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Cacozelia

Posted on October 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Cacozelia (ka-ko-zeel’-i-a): 1. A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned. 2. Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.

Novitiate: Your sobriquet manifests a quality of veritas-inducing pathos, bathos and credence in the sincerity of your verbalizations. You are known as Father Potato—your soul is wedded to the earth, with many eyes you survey your manse, and you would be ready to be whipped or mashed in service of the Lord. Not to mention, scalloped or fried in oil—to a crisp beige hue, and liberally salted, or soaked with ketchup, or even mayonnaise, if visiting Holland. We know these are all metaphors Father Potato, but they provide us with an orientation to what we can only trust as we wander this vale of tears, forgetful of where we come from. Am I right Father Potato?

Father Potato: No, you are completely wrong. Your musings about me and everything else, are like “a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan, a rider on the storm.” Thus spake Saint James of the leather pants, who died in Paris and ascended to Montmarte, to sit at the left hand of Baudelaire on Saturdays, and his right hand the rest of the week. Saint James can’t speak French, so he just nods his head when Baudelaire reads “Paris Spleen” out loud. “I woke up this morning and had myself a beer, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” Thus spake St. James. Accordingly, I have begun drinking beer and letting it roll all night long, as should you, my son. Instead of a beer, you should have a glass of orange juice when you wake up in the morning, before school. Now, please go away. I have to work on this Sunday’s sermon. It is about a man who becomes locked in a coal cellar and eats a piece of coal. The coal poisons him and he dies a slow agonizing death and goes to hell. It is an allegory.

Novitiate: Oh Father potato! I am up to my ankles in the wisdom overflowing from your words. I can’t think of enough cliches to encompass the truth you purvey—like a ladle filled with the broth of prayerful uplift on the wings of a great big white dove, soaring above the Sea of Galilee, crapping on sinners hauling their nets filled with great flopping lies, inducing vile uncharitable thoughts suited for cackling imps and howling demons. There is so much I have to learn—that I want to learn—“about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, and a little thing called love.” Thus spoke Jewel Akens. I am overwhelmed. I am going to pass out!

POSTSCRIPT

The novitiate passed out, rolling down the stairs in an ecstatic revelry—including a vivid vision of his high school English teacher, Miss Carnaletti. When he awoke, Father Potato was dragging him under the altar. He left the boy there and went to Pop’s Bar and Grill to let it roll all night long, and to ride the coin-operated pony in the back room.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Catachresis

Posted on October 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Catachresis (kat-a-kree’-sis): The use of a word in a context that differs from its proper application. This figure is generally considered a vice; however, Quintilian defends its use as a way by which one adapts existing terms to applications where a proper term does not exist.

I was reticent to jump out the window. It was three feet to the ground where mother’s beloved flower bed was filled with color, the result of years of hard labor, and the consequence of an unhealthy rivalry with Mrs. Better across the street. But why the hell was I even hesitating? Grandpa was in flames in his living room chair and he was headed toward lighting the entire living room on fire. “Everclear” and a “Swisher Sweet” cigar were a bad combination. It was inevitable, but I didn’t think it would be today. I felt the heat of the flames, and I jumped, landing in the rich well-turned loam and crushing four different-colored tulips.

The fire department came and they quickly put the fire out—it didn’t spread much from Grandpa, scorching the carpet and chair and burning up the table by the chair with Grandpa’s medication and where his Rubic’s cube usually was. He loved that Rubic’s cube. He never solved it, but he said it kept his wrists limber. Where was it?

He was put in a black rubber bag and and zipped it up. I couldn’t watch him being bagged. Suddenly there was movement inside the bag. The EMT unzipped it and there was dead Grandpa holding his Rubic’s cube with his hand twitching in post-morten convulsions. In death, he had nearly solved the puzzle, but his convulsions stopped before he could finish. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The EMTs zipped Grandpa’s bag back up and wheeled him out the door.

My mother came storming in holding the tulips I had crushed. “What were you thinking stupid boy? These tulips came straight from Amsterdam. A client gave them to me as a special bonus. You know that’s where I met your father when I put my butt up to the glass and he licked it, winning my heart and making me his wife. So, you should know how much pain you’ve caused by crushing them!” With that, she started slapping me across the face with them until they turned to juice. I reminded Mom that the tulip bulbs were unharmed and the tulips would come back next year. She didn’t care. She started throwing dirt balls at me. One hit me in the eye and enraged me. I wanted to kill her. I threw Grandpa’s “Everclear” bottle at her and hit het a glancing blow to the head. The rubber mask flew off. Holy shit! It was Grandpa. “Jesus Grandpa! Who was that in your chair?” Grandpa said, “My twin brother Florio. I didn’t know he existed. He showed up here 3 months ago and tied me up in the bomb shelter in the basement. He has been collecting my Social Security checks and stole your poor dead dad’s coin collection and guns and sold them for half of what they’re worth,”

I was shocked: “God Grandpa! Where the hell is Mom?” Where did you get the Mom mask? Grandpa said, “Mom lives next door and visits every day. Up until my twin brother showed up, everything worked fine. He is dangerous a kept one of your dad’s guns in the chair with him. I got loose from the bomb shelter, but was afraid to confront him or contact the police. I have 100s of parking tickets. So, I resurrected the Mom mask I had made so your mother could cheat on your father. I disguised myself as her and pretended to be her when she went next door for her trysts. There’s more to the story, but enough is enough.”

“Are you sure you’re my real grandpa?” I asked. “Grandpa” looked at me and headed for the door. He pulled the Mom mask back on and said he was going to buy a new Rubic’s cube at the toy store.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Catacosmesis

Posted on October 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Catacosmesis (kat-a-kos-mees’-is): Ordering words from greatest to least in dignity, or in correct order of time.

Heaven and earth! Spirit and matter! We are born, we live, we die. Some people live their entire lives enamored with heaven, their spirt or soul, and their death, putting them out of the here and now. Sometimes I wish I could put the here and now out of play and focus my thoughts and feelings on the Great Beyond. Out of curiosity, I’ve tried, and I am trying, three time-tested methods.

Self-flagellation: Whacking your naked back with a leather metal-studded thong, has a sort of appeal, not unlike masturbation—it is self inflicted and it is supposed to result in some kind epiphany. But as much as I try when I beat my back, I can’t get there. I just yell “Ow!” and keep on slamming. Whoever invented flagellation as a spiritual exercise was a little creepy. There were people like St. Fleshrip, who had stand-ins to keep whipping him when his arm got tired. He died from an exposed backbone and ascended directly to Heaven, where he sits behind God, holding his scourge to hand off to God if he should need it. Martin Luther was also a notorious self-whacker, as was Sarah Osborn, who strangely enough, practiced self-flagellation to improve her tennis swing, while at the same time contemplating her sinfulness, a feat that won her a place in the “Guinness Book of World Records” under the category of “multitasking.”

Hair Shirt: When I was a little boy, my mother purchased me a pair of goat fur underpants from the St. Thomas More website. I was having trouble in school, and they were supposed to be a remedy for poor study habits. My mother made me wear them when I was doing my homework, but the itching was more of a hindrance than a help. I spent half my time scratching my crotch, like I had jock itch from poor hygiene. So, I kept a tube of Cortisone in my desk. When mother left the room to use the toilet or make a cup of tea, I jammed a glob of Cortisone down my goat hair underpants and found almost instant relief from the itching. I excused my behavior by claiming to myself that my itchy underpants had prompted me to be creative, and I would give thanks: “Thank-You God for the itch-relieving balm of Cortisone.”

Fasting: Another body-bending adventure in self-torture! It’s easy! You just stop eating, and go for non-chewable commestibles, which in this case, are liquids. No more cheeseburgers. No more jelly donuts. No more sushi. When I last fasted, I drank strawberry Kool-Aid. My teeth became stained red from the Kool-Aid. I looked like I had a fatal case of gingivitis, The major benefit of fasting is getting out of cooking. If you’re smart, you’ll choose water as your fasting liquid of choice. All you have to do is turn on a faucet and fill up a glass! Convenient! Quick! No mixing! Totally liquid!

I’m fasting right now. I stopped pooping a week ago and my urethra is burning from the nearly endless stream of pee. Writing all this has been extremely difficult. I am dizzy and have had several visions. The best vision so far has been the red Cadillac in my driveway. I think the Lord has traded out my Subaru. Although I loved my Subaru, I am grateful for the Cadillac. Praise the Lord.

I’m thinking of dragging myself to the refrigerator in the kitchen and grabbing a tub of cheese dip and eating it with my finger. I hope I can reach the refrigerator handle. I hope I can reach the cheese dip. I hope I can reach the kitchen.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Cataphasis

Posted on October 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

Cataphasis (kat-af’-a-sis): A kind of paralipsis in which one explicitly affirms the negative qualities that one then passes over.

You are a selfish, close-minded, prejudiced ass. But, I’m not going to waste your time telling you what you already know, instead, I want to talk about the asinine bullshit you fill my children’s heads with when they come over to play with Dick and Jane. I’m on the verge of not letting them over to your house any more. You’re an adult, Jim, so they believe you.

First: Betty and I are not space aliens and we did not steal them and our twins from a family in England and transport them here by matter exchange, a common means of travel, you allege, on our plant. Sure, the kids have a slight British accent, but that’s from watching Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS.

Our cat-like eyes are the result of drinking too much catnip tea. It is quite normal and has been documented in “Scientific Italian Magazine,” The condition has become permanent, but we don’t care because we love our catnip tea!

Second: you told my kids I don’t have a job because I don’t leave the house every morning clutching a briefcase like all the other Bozos on the block. Well, I’ll tell you! I work at night in the surrounding towns collecting donations door to door—mostly jewelry,, cash, and small appliances. People leave their doors open as a signal to me, and I quietly bag what they’ve left sitting out. Believe it or not, I have my own charity, “Golden Nest.” Most of what I collect goes to a family right here on our street, and the rest goes to the Police Vice Fund (PVF). PVF studies vice in the field, risking seduction and corruption, and getting caught with pants down or a slot machine handle in their hand. You poor deluded creep! Stop filling my kids’ heads with total nonsense!

Third: you told our kids we used to have four children and two of them (the twins) are dead: murdered. God, what a terrible thing to tell our kids! You made them fearful of us. They lock their bedroom doors at night and test their food for poison on Arfo, the family dog. If we wanted to kill them, we certainly wouldn’t poison them. We would probably drown them in the bathtub, hang them, or push them out an upstairs window. But we didn’t, Damn you!

We sent the twins, Kiki and Karl, to Ukraine, where they are listed as missing! Missing! Not dead! Their surrogate grandparents were taking care of them, but they’ve disappeared too, along with the kids’ passports and any signs that they were ever there. There’s no record of their plane tickets, which we bought online from Orbitz. We think maybe they cashed in their tickets and went to Disneyland. We’re checking on this theory. In the meantime we do not consider them dead because we have solid theories. So, shut up about “dead children.” They’re missing!

So, that’s it for now. Let’s try to be friends. After all, we’re neighbors.

Let’s get together on Friday. Bring your little wife Honey. Tonight, I have to work on the big silver thing in my garage. One of its parts has become defective, but I can replace it with any small appliance Tonight, I’ll be trying out a toaster.

Now, Carl, I’m going to make you forget this conversation and all suspicions about our family, my job, and where we come from. When I clap my hands, all that you will remember is our Friday dinner date. Clap!

POSTSCRIPT

Carl had his own secrets to keep and pretended to be affected by the spell. Carl was a Space Ranger and had had his eye on his neighbors, from the planet Tylenoll, where Carl came from too. He’d been surveilling them for nearly a year. He was getting ready to bring them in. He hoped he could unload the two brats when they stopped at Uturn. They didn’t deserve the same fate as their depraved parents, as required by Tylenollian law.

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

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Cataplexis

Posted on October 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Cataplexis (kat-a-pleex’-is): Threatening or prophesying payback for ill doing.

May your nose fall off and land on the floor. You, Carl Peek, have wronged me, Ned Aiken, super-beloved middle school teacher.

You have slighted me. You have dragged me through the mud, by the feet, on a freezing day. You scoundrel! You skunk! You rotten banana! You unlaundered garments! You basket of moldy bread! You dead battery in a power outage! Your guts stink. Your soul is ashen. I will redeem myself, inflicting you with horrendous painful, torturous, retribution!

I will tie you to an uncomfortable wooden chair. I will fill your mouth with ping-pong balls and force you to watch pre-recorded episodes of “The View” until you recant every evil thing you ever said or wrote about me.

I wouldn’t be so mad if nobody had believed your slanders. I have never, never, never read “Grapes of Wrath.” In an act on consummate cruelty and deception you stuffed a copy in my book bag when I was distracted, looking at Ms. Carver’s rear side in the lunch line, which in itself is harmless, and permitted if not accompanied by catcalls. I did not utter a single catcall, at least, so nobody could hear me.

Then, you told the whole school I said “woke” contrary to the recently imposed censored speech regulations. I really don’t care about the First Amendment and its so-called “freedom of speech.” I don’t mind having a dictator for governor, what I do mind is getting me in trouble with his henchmen. See my nose? Does it look happy to you? All I did was say, “I woke up a little late this morning.” You recorded me, cut the “woke” and pasted it in sound clip where it played over and over and sounded like a chant. You Rat! I got my ass kicked on my way home from Plantation Way Middle School by a gang of sweaty beer-drinking old men.

Well guess what, Mr. Horseshit? I got your sister pregnant. She doesn’t want the baby. Given your finances, she’s gonna’ have to walk a thousand miles to NY to terminate her pregnancy. Ha ha!

POSTSCRIPT

This story is filled with idiots, letting their freedom slip away disguised as educational reform and trampling on women’s reproductive rights. After the blood test, it was determined that Ned was the baby’s father and he is responsible for providing child support. He asked Carl’s sister, Nareen, to marry him and she hit him in the face with a hardcover edition of “Grapes of Wrath.” Noreen held a fundraiser in the Barn Door Mall parking lot and raised enough to fly to New York. She had to lie about why she was going to New York.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Charientismus

Posted on October 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

Charientismus (kar-i-en-tia’-mus): Mollifying harsh words by answering them with a smooth and appeasing mock.

Joe: You’re the laziest person in the universe.

Nick: I’m resting. I don’t need a wake-up call from you Mr. 6:00 am.

These two guys didn’t get along with each other. Their conversations consisted mainly of insults and almost every week they’d end up fighting—wrestling on the kitchen floor. But times were tough and they needed each other to cover the rent. Then, they decided to sublet the hallway closet—it was big enough for a single bed and it had shelves and plenty of room to hang things. All it needed was an extension cord and it was good to go, New York style.

They put an ad on sublet.com. They were renting the closet for $500 per month. Joe and Nick hoped the extra money would get them off the edge, and give them a modicum of financial stability. They got over 200 responses to their ad. They were overwhelmed. They decided to close their eyes and randomly point to an application from the ones scattered on the kitchen island, and see what they got.

They hit the application on the top of the pile: a veterinarian. They thought they couldn’t go wrong subletting to an animal doctor—he probably made good money and wouldn’t stiff them on the rent. So, he moved in. His name was Dr. Doolittle. One night Joe heard rustling around in the kitchen. Dr. Doolittle was drinking a martini a with a large chimpanzee in pajamas.

Dr. Doolittle introduced the chimp—its name was Cheetah III and his great-grandfather had appeared in numerous Tarzan films. Dr. Doolittle had rescued Cheetah from a factory in Thailand where he worked assembling iPhones, seven days a week, with no vacation.

Joe called Nick into the kitchen and they told Dr. Doolittle to get rid of the chimp or move out. Dr. Doolittle finished his martini, put down the glass and said “No.” Cheetah stood in front of the doctor with his fists raised. Dr. Doolittle said, “You know, Cheetah cooks, does laundry and dishes, cleans bathrooms, and vacuums.” Joe and Nick looked at each other and nodded their heads.

Dr. Doolittle taught Joe and Nick how to speak Chimpanese, and Cheetah would tell them chimpanzee folktales while he washed the dinner dishes. Their favorite tale was “Charlie the Hairless Chimp.” It was about a bald chimp that was relentlessly teased by his peers. A female chimp named Rosie took pity on him. Although they had poor hygiene, the local sloths shed a lot of fur in the spring. Rosie made Charlie a sloth fur sweater. It covered most of his nakedness and the teasing stopped. Charlie founded a foundation for bald chimps, collecting sloth fur and knitting sloth fur sweaters for needy chimps. Charlie and Rosie got married and lived happily ever after. Charlie invented a sloth fur sweater shampoo called “Bubble Slow” and made one-million banana bucks, most of which he donated to his foundation.

Joe and Nick were inspired by Cheetah’s stories and stopped wrestling with each other on the kitchen floor. For some reason now, Nick would say “Me Tarzan, who you?” when he was trying meet a woman in a bar. One night he struck gold when a woman replied “I Jane.” They’ve been dating for a month.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Chiasmus

Posted on October 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

Chiasmus (ki-az’-mus): 1. Repetition of ideas in inverted order. 2. Repetition of grammatical structures in inverted order (not to be mistaken with antimetabole, in which identical words are repeated and inverted).

Hi! My name’s Bill! “I’d rather die eating meat than live as a vegetarian.” My father worked at a meat packing plant. He made up the saying. Sometimes he would stand at the dinner table and hold up a piece of bacon or a pork chop when he said it. He saw more blood in a day than a hospital emergency room in a month. As foreman, each year he was given a dead cow as a gift. He’d borrow our neighbor’s pickup truck and we’d drive to the slaughterhouse to pick up the cow. It was hell loading the cow. We would pour Mazola Oil in the truck bed, rest the cow’s head on the tailgate, jack up the cow’s hindquarters with the truck’s jack, and slide the cow forward on the oily truck bed. When we got home, we’d tie a rope around the cow’s neck and drive the truck under a tree limb and hang it up in the front yard. People would drive by and take pictures. Sometimes me and Dad would pose for pictures, standing in front of the cow shaking hands. One year PETA tried to “rescue” the dead cow. We fought them off with a garden hose and cubes of raw liver.

We let the cow hang in the front yard for about a week. Then, we’d yank off the skin and put on green surgical gowns to butcher the cow. We wear mirror gizmos on our foreheads with little holes in them like real doctors. We thought it was funny. My little sister would play nurse, wiping our brows and handing us stuff. We used a battery-powered hedge trimmer and a chainsaw to dismember the cow, then hacksaws, meat cleavers and knives to produce the cuts of meat. My favorite was the loins or “blackstraps” running along either side of the cow’s backbone. There were no bones, just solid meat! I used my “Bovine Butcher Blade” to cut out the loins—moving through the raw meat like it’s melted butter. I love making a meat turban out of one the loins, putting it on my head, and crossing my arms like a wise man, and saying: “I am the Meatman, ooo-kooka-too.” The cow’s tongue is fun to retrieve too. It’s slippery, but if you wear gloves you can get a good grip, pull, and slice. Once it’s tongue helped the cow to “moo,” now it’s headed for the pickle jar. Sliced thin, it makes a great sandwich—sprinkled with A-1 steak sauce, topped with two pieces of American cheese on white bread and, fried in butter, cut in half and served with potato chips and a glass of milk. Mooove over and give me a bite of that!

We have two freezers in the basement where we keep the meat. That’s where we keep the meat grinder too—in the basement—we grind up scraps and cuts of meat that are best for meatballs, etc. Mostly, it is meat off the cow’s neck. But that’s not all. We make flower pots out of hollowed out cow’s hooves and give them as Christmas gifts with dwarf poinsettias planted in them, with tiny little ornaments decorating them. Very festive!

“From cow to now” is what I think when I bite into a slice of steak and the juice runs down my chin, and I wipe it off with a paper towel, and quietly. burp, and sometimes go “bow, wow, wow” like my uncle Dave used to do. This year I made my little brother Dexter a cow suit for Halloween. It’s genuine cowhide skinned off this year’s cow, and I must say, it looks real good—it even has horns and a tail. It moos too from a recording I made on Dexter’s phone. He’s going to wear it today in the annual school Halloween parade. Maybe he’ll win the best costume prize. He’s such a good boy.

So, if you’re not doing anything tonight, “meat” me at the “Blue Coyote” and we can have a couple a beers and some all-beef Slim Jims. I ‘m buyin.’

POSTSCRIPT

While taking the shortcut to school through the woods in his cow suit, little Dexter was shot by a deer hunter, who had left his glasses in his truck and thought Dexter was a deer. Luckily, little Dexter was only nicked the ear. He was able to beat the crap out of his assailant with a tree branch, kick him a few times in the stomach, and then, continue on to school. He won the Halloween costume prize and then went home for a hamburger, medium rare.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Chronographia

Posted on October 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

Chronographia (chro-no-graph’-i-a): Vivid representation of a certain historical or recurring time (such as a season) to create an illusion of reality. A kind of enargia: [the] generic name for a group of figures aiming at vivid, lively description.

I have had numerous conversations with people regarding my favorite time of the year. I see fall and summer as one season—summerfall. That complicates things, but I don’t care—that’s how I see it. Summerfall goes from May until the first frost. That’s when I call it quits and close my swimming pool after a summerfall of splashing around and basking in the sun smeared with cream that smells like coconuts. After pool closing, it’s all downhill. Everything freezes. It snows, and the world is a mess. I can hear the snowplow at six a.m. as it wrenches its way down my driveway, wreaking havoc on my driveway’s gravel surface. Then there’s the pain in the ass of Christmas—driving through a blizzard to eat Aunt Ida’s cardboard turkey with dressing stuffed in its butt that smells like a dirty dock, uncle Dave’s “special” marshmallow sweet potato glop, my sister Pat’s turnip paste, Aunt Jillian’s raw potato cubes marinated in soy sauce and Nana’s Pelican Pie topped with pimento-stuffed olives.

Nana grew up in Florida, near Miami, in the late 30s when there was a lot of poverty. Her family lived in a lean-to close to a marina where rich people kept their yachts. Her father, my great grandfather, taught her how to sneak up behind a pelican perched on a dock’s piling, grab it by the throat, and strangle it to death.

The “swells” sitting in their yachts were always entertained by Nana’s pelican murder and would sometimes throw M&Ms at her to show their approval. She would pick up the M&Ms and go back to the lean-to where her mother (my great grandmother) would make the pelican into pie. One time when they were pulling out a pelican’s guts and entrails, a gold bar fell out on the floor. Somehow, the pelican had swallowed it. Pelicans were notorious for eating just about anything. But a gold bar? Weird.

They took the gold bar to the bank and had it weighed and valued. Now, they were loaded! They set their lean-to on fire and struck out on foot for Miami. They bought a brand new one-room shack. Great-grandfather invested in an orange grove and became rich. Every year at the Christmas party, I ask Nana where she got the pelican for her pie. She won’t tell me. She just throws a handful of cardboard turkey at me and the annual family food fight begins.

Covered in food fragments, stuffed with Christmas dinner, driving 5 mph toward home in the blizzard though two feet of show, with the wipers and defroster going full blast, skidding sideways toward a stop sign and bouncing off the curb, I think to myself that I don’t have much to be thankful for, but then again, maybe I do. I look at the gift Nana gave me. Since I’m stopped anyway, I pick it up off the seat and tear off the wrapping. It’s a picture of her standing alongside Earnest Hemingway, holding a dead pelican over their heads and laughing. It was signed: “To my soul’s inspiration, Ernie H.”

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99

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Climax

Posted on October 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

Climax (cli’-max): Generally, the arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance, often in parallel structure.

Bottom, middle, top. Where do we draw the line? How do we draw the line? What does the line consist of? But, most important, why do we cross the line?

I was brainstorming topics for my PhD dissertation in geometry. I had had a vision when I was visiting Egypt. Standing in the shadow of Cheops in the late afternoon, I was chatting up a fellow tourist, to get her to go to dinner and to bed with me. I told her she was fascinating and beautiful. She said, “I’ve heard that line before.” Suddenly, the world started spinning around and when it stopped abruptly, our guide had turned into Moses and she had turned into a golden calf. Moses looked like he always does: white hair, white beard, wild eyes. The golden calf fellow tourist looked even better made out of gold. I made a fist and knocked on her and she made a beautiful thudding sound. “24kt” I thought. I decided to call Moses “Moe” to test his take on hierarchies and formailities. Did he see himself as a Big Shot because of all the favors God had done him, not to mention making the Red Sea into a freeway and giving him ten short, easy to remember commandments to keep him and the rest of world on track toward salvation.

Me: Moe, do you have any idea why my fellow tourist got turned into a golden calf?

Moses: I would appreciate it if you called me Moses. The golden calf thing crops up as a symbol of misdirected affection—either putting God in second place (Commandment 1 violated), or caring only for the way people look and not how they act. In your case, it has to do with your desire for the flesh and not the person—you cared only about getting laid in your cheap hotel room, by plying your fellow tourist with a meal and drinks. For shame!

Me: But Moses, that’s life. It’s how the world turns. it is called “courtship.”

Moses: idiot! It’s courtshit, not courtship. It’s like the diabolical game show “Dating For Satan” that’s on Channel 666 all day Saturday and Sunday, drawing people away from worship to watch displays of wantonness, lust, and debauchery that Satan slips past the FCC in the United States and other regulatory bodies around the world. Wake up! Your penis does not communicate with your soul. It is an unreliable source of motivation for nothing but urination and procreation. Men who call their penis their “tool” are living by the right metaphor.

Me: You turn my hierarchy of the good upside down. I will think about calling my penis my tool. I have in mind a “screw-driver.” Ha ha! Pretty funny, huh?

Aside: With that, his penis caught on fire—just his penis, not his garments. It turned into a smoking screwdriver. Moses held out a handful of screws and said, “here. Have fun.”

Me: Yeeeow! I get it. I get it. It’s a metaphor. It’s a tool—peeing and procreating tool, not a toy, not for fun. A tool. (Moses snapped his fingers). Ahhhh. It’s back, unscathed. That was hell! So Moses, why are you here?

Moses: To show you where to draw the line. First, you should always carry a marking device: a chisel, a hoe, a marker pen, a ballpoint pen, a pencil and even a stick—especially good for drawing a line in the sand. Now, when deciding where to draw the line your first consideration should be what’s going to be contained on the line’s other side. Then, you must consider whether your line crosses somebody else’s line. Finally, you put up “No Trespassing” signs and punish anybody who crosses your line. Follow these simple steps and everything will line up.

Me: At that point I passed out and woke up in my sleazy hotel room. There was my fellow tourist, naked and snoring loudly, shaking the drapes. I came to the sudden realization that I had crossed the line. But, recalling my vision, Moses made it seem literally a bad thing to cross the line. Then, things started to click. I knew I had crossed the line, but whose line was it? My line? Society’s line? Then I remembered a TV show I loved to watch as a kid: “What’s My Line?” There would be three panelists. Two would lie about what they did for a living, with the remaining panelist actually telling the truth. Flash: Now that my penis was a metaphoric tool, I could see that “line” was a metaphor too!

TWO MONTHS LATER

I finished my dissertation and submitted it, against the advice of the committee Chair. The title is “My Tool is a Line.” In it, I transgress the deeply cultured lines that meanings draw, taking a Mosaic turn toward the utilization of recursiveness in surveying my “tool” and the syncretic obviation of its functional flexibility obscured by its metonymic iteration as a tool, and the line it draws, masking its recreational function and the threat it poses as “other” to the dominant trope of monogamy.

I am currently writing a new dissertation.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Coenotes

Posted on October 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Coenotes (cee’-no-tees): Repetition of two different phrases: one at the beginning and the other at the end of successive paragraphs. Note: Composed of anaphora and epistrophe, coenotes is simply a more specific kind of symploce (the repetition of phrases, not merely words).

When I was younger, I more less knew what was going on. I could see clearly and I could hear what people were saying, and understand them. I could actually run a few hundred feet, especially if I was being chased by a bully or a cop. I could balance my checkbook and do the boogie-woogie all night long. I would go to bars solely to meet women, talk to them for 10 or 15 minutes and then head to my place with them to boogie-woogie all night long, and then, after a boogie-woogie night, go to I-HOP for breakfast: a medley of grease, bacon, eggs, syrup-soaked pancakes, and cups and cups of hot black coffee, followed by a couple of Newports and a candy mint. After breakfast, I’d wait outside the liquor store, licking my lips, thinking about a couple shots of “Dancing Bolshevik” vodka chased with the tomato juice I kept in a cooler in my trunk. After a couple of 100 proof liquid cuties, I headed off to work, half drunk, and ready for another day of pretending to work and complaining. I worked folding pizza boxes at “John Smith Pizza.” It’s “gimmick” was its non-Italian pizza, like peanut butter and jelly, or American cheese topped with pork and beans. They called their pizzas “Flat-Circle Open Face Sandwiches.” Quite a mouthful, ha -ha. Business was terrible, but they had “backers.” Big Joe would show up once a month with a bag of “laundry” to run through the cash register. Memories never get old!

When I was younger, I more or less knew what was going on. Now that I’m an old man, it is the other way around. I take a small handful of Adderall everyday to “keep me in the conversation.” I wake up 4 or 5 times during the night to pee. I sleep with a headlamp strapped on my head because I can’t find the light switch in the dark. I inevitably accidentally turn on the ceiling fan by mistake and blow crap all over my room, tripping over socks and slipping on unpaid bills, sometimes wetting my pajamas. Without my glasses, the world looks like an oil slick. I don’t get Social Security payments because I never reported any wages. Instead, I am on the dole—I get a block of cheese, 2lbs of lard, powdered milk, and a pack of chewing gum each month from the state, $100 per month from “Stayin’ Alive,” a charity founded by a very successful Bee Gees cover band, and $200 per month for posing as an advocate for the abolishment of Medicare. Most of the time I sit in my apartment (paid for by the state) waiting to poop and watching TV. My favorite shows have all gone the way of the DoDo bird. TV stinks, but I watch it to stay in touch with reality. If it wasn’t for FOX News I would be clueless. I wish they’d bring back Ed Sullivan, but he’s dead. The Ed Sullivan Show was the shiniest gem in the crown of my youth. Memories never get old!

I get meals on wheels every night for dinner. Clay, the guy who delivers my food, acts like he’s casing my apartment to rob it when he comes to deliver the food and finds me dead. He can have it! Probably my heated toilet seat is the most valuable thing I own, and it doesn’t work right anyway. Two weeks ago I burned my ass on it. I had to go to the hospital. They gave me some ointment and a kid’s inflatable pool toy to sit on—it was a “My Little Pony” floatie—pink and baby blue.

My walker is second-hand and is missing a wheel. So, I replaced the missing wheel with a slit tennis ball. As long as the fuzz holds out on the ball, I can shuffle along almost fast enough so people don’t push me out of the way. But, I’ve learned how to raise my walker and threaten people with it. I knocked a teen punk down a couple of days ago and his head made a hollow-melon sound when it hit the pavement. Sometimes the tennis ball gets stuck in a crack in the pavement and I go around in circles until a passerby gives it a kick.

Now, aside from all my old man maladies, all I have are memories—memories that I mostly can’t remember, but that’s better than nothing! My most vivid memory is being bitten by a squirrel when I was around 16. I sneaked up behind it and grabbed it by the tail. It bit me on the thumb.

Just because I’m alone, it doesn’t mean I’m lonely! It means I am desperate for somebody in addition to Clay, the predatory Meals on Wheels Guy, to pay me a visit. I was thinking of throwing my TV out of my window, or lighting myself on fire and standing in the widow as ploys for getting people to come up to my apartment and visit me. I decided the window gambits were crazy. Instead, I bought a stolen laptop from Clay for next to nothing. I have joined a couple of online senior-citizen dating sites. There’s one that is especially good. It’s called “Hot Bags” and features “over-70 female hotties who will help you rise up and be merry.” It has a live feed from a nursing home “somewhere in California” that is themed after Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy Bunny Hutch.” Need I say more? I am making new memories for $12.00 per month.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Colon

Posted on October 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

Colon (ko’-lon): Roughly equivalent to “clause” in English, except that the emphasis is on seeing this part of a sentence as needing completion, either with a second colon (or membrum) or with two others (forming a tricolon). When cola (or membra) are of equal length, they form isocolon.

“I came, I saw, I farted.” I thought that was so funny the first time I thought of it, substituting “farted” for “conquered” in Caesar’s famous tricolon. I even had a T-shirt made that said “I came, I saw, I farted” in Latin with a picture of Caesar bent over, obviously blowing wind. People would ask me what it meant. When I told them, they would look at me with an “I pity you” look on their face. But that didn’t deter me. If anything, it motivated me to produce more witty t-shirts and make a lot of money, and to ensure that I would, I would only use English—no more Latin or anything else.

My first creation was Biblical, in a way: “The meek shall inherit the Porta-Potties.” It had a picture of a meek-looking person in sandals and a robe hugging a Porta-Pottie, smiling with joy, realizing he got what he deserved at the end of time. I thought the irony would strike people as exceedingly funny, but it didn’t. The name of my business was “Mr. T’s.” People started calling it “Mr. Traducer’s” and held a vigil in the street in front of my store. They chanted “Leave the meek alone” and “1, 2, 3, 4 we won’t shop at Satan’s store.” When I went outside to apologize, they threw kitty litter at me, followed by water balloons. They yelled “Traducer! Traducer! Caffeinated beverage user!” This chant I didn’t understand, so I yelled back “What do you mean?” Their leader yelled back, “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.” Then, they dispersed after setting fire to the Porta-Pottie they had carried to the protest. It smelled terrible and it took three days to clean up the mess.

I wasn’t to be thwarted. My sacred First Amendment rights were being violated. I felt oppressed. I felt angry. Mother’s Day was just around the corner. We needed to make a Mother’s Day T-shirt with a message from the hearts of sons and daughters throughout the land. I asked my workers for suggestions. I got things like a giant heart with “MOM” written across it, “A mother is like glue, holding the family together,” “My mother is a walking miracle”—two-bit cliches with no discernible oomph. I couldn’t depend on my idiot employees to come up with anything worthy of the company’s name.

I went out to my car, taking my sketch pad. I sketched a voluptuous woman stretched out in a bathing suit in a 1950’s pin-up style. After smoking a couple of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, I came up with a saying expressing and summing up men’s and women’s heartfelt honest feelings for their mothers: “Mom, I love you more than Dad.” We marketed the t-shirt for sale as a special Mother’s Day gift cutting through the usual drivel, and striking at the heart of the special day. We were confident of blockbuster sales. We sold 2 t-shirts which were burned live on the nightly news.

Undaunted, I forged ahead. I hired somebody else to design our t-shirts. My new employee had a perfectly round head. It was very cool. His first design, aside from the color, looked like a self portrait. It was a big smiling yellow head with eyes. I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. But, after my string of fiascos, I had started mistrusting my judgment, so I had my employees decide whether they wanted to produce “Smiling Face” t-shirts. I was the only dissenting vote, so we put “Smiling Face” up on the web and waited for orders. In the first 2 hours, we had over 10,000 orders. We changed the name to “Smiley Face” and put them on everything we could think of—from cigarette lighters to underpants.

The basic lesson here is hard the fathom. I failed miserably, but I tried again and failed again. I never really succeeded. The guy I hired succeeded though, which sort of made me succeed, even though I voted against printing his design. So, what is the lesson? I don’t know, but I’ve become convinced that my designer is a “one horse Harry.” Since the “Smiley Face,” all of his designs have gone straight to the trash bin. For example, who would want a t-shirt with a thing that looks like a chicken’s footprint with a circle around it, or a hand making a WWII victory sign?

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Commoratio

Posted on October 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Commoratio (kom-mor-a’-ti-o): Dwelling on or returning to one’s strongest argument. Latin equivalent for epimone.

This is it—all that we have been waiting for since we turned vegetarian, rebuffing family and friends and living on whole grains, green leaves and supplements. Although our book “Meat Me in Hell” was a total failure, it got us a lot of attention. Soon, we’re going to give our cookbook a shot—“Leaf Me”—it has ten good recipes for ten good dishes. Spaghetti with applesauce sauce is a favorite in our home, as is grapefruit and eggplant wedges on tofu, with a ramekin of pearl onions blended with lotus seeds and sprinkled with crushed peppercorns on the side.

We’ve been vegetarians since we were in high school, where we were shunned and subjected to harsh ridicule— like “Moo Moo“ and “Have you found your roots yet?” That was fifty years ago—and it bears witness to longevity as the key benefit of being a vegetarian—that, and not committing murder for a meal. Our consciences and our colons are clear.

What about our classmates from high school who didn’t hoe same the row that we did? Class reunion was bleak. They’re nearly all dead or in nursing homes, while we continue to plow into the future with our rutabegas held high, while the non-vegheads limp, push walkers and roll in electric wheelchairs with bleary eyes and gravy stains on their clothing.

Somehow, animal organ eating, pot-smoking, acid dropping, beer guzzling Billy Gote went all these years unscathed. Go figure! By all rights he should be dead or bedridden. But, he had his fifth set of triplets with his new wife Velda just last week. So what! Who cares! Look at us! We can still stand! We can still feed ourselves! We can use a remote control. And best of all, we still drive, albeit 10 miles per hour under the speed limit— to the great chagrin of the young hooligans who try to run us off the road, or blow their horns and give us the finger.

Longevity is the aim and a meatless menu will get you there. The five of us haven’t sucked blood from char-broiled cows, boiled chickens in oil, or had ground-up pig leg on a bun for so long I can’t remember, and we look and we feel great. In fact, Raymond has started growing roots from the soles of his feet. They look somewhat like carrots without the orange glow. Raymond will be checking into the “Center for Mutant Studies” on Monday where he will become a subject in a scientific study.

So Raymond, this one’s for you, “May your roots take hold in the soil of life, and keep you steady in the years to come.”

I have prepared a celebratory lunch for us according to a recipe from our (hopefully) forthcoming cookbook. it’s called “Ants and Uncles.” It consists of batter-dipped ants, lightly seasoned with sea salt and garnished with chopped clover. The batter-dipped ants are “sequestered” on a “hill” of stir-fried brown rice “punctuated” with diced durian.

The next time you see one of our former classmates wobbling along behind their walker, give them a shove to help move them along their way. If you see Billy Gote, ask him what he’s doing Friday night.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Comparatio

Posted on October 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Comparatio (com-pa-ra’-ti-o): A general term for a comparison, either as a figure of speech or as an argument. More specific terms are generally employed, such as metaphor, simile, allegory, etc.

Mom: You are like a cracked egg rolling toward the edge of a 200-foot high cliff somewhere in New Mexico. Our certitude of your forthcoming demise robs your rolling trajectory of all suspense, leaving room only for bets on how soon you will shatter on the canyon floor and splash your yolk and egg white all over the jagged rocks, leaving only your shell to bear witness to your fleeting infertile existence, the “offspring” of a captive hen, grunting her life away in the in the confines of a commercial nesting box, only to become after her death, a plastic-wrapped headless roasting chicken on display at Hannaford’s, like an explorer’s boat afloat on a sea of crushed ice looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, the Promised Land, or Atlantic City.

Now, I want you to take what I’ve told you and go out into the world and make something of yourself out of shame and embarrassment. Be like a loaf of bread, tightly sealed, resisting mold. Be yeasty and light to the touch, crumb free and thinly crusted. If you are toasted, go with the flow—the flow of soft butter smeared across your face, or jam, or thick dripping ultra sweet honey. Or be all the sandwich you can be, bearing cold cuts, lettuce, mustard, mayonnaise, cheese, or peanut butter and jelly toward wide-open prospects, eager to have diners gobble up your irresistible sandwiches of comfort and joy. So, take that twisty off your plastic bag and get out there and be a triple decker! Or be a bagel if you want to be!

Daughter: I’m so glad I came to visit. The orderlies are really nice and they escorted me from the front desk. Whenever I visit I see how far into cloud cuckoo land you’ve drifted. I have never been able to follow your advice. It’s like trying use a riddle for a roadmap, or like hooking up with a band of lost lemmings endlessly searching for a cliff, or like a salesperson who has nothing to sell and charges twice what it’s worth.

The closest I have come to following your advice is to be a rag wringer at the laundromat. I have my own corner in the back of the laundromat where I ring out rags, getting them ready to wipe down the washers and driers—keeping them spotless and shiny, like showcases in a jewelry store, countertops at MacDonalds, or toilet seats in rest stops along the NYS Thruway. If anybody should lick a washer or drier, they should have no fear of contracting any orally transmitted diseases. Our machines are as sanitary as Dixie Cups or factory-wrapped toothbrushes.

You’re crazy, so you probably don’t understand a thing I’m saying. It’s ok, We can just sit here and stare at each other for 5-10 minutes. Or maybe, play pattycakes.

Mom: No, no. That’s like asking a bumble bee to give up it’s stripes, or a plumber to pull up his pants, or a trellis to turn away roses, making them crawl along the ground like colorful nicely scented serpents slithering after spiders cowering in the grass, regretting everything they failed to do, as they focused their interest and affection on spinning elaborate webs, flimsy extensions of their self-absorbed egos providing no shelter from the shadow of death lengthening across their pitiful lairs, like a holed-up cowboy preparing to eat lead, or a professional baseball player who knows his team will lose, or a stockbroker riding the DOW into oblivion.

I’m so proud of you. I feel like a million dollars, like I won the LOTTO, or the Indy 500, or I found a wallet on the sidewalk loaded with cash, or I got a hole in one, or I got a ringer in horse shoes, or I shot you in the head with this pistol.

Mom brandished a handgun. It was fake, and she handed it to the orderly. She had made it in her “Life Skills” class out of balsa wood she was permitted to carve, as long as it was assured she had taken her medication. Allowing patients to use cutting implements was ruled “totally incompetent” by a tribunal and Dr. Iddy was put on one week’s probation.

Daughter: Mom. You scared to crap out of me. It was like I had stumbled at the edge of a cliff, or Dad had come home, or a rat chased me into the bathroom and I couldn’t get the door unlocked, and it was gnawing at my heel, like I got it stuck in a blender, or I was in an earthquake in some country that didn’t have clean water, or toilet paper, or frisky little squirrels.

Mom: Someday it will all sort itself out, like the keys on a piano, or a blank cartoon sound bubble. Please go home now. I need to cool off so I can make hay while the sun shines, and be a chooser not a looser.

Daughter: Ok Mom. I’ll head home now—it’s where the heart is, like my rib cage, or San Fransisco.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Comprobatio

Posted on October 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

Comprobatio (com-pro-ba’-ti-o): Approving and commending a virtue, especially in the hearers.

You are all too good to be true. Aunt Sally, your work with delinquents is commendable. Ed, your skill as a surgeon has saved hundreds of lives. And Aunt Edna, what can I say? Your Pulitzer Prize winning book “Shake, Rattle, Roll” has given us insight into the origins, history and social significance of Craps. The chapter “Whose bones do we roll?” could stand alone as a masterpiece in its own right, deserving of widespread recognition.

Today is Thanksgiving and we should give thanks for all the wonderful, accomplished, talented and compassionate people here at the table. That is, all the people except for my brother Edsel.

Named for a car that was mocked the moment it came off the assembly line, Edsel has been a loser and a burden on our family ever since he was born. My mother, God rest her soul, wouldn’t admit it, but we always thought that Edsel’s father was the guy who picked his nose in church and farted: Herbert “Hungman” Bush. Whenever we mentioned Herbert, mother would blush and drive away in the car, burning rubber, which was uncharacteristic of her. Dad would just tamp down his pipe and light it again for the tenth time, shake his head, clench his fist, and go back to reading “Outdoor Life” magazine.

And here you are, sitting at the table, Edsel. We had to put the house up as collateral for your weekend furlough from Beauregard Culver State Prison, named after the Confederate sharpshooter who served as Booth’s backup at Ford’s Theatre. Your crime spree across Florida earned you a lot of attention, plus 8 to 10 years behind bars for robbery. No one ever thought that stealing bicycles was worth it. You didn’t even have a pickup truck! Stuffing them one at a time into the back seat of your Ford Taurus must’ve slowed you down. You got caught when you donated one of your stolen bikes to the PBA Charity Bike Drive, an annual event where people donate their used bikes to charity. You gave away a $1,000 bike in nearly new condition. It took the cops five minutes to track it down, and they nabbed you right on the spot.

Edsel was a loser right from the start. He stayed back twice in the second grade and swore at his teachers. Nobody could ever figure out where he learned the swear words. Personally, I thought it was Herbert, but there was no way I could prove it. Dad, I remember when you nicknamed Edsel “Bastard Freak,” but most of the time you just called him “Freak” or “Bastard.”

Anyway Edsel (aka Bastard Freak), even though you’re a total loser and a disgrace to the family, here you are sharing a Thanksgiving meal with your family, who has considered disowning you countless times.

I’m holding a box of rat poison here, and would really appreciate it if you would let me sprinkle two heaping spoonfuls on your cranberry sauce while I say grace: “Dear Lord I beseech thee to motivate Edsel to eat the rat poison and come home to your loving arms. Amen.” Edsel tentatively took a little taste.

Everybody laughed as Edsel spit out the rat poison and ran to the kitchen to rinse out his mouth. When the water shut off we heard him stomp down the hall and out the front door. Everybody cheered and started eating. I ran after Edsel. I didn’t want to risk losing our house by losing him. I found Edsel sitting on the front porch smoking a cigarette. He asked me if it was really rat poison that I had put on his cranberry sauce. I said “No.” I lied.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Conduplicatio

Posted on October 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Conduplicatio (con-du-pli-ca’-ti-o): The repetition of a word or words. A general term for repetition sometimes carrying the more specific meaning of repetition of words in adjacent phrases or clauses. Sometimes used to name either ploce or epizeuxis.

“My little runaway, run, run, run, run, runaway.“ I feel like Del Shannon’s son—Son of Del, looking for my own little runaway. Unlike Del, I know what went wrong with our love, “a love that was so strong.”

I commented on your chronic body odor and how you make my eyes water when I hold you tight. All I asked is that you take a shower—I don’t even care if you wore the same crusty clothes—just take a friggin’ shower. But you couldn’t or wouldn’t do that for me. Instead, you ran away.

Since you’ve run away, I’ve stopped eating, trolling Instagram, and going to church. I am a broken man—I walk bent over and limp badly. I thought I could follow your smell and find you, but your trail petered out when a hurricane almost blew our town away.

I have searched and searched for a solution to “our” problem. Then, I remembered the time when I was at my friend Bill’s and he showed me his kid’s hamster. “Hammy” had a plastic spherical bubble. Bill put Hammy in the bubble and Hammy walked it around the living room. He seemed to be having a really good time rolling around. Suddenly, I thought: I can build a bubble for you! It would contain your unpleasant smell, and at the same time allow you to leave your home without making people run away, pass out, or get sick.

I searched and searched and found a place that will build the bubble for $5,000. It’s called “Plastic Treasures” and they custom-build all kinds of things out of plastic. Their most recent project was a plastic staircase on wheels—the client called it “my staircase to heaven.” She loves ice cream and has her freezer mounted 3 feet off the floor. She climbs her staircase to heaven every night for a carton “Chocolate Melody” which she eats in bed and shares with her Poodle Richter. Pretty creative! So far, Mr. Loucite’s masterpiece is a plastic lawn sprinkler that flashes red, white, and blue. It is designed for night sprinkling displays of patriotism. It is shaped like an AR-15, with water coming out of the barrel. He has received an award from the NRA for “integrating iconic combat weaponry into lawn maintenance implements.”

If we pool our resources, we can build the bubble, get married, and refit my house’s doors so you can roll your smelly self in and out as you please. We can have the bubble fitted with a charcoal exhaust filter to manage your smell, and you’ll never have to take another shower! I can wear SCUBA gear for our intimate moments and we’ll be able to have children too. Just think! Oh, as far as eating and going to the bathroom are concerned we can work that out in consultation with Mr. Loucite at “Plastic Treasures.” He’s anxious to work on our project. He’s even thought of a clever name for the sphere, but he won’t tell me what it is because he doesn’t want any “leaks” to occur before the bubble is finished and he is nominated for the Plastic Fabricators’ annual “Ono Award”

I can’t wait to get things “rolling.” Ha ha! So, my little runaway, where the hell are you? I know you must be at least a mile away because I can’t smell you. I know you like to hang out at the sewage treatment plant when things get bad, or on a rock at the clam flats at low tide, where you almost blend in.

I hope you have your phone turned on and you get this message. It would really stink if you’re not coming back. Hmm. Well it wouldn’t actually stink, but I hope you know what I mean my little Corpse Flower.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Congeries

Posted on October 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Congeries (con’ger-eez): Piling up words of differing meaning but for a similar emotional effect [(akin to climax)].

“The best, Yeah, yeah, yeah! All of it! Let’s roll all night long!“ That’s what I saw when I looked in the mirror, I exercise, I plasticize—I had an Airedale Terrier hair transplant, and soon I will have the eyes of a tiger—ha ha, just kidding. Actually I’m going for eagle eyes. Ha ha, just kidding again.

I’m 33, but I don’t look a day over 25. This is what life is about—how you appear; how you look. If you look 25, you are 25. With scalpels, stitches, and silicone your nose loses its hook and bump, and your boobie’s go bouncy jouncy, and your butt becomes Mt. Olympus—home of the gods and goddesses. And with capped teeth, you can smile your way into the guys’ hearts and wallets, blinding them to your nefarious intentions.

So, I found a man who’s 55, loaded with cash and in love with the 25-year-old version of me. We’ve been married 14 years and have a 14-year old daughter who doesn’t look like either of us. She looks a bit like Vince, the friendly guy who works behind the counter at Cliffs. Thank god my husband never goes there—he’d surely suspect something. But my daughter almost looks exactly like me—the actual me, the “pre-renovation” me. She has a hook and bump nose, flat chest, no butt, and snaggly teeth. Just like the actual me, she is ugly as sin.

I never told my husband about my “renovation.” He’s never bothered to check out my age. Then he ran across a picture of me with my mother when I was around 15. I should’ve burned it before he saw it. But I didn’t.. He asked me who the girl was in the picture and remarked on how ugly she was and how much she looked like our daughter. I told him it was me—that he had married a good-looking female Frankenstein. I thought he would go berserk, but he didn’t. He just said “Oh” and sat down behind his computer and started tapping. Later, he said he had booked us three tickets to Geneva, Switzerland where we would see the famous plastic surgeon Dr. Tightskinitski.

When we arrived at the DiMilo Clinic, I was separated from my husband and daughter. I was put in a room that looked like a hospital room. I was frightened and asked to see my husband. They told me I could see him “after the procedure.” I asked “What procedure?” and the two nurses laughed and asked if I wanted a Swiss chocolate bar.

I was groggy when I woke up, and I felt numb all over. I felt like I had been drained and refilled. My husband and daughter came in the room. My husband sad “Now you are who you are.” They laughed and left me alone.

The bandages were removed in a week. I looked in the hand mirror the nurse had given me. Dr. Tightskininski had undone my plastic surgery and orthodontia. I look at least 50. And I am uglier than our daughter. I asked my husband why he did this to me. He said “Because you deserved it you deceptive piece of crap. It would be different if you were fun to be with, treated me well, or cared about something more that my bank account and your disgusting affair with Vince. But even though she’s not my daughter, and even though she’s ugly, I’ll take care of her and love her like she’s my own flesh and blood.”

I was devastated. I was ashamed. I looked like shit.

POSTSCRIPT

After the dust settled she decided to get “restored” again. She went to Mexico, where plastic surgery is cheaper. The surgery was botched. Her nose was accidentally cut off and she bled to death on the operating table. Her former husband travelled to Mexico to retrieve her remains. He took only her nose back to New Jersey where he disposed of it in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Her husband threw it in a pond while cursing her. A beaver swimming by grabbed her nose and used it to plug a hole in its dam.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Tagged elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Consonance

Posted on October 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Consonance: The repetition of consonants in words stressed in the same place (but whose vowels differ). Also, a kind of inverted alliteration, in which final consonants, rather than initial or medial ones, repeat in nearby words. Consonance is more properly a term associated with modern poetics than with historical rhetorical terminology.

I had found out that Descartes was a vet when I read Cosmopolis. I was a vet too. I was attached to CIA in Saigon. I was part of a special Army detachment assembled after a series of intelligence leaks that led to the closing of a clandestine Agency-supported gambling casino—Dough Boy—on Pasteur Street. It was raided by the Vietnamese Army to the great chagrin of American personnel stationed in Saigon who had made the casino into their second home. Their morale plummeted, Things were coming to a head.

It was determined that it was prostitutes who were orchestrating the leaks, prompted by threats from VC operatives who were ubiquitous in the city. I was assigned the task of “meeting” with prostitutes and surreptitiously interrogating them. To maintain my cover, I did this while “getting what I paid for.” My quota was three “interrogations” per day. It was exhausting work, but I was glad to be of service to my country. However, I had miscalculated the danger.

One night I was “interrogating” a prostitute when pistol fire broke out in the hallway. As I was pulling on my jungle fatigues, a bullet came through the door. It whizzed through the room and exited through the window. The prostitute thought the bullet had been destined for her because she refused to collaborate with the VC. I instantly thought: I can pay her to identify VC operatives. I’ll be a hero back at headquarters!

They bought my idea and she became a double agent. Then, I found out I had contracted the clap from her. It wasn’t unusual—what you’d call an occupational hazard, especially if you were stupid enough to forego “protection.” I had been trained to deploy a condom, but I routinely failed to do so. Anyway, I had an R&R coming up and elected to go to Australia to rest, and relax, and recuperate from the clap. While I was in Australia, I got involved with some ant-war activists. When I told them what I was doing in Vietnam, they went crazy. They thought it was morally depraved to assign me, a 19-year old, to “interrogate” prostitutes. They kidnapped me and wouldn’t let me go back to Vietnam. I became an Army deserter, and I liked it. After 6 months they let me go, and I got a job at a kangaroo rehab center, mostly for retired professional boxing kangaroos, but also for injured and unruly kangaroos. I got married to one of my former captors, Matilda. We have five children, and now that the statute of limitations has run out on the desertion charge, I travel freely, and I am the owner of a chain of kangaroo rehab centers called “Marsupial Menders.” I’m still waltzin’ Matilda under the under the stars. The song never gets old, especially after a few Victoria Bitters.

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

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Correctio

Posted on October 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

Correctio (cor-rec’-ti-o): The amending of a term or phrase just employed; or, a further specifying of meaning, especially by indicating what something is not (which may occur either before or after the term or phrase used). A kind of redefinition, often employed as a parenthesis (an interruption) or as a climax.

I was looking out the window at the spice bush when I realized I was crazy (well, not exactly “crazy” per se, but deeply unhinged). The spice bush was trying to get my attention, and I realized that seeing a gesturing spice bush secured my candidacy for another stay at “Yodel Hills,” a weirdly named insane asylum, supposedly named for 19th-century yodelers who went crazy yodeling—being unable to stop for weeks at a time, becoming so emaciated their cowboy hats would slip down over their ears, casting a menacing shadow. They called the malady “Yodelitis” and began a program of research to eradicate it. One of the first things they discovered was not wearing cowboy boots and wearing Florsheim imperial Wingtips instead, would significantly reduce, if not cure, instances of Yodelitis. And also, closing down the yodel camps where children were taught to yodel, almost eliminated Yodelitis. Dr. Littleoldlaydyhoo is credited with the final breakthrough: a drug that softened the larynx and prevented yodeling altogether: “Yode-Away.”

I knew if I told anybody about the spice bush, I’d be “taking a ride.” So, I decided to keep my mouth shut. As the days went by, the spice bush became more and more aggressive. Whipping back and forth, one day it tore a hole in the screen porch’s screen. I feared that it would become violent and hurt somebody. So, I decided to trim it back. It was pretty big, so I bought an electric hedge trimmer on Amazon. It came, and I charged the battery. I was ready to go.

I walked around the swimming pool toward the spice bush, carrying the trimmer. As I approached, it started shaking and wiggling. A branch shot out, whipped me in the face, and grabbed the hedge trimmer. It shook it at me as it fumbled to pull the trigger that would turn it on. I ran into the garage and grabbed my pole pruner. When I got back to the spice bush it had figured out how to start the trimmer. As I came toward it, it thrust the trimmer toward me in an attempt to keep me at bay. But that didn’t matter. I could attack from 10 feet away with my pole pruner if I had to.

The pruner had a curved saw blade and a lopper that operated by pulling a rope attached to it. My plan was to shove the pole pruner into the spice bush, hook the branch holding the trimmer and pull the rope, lopping off the branch. When I pulled the lopper, the spice bush let out a blood curdling scream and burst into flames. The screen porch was on fire!

The police said I had a shotgun in one hand and a can of gasoline in the other when they arrived. I couldn’t account for that, but I knew I was crazy as I got in the van for my “complimentary” ride to Yodel Hills. As we came up to the entrance, I noticed there were two large spice bushes growing on either side of the door. I could tell they wanted to kill me. I begged to use a side entrance and everybody laughed as they dragged me toward the door and the waiting spice bushes.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Deesis

Posted on October 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Deesis (de’-e-sis): An adjuration (solemn oath) or calling to witness; or, the vehement expression of desire put in terms of “for someone’s sake” or “for God’s sake.”

Lulu: I swear to God, if you do something like that again, I will duct tape you to a chair in the backyard, slap you around with a piece of hose, smash your fingers with a hammer, and stab you to death with one of our hibachi skewers.

Stew: It sounds like you’ve given my murder a lot of thought. That’s a good sign, given your struggles with impulse control. But I consider what you’re saying to be a real threat, especially because I don’t know what the horrible thing is that I did. Was it waking you up when I came home late last night? As you know honey, I’m an actuary and working late compiling statistics goes with the job.

Lulu: That’s not what I’m talking about you yodel head! You know damn well what I’m talking about. You just don’t listen. You don’t care. I should’ve known. I should’ve listened to my mother, God rest her soul. And what you’re doing to our little Timmy’s moral compass is an absolute disgrace!

If you play catch ever again with Timmy with my mother’s ashes, you’re headed to the morgue Stewy. What if Timmy dropped Mother’s urn and her ashes spilled all over the living room carpet? What then? Do we just vacuum her up and forget about it? Do we empty the vacuum bag back into her urn and just put her back up on the mantle? What are you thinking? You make “shit for brains” sound like a compliment!

Stew: Well! That’s a surprise! Your mother loved baseball, I thought she’d enjoy having her ashes tossed back and forth between Timmy and me, especially in preparation to get him involved in Little League. There’s no harm in that! It’s a tribute to your mother. Plus, the urn is made of brass—nice and heavy. It’ll build up Timmy’s muscles.

I’m getting Timmy a baseball glove this weekend. Tryouts are in two weeks. He’s going to be a champ—after throwing his Grammy back and forth, he’s got the eye, and I think he’s developed a respect for the game that doesn’t come from playing catch with a ball. At least we didn’t use your mother’s urn for batting practice. Ha ha!

Lulu: I’m headed to Ace Hardware to get a roll of duct tape. I’m going to put it on the mantle alongside my mother’s ashes. I hope you’ll be reminded of what’s in store for you if you ever touch my mother’s ashes ever again, no matter what insane reason you may have.

Stew: Uh oh. I should’ve told you. We decided to play Grammy catch in the back yard a couple of hours ago. Timmy dropped Grammy and her ashes spilled out. Right then, the lawn sprinklers came on and washed her away. There’s about a teaspoon of Grammy left in the bottom of her urn. I hope that’s ok.

Lulu took the urn down from the mantel and looked inside. There was a tiny bit of her mother stuck inside the bottom of it. She bashed Stew over the head with the urn and called 911 when he fell to the floor. Stew moaned. She bashed him again. She was glad the urn was made of brass.

She could hear the sirens of the approaching emergency vehicles. Lulu hoped they wouldn’t get there in time as she gave Stew another bash on the head.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Dehortatio

Posted on October 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Dehortatio (de-hor-ta’-ti-o): Dissuasion.

Her: This is the most ridiculous afternoon I’ve ever spent. I never even thought about “spending afternoons” until today wandering around in the woods with headphones on and carrying this stupid metal detector, looking for buried treasure. My arm is tired from sweeping the ground, and I’m getting cold. I want to go home! Now!

Him: Now now honey. I can almost smell the gold. Like I said, they say pirates buried treasure in these woods. Nobody believes the story, so the gold is here for the taking!

Her: You will believe anything! Guess where the nearest ocean is. 1,000 miles! Do you think the pirates put wheels on their ships and drove them here, to Kansas? Why didn’t they bury their treasure somewhere along the Jersey shore, like Cape May? Come on. Let’s go home and return to sanity. I’ll make your favorite lettuce, anchovy, apple and American cheese pizza and we can sit by the pool and forget about this treasure nonsense. Come on! Shut off your metal detector.

Him: Ha ha! You’re so funny. I’m not buying it. If I gave up on everything you wanted me to give up on, we’d still be living in the pup tent in Buffalo Roam State Park. If it hadn’t been for me, we’d still be there, rummaging trash cans in the picnic area and stealing food from other campers. If it wasn’t for winter’s onset and the prospect of freezing to death, we never would’ve left and I never would’ve bought that winning lotto ticket with our only dollar, and we wouldn’t be multi-millionaires now. So, shut up and keep sweeping.

Just then, his metal detector went wild. It sounded like an ambulance on its way to a 911 call. He pulled out his spade and started digging, while she continued nagging him to go home. He hit wood with his spade and dug around it. It looked like a plank. It was their property, so they called in an excavator to dig up whatever it was.

As the dirt cleared, what looked like a wooden ship started to emerge! It was remarkably well-preserved, and it had wheels. He climbed onto the deck and ripped open the hatch cover. Looking down into the hold, he saw the dull yellow glint of gold—bars of gold. Hundreds of bars of gold. He heard a voice: “Hey matey! I been waitin’ for you. It seems just yesterday I set off in my wheel ship to make the trek overland with my crew and my treasure, headed where nobody would look for it. We had a 20-mule team pullin’ her. This spot is where the mules gave out. We dug a ship-size hole, and rolled her in. Then, I invited my crew one by one to join me in the ship’s hold for a glass of rum. As they climbed down the ladder, I ran each one of them through. After I killed them all, I went back on deck to figure how to finish covering up the ship.

A garden gnome walked out of the woods. They were sort of like wardens watching over the woods. The gnome asked me what I was up to and I told him ‘Non of your business pee wee.’ As soon as the ‘wee’ came out of my mouth, I knew I was in trouble. His little red pointy hat started spinning around on his head and smoke was coming out of his ears. Needless to say, he put a powerful gnome-curse on me: to stay in the ship’s hold until somebody found me. I climbed back down into the hold and a gang of gnomes filled the dirt on top of it, leaving no trace that anything was buried there. But, here you are! I’m free! I’d be happy to take that naggin’ wife offa your hands—I could hear her all the way down here. I been down here alone for a hundred years or more and I’m desperate for the company of a woman, even if she’s a pain the the stern.”

He stood there in shock. He helped the pirate out of the ship’s hold. His wife was standing waiting.

Pirate: Argh! Shiver me timbers! Blow me down! Avast! It’s me old lady, Moanin’ Mary. I thought I put a bullet between your eyes on our wedding night, just for sport.

Her: Captain Billy Nail! It can’t be you! I still love you! I still need you! You were always reckless and did weird things for fun. I’ve been living here as a “Ghost First Class” ever since you shot me in our bed at the “Crimson Nose.” This piece of crap standing here is my 12th husband. Take me away from this poor excuse for a man. Take me back to the wind, and the spindrift, the raids, and the smell of hot blood staining the decks!

He was stunned and scared out of his wits. He’d been married to a ghost pirate woman all these years. She didn’t smell. He couldn’t see through her. She didn’t cackle. She just nagged the hell out of him. And now he knew that the round scar between her eyes wasn’t from Chicken Pox. He ran home faster than he ever had run in his entire life, leaving the two of them behind. What should he do? Call 911 and tell them there was a pirate ghost that his ghost wife knew from a prior life, and they were getting ready to run away together! This was insane! He’d just have to let them run off together and rekindle their blood-sloshed romance. He would save big-time on attorney fees and alimony. He felt pretty good about that.

First thing in the morning he went back to the ship to figure out how to get the gold out of it. When he got there, the ship was gone, along with his wife and Captan Nail. There were wagon wheel tracks that ran about 100 feet from the now-empty hole, and then, disappeared.

As he headed back home empty-handed, he felt better than he had in 20 years—that was when he had met “Mary” standing in line at Long John Silver’s.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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Tagged elocutio, example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Diacope

Posted on September 30, 2023 | Leave a comment

Diacope (di-a’-co-pee): Repetition of a word with one or more between, usually to express deep feeling.

“Help, I’m drowning, Help, help, I’m sinking, help me! What the hell is wrong with you? Save me!”

It was true. She was drowning. Now she’s learning her lesson. She should’ve taken the swimming classes I reserved for her at the Aquatic Center. Now, it’s too late. It’s too bad she’s fallen into the Erie Canal—“low bridge, everybody down.” Ha ha. There she goes floating face down on her way to Syracuse, or maybe, all the way to Buffalo!

I am a heartless wonder. I wouldn’t say I murdered her, I just let her die. I’m not a bad person. I’m not a good person either. I am just a person. I have my likes and dislikes, my ups and downs, and my ins and outs. Mostly, though, I have my dislikes, downs, and outs. But it was all her fault.

I told her not to wear high heels for our hike along the Erie Canal. She wore her red Pradas anyway. We were walking along hand-in-hand looking at the Fall foliage and marveling at the beauty of the warm Autumn afternoon. Two people rode by on bicycles too close, and we had to jump out of their way. She lost her footing, and then, out of nowhere, a gaggle of Canada Geese ran toward her, nipping at her ankles. I just stood there and watched as they herded her over the bank of the canal, angrily honking. That’s when the cries for help started. Despite the fact that I had taken my medication that morning, it wasn’t helping me cope with what was happening in front of me.

I blamed her for what was happening. So, she drowned. I threw her stuff that was in my car into the canal. I drove home, slightly paranoid, with the smell of murder on me. On my way home I stopped at the Jack in the Box drive-in window and ordered a Large Jumbo Jack. Mom would be mad, but I was dying for a burger.

The person in the ordering window sniffed the air and asked if I’d recently murdered somebody. Then, she laughed and said ”Poor Sarah, shame on you.” I yelled “It was an accident!” I panicked, and drove away leaving my order behind. I turned on the radio to listen to NPR. “Help me! Help me!” It was her voice on the radio! When I got home, my Mom greeted me and sniffed. “Son, have you been hanging out with murderers?” I said “No!” and ran upstairs.

It’s my smell, I thought. I’ve got to get rid of it. I’ll take a hot bath.

POSTSCRIPT

He ran a tub using his sister’s bubble bath. He took off his clothes and stepped into the warm water and stretched out. It felt so good and the little popping sounds of the bubbles made it even better.

His mother went looking for him when he didn’t answer her or come down to dinner. She found him dead in the bathtub. Somehow he had drowned. There was no sign of struggle. When the coroner flipped him over, he made a sound that sounded like “help,” but the Coroner said it was just air escaping from his lungs. In addition, he looked happy, with what looked like smile locked on his face. There one anomaly, however. There was a Canada Goose wing feather stuck in his eyeball.

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

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Dialogismus

Posted on September 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

Dialogismus (di-a-lo-giz’-mus): Speaking as someone else, either to bring in others’ points of view into one’s own speech, or to conduct a pseudo-dialog through taking up an opposing position with oneself.

I’d like you to meet my opponent Donal Strut. What do you think Donald?

“Witch-hunt.”

Oh, that’s right. You claim you’re not a witch, but you’re being hunted as if you are a witch.

“Hoax.”

But maybe “witch-hunt” is a euphemism, or a metaphor. We know there’s no such thing as witches, so maybe it means hunting after somebody who acts witch-like: stealing, causing widespread conflict and dissension, clogging porta-potties, lying, and more. What say?

“Rigged.”

Well, Mr. Strut is about as forthcoming as a turtle. He didn’t even laugh at my mention of clogging porta-potties, although I think it might be true, regarding him. Ha ha!

Three key terms: witch- hunt, hoax, and, rigged. I think these three words are his campaign’s keynotes. Well, he’ll be in prison soon anyway, if the jury isn’t rigged. Clearly, his conviction won’t be a hoax. They’ll probably send him to one of those minimum security prisons in California where his wife Melanomia will visit him and he will die of a heart attack playing badminton.

POSTSCRIPT

I lost the election, but my prediction came true, right down to the badminton death stroke. Strut’s funeral and burial were kept secret to bolster the ‘badminton death hoax’ that he’s not really dead, but after massive plastic surgery he is posing as Mick Jagger and touring with The Rolling Stones. “Mick” claims it’s a hoax. He’s not Strut.

“Look at me, do I look like that fat old sod?”

I went to see the Stones in concert, to see if I could detect anything strange. Mick came on stage and opened their set with “The Wheels on Bus.” It had a bluesy tone to it, but it was also Strut’s favorite song—they had played it at his third wedding.

I was alarmed, but I didn’t show it. Suddenly, another Mick came running onto the stage with a loose handcuff dangling from his wrist. He tackled the other Mick and yelled “Hoax!” with a thick British accent, and beat him in the face with a cowbell that was laying next to the drum kit. It sounded like Blue Oyster Cult’s opening riff in “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” This made me think there was some kind of implant embedded in Strut’s cheek from plastic surgery that made the cowbell ring.

Things were getting totally out of hand when Kieth Richard raised his guitar threateningly and said into his microphone:

“Mick’s got a birthmark on his nutsack that looks like a bleedin’ volcano.” The crowd gasped and started chanting “nutsack, nutsack, nutsack.”

The two Micks pulled down their pants and stretched out their nutsacks in front of 5,000 fans. The crowd went wild. The Mick who had been beating the other Mick in the face with the cowbell, and who was wearing a handcuff, had the birthmark clearly present. The other Mick did not. DNA tests were taken later and it was determined he was Donald Strut. He was returned to prison and 50 years were added to his sentence. Melanomia divorced Strut and married Elton Mush, the famous battery-powered hoe mogul. Mick’s volcano birthmark has become the most popular tattoo in recorded history.

If you see a man walking funny down the street, chances are he’s coming from a tattoo parlor.

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

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Dianoea

Posted on September 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

Dianoea (di-a-noe’-a): The use of animated questions and answers in developing an argument (sometimes simply the equivalent of anthypophora).

He: Am I your man? Yes! Am I your best bestie? Yes! Am I your rainbow? Yes! Am I your first-class ticket to paradise? Yes! am I your package under the Christmas tree? Yes!

Baby, it all adds up, and you want me, and need me, and love me more and more every minute of every . . .

She: Will you PLEASE shut the hell up? My answer to your rant is none of the above, none of the below, or none of anywhere else. You are a psychopath and you’re not going to get away with this! Everybody knows, you’re so crazy you give crazy a bad name! Put down the fly swatter and let me go! I’ll visit you every month at “Flying Id.” They like people like you there and they can help you with your delusions of love, and all the rest. Medication will help you see you’re not a Harley chopper with three-foot ape hangers and a rainbow mist gas tank. I’m sure you have an inkling of how disturbing it is when you “rev it up” in your driveway at 2:00 a.m. So, put the fly swatter on the coffee table and we can get you some help.

He: Help? You’re the one who needs help! Traitor! If you don’t apologize, I’m going to swat you to within an inch of your life—well maybe a half-inch, or even a foot. I don’t know. But a few things I do know: I am your man, your bestie, your rainbow, and more. Vroom! Vroom! Vroom! Let’s go for a ride around your living room. I can do a wheelie.

He got down on his hands and knees and let go of the fly swatter. She climbed onto his back and dialed 911. They circled around the living room three times before help arrived.

The door flew open with a crash and police streamed through, guns drawn, along with two orderlies from “Racking Mind Hideaway.” He picked up the fly swatter and started waving it around and the police shot him 27 times, stopping to reload before using all their ammunition.

In court, during the wrongful death suit, the police argued that the fly swatter looked like a machine gun in the dimly-lit apartment. She backed the police up, testifying that the fly swatter looked like a machine gun. (Although on cross examination, she admitted she didn’t know what a machine gun is). The police were exonerated. Injustice was served.

Now, whenever she sees a fly swatter, she cries, gets hives, vomits, goes cross-eyed, bloats up, farts, and feels numbness in her feet. She voluntarily committed herself to “Flying Id Psychiatric Hospital” to rid herself of her unpleasant reaction to fly swatters. She’s been diagnosed with PIS (Post Injustice Syndrome). She is undergoing swatter therapy administered by Frank Bugck, a doctor newly graduated from “Granada Medical School” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In their sessions, using what he calls “crazy on crazy” therapy, Mr. Bugck has her dress in blue velvet pajamas and approach a fly swatter hanging on the wall while inhaling nitrous oxide. Dr. Bugck is optimistic about her prospects for recovery. “We are seeing signs of recovery: the numbness has moved from her feet to her hands, and the duration of her farts has diminished.”

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

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Diaphora

Posted on September 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

Diaphora (di-a’-pho-ra): Repetition of a common name so as to perform two logical functions: to designate an individual and to signify the qualities connoted by that individual’s name or title.

Earnie: Joey, Joey, Joey. You’re just like a baby kangaroo—you are your mother’s burden, but you’re a bad Joey, making her carry you around for the past 10 years. Joey the joey, it is time to get out of that pouch and make a life for yourself before you kill your mother, before you ride her to her grave.

Joey: What do YOU know dingo butt? Since my father died, it’s been me and Ma all the way. Sure, I don’t have a job and everybody thinks we live off her Social Security, but that’s what Social Security’s for. And to be absolutely honest, I do have a job. I sell gourmet popcorn on the internet. The business is called “Boom Bam” and it is a front for a dating site that specializes in “clandestine” dating. There, Mr. Cosmic Snoop Do-Gooder, Shit for Brains, now you know my biggest secret. I live here with Ma to conceal my assets.

“Boom Bam” clears 500K per year, but I have to keep it secret for the sake of my clients, some of whom are prominent citizens. I’m thinking about going into blackmail next.

If you tell anybody about me, I’ll have you tortured to death out in the desert.

Earnie: Holy hell-ride from outer space! I always knew you’d make good! You make my extortion racket look like bullshit. I make half what you do with twice the risk. So, scaring the shit out of my clients is part of my game. I like to send them pictures of bloody chain-saws and severed hands. Works like a charm to prompt timely monthly cash payments in my money drop, an old Mercedes parked in a junkyard with a mail slot cut in the trunk. Of course, I pay a modest parking fee to my buddy George who owns the junkyard. It’s called “Twisted Treasure.” Ha ha! Maybe we could team up.

Joey: There’s no room on my crew for you Earnie. Don’t get any big ideas either. Just leave well enough alone.

Earnie: Ok. Ok. Enough said. Never will I get in your face. My hands are off.

POSTSCRIPT

But, Earnie lied. He tried to muscle into Joey’s extortion rackets. First, Earnie flooded “Boom Ban” with fake logons, and started rerouting Joey’s clients to his site “Top Pop” selling decorations and jewelry made from 1960s soda and beer can pop tops. Then, he committed the ultimate breach of criminal friendship: he stole the trunkful of money stored in the Mercedes at “Twisted Treasure.” This is not “hands off.” Joey said to his crew. “Ever since we were kids he’s been stealing stuff off me, all the way back to my baseball glove when we were in Little League together. I never should’ve let it slide—my mom and his mom were good friends and I didn’t want to ruin that. It’s time to put an end to it.”

Joey took Earnie “for a ride” out to the desert, along with three of his crew members. Lucky for Earnie, he didn’t know what hit him. He was cleanly whacked and quickly dismembered with a chainsaw. Joey laughed, “Now he’s really hands off.”

Out of respect, Earnie put a photograph of one of Joey’s severed hands on the new edition of the “Payment Prompter” which he’d be sending to clients falling behind on their monthly “donations.” Joey thought the “Prompters” were the best idea Earnie had ever had.

Now, it was time for Joey to get to work on the blackmail scam. He was going to start at the top. He was considering Elon Musk or Kevin McCarthy.

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

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Diaporesis

Posted on September 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

Diaporesis: Deliberating with oneself as though in doubt over some matter; asking oneself (or rhetorically asking one’s hearers) what is the best or appropriate way to approach something [=aporia].

There I was standing in front of at least 200 people who had come to hear what I think. I do public performances of what I am thinking. No holds barred. Whatever I’m thinking comes out of my mouth. I signaled the start of the performance by clapping my hands twice. Here I go, “Clap, clap.”

“My tooth hurts. What’s for lunch? I need to adjust my underpants. No! Not here. I really don’t care about my shriveled parents in the nursing home. When are they going to die—oh—not today, please I need to get a haircut. You need a haircut? What about your famous ponytail? Where did that go? To hell with everything else in your life. I wet my pants in my car last week on my way to my daughter’s graduation. I couldn’t go with wet pants. Maybe that’s why I wet my pants. She’s been a pain in the ass ever since she came screaming into the house as an infant. Don’t you love your daughter? No! I’ll be glad when she goes off to the third-rate college she got into, somewhere in Montana. You are a true-blue asshole. So, these are my thoughts. Unfiltered, asocial, they can’t be judged. There’s no reflection here. Give me a break “other voice” blah, blah. I need to sit down, but there’s no chair. What’s the matter sissy boy? Can’t stand up for a half-hour? Eat me! I was scared in the war. Do I need a new car? No. Will it rain? I don’t give a shit. That woman in the third row is really fine looking. Jeez! I hope I get paid for this set by next week. My bookie is getting aggressive. Maybe I’ll have Sal take care of him. What? You’re going to hire a hit man? Maybe, but not likely. I am custodian of my fading parents’ assets, which are huge. I think I’ll go out for sushi tonight. Where do they get all that fish from? Should I go to this year’s Halloween party? Pagan craziness. No way. I think I’m having a mild heart attack. Let’s take a break.”

The audience gasped. I passed out and dreamed of a wedding. It was mine. I was marrying Alice in Wonderland’s divorced mother. She was banging me on the chest and yelling “come on!” It was like having sex with my first wife. She was rough. I had an Apple Lightning port in my chest, and she plugged me into a wall outlet. I felt a massive electric shock and I woke up, or at least I thought I woke up. I saw a tunnel, sort of like the Holland Tunnel, with a light at the end of it. I ran into the tunnel, toward the light. When I came out into the light, there was a squeegee man standing there. He sprayed me with window cleaner and started squeegeeing my hospital gown. Then, I really did wake up. There was a man in white holding a thing that looked like a squeegee and dragging it around on my chest. He looked at me and said “Sonogram.”

What? Stranger things had happened than men having babies. The man in white elaborated, “The Sonogram is of your heart. Nobody knows why you’re alive. We must study you, with your permission, of course.” So now, I’ve become a professional scientific study subject. I have a suite next to the “rat room” with all the amenities, including a hot tub. Each day a group of scientists gather around my leather-upholstered recliner and argue with each other. They’ve even gotten into shoving matches. As far as I can tell my heartbeat has gone away. Instead, my heart has become more like a leaf blower, blowing my blood through my veins and arteries. My IQ has gone through the roof and I am able to write beautiful, meaningful poetry that makes my nurses cry and fight over tucking me in at night.

So, anyway. Here I am, a certified anomaly. I’m thinking of joining a sideshow where I project the live sonogram of my leaf-blower heart, while I sing “I Left My Heart In San Fransisco,” “Heart and Soul,” “Heart Breaker” and possibly, a few others. I would perform in front of a giant screen, singing and dancing. In the dance I would be laying on the stage making pumping motions with my arms (like a normal heart). I would stop and then slowly stand making swirling leaf-blower motions with my hands, recovering from my heart attack, and finishing my act vibrantly with “Heart Breaker,” waving a handgun and leaping and strutting around the stage Mick Jagger style. I know this sounds corny, but that’s what will make it a success. Oh, I will wear a red full-body leotard with a black silhouette of a leaf blower on the chest. Too bad “Heart” is already taken as a stage name, or I’d take it. I’m thinking of “Infraction,” or maybe “Heart Attack,” or “Cardiac Arrest.”

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

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