Tag Archives: examples

Parrhesia (par-rez’-i-a): Either to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. Sometimes considered a vice.

“I’m gonna tell you like it is, The last ten years with you have been like living on that French prison island—Devil’s Island. I’m breaking out of here. Free of you I’ll be somebody.“

I said this ten years ago when I split up from my wife, Sloopy, who hung down at the local bar “Dick’s Kicks” bumming drinks an flirting with the truck drivers who hung out there.

It’s ten years later and I’m still nobody. My nickname is “Dead End Darrell.” I’m 49 years old and I’m still hoping to hit the big one. TV, cigarettes, and beer have kept me on track all these years, consumed by night from the embrace of my velveteen lounger. By day, I’m a workin’ man, nervous most of the time—nervous because I never paid Sloopy any alimony. I wrote cordial letters, but never sent a check. I “disappeared” five years ago. It takes years of absence to be declared dead. I am almost there—almost dead! No more worries!

But in the meantime I hide & work. My jobs are low profile and under the table. I switch jobs frequently to stay under the law’s radar. I work for a collection right now. It is humorousLY called “Rat’s Ass Collection Agency.” it is a branch of a giant loan sharking conglomerate called “Hell’s Interest” to warn people—so they can say “We told you so, sucker” when guns are drawn, the car is flaming and the daughter has been shipped off to Abu Dhabi,

I specialize in knuckle busting. I wield a two-pound hammer with a beautiful leather wrapped handle and “Dead End” engraved on it. I can’t say I enjoy the work. I really get tired of the begging and screaming with pain, but every month I aspire to be employee of the month, so I try to ignore it. Just last week I “busted” somebody who owes us a cool million. In a sense, it was professionally rewarding. The guy was a real schmuck before I landed one on his FU finger—that he was pointing at me. Bam! and he was a new person, the arrogant bastard became a lame duck. Ha ha!

Before working for “Rat’s Ass” I worked filing serial numbers off handguns. I went through special training at “Smoothies” where I learned how to take serial numbers down with a Diamond-gritted file, by hand. It was hard work. So, I quit.

I just wish I could get my shit together. Through no fault of my own, I have become a bottom feeder.

I’ve got a new job lined up at “Smoke on the Water” a mafia operation specializing in arson. They burn down the homes of financially strapped people and split the insurance payout, and charge a fee. I will be a “match man” actually igniting the fires with a BIC Firestick.

I think this will be a good career move.

Parrhesia (par-rez’-i-a): Either to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. Sometimes considered a vice.

“Sometimes the truth hurts Earl. You’re a fu*king idiot and I’m ashamed to be your father.” These two sentences changed the course of my life—like a shoal tearing out the bottom of my boat. I was only nine years old and my father had pulled me out of school to work as stern man on his lobster boat. I baited the traps and sent them overboard, I also hauled traps and checked them for keeper lobsters. Dad’s nickname was “Shorty” for all the short lobsters he’d been cited for keeping. He drank Peils beer and smoked cigars while he skippered “Bang Bang Betty,” our lobster boat.

Mom was mysteriously “lost at sea” when she fell overboard from Bang Bang Betty by the bell buoy off Ram’s Head. Mom and Dad never got along. I predicted he would kill mom when I was in the fifth grade in my diorama “Person Overboard.” It won a blue ribbon in the Town Fair in the “local color” category. People kept asking me how I made the tiny cigar and can of beer. I told them I made the cigar out of a lollipop stick and the beer can from a piece of tubing stuffed with plastic wood. I had painted the cigar with brown paint and the beer can with blue paint. I used my felt tip pen to write “Peils Beer” on it. The “person overboard” had black hair like my mother, heavy chains around her neck, and her arms raised. She had a speech bubble pasted to her hair that said “You dirty dog!”

I brought my diorama home with the blue ribbon dangling from it. That’s when my dad began calling me “Idiot.” About a year later the police came to visit. They wanted to have a look at my “famous” diorama. I told them my dad had burned it in the fireplace because I was an idiot. Just then, dad came home. The police handcuffed him and charged him with the murder of mom. He yelled “You fu*king idiot!” as they led him out the front door.

Now, I’m the youngest lobsterman on the east coast. When I’m hauling traps, I play Pink Floyd on my lobster boat’s Bluetooth speakers. My boat is named MAMA as a tribute to my mother.

I live with my aunt Fidget who takes real good care of me. Dad writes to me from state prison every once-in-awhile. The letters are all the same: “Dear Earl, you’re a fu*king idiot.”

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

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