days were bliss at a motel near San Luis Obispo. On day three, she tried to smother me with a pillow because I remarked on her hairy armpits. It was like she had two lumps of coal grafted to her armpits—I called them her “coal pits.” I yelled “shit!” when she came after me with the pillow, and Shit bounded through the open motel window and growled and barked at her. She got off of me, threw the pillow at Shit and ran out the door. She took the car, and disappeared. I was marooned at the motel with Shit. I got $100 out of the motel’s ATM and packed Shit’s dog dish along with my clothes in my rolly-bag, hooked up Shit’s leash, and Shit and I started walking toward Santa Barbara. We got about 100 yards when an Audi convertible pulled over and the driver asked us if we needed a lift. She was beautiful and kind looking. Shit and I climbed in the car and we took off toward Santa Barbara. She asked me my dog’s name and I told her “Shit.” “That’s fantastic,” she said. I felt like a door had opened in my soul, letting in light, clearing out the darkness. I told her what had happened and she invited us to stay with her for a couple of days. That was one year ago. Nancy’s out of town on business right now and Shit and I are in charge of the villa. Nancy and I are going to have a baby girl. We’re going to name her Hope.

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

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Anacoluthon

Posted on August 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anacoluthon (an-a-co-lu’-thon): A grammatical interruption or lack of implied sequence within a sentence. That is, beginning a sentence in a way that implies a certain logical resolution, but concluding it differently than the grammar leads one to expect. Anacoluthon can be either a grammatical fault or a stylistic virtue, depending on its use. In either case, it is an interruption or a verbal lack of symmetry. Anacoluthon is characteristic of spoken language or interior thought, and thus suggests those domains when it occurs in writing.

I was running, run, run, run like a nose, like a river, like an electric appliance plugged into the wall of nature—a sweet contrivance, seemingly edible, smelling like bacon or a dirty charcoal grill afire on the deck of love, peace, and happiness I basked on in 1966, before I joined the Army so I could go to college tuition-free some day, and learn more than anybody in my family and dazzle our ignorant neighbors with the pile of knowledge accumulated in my head.

There I was at Ft. Dix, New Jersey wondering why the drill instructors said “hup, two, three, four” instead of “one, two, three, four.” So, I asked Staff Sgt. Blood why. He said, “Get down and give me 200.” I didn’t know what that meant, so I got on all fours and started crawling toward Newark, which was roughly 200 miles from Ft. Dix. I wanted to be obedient, and I had given it my best shot, but I got put on guard duty for the “duration” and vowed to bear the high responsibility with pluck and determination, risking my life if need be fending off an invasion of the Fort, or thieves stealing flour and coffee and other edibles from the mess hall warehouse I was diligently guarding. I had one bullet in my M-14. I tripped on the curb as I was patrolling by the warehouse, and my M-14 slipped out of my hands, hit the pavement hard, and fired.

I ran and kept running. Then, I stopped. It was a accident. What could happen? I turned myself in to the first MPs I saw. They were laughing really hard as they handcuffed me and put me in the back of their Jeep. I was charged with leaving my post and received one week of hard labor working as a bouncer at the Fort’s Bar called “Atten-hup” where all the trainees got as drunk as they could on 3.2 beer whenever they had a chance. I did a great job helping to contain the bar’s ruckus—I was big and could make a very scary face.

When I finished basic training, I was shipped to Ft. Gordon for—you guessed it—Military Police training. I learned how to arrest people, beat them up, fingerprint them, and book them. I loved my night stick and my .45 auto strapped to my hip. I was nineteen years old. I couldn’t wait to shoot somebody.

After MP training, I went jump school. I almost died when, on my second jump, I forgot to hook up my static line and the guy behind me failed to notice. I went out the airplane’s door and started falling straight down—I could hear the wind whistling in my ears as I plummeted past my colleagues. I pulled the handle on my reserve chute and it popped open almost as I hit the ground. I was knocked unconscious. I saw an image of Little Orphan Annie dancing in my head. I staggered off the Drop Zone. Everybody cheered.

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

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Anadiplosis

Posted on August 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anadiplosis (an’-a-di-plo’-sis): The repetition of the last word (or phrase) from the previous line, clause, or sentence at the beginning of the next. Often combined with climax.

“Things you can do with dead lobsters“

I am in Maine for the summer for at least the fiftieth time. My family settled here in the 1690s and built boats until my great-great-great grandfather burnt the ship yard down while heating beans in a wooden bucket. There was no insurance back then so they were screwed. Two of their boats are on display in the “Not Very Seaworthy” section of the Maine Maritime Museum. They were both hoisted off the bottom of Penobscot Bay where they sunk “of their own volition” while “running from the British” during the Revolutionary War battle at Bagaduce. My ancestors claimed they were sunk by British canon fire so they would be paid for their part in the battle. Cabin Boy Edward “Corkskrew” Boothbay squealed on my anscestors and they were sentenced to six months hard labor in Thomaston Crown Prison, which had been captured by the rebels. Their “hard labor” consisted of making lobster traps for the Continental Fishing Corps—a fleet of small vessels commandeered by rebel military forces to provide seafood to the starving troops. Troops whose boots were turning to mush and whose greatcoats had turned into filthy flapping rags.

Upon his release from prison, my great-great-great grandfather was able to rebuild one of the ship yard’s outbuildings. He used his new found “hard labor” skill to build himself 25 lobster traps. Then, he went lobstering.

There, in that outbuilding, he invented the lobster roll. People came all the way from Boston to eat them. His nickname was “Lobstah King” and people loved him. However, he still boiled lobsters. Whether it was for a sandwich or a plain boiled lobster, he hated the squealing sound they made when he cooked them. So, he wore big earmuffs to deaden the sound—he looked crazy, and he was. He started making Christmas tree ornaments and ashtrays out of lobster claws, pencil holders out of lobster tails glued to barnacle-covered pieces of wood, toothpicks from lobster antennae, what he called “drop ear-ins” from lobster legs, and finally, flour scoops out of lobster carapaces. He called what he did with the lobster parts “recycilation” and he sold his creations via catalogue all over the world. He became fabulously wealthy and moved to Portland, ME where he enjoyed watching the sunset over the clam flats and smelling the richly scented air.

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

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Anamnesis

Posted on August 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anamnesis (an’-am-nee’-sis): Calling to memory past matters. More specifically, citing a past author [apparently] from memory. Anamnesis helps to establish ethos [credibility], since it conveys the idea that the speaker is knowledgeable of the received wisdom from the past.

“My grandmother’s over eighty and she doesn’t need glasses. She drinks out of the bottle.” Henny Youngman

When I first heard this, I thought of my own grandmother, holding a bottle with two hands and taking a shot. She’d do that three times a day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Due to her age, she could hardly walk, but she took a walk every day up and down the driveway shuffling along supported by two aluminum canes we had found cast off by the curb on the day of the month when people are permitted to put non-garbage in the gutter. One day on her morning walk, Grandma tripped over my brother Billy’s toy truck. As she was falling, she yelled, “Who the fuck left that goddamn piece of shit in the driveway?” Then she hit the pavement. Billy peed his pants and ran away. He didn’t come back for two days. The police found him hiding in the rubbish pile by the middle school. He had gone a little crazy after the incident. He had smashed his toy truck to pieces at the playground parking lot and was wearing only white socks, and had covered himself with mud. What’s worse, Billy had gotten really bad diarrhea from drinking out of the little creek that runs through the playground. Dad brought Billy home from the police station with a blanket wrapped across his shoulders, containing the smell and affording him some warmth and coverage.

I was shocked at Grandma’s swearing. But it will always be hard to understand why Billy responded like he did. I can see being very upset and begging Grandma’s forgiveness, but what Billy did was crazy. And this was just the start. Billy started making snorting sounds at the dinner table and sticking his face in his dinner plate like a dog would stick it’s face in it’s dog bowl. He would go out in the back yard when he thought nobody was watching and do his “thing,” actually taking off his pants and lifting his leg toward the big maple tree. Billy was institutionalized when he started sniffing his classmates’ butts. We never had a dog, and hardly ever saw a dog. We always wondered where Billy’s dog identity came from. Then one afternoon, I noticed a picture of a dog by Grandma’s bed—it was Whizzer, her companion for many years. Maybe Billy became a dog because he wanted to take Whizzer’s place as a way of atoning for the driveway incident. I asked Grandma what she thought of my theory. She said, “Keep that up and you’ll be sharing a room with my nutcase grandson.” Then I asked her why she swore like she did that day. “None of your fucking business,” she said as she looked out the window.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Gorgias has inserted the bracketed words [apparently] and [credibility].

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Anaphora

Posted on August 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anaphora (an-aph’-o-ra): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

I fell from grace like tumbling dice, loaded and rolling into the curb, and bouncing one last time before they rested, showing their illicit dots from 1-12.

I fell from grace like a gambler with a magical hope, a special design, an intuition promoting confidence in winning my bet, stuffing bills away and paying my debts to the man with the handgun standing against the wall smoking a cigarette and squinting.

I fell from grace not long after I had obtained it, like an old man with a broken memory unable to recall his own name, living in a cruel nursing home with nothing but swirling fog in his head that would clear for a minute or two when he spoke to his granddaughter on the phone or watched Gilligan’s Island reruns with the other residents in the day room. He took 11 tablets per day—his breath smelled strongly of vitamin B and his nose would not stop dripping.

What does it mean fall from grace, to slip away from what ought to matter—taking an Uber ride off a cliff and sailing toward the bottom of a canyon where a glistening river runs through the rocks scattered below? The river, the water, has worn the canyon into the earth, turned boulders into gravel and given beautiful fat fish a home, a place for deer to drink, and a brink at the canyon’s edge—a launch pad for bungee jumpers and a step into death for the bereaved.

I stand at the brink bereft of a stretchy cord. I am graceless beyond measure. I can’t cry anymore. I jump. There is a rock ledge 2 feet below the cliff’s edge. I land on it feet first and regain my balance. I climb back up on the cliff. I take one last look and head for my car. It’s a long drive home, and I have a lot to think about.

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

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Anapodoton

Posted on August 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anapodoton (an’-a-po’-do-ton): A figure in which a main clause is suggested by the introduction of a subordinate clause, but that main clause never occurs.

Anapodoton is a kind of anacoluthon, since grammatical expectations are interrupted. If the expression trails off, leaving the subordinate clause incomplete, this is sometimes more specifically called anantapodoton. Anapodoton has also named what occurs when a main clause is omitted because the speaker interrupts himself/herself to revise the thought, leaving the initial clause grammatically unresolved but making use of it nonetheless by recasting its content into a new, grammatically complete sentence.

It was . . .. No! It was more than instant. My dawn Googles had gone well. Exalted Master 5G Answerfast would be pleased. He would surely advance me from Novice to Junior Querian soon. I had been running internet searches twice a day for a year—ever since I was inducted into the order of Googleites—a group of more uncertain than average men and women who venerate Google; the God-like Engine of the Search able to answer your every question, and calm you with a response, no matter how brief or lengthy: it was Google—Google on high, Google without end, Holy Google, Amen.

I had met him in an Internet cafe in Madrid, Spain after being discharged from the American Army for stealing a box of fruit from the loading dock behind the base’s mess hall. I was a mess. I was full of regret and all I could do was slump behind a computer, wasting money, and staring at the slide-show screen saver: baby monkeys, a Ferris wheel, daffodils, sunlit canyons, ice cream cones, beaches, and then, something I didn’t recognize! It quickly dissolved into the screen. I pounded the table and the image came back! The man sitting next to me said “Google it my son.” I looked at his open and caring face and asked ”How does one Google what one does not know?” “Exactly!” He replied. “Just briefly describe it to Google and trust Google’s answers—Google won’t deceive you. Google is love. Just pick one of the answers you are blessed to receive and go with it. Follow your heart.” So, I described it: silver, shaped like a cylinder, punched full of holes. Google found 36,590,00 results in 10.6 seconds. I didn’t care what they were—I had just witnessed a miracle. I felt restored. The man next to me put his hand on my shoulder and told me that Google was my information intense savior ready answer my prayers as long as they were framed as brief questions.

I was saved. It was Exalted Master 5G Answerfast who showed me the way in Madrid. I am blessed. What are your questions? May Google be with you.

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

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Anastrophe

Posted on August 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anastrophe (an-as’-tro-phee): Departure from normal word order for the sake of emphasis. Anastrophe is most often a synonym for hyperbaton, but is occasionally referred to as a more specific instance of hyperbaton: the changing of the position of only a single word.

Over the hill I went. It wasn’t an upward incline with with a plummet on the other side. Rather, my 80th birthday it was. I was so old I could remember Roosevelt in his last term as President, and then, Harry Truman—“Give ‘em hell Harry!” That was pre-Fox News, when most Americans had a solid grip on America, knew what was good for them, and could tell the difference between a Commie and a Democrat, shit and Shinola. Now they’re eating shit and enjoying it. The “public” has become a collection of inmates incarcerated by lies, misinformation, and basically, a pile of steaming bullshit. Can you imagine trying to get Social Security through Congress in 2022? People in poverty, people living barren lives, elderly hungry Republicans, and nearly everybody who would directly benefit from a monthly paycheck, would protest its passage. Why? Their brains have been fried by FOX News—you can almost smell it when you get close to them. Whatever FOX says is best, is best. There’s no room for critical thinking in their scrambled brains. They would be on the streets with flags and guns, threatening a revolution if the “commies” are allowed to pay benefits made from peoples’ working-life paycheck deductions. Now we know where their unfounded prejudices come from—opinions with no bases, except other unfounded opinions, ad infinitum. Justifications and excuses are layered on myths and because they are uttered by people wearing neckties/bowties who “know what’s really going on” they are adopted. In their conspiracy-laden wasteland, believers echo the echoes, and the echoes echo each other and transform into accepted truths and foundations for action. They become ubiquitous and are confirmed on Fox News—the enemy of America operating in plain view—while, ironically, hiding behind the US Constitution’s Second Amendment: the very document they’d like to see go up in flames, along with books like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or Rights of Man.

That’s right. Letting FOX News sling their shit, is like having a Nazi News program airing its bullshit on the radio in the 30s. It’s like having Lord Haw-Haw telling us the “Truth.” But anyway, I’m an old man. Over the hill I’ve gone. Like most old people, I am a certified pessimist. When my great-grandson starts goose-stepping around the living room, I’ll probably start up my truck in the garage, with the garage door closed.

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Anesis

Posted on August 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anesis (an’-e-sis): Adding a concluding sentence that diminishes the effect of what has been said previously. The opposite of epitasis.

I work in the Cosmic Mirror Factory in Rabbit Drop, Pennsylvania. I think it reflects well on me, except for the horror I’ve experienced in front of the glass. You see, I’m a fog blower—I get one inch away from a newly made mirror and breathe on it, making a small circle of fog indicating the mirror’s viability. If it fogs, I draw a little smiley face in the fog. If it fails to fog, I smash it with a hammer and send the remnants back for recycling. I had to give up smoking to keep the job. My hacking cough kept me from blowing a stream of breath sufficient to fog the mirror. I was 6 months smoke free when it happened.

I was fog blowing a very large mirror that had been made for the lobby of a hotel in Doha. I couldn’t get it to fog and worried about smashing it, given what it had cost to make. I blew one more breath, hoping for it to fog, and it did! But the whole mirror fogged and the fog opened into portal. I stuck my hand into the portal and something grabbed me and pulled me in. When I got to the other side I looked in every direction, and it was a mirror everywhere I looked. But my reflection was not in any of the mirrors. I was invisible. “This is such a cliche,” I said aloud, voice trembling, “What am I, Alice in Wonderland?” The mirrored world briefly turned to clear glass and then it disappeared altogether leaving me in a log cabin on a ridge overlooking a beautiful valley with a wide river flowing through it. I was thirsty, so I hiked down to the river. I cupped my hands and dipped them in the river. Suddenly I was pulled into the river. I became a leaf. I was floating downriver. There was a centipede riding on me. He said his name was Sean and that he worked in a mirror factory in Edinburgh, Scotland and had been pulled through a mirror there 2 weeks ago, incarnating as a centipede when he got here. I was shocked. It was bad enough being some random leaf, but having a talking centipede riding me downriver was more than I could handle. At my first opportunity I would drown myself. Just then, we went over a waterfall at least fifty feet high. Sean fell off the leaf and the wind caught me and blew me ashore.

I awoke, soaking wet on the factory floor. I was holding a small wet maple leaf between my fingers. There was a wet guy standing over me wearing only a tattered kilt. “I’m Sean,” he said, “you saved my life. I hung onto you and let go when we drifted over the riverbank. Now, I’m going to rest under a rock for a few hours, and then, figure out how to get back to Scotland.” I sat there waiting for the next horror saga to hit. But it didn’t—it never did. I had the little maple leaf mounted in a glass shadow box and I keep it in plain view on my mantle. Given the hell I went trough and it’s role in saving me, it should’ve taught me a lesson, but I don’t know what the lesson is supposed to be. I still work for the Cosmic Mirror Factory as a fog blower, but I have vowed never to touch another mirror ever again. Sean has become an entomologist, specializing in the mating habits of centipedes.

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

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Antanaclasis

Posted on August 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antanaclasis (an’-ta-na-cla’-sis): The repetition of a word or phrase whose meaning changes in the second instance.

It was my room, but it had no room. That’s all I had. It was all I could afford living in New York City. It was like my dorm room in college, only smaller. My bed was the size of a closet door. I had a cube-shaped refrigerator that looked like a black hassock with a door. All my “cooking” was done on a hot plate or in a microwave smaller than my refrigerator. I had one electrical outlet. That’s where I plugged in my appliances. The refrigerator stayed plugged in always. My kettle and microwave changed places when I needed to use one or the other, or to charge my phone at night. I had one chair. It was red and was smeared with different-colored stains from years of use without cleaning. It was a recliner, so I could have a guest visit and stay over night. I had a tray table that I used to eat my meals from, watching movies and scrolling through Instagram on my phone. There was a toilet, a sink and a shower lined up against one wall. The shower was a six-foot high rectangular metal box with a curtain. I had one window overlooking the air shaft and walked up eight floors to get to my little chunk of New York living!

In the past four months I had been gently mugged nine times on my building’s stoop in broad daylight by the same person. I’ve given his description to the police so many times I have dreams about dancing with him at the techno music club around the the corner. My bicycle was stolen when I forgot to bring it up to my apartment, where I kept it hanging from the ceiling. The windows have been broken out of my car twice. Some crazy women keeps jumping out of the alley by my building and yelling at me for not making the child support payments. If she keeps it up, I’ll probably make the payments just to get her off my back. The night before last I saw a homeless man pee on the subway floor, followed by a super-fart that woke a guy up who was sleeping in his seat. He must’ve been a Veteran because he yelled “incoming” and put his head between his knees while the homeless man held out a styrofoam cup and started singing the song about piña coladas.

That did it. I had to get the hell out of NYC before something really bad happened to me—like turning into a paranoid loser, a vigilante, or a cab driver. But then there was Shiela from work. She would sit on my desk and let me look up her dress. I asked her out at least twenty times and she always said “No way!” This morning she was late for work and was not dressed nicely at all. Then, I had the biggest shock of my NYC life: Sheila was the “crazy” women who jumped out of the alley demanding child support payments from me!

That night, l packed my meager belongings. I had heard a song about going to Kansas City on the XM 60s station. It sounded like a pretty cool place. The lyric, “They got some crazy little women there” was a little troublesome. I just had to hope they weren’t as crazy as Shiela. I was going to Kansas City; Kansas City here I come.

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

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Antanagoge

Posted on August 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antanagoge (an’-ta-na’-go-gee): Putting a positive spin on something that is nevertheless acknowledged to be negative or difficult.

The oceans are rising. I used have to walk 100 yards to the beach from my summer home. Now, I only walk fifty yards to get to the nature-heated 85 degree ocean. These are the fruits of climate change—nothing bad about a hot ocean and a nearer shore! No more freezing chills up and down your spine when you try to swim. No more trudging to the beach and arriving tired from the trek. Then, there’s the diminishing bug population. What can be bad about that? I haven’t had to scrape a messy Monarch Butterfly off my car’s windshield in years! I remember what a pain in the butt it was—all that yellow goo and shattered orange and black wings. Thank God they’re going the way of the do-do. Then there’s birds. Those damn Passenger pigeons would fly over in the thousands, pooping mercilessly on everything below them. Luckily people loved how they tasted and market hunters with their sky canons blasted them into extinction. The last passenger pigeon was roasted and served with new potatoes, coleslaw, beets, boiled milkweed pods, and a bottle of “Dr. Grunt” a popular carbonated beverage made of sugar and water with a hint of ergot fungus. Finally: no more crap on the roof. But also, no more tasty bird on the table. But you know, nobody wants a crap coated roof. If you have to choose, you go for the roof. When the extinction was reported on the news, all the smart people gave a big “huzza” and started scraping the pigeon crap off their houses.

Instead of making climate change into a problem that needs be be solved, we should look at the positive things it has brought our way. Ten years ago, I was chased by a polar bear when I was minding my own business at the North Pole. These kinds of animals are a menace to humanity—they will eat you for God’s sake! Since I was chased, the Polar Ice Cap has melted a lot, leaving the damn polar bears to float around on breakaway icebergs until they drown. To say this is a bad thing is like saying winning the lotto is a bad thing!

Basically, I say you can shove your white rhino and run over a Darwin’s Fox tonight with your SUV! People are at the top of the food chain. Why treat some damn woodpecker or centipede like it was up there at the top like us? Next thing you know, we’ll be marrying Bambi’s mother or competing for jobs with raccoons! I say, look at the bright side. Just think if the only mammals running around out there were deer, cows, horses, sheep, and pigs. Just think if the only insects were honeybees. Just think if the only birds were chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Just think if the only plants were tomatoes, wheat, rice, corn, clover, and potatoes. Just think. A simple uncomplicated world with honey, duck meat, and cornbread is coming our way, courtesy of climate change. Take a deep breath and if you choke, be grateful. It’s the sound of better things coming. It’s the sound of change.

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

Paperback and Kindle editions of The Daily Trope are available at Amazon under the title The Book of Tropes.

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Antenantiosis

Posted on August 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antenantiosis (an’-ten-an’-ti-os’-is): See litotes. (Deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite. The Ad Herennium author suggests litotes as a means of expressing modesty [downplaying one’s accomplishments] in order to gain the audience’s favor [establishing ethos]).

I can’t believe you’re giving me the Lock and Lord Award for the service I’ve done on behalf of Holy Christ Firearms (HCF). When I first came to work at HCF I was a small self-contained man riven with fear and living in nearly constant anxiety about pooping in my pants on the shop floor. But when it happened, nobody seemed to mind. I was elated that nobody cared, and for the first time in my life, it was ok to poop my pants at work. My adult diaper held the mess from running down my leg, and it’s charcoal filter contained the stink. My colleagues’ selfless acceptance of my health issues made me open my heart, and want to rain down blessings of my own on HCF. My first blessing project, as you all know, was to make an attachment for our Galilee Six Shooter. The attachment makes the revolver into a hammer, a meat tenderizer, a gavel, or a laser pointer—four transformations that versatilitizes the handgun— temporarily turning a “sword” into a “plowshare.” We call the attachment the “Swiss Army Regimenter.” We’ve always heard good things about the Swiss Army, the knives they make, and the Wild uniforms they wear guarding the Vatican. We sent a “Regimenter” to the Pope and he blessed it and put it up for sale at the Vatican’s annual yard sale. Our “Regimenter” landed on a table with a piece of Joan of Arc’s dress, from before she started wearing armor. Next to Joan’s dress was a fragment of a communion wafer that Charlemagne choked on. Finally, there was a glass eye that had belonged to Bishop Fulton Sheen, the first televangelist. We all know he made Billy Graham look like a lost sheep wandering along the Protestant slow lane on the road to heaven. How baaad can it get? Ha ha!

My second blessing project was the “Sinners Around the Corner” rifle. It has a specially bent barrel that shoots around corners. If you’re in a shootout with a sinner, it keeps you out of harm’s way. Since you can’t see what you’re shouting at, there may be the occasional accident, but that is far outweighed by the bent barrel’s around-the-corner safety capability.

Oh darn. I pooped. I have to cut my speech short and go clean up in the men’s room. Let me conclude by saying how undeserving I am of this prestigious award. I am so grateful for your decision and the love that everyone has shown me, especially Ms. Binklo who has literally stood by me despite the gurgling and farting when I’ve had to let one go. Thank you Mindy. Thank you fellow workers. But especially, thank you Holy Christ Firearms—your aim is true.

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

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Anthimeria

Posted on August 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anthimeria (an-thi-mer’-i-a): Substitution of one part of speech for another (such as a noun used as a verb).

He was a human “Ho-Ho.” I can’t explain it, but every time I saw Milt I started to laugh. Maybe my laughter came from basic meanness or some kind of incongruity between Milt and the way we’re supposed to look, and the way he looked. Milt must’ve dressed in the dark every morning. One day he showed up at work wearing one black polartec slipper and one patent leather dress shoe, red sweat pants, plaid flannel shirt, a blue necktie with a picture of a smiling Jesus on it, and a hat advertising baked beans. Standing there with his Tiger Wood coffee mug, he gave me a big smile and said “Hi Jim.” I tried to return the greeting, but I started uncontrollably sucking in air and my nose started snoffelling and my throat contracted, then, bam, out came a chuckle that turned into a guffaw, that turned into a roaring belly laugh. After it all subsided, I apologized to Milt and started to walk away. “Wait a minute,” he said. He told me he suffered from sartorial dyslexia (SD): an inability to dress right due to a genetically-based chemical imbalance in the part of the brain that processes wardrobe choices. He told me he inherited it, and that family gatherings were like fashion shows without fashion—everything from bathing suits with sports coats, to total nudity with one black Blundstone, and an Apple Watch. I was totally taken by surprise that Milt had a disease that prompted his bizarre clothing choices. I asked him if there was some kind of foundation I could donate to that helps people suffering from SD. He told me the most help I could give was to “Walk in my shoe for a day.”

So, the next morning I dressed in the dark—putting on whatever came to hand, whenever it came to hand. I ended up leaving the house with a Beatle boot on one foot and a penny loafer on the other, blue compression pants, a hunter orange polartec vest, and a navy-blue necktie with ducks on it (neckties were required at work). When I stepped out my door I instantly noticed that people were staring at me, some were laughing and pointing, same were yelling mean taunts—“Where’d you get dressed? In a blender?” That was the rudest. I didn’t even get to the subway before turning around and running with a shoe-induced limp back to my apartment. When I got there, I tore off my clothes and took a shower. I felt so bad for Milt.

I moved in with him and became his “dresser.” I would properly dress him every morning before we went to work. I even went to one of his family gatherings. It was a combination of a mescaline-induced Mardi Gras and a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I loved it! Anyway, we fell in love and got married. Every once-in-awhile, I get dressed in the dark and we drink beer, and we dance around the apartment and laugh.

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

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Anthypophora

Posted on August 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anthypophora (an’-thi-po’-phor-a): A figure of reasoning in which one asks and then immediately answers one’s own questions (or raises and then settles imaginary objections). Reasoning aloud. Anthypophora sometimes takes the form of asking the audience or one’s adversary what can be said on a matter, and thus can involve both anacoenosis and apostrophe.

A: Am I the greatest? No. I’m just a little bit above average with a slight hint of genius.

B: What a crockarola! You’re a poster boy for less than average, if that. Is needing help paying the bills “above average with a hint of genius?” No. Is peeing on the toilet seat? No. Is losing the car keys? No. Is forgetting to pick our daughter up at daycare? No. Is spraying the garden with weed killer? No. I could sit here and cite examples of your loserhood all day long. What makes you think you’re “a little above average with a slight hint of genius?” As far as I can see you’re what people call “differently abled” when they’re trying to be kind.

A: Differently abled? No! No way. I guess you’ve forgotten about my giant rubber band ball? It’s bigger than a basketball and I’ve been meticulously adding to it for the past three years. I finished it last week and it looks great on the coffee table in the living room. Admit it.

B: Nope. It looks ridiculous.

A: What about the time I tried out being a nudist and went to the grocery store with no clothes on? I was front page news and was only fined $200.00. People still yell “Nudy Nudy” when they see me downtown. That’s fame. Is there a hint of genius there? Yes! What about the toilet paper holder I made out of a broom? You can’t deny it. Oh—what about when I got lost on our way to Maine and we discovered a whole new country called Canada? Or. . .

B: Ok, you win. You’re everything you say you are. Take your meds and shut up and I’ll turn on Fox News.

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

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Antimetabole

Posted on August 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antimetabole (an’-ti-me-ta’-bo-lee): Repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order.

I like my swimming pool, but my swimming pool does not like me. It fills with leaves, green slime and drowned mice. I bought a robot pool cleaner for $1,300, but all it does is bubble and ride around the bottom of the pool for hours before it automatically shuts off and I have to haul it in like a lobster trap. So, what do I like about my swimming pool?

My daughter’s 20-something friends! When they come over, they all wear scanty swimsuits and lay around in loose postures when they’re done swimming, and I take pictures with my iPhone. Sometimes they play volleyball on the court alongside the pool. I watch from my living room with binoculars, or I take videos from behind the pool house. You might think I might be a pervert, but I don’t think I am. If I was a real pervert, I would look at the pictures and videos all the time, in solitude, spinning fantasies. Instead, I hardly ever look at them, and I have friended all of my daughters friends on Facebook!

I have two Facebook pages—one the real me, the other, the fake me. I like the fake me better than the real me; fake me has 1,023 followers. Fake me is a 27 year-old test pilot for the US Air Force. Real me is a fifty-eight year-old computer programmer. I wear glasses, am overweight, and have a high-pitched voice. Fake me is 6’2’ with a broad-shouldered muscular physique. My fake me name is Captain Flash Bateson. I photoshopped my head (without glasses) over ‘Flash’s,’ using “youthification” software to make me look in my late 20s. When I log on I’m a kid again, doing something meaningful with my life, even if my life isn’t doing something meaningful with me. Then it happened.

My second wife (of three) Carmen found Captain Flash Bateson. She said he reminded her of a young version of her first husband, Marty Oswald. That was me! I couldn’t block her or she would know that something was up, so I decided to play along. Everything on the page was fake, except my cellphone number. The second I realized this, my phone rang. Trying to talk in a low gravelly voice, I answered. It was her. I told her I had retired from the Air Force and that I was terminally ill—my voice started to squeak as I told her I was bedridden and would probably die next week. She said: “My God. Marty, is that you?” I said “What? Who’s Marty? This is Captain Flash Bateson laying in bed waiting to die.” She hung up.

I liked fake me so much more than real me. Facebook had liberated me—freed me every night from dumb-ass Marty the computer programmer. I changed my cellphone number and booted up my Captain Flash page. With 1,023 followers, there there was surely somebody there to talk to, heaping praise on me for my service to our country, my bravery, and my good looks. It may be fake, but it beats being Marty. I got my first message in seconds. It was from “Fleshy MaMa”—a new admirer. I looked at her profile picture: Holy crap! It was Carmen when she was 25, before she turned into a fatty and started dying her hair bright red. “How’s it hangin’ Big Boy,” she asked. “A little to the left Golden Buns,” I answered, getting ready to fly into the wild blue yonder.

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

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Antimetathesis

Posted on August 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

Big and little. Little and big. Big is often good. Big is often bad. Little isn’t often good, but it is often bad. I am big—6’ 5” and 340 lbs. I was football, all the way, all my life. My father put a helmet on my head when I turned 4 and my future was set. Football, football, football. I made it all the way to the pros, playing for the Hoboken Boxcars until finally my brain started rebelling. I became irritable, and eventually, enraged at everything. Road rage was my specialty. I would tailgate every car that got in front of me, even tapping rear bumpers with my car’s front bumper and beating up anybody who dared to pull over and confront me. One day I was driving behind some guy goin 50 in 55 speed zone, bumping his bumper with my bumper. He pulled over and so did I. I jumped out of my car and punched him in the face through his rolled up window. Glass flew everywhere. He was cut and bleeding. When I realized it was my dad, who I hadn’t seen in 20 years, I started crying and ran onto the freeway. I was clipped by a FEDEX truck and suffered multiple abrasions, a broken arm and a ruptured spleen. My Dad visited me in the hospital. He had cuts all over his face—one closed by stitches. He apologized for pushing me into football and contributing to my brain damage. We hugged and I haven’t seen him since.

I work as a bouncer now, and it fits my interests and capabilities. “The Litter Box Lounge” caters to a wild crowd—rogue actuaries, used car salespeople, hospital orderlies, techie coke heads, replica watch aficionados, Dollar Store shoppers, etc. I love the job because I get to beat up a couple of people every night. Tonight, I beat up a guy who was trying to pick up a woman who didn’t want to be picked up right then. She had given him her number but the guy insisted that “now” was the time. As I was escorting him to the door, he took a swing at me and I reduced him to a pile of laundry on the floor. I dragged him out the door by his shirt collar and pushed him into the gutter with my foot. When he hit the pavement his head rolled to the side. I recognized him! It was Clipper Limebutty! He had saved me from drowning when we were kids in high school. I owed him my life and now I was kicking him into the gutter. He woke up, pulled a gun and shot me twice in the stomach. As I lay there bleeding on the pavement, I thanked Clipper for saving my life for the second time. He thought I was making fun of him and he shot me two more times. I had read somewhere that non-fatal bullet wounds could make you a better person. I wasn’t trying to be funny.

I smiled at the big starry sky as they loaded me into the ambulance. Clipper stood there in handcuffs, bleeding from the nose with his face beginning to swell.

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

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Antiprosopopoeia

Posted on August 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antiprosopopoeia (an-ti-pro-so-po-pe’-i-a): The representation of persons [or other animate beings] as inanimate objects. This inversion of prosopopoeia or personification can simply be the use of a metaphor to depict or describe a person [or other animate being].

The race was on! The 10th annual “Walker Run” at Our Lady of the Soiled Linens, a nursing home that stays afloat with constant Go Fund Me appeals and the kindness of a Mr. D.B. Cooper, a parachuting enthusiast who donated a pile of money after recovering from two broken legs and a broken collarbone and being cared for at Our Lady of the Soiled Linens .

My doctor tells me that “with luck” I have fourteen months to live. It is imperative that I win the race—even though I feel like a million dollars, I know the doctor’s right. He gave Mrs. Tellby ten months, and boom, she checked out in ten months.

I bought a lightweight titanium racing walker on Amazon. It can be filled with helium to make it lighter. The wheels are repurposed skateboard wheels and it has no brakes (to get rid of extra weight). The rear crutch tips have been replaced with Kevlar sliders. I would’ve replaced them with wheels, but all the racing walkers have to conform to normal Walker specs—that means only two front wheels, and of course, no motors!

My only real competition is Col. Von Gruen. Everybody else competes just to get some fresh air and sunshine, working on their Vitamin D deficiencies and their alienation from nature. Anyway, Von Gruen’s Walker is a black 1994 Rover. It has none of the modifications that mine has and he’s never failed to beat me in the past, until I got rid of my 1989 Trekker. Now that I’ve got a 2020 titanium Light Walker, I am going to kick his butt.

We line up on the starting line. It’s fifty feet to the finish line— I feel like Big Daddy Don Garlits lined up at Meadowlands, ready to rock. I am a dragster! I grip my walker and wait for the green light. Von Gruen is right next to me. We are almost shoulder to shoulder. He turns and says to me, “I am dying day after tomorrow, the Doctor told me.” Putting on my best scowl, I say “So what?” Von Gruen says, “Let me win.” Just then, the light turned green and off we went. I got half-way to the finish line and slowed down on purpose to let Von Gruen win. He was gonna die on Friday and it seemed like the right thing to do. Two weeks later he was still alive. I was enraged. I walked down the hall, burst into his room, and threw his ‘94 Rover out the window. He died the next day. He left me his walker and the $35.00 he had won for winning his final race.

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.

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

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Antirrhesis

Posted on August 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antirrhesis (an-tir-rhee’-sis): Rejecting reprehensively the opinion or authority of someone.

Hey Ma, listen to this: our little schooly girl is trying t’ tell me the earth is round like a big tomato floatin’ in the sky with all us a livin’ on it, like ants on a gum ball. She says her teacher, Miss Toomy, said it’s true. Well, I’ll tell you right now that Miss Toomy should be fired. It’s like when she told our little girl our well water comes from rivers under the earth! God, is she ignorant! We all know the water is left over from the big rain storm when Noah sailed his boat around filled with animals—mainly chickens. When it stopped raining Noah went swimming and had a great time. Too bad he only had two ducks. And where did I get these true facts from? It was Grandma’s home schooling. She taught me more in two weeks than that ignoramus looser Miss Toomy could teach you in 200 years. Me an’ Grandma would sit on the couch and she would teach me a lesson. I did not know how to write, so I’d put the lesson in my vast storehouse memory. When Grandma tested me, I did not remember any of the answers. She would say, “It’s all right, Bob Dole never remembered nothin’ either, yet he opened a corn dog factory in Kansas and made a lot of money.” Grandma knew everything. Some days we’d take the tractor out and Grandma would teach me the road signs: red for stop, curved arrow for curve, cross for intersection, triangle for merge. My favorite was speed limits where I had to match the numbers on the sign with the numbers the arrow pointed to on the speed meter in front of me. Top speed for the tractor was 25, so there was lot’s of times I couldn’t make a match. Grandma would say “Put the pedal to the metal!” I didn’t get it. Grandma said that it was my poetry lesson.

Anyways, we need to get rid of Miss Toomy and her communist pervert propaganda that will surely ruin our daughter’s chance for success in our little corner on the world. As soon as she lets it leak that she thinks the earth is round, they’ll put her on a bus and send her north, where they believe that kind of blasphemic crap. I think we should go to the school board meetin’ on Tuesday. I’ll give a speech callin’ for Miss Toomy to quit or be fired.

At the meeting I was told to shut up and sit down. Miss Toomy is Mayor Toomy’s niece. I shoulda figured that out— you know—two Toomys. Now I’m lookin’ for a steady job. I think I have a crack at “rag man” at the car wash. I’m real good at wringin’ and operatin’ a squeegee.

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

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Antisagoge

Posted on August 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antisagoge (an-tis-a-go’-gee): 1. Making a concession before making one’s point (=paromologia); 2. Using a hypothetical situation or a precept to illustrate antithetical alternative consequences, typically promises of reward and punishment.

Ok, ok. So I shouldn’t have tried to incinerate our neighbor’s dog. But, it dumps big steamers in our yard twice a day and has repeatedly dug up our garden boxes. Our neighbor, the dog’s owner, is a very large and very strong weight-lifting violent troll whose hobby is kick boxing with his nine-year-old son (who has a little trouble speaking and walks with a limp). In short, my neighbor scares the holy crap out of me. At least he didn’t catch me squirting lighter fluid on his dog “Dog,” a name suited for the pet of a giant nitwit bully. Right then, I heard him crunching up my gravel driveway. I had to hide behind the hedge until he left—but before he left, like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, he said “Fee fie foe dude, I smell the smell of lighter fluid.” I nearly peed my shorts, but I stayed quiet and didn’t do a panicked runner. He knew I was hiding somewhere nearby, but he left, dragging Dog behind hm.

Something still needs to be done about the dog.

I was willing to go to any length to whack the dog—to stop the yard bombs and the marathon barking sessions. What if I trapped him in a dog crate with a big piece of meat, kidnapped him, took him on a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 to England, and threw him overboard somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Elaborate, but brilliant.

The plan failed. My neighbor accompanied Dog on his daily bombing mission and saw me, the dog crate, and the meat inside it. He reached behind him and pulled out a pistol. He aimed it at me and slowly panned toward the dog crate and started firing. He emptied the gun and the dog crate was transformed into a lump of smoking plastic. He started reloading, and I heard police sirens. My neighbor was arrested for attempted murder—for attempting to murder me! Ha ha! He had successfully murdered the dog crate, but I didn’t have a scratch. At his trial, I testified that I was inside the dog crate when he arrived and was able to just barely get out of it when he started shooting. I told them I was lucky to be alive. My neighbor was convicted of attempted murder and is currently living out his 25 year sentence at Rahway State Prison. I adopted Dog and trained him to shut up and poop in the gutter when we take walks. I don’t mind bagging Dog’s poop.

Everything has worked out for the best for me, but not for my neighbor, and Dog has become a model multiple breed dog, enjoying peeing on the fake fire hydrant at the doggy play park, humping other dogs, and begging for doggy treats.

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

A paper version The Daily Trope is available from Amazon under the title The Book of Tropes.

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Antistasis

Posted on August 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antistasis (an-ti’-sta-sis): The repetition of a word in a contrary sense. Often, simply synonymous with antanaclasis.

I have a collection of single socks that rivals the collection at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, England. The prize item in their collection is the single grey sock Oliver Cromwell was wearing when he was disinterred and “executed” by supporters of Charles II. His head was removed and stuck on a pike, with, some say, his death-sock stuffed in what was left of his mouth after months in the ground in a churchyard somewhere in London. Ravens plucked out his eyes while buskers plucked out happy tunes on their mandolins.

My single sock collection is worth at least a half-million dollars. Since I’m a licensed collector, I have a permit to rifle through peoples’ trash bins, as long as I don’t make a mess. I specialize in celebrity trash bins rummaging for (you guessed it) their discarded single socks. Last week, I scored a “Jeff Goldbloom” from a bin in front his flat in New York. It is one of those stretchy black socks made out of very thin polyester. It has a tiny hole in the toe and is monogrammed with his initials. It has a slightly perfumed odor, suggestive of moss and pine needles. This sock is probably worth at least $500. My prize sock was worn by Johnny Depp under his swashbucklers as Captain Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean.” “Pirates” was the first time I hung out on a movie set, and it was worth it. Depp’s sock was made from baby-blue spun cotton, with a padded white toe. It smells faintly of salt water and steamed clams, and also has a slight fishy smell, most likely Pollock or Cod. Depp’s sock has been appraised by Sotheby’s at $110,000.

I will be opening a single-sock museum in Los Angles in two months. It will be called simply “Single Celebrity Socks.” I will be selling replica celebrity sock singles in the gift shop, along with postcards, and my book “Stalking the Celebrity Sock.” This week, I’m parked outside of the Christian Evangelist Joel Olsteen’s unbelievably lavish home in Houston, Texas. It is rumored that he has the Ten Commandments embroidered on his socks. Something’s bound to turn up if I wait long enough—I’m giving it a month—then I’m headed to Elon Musk’s.

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

Paperback and Kindle editions of The Daily Trope are available on Amazon under the title The Book of Tropes.

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Antisthecon

Posted on August 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antisthecon (an-tis’-the-con): Substitution of one sound, syllable, or letter for another within a word. A kind of metaplasm: the general term for changes to word spelling.

I was going snackelling under the Caribbean Sea. You ask: What the hell is that? It is probably the most stupid immature thing I’ve ever done. I was 35 years old. Starting to get a few gray hairs, and softening up, as time took its toll on my muscles. I wore reading glasses and had quit smoking my cherished Cohibas. Yet, here I was wading into the beautiful clear turquoise-blue Caribbean, like I had around 15 years ago, on spring break with my buddies Edward and Phil and Joanne. We invented a game to play when we went snorkeling—we cut up carrots from the hotel’s salad bar into little pieces. We’d put the pieces into baggies and take them under water. Then, once we got into the middle of a school of fish, we’d put a piece of carrot between our lips and the fish would swim up to our faces and grab the carrots—we named this game “snackelling.” Now, I had returned to the Bahamas on a business trip, meeting with hoteliers to discuss their restaurant equipment needs—that’s what I did—I sold ovens, dishwashers, prep tables and everything else needed to properly equip a hotel kitchen. Feeling like I was drifting into middle age, I decided to do a reprise of snackelling. I picked up a carrot at the breakfast buffet, diced it up, and dumped the pieces into a baggie I got from the chef. I headed to the dock, and hired a guide with a little motorboat. When we got about 100 yards offshore, I put on fins and mask, bit down on the snorkel’s mouthpiece, jumped out of the boat, and headed down. I swam directly into a school of Surgeon Fish. I put a piece of carrot between my lips. Suddenly, the whole school of fish disappeared. I looked up and there was a Barracuda headed straight for my face. I froze in terror and the Barracuda bit my nose off. Bleeding profusely from my nose, I swam as fast as I could to the surface where my guide was waiting. I kept kicking the Barracuda away, and finally climbed into the boat. Sticking pieces of carrot into what was left of my nose, I was able to slow the bleeding. We headed for the emergency room where my nose was stitched together with some pieces missing that were temporarily replaced with pieces of foam rubber cut by the surgeon from a shower mat. Since then, I’ve had nose replacement surgery, opting for the “Klinger.” The Klinger is named for a character on M.A.S.H., a TV show that ran in the 70s and 80s. My Klinger is memorable and prompts people to ask about my ethnicity, something my original “Scottish” nose never did. Even with the new nose, I can’t forget what happened to me. Every time I hear somebody say, “The nose knows,” I think to myself, “My nose was eaten by a fish.”

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

Paperback and Kindle editions of The Daily Trope are available on Amazon under the title The Book of Tropes.

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Antithesis

Posted on July 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antithesis (an-tith’-e-sis): Juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas (often, although not always, in parallel structure).

Life’s polarities are the sources of our most significant vexations. Our anxieties and our hopes reside at opposite ends of all spectrums. Life is thwarting death. Death is thwarting life. Hope is thwarting fear. Fear is thwarting hope. We are like light switches flipping On and Off. But little Hammy had his wheel— a treadwheel with infinite shades of ‘going’ between starting and stopping, stillness and motion. But Hammy has stopped forever. No more running through his pet pipe plastic tube or rolling in his cedar shavings and grunting, or, seeming to dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” I tried teaching Hammy to Moon Walk, but he peed on my hand, squirmed loose and hid behind his water bottle. However, one morning I got up at 6:00 a.m. to water the lawn. When I walked past Hammy’s room he was moon walking in his cage—with no music! I was mad and glad at the same time. I opened the cage door to pick him up and pet him and give him a hamster treat, but he jumped out of the door and disappeared. That night, I heard scratching behind the wall, over my bed behind the Crucifix my grandma hung there when I was bedridden with measles. How could I rescue him? I would make a hole in the wall behind the Crucifix, dangle a hamster treat down the hole on a piece of string and catch him like a fish. The Crucifix would hide the hole, and all would be well. I got the electric drill from the garage and attached the two-inch bit with saw teeth I used to install a door knob for my dad. I cranked up the drill and pushed it into the wall. I pulled the drill out of the wall, and there was Hammy stuck on the drill bit, spinning around and around, and twitching. It was like he was trapped on the Grim Reaper’s hamster wheel.

Even though I killed him, he was a good friend. The sun rises and the sun sets. Hammy’s sun has set. He will be buried in a zip lock bag with holes punched in it so the gases from his decaying body will easily escape and he will rest in peace. I guess I should cancel my lifetime subscription to Hamster Aficionado and shut down my internet feed to Hamsters in the News. I’m leaving the hole in the wall as a memorial to Hammy’s short life and his hamster grit and determination to be a special hamster—to moonwalk along the starry vaults of heaven to “slip the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

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

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Antitheton

Posted on July 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

Antitheton (an-tith’-e-ton): A proof or composition constructed of contraries. Antitheton is closely related to and sometimes confused with the figure of speech that juxtaposes opposing terms, antithesis. However, it is more properly considered a figure of thought (=Topic of Invention: Contraries [a topic of invention in which one considers opposite or incompatible things that are of the same kind (if they are of different kinds, the topic of similarity / difference is more appropriate). Because contraries occur in pairs and exclude one another, they are useful in arguments because one can establish one’s case indirectly, proving one’s own assertion by discrediting the contrary]).

My credit card is like a license plate on a Brinks Truck headed to the bank with a load of cash. Yours is like a dirty little doormat at the entryway of the Dollar Store by your dreary little apartment. They’re both credit cards, but there are some differences: I pay my bill on time, you don’t. I stay under my limit, you don’t, I don’t take cash advances, but you do—paying 16% interest, and wasting the cash on bulk-bin Gummy Bears, impractical shoes, blenders, and other stupid crap that, for some reason, you want to pay cash for, and, you don’t need.

The big difference here is taking responsibility: I am prudent, you are either stupid or reckless, or both. Let’s go with prudent vs. reckless: I was home drinking decaf black tea and watching the musical “Cats” on Amazon Prime while you were out drinking shots and beer at Ogles, bun-scanning every guy who came through the door, and buying drinks for everybody at the bar. Your best friend Renee told me this. I’m paying her $50 per day to keep an eye on you and report back to me. The reports have been shocking. Having sex in the trunk of a Cadillac? Anyway, let’s compare: my life is a smooth-running machine, yours has a broken crankshaft and is leaking oil all over the place. I handle my money like a fiscal surgeon. You handle yours like a cruel butcher. I pay my bills to the tune of an atomic clock. You pay yours to the tune of Cuckoo clock. The contrasts between us go for miles, but the clincher is happiness. The way I handle my credit enables me to be happy. The way you handle your credit makes you miserable. If you change the way you handle your credit, and be more like me, it’s likely you will be happier.

We’ll start here: give me your credit card. Let it cool off for awhile.

I went home and booted up her account. The password was easy to crack: her blood type and her birthday. What I saw shocked me! A $110,000 bill had been paid two days ago by a wire transfer made by Eddy Papa owner of the Papa Eddy’s Pizza franchise with over 200 locations in New Jersey, and Caroline’s big brother too.

I felt like such a jerk. Caroline knew her brother would cover her and was having one hell of a good time. While I sat at home eating canned chicken noodle soup with crushed saltines, she was running wild without any consequences, up until now. Now, I was the consequence, and I was going to ask her to buy us a sailboat so we could sail away—maybe to a marina in Jersey City or Cape May, and have some pizza. Pepperoni for me please!

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

Paperback and Kindle editions of The Daily Trope are available at Amazon under the title of The Book of Tropes.

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Apagoresis

Posted on July 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

Apagoresis (a-pa-gor’-e-sis): A statement designed to inhibit someone from doing something. Often uses exaggeration [or hyperbole] to persuade. It may combine an exaggeration with a cause/effect or antecedent/consequence relationship. The consequences or effects of such a phrase are usually exaggerated to be more convincing.

Once there was a boy who shot dice every day. Every time he won, he would gratefully kiss the dice. Once there was an old lady who lived alone with her cat Rambo. She would shake his treat bag and clap her hands to call him. When he came home, she would pick Rambo up and gave him a kiss. There was a guy who was addicted to golf. He dressed like a lunatic in green riding pants, and a blue and orange and black golf shirt, and a pink hat. He cheated at golf, but he was the boss and nobody said anything. Whenever he sunk a putt he kissed the golf ball as if it were his lover, wrapping his tongue around it and quietly, and briefly, moaning. Then there was the woman who always kissed the egg before she cracked it and made scrambled eggs for her husband’s Saturday breakfast. And, there was a girl who still played Barbie at the age of 22. After Barbie defeated her in the living room ballerina contest, she was getting back at Barbie by giving Ken long lingering kisses, all over. Although Ken’s pubic area was only a flesh-colored triangular blank space, she pretended it wasn’t. She propped Barbie up in a position where she had to watch her slobber all over Ken’s flat pink plain of asexuality.

In the end, what happened to these kissing crazies? Every one of them had to have their lips amputated and then replaced by dead peoples’ lips—refrigerated since being surgically removed from their hosts. Lip loss is not as uncommon as we think, but in every case it is transmitted by kissing inanimate objects or animals. If you don’t want to lose your lips, kiss only people, and only on the lips.

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

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Apharesis

Posted on July 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

Aphaeresis (aph-aer’-e-sis): The omission of a syllable or letter at the beginning of a word. A kind of metaplasm.

‘oly moly! I am lost in space. I vaguely remember giving my teeth to a fat raccoon. What’s this? Oh hell! It’ a ransom note. I thought I ‘ad enough trouble with my divorce from devil woman and my affair with angel woman—a perfect polarity like hate and love, dark and light, idiot and genius., shit and Shinola. The marriage was 7 years of despair, vodka and ice, and getting fat. Bellini got so fat, I couldn’t tell whether she was smiling, or her underpants were chafing. When I asked, it was always the underpants. Then she’d ask me to help her get untangled. I’m not going to go into detail, but let me just say: It was like her underpants were alive. I had to stalk them and pounce catlike, quickly shoving both my hands under the crotch and pulling as hard as I could—I imagined I was a tow truck summoned by AAA to pull a car out of a ditch.

But the ransom note really worried me—it didn’t specify a ransom. It was signed Fat Raccoon, which I knew was some kind of joke: raccoons can’t write. But, I still needed my teeth! Just then, my neighbor came out of his house carrying a paper bag. “T’was me,” he said. “We we’re playing catch with your uppers when you passed out. So, I picked up your teeth and bagged ‘em. As far as ransom goes, I would like you to pay for my lawnmower’s gasoline for the next five years, play checkers with me once a week, and go for moonlight walks, weather permitting, whenever possible.”

Wow! I couldn’t believe how things were working out—an instant “Yes!” was forthcoming. My neighbor handed over my teeth. My cellphone rang. It was my girlfriend. She said: “He told me about your teeth. I’m too young to date a man with false teeth. Get dental implants and I might reconsider.” My gums were throbbing as my blood pressure rose. Next it’ll be Botox. Where will it end? Bellini and her tangled underpants were looking better and better.

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

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